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21Colloquium 3: Cosmic Orientation in Aristotle’s De CaeloProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 26 (1): 91-129This paper examines how within De Caelo Aristotle argues that the heavens rotate to the right, because this is best. I isolate and evaluate its presuppositions and show how it comprises both a dialectical argument to cosmological principles and a partial demonstrative explanation on the basis of such principles. Second, I consider the expressions of epistemological hesitation that Aristotle offers in regard to this arguments, and draw conclusions concerning the status of cosmology as an Aristote…Read more
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36The Pythagorean Table of Opposites, Symbolic Classification, and AristotleScience in Context 28 (2): 171-193. 2015.At Metaphysics A 5 986a22-b2, Aristotle refers to a Pythagorean table, with two columns of paired opposites. I argue that 1) although Burkert and Zhmud have argued otherwise, there is sufficient textual evidence to indicate that the table, or one much like it, is indeed of Pythagorean origin; 2) research in structural anthropology indicates that the tables are a formalization of arrays of “symbolic classification” which express a pre-scientific world view with social and ethical implications, ac…Read more
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11Review [of Marguerite Johnson, Harold Tarrant (ed.) Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator] (review)Bryn Mawr Classical Review 201207. 2012.
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15Human Life and the Natural World: Readings in the History of Western Philosophy (edited book)Broadview Press. 1997.Human concern over the urgency of current environmental issues increasingly entails wide-ranging discussions of how we may rethink the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. In order to provide a context for such discussions this anthology provides a selection of some of the most important, interesting and influential readings on the subject from classical times through to the late nineteenth century. Included are such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Hildegard of B…Read more
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16To Tell the Truth: Dissoi Logoi 4 & Aristotle's ResponseIn Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Victor Miles Caston & Daniel W. Graham (eds.), Presocratic philosophy: essays in honour of Alexander Mourelatos, Ashgate. pp. 232-49. 2002.
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75Atoms, complexes, and demonstration: Posterior analytics 96b15-25Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (4): 707-727. 2004.There is agreement neither concerning the point that is being made in Posterior analytics 96b15–25 nor the issue Aristotle intends to address. There are two major lines of interpretation of this passage. According to one, sketched by Themistius and developed by Philoponus and Eustratius, Aristotle is primarily concerned with determining the definitions of the infimae species that fall under a certain genus. They understand Aristotle as arguing that this requires collating definitional prediction…Read more
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Joseph Owens, Some Philosophical Issues in Moral Matters: the Collected Ethical Writings of Joseph Owens Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 17 (3): 196-198. 1997.
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7Contrā Dale Jamieson, the study of the metaethical foundations of environmental ethics may well lead students to a more environmentally responsible way of life. For although metaethics is rarely decisive in decision making and action, there are two kinds of circumstances in which it can play a crucial role in our practical decisions. First, decisions that have unusual features do not summon habitual ethical reactions, and hence invite the application of ethical precepts that the study of metaeth…Read more
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38Tamir, Rawls, and the Temple MountJournal of Applied Philosophy 22 (3). 2005.abstract What gives ethical and political validity to a state? This is to ask what a state is for and to provide a means to determine whether or not a constitution is just. In this paper I compare the account given by Tamir in Liberal Nationalism with that of Rawls, in order to clarify the decisive differences. Although both recognize the importance of particular associations and the moral imperative to be fair, Tamir places priority on the first and Rawls on the second. I explore their practica…Read more
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16Self, Sameness, and Soul in Alcibiades I_ and the _TimaeusFreiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie Und Theologie 40 (1-2): 5-19. 1993.
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33Heraclitean Satiety and Aristotelian ActualityThe Monist 74 (4): 568-578. 1991.It is now a commonplace that Aristotle and Theophrastus systematically misunderstood Heraclitus in interpreting fire as an ἀρχή of the kind posited by the Milesians. While air in the thought of Anaxamines and the ἄπειρον in the thought of Anaximander can be considered to play the role of the Aristotelian material substrate without too much distortion, this is not so for fire in the thought of Heraclitus. As Cherniss has indicated, while a substrate of the kind posited by the Milesians is a perma…Read more
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24Colloquium 3: Cosmic Orientation in Aristotle’s De CaeloProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 26 (1): 91-129. 2011.
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5Problems with Graham's Two-systems HypothesisOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 7 203-213. 1989.
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Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |