Owen Goldin

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 not for the casual reader, since much of the book is devoted to a careful examination of the Greek text and alternative interpretations. Nonetheless this book will prove profitable for all who are interested in Platonic metaphysics, for Benitez concentrates on developing cogent interpretations of the One-Many problems and the Heavenly Tradition and the Fourfold Classification, two of the most difficult and provocative passages in the Platonic corpus.

This 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 Aristotelian science. In order to "save the phenomena," to allow the endoxon that the heavens are alive and divine to stand, Aristotle needs to make the point that the world and its doings, including all of our human doings, depend on an actuality that is in some sense better than the occasional, incomplete activities in which we engage.

Heraclitus accepts as a principle that any particular insight into things is necessarily partial and perspectival. Edward Halper has discussed how, for this reason, it is in principle impossible for a particular thinker to attain the perspective of the Logos by which the whole can be made intelligible. So, metaphysics itself tells us that metaphysics is impossible. According to Halper, Heraclitus was wrong to take the Logos as applying to itself, as the Logos should properly be understood as applying only to what is not a product of human agency. I argue that Halper’s move cannot serve as a corrective patch to Heraclitus’ metaphysical thought, since it posits a distinction between the human and the rest of reality which Heraclitus could never accept. Although not a radical monist who denies the reality of all multiplicity, a fundamental principle of his thought is that all distinctions and oppositions are grounded in a more fundamental unity. I instead approach the Heraclitean paradox by appealing to the strategy, familiar from a number of ancient Greek philosophers, of making a distinction between different levels of knowledge inherent within the same knower.

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 two related reasons. First, on an atomistic account, the units of explanation are determinate, and for that reason are in principle ultimately intelligible, as are the complexes derived from them. Both examples of atomism that the author takes as examples display these features. Second, atomism is reductionistic. Ancient atomism has this feature, but it is not an inevitable result of an atomistic strategy. It is absent from Fredkin’s digital ontology.

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 Bingen, St Francis of Assisi, Bacon, Decartes, Kant, Mill, Emerson and Thoreau. As the collection as a whole amply demonstrates, the history of western philosophical accounts of nature can help us to better understand current attitudes and problems. Human Life and the Natural World may also be of interest to a broad range of philosophers and students of philosophy, and more generally to those with a concern for the environment that engages the intellect as well as the heart

Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism

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 of how the mind sorts out the elements involved in a complex unity. I suggest that it is not primarily the mind that does this work, but language. What the mind does is primarily to be understood as a reflection of what language does, not vice versa.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symbolic Classification and The Emergence of a Metaphysics of CausalityOwen Goldinwhat is distinctive about metaphysics as a mode of thought that emerged in the fifth century before the Common Era? How did it emerge out of early ways of conceptualizing the world as a whole, and why? Many answers have been proposed. One common view is that earlier modes of thought personify natural agencies; once this is abandoned, the way is open for discerning more complex regularities among natural events.1 Another view is that the process of "rationalization" introduced by the Greeks involves an implicit appeal to the individual's natural intelligence, in contrast to a dependence on an "inherited stock of wisdom."2 A third view is that the first Greek philosophers introduced inference as a way of navigating conceptual relationships, independent of the sorts of personal interactions among divinities related in mythical narrative.3 According to a fourth account, the mode of rationality that allowed for the development of ancient Greek metaphysics was a social [End Page 3] practice with the aim of persuasion, brought on by more democratic involvement in societal deliberations concerning law and policy.4To these I add a fifth way of answering the question. Crucial to the emergence of Greek metaphysics is explicit distinction of ontological/causal priority and posteriority. Ancient Greek scientific explanations developed out of older, archaic modes of conceptualization, which I maintain have deep parallels with modes of conceptualization shared by many nonliterate cultures. Such modes of thought rest on an implicit worldview which can be called a metaphysics, in a loose sense, and are still worthy of philosophical consideration.I begin with a red flag that will be raised for many as soon as we start talking about the metaphysical traditions of nonliterate cultures. What counts as a metaphysical tradition? I make some distinctions. In the loosest sense, an account or tradition is metaphysical if it reflects a coherent worldview concerning the kinds of beings that there are and how they are related to one another. According to a stricter sense of the term, a tradition is metaphysical if it involves working through this worldview in an explicit and systematic matter. In an even stricter sense, a tradition is metaphysical if, in addition to being explicit and systematic, it merits being classified as "philosophical," itself not an unproblematic term. I here stipulate that an account is philosophical if it does not rest on premises that are specific to certain cultural traditions and employs inferential arguments that are in principle subject to refutation.Generally speaking, there are two ways in which a tradition that is metaphysical in the strictest sense can listen to one that is metaphysical in a looser sense. First, a metaphysician might examine the latter tradition in order to explore how, historically, it served as the root for the former. An example is Aristotle's interest in Hesiod as expressing metaphysical intuitions that later philosophers unpacked.5 By studying [End Page 4] the ontological presuppositions of the sort of account from which our own metaphysics is derived, one learns more about our own ontological presuppositions and what we gain from them.6 This sort of dialogue carries with it the danger that the later thinker presupposes that—in the spirit of "you have to start somewhere"—the earlier thinkers were simply doing a bad job working through their own theories; Aristotle has often been accused of precisely this.7Another sort of dialogue is possible as well. An alternative metaphysical tradition can reveal the possibility of a radically different way of conceptualizing the causal and ontological structure of the world, one with its own advantages. In such a case there is shared set of problems at issue, shared points of reference within the philosophical literature, and a shared understanding of what philosophical argument is. But philosophical insight might also emerge from the kind of dialogue in which a developed metaphysics that conforms to certain standards of inferential argument confronts a way of thinking that is metaphysical in a looser sense. A substance-based ontologist can be led to reflect on whether the world has to be cut up as she does by studying Aztec...

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 Neoplatonic Aristotelians, but not against Aristotle himself. Aristotle’s response to Maimonides would be that the latter is in effect asking, “Why are there the essences there are?”, a question that Aristotle would take to be fundamentally misplaced, since he holds that the existence of the theoretical primitives of every science is to be assumed. Nevertheless, Maimonides’ challenge has force for those who recognize a demand for a metaphysical explanation for there being those kinds of things posited as primitive by the natural sciences.

This 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 (and similar) arguments, and draw conclusions concerning the status of cosmology as an Aristotelian science. In order to "save the phenomena," to allow the endoxon that the heavens are alive and divine to stand, Aristotle needs to make the point that the world and its doings, including all of our human doings, depend on an actuality that is in some sense better than the occasional, incomplete activities in which we engage.

Contrā 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 metaethics and ethical theory isolate and clarify. Second, there are times in which the good of others may well be given greater weight in one’s ethical deliberations if theory has made clear that the good to be promoted is ontologically independent of one’s own good.