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9Review of Animal Minds and Human Morals by Richard Sorabji (review)Classical Bulletin 71 (1): 62-4. 1995.
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7Review of The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science, by Dustin Sebell (review)Polis 35 (1): 237-40. 2018.
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12Colloquium 2 Commentary on HalperProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 33 (1): 61-67. 2018.Edward Halper’s “The Metaphysics of the Syllogism” argues that the ontological ground of valid inference is found in the necessity of the predications that constitute the premises of the sort of syllogism central to Aristotle’s theory: demonstration. I further support his conclusion on the basis of a consideration of the title and structure of Aristotle’s Analytics, as well as some recent analysis of Aristotle’s modal logic. Halper however suggests that the logical form of inference is a result …Read more
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28The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science, written by Dustin SebellPolis 35 (1): 237-240. 2018.
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16Ancient Atomism and Digital PhilosophyReview of Metaphysics 72 (2): 245-257. 2018.What is it for a philosophical account to be atomist? What is the attraction of an atomistic metaphysics? These questions are best approached by considering representative varieties of atomism. The present paper offers a preliminary account of atomism in general and then, in order to shed light on atomism in general and its appeal, considers two very different varieties of atomism: that of Democritus and that of Fredkin’s “digital ontology.” Atomistic accounts are philosophically attractive for …Read more
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50David Bronstein. Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning: The Posterior Analytics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xiii+272. $74.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 7 (1): 173-176. 2017.
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34Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption I (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 46 (1): 132-133. 2006.
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The Role of the Demonstration That Explains an Essence in Aristotle's Theory of Explanation [Microform]. --University Microfilms International. 1988.In this dissertation I present an interpretation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics II.3-10 according to which Aristotle here outlines the structure of reductive explanations, in which attributes taken to be basic from the standpoint of common sense are analyzed as complexes of theoretical primitives. ;I first discuss the basic features of Aristotle's account of scientific understanding. I then show how an Aristotelian definition of a kind is thought to play two roles: that of grounding all expl…Read more
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30Review of Anthony Kenny, From Empedocles to Wittgenstein: Historical Essays in Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (3). 2009.
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8Metaphysical Explanation and “Partcularization” in Maimonides’ Guide of the PerplexedJournal of Philosophical Research 17 189-213. 1992.Within The Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides presents an argument that is intended to render probable the temporal creation of the cosmos. In one of these arguments Maimonides adopts the Kalamic strategy of arguing for the necessity of there being a “particularizing” agent. Maimonides argues that even one who grants Aristotelian science can still ask why the heavenly realm is as it is, to which there is no reply forthcoming but “God so willed it.” The argument is effective against the Arabic Neo…Read more
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25Forms in Plato's Philebus (review)Review of Metaphysics 44 (3): 617-618. 1991.This book is an attempt to meet the arguments of scholars who have denied that within the Philebus, generally recognized as a late dialogue, the theory of Forms of the middle dialogues is advocated or plays an important role. Accordingly, instead of a commentary on the argument of the Philebus as a whole, Benitez presents a painstaking analysis of those passages that promise to shed light on Plato's metaphysical and epistemological views at the time of the writing of the Philebus. The result is …Read more
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41Aristotle as Teacher: His Introduction to a Philosophical Science by Christopher BruellJournal of the History of Philosophy 54 (1): 154-155. 2016.This commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics is in a style familiar from the writings of Leo Strauss and his students. The reader is presented with a paraphrase of the whole of Aristotle’s text, marked by seemingly odd omissions, emphases, and offhand remarks. One soon sees that the book is written in code. Only as the book progresses is the author more explicit concerning what he takes to be the main lines of Aristotle’s esoteric teaching, which is as follows.Aristotle writes the Metaphysics for …Read more
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38Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements he first formulated of logical validity and explanatoriness. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of unive…Read more
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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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82Atoms, 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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Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |