Anna Marmodoro

Do powers have powers? More urgently, do powers need further powers to do what powers do? Stathis Psillos says they do. He finds this a fatal flaw in the nature of pure powers: pure powers have a regressive nature. Their nature is incoherent to us, and they should not be admitted into the ontology. I argue that pure powers do not need further powers; rather, they do what they do because they are powers. I show that at the heart of Psillos’ regress is a metaphysical division he assumes between a pure power to φ and its directedness towards the manifestation of φ-ing, i.e. between a pure power and its essence. But such an ontological division between an entity and its essence has already been shown by Aristotle to be detrimental, condemning the entity to a regressive nature. I show that Psillos’ regress is but an instance of Aristotle’s regress argument on the relation between an entity and its essence. I compare Aristotle’s, Bradley’s, and Psillos’ regresses, showing that Bradley’s and Psillos’ (different) conclusions from the regress arguments lead to impasses. I then build on Aristotle’s directive against regressive natures, arguing with him that an entity is not other than its nature (being divided from its nature by a relation between them). Rather, an entity is an instantiated nature itself. The Aristotelian position I put forward explains how the oneness of the entity is achieved by its being an instance of a type. Thus, the regress is blocked, and the nature of pure powers is shown to pose no threats of an ontological or epistemological kind, if physics gave us reasons to posit pure powers.

‘Is being one only one? – The Argument for the Uniqueness of Platonic Forms’ Abstract: Each Form is unique in number; no two numerically distinct Forms can share the same nature. Plato argues for this claim in Republic X. I identify the metaphysical principles Plato presupposes in the premises of the argument, by examining the reasoning behind them, and offer a reconstruction of the argument showing the principles in use. I argue that the metaphysical significance of the argument’s conclusion is to establish that if a Form F were not unique, if there were many Forms F, their nature would alter along with their number: a Form cannot recur without change in its constitution. This is why there can be only one Form for each character in the world.

‘The Union of Cause and Effect in Aristotle : Physics III 3’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 32, pp. 205-232, May 2007.: I argue that Aristotle introduced a unique realist account of causation, which has not hitherto been appreciated in the history of philosophy: causal realism without a causal relation. In his account, cause and effect are unified by the ectopic actualization of the agent’s potentiality in the patient. His solution consists in the introduction of a property that belongs to one subject but is realized in another subject on whose state this realization depends. I identify and analyze the multiple ontological dependencies between the causal state of the agent and that of the patient during their causal activity

This volume is a collection of papers that advance our understanding of the metaphysics of powers — properties such as fragility and electric charge. The metaphysics of powers is a fast developing research field with fundamental questions at the forefront of current research, such as Can there be a world of only powers? What is the manifestation of a power? Are powers and their manifestations related by necessity? What are the prospects for dispositional accounts of causation? The papers focus on questions concerning the metaphysics of powers that cut across any particular subject-specific ontological domain -- whether philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology – investigating the metaphysical structure of powers, the nature of the manifestation of powers, the necessity or contingency of a power’s relation to its manifestations, and powers and causation. A number of authors also engage in discussion with Humean and neo-Humean treatments of causation, thereby making contributions to a larger metaphysical debate beyond powers. Additionally, the authors engage critically with the latest contributions to the debate on powers in the literature, thereby bringing together in a wholesome and analytical way the most recent and noteworthy theoretical developments in this research field.

L'A. offre l'analisi del libro D della Metafisica mettendo a confronto l'impostazione esegetica dei commentatori moderni con quelli medievali, in particolare è presa in esame la Lectura super librum Metaphysicorum di Paolo Veneto tradita dai mss. Pavia, BU, Aldini 324 e Casale Monferrato, Seminario Vescovile, I.a.3-6. Dopo aver analizzato le due principali linee interpretative della nozione di Essere negli esegeti moderni e la molteplicità dei suoi significati nel corpus aristotelico, l'A. passa ad esaminare in maniera specifica la soluzione interpretativa proposta da Paolo Nicoletti in merito alla nozione di Essere focalizzando l'attenzione sulla definizione di ente e sulla questione di essere come vero e non essere come falso e le soluzioni proposte dall'autore. Si evidenzia come alcuni spunti interpretativi possono essere riscontrati sia Alberto Magno sia in Averroè. Il testo del Nicoletti, edito dall'A. nella parte conclusiva dell'articolo, corrisponde al Libro V, tr. II, c. 2.

Are there atoms in the constitution of things? Or is everything made of atomless ‘gunk’ whose proper parts have proper parts? Anaxagoras is the first gunk lover in the history of metaphysics. For him gunk is not only a theoretical possibility that cannot be ruled out in principle. Rather, it is a view that follows cogently from his metaphysical analysis of the physical world of our experience. What is distinctive about Anaxagoras’s take on gunk is not only what motives the view, but also the particular type of gunk that he develops. It is qualitative gunk, rather than material gunk. Anaxagoras’s ontology was developed before matter was ‘invented’. It includes quality tropes only; they are gunky. The resulting metaphysical view – a world of qualitative gunk – is new, in the sense of being hitherto unexplored; and yet, it is derived from Anaxagoras’s writings. Drawing on Anaxagoras’s insights, this paper offers a sketch of what qualitative gunk ontology l..

In everyday life we assume substantial behavioural reliability in others, and on the basis of it we talk of people as acting “in character” and “out of character”. This common assumption seems intuitively well founded. But recent experiments in social psychology have generated philosophical controversy around it. In the context of this debate, John Doris challenges Aristotle’s well known and influential view that people’s behavioural reliability with respect to acting virtuously is underpinned by character traits, understood as settled and integrated dispositions of the agent to have appropriate judgment and appropriate feelings toward what she is called upon to do in a given situation. In this paper I will take John Doris’ challenge at face value, and argue in response that Aristotle’s position is not undermined by it. In fact, rethinking Aristotle’s realism about character and moral virtues in light of Doris’ criticism has important and hitherto unexplored heuristic value for Aristotelian scholars and situationist philosophers alike.