Owen Goldin

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.

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.

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 explanations of the attributes of that kind and that of expressing the kind's essence. There follows an examination of the various technical senses of kath' auto. ;Next I discuss Aristotle's distinction between those kinds whose einai is assumed among the first principles of a science and those whose einai is demonstrated. I show that Aristotle's distinction is between the basic kinds studied by a science and the attributes demonstrated to belong to those basic kinds. ;I then turn to my interpretation of Post. An. II.3-10. I argue that Aristotle's distinction between what does not have a cause other than itself and what does is the same as the distinction between basic kinds considered by a science and the attributes of those kinds that are demonstrated to exist. I show that Aristotle is claiming that only those kinds that are not to be considered basic can have their essences explained through demonstration. This is done through a syllogism in which the existence of the conjunction of predicates that is identified with the kind through a nominal definition is shown to follow from certain indemonstrable definitions of other kinds. I argue that such a demonstration constitutes a reductive explanation of the existence and properties of the kind in question, as reductive explanation has been explicated by Sellars. I then show how those nonsubstantial kinds that are taken to be basic by the sciences that study them are in effect considered substantial from the perspective of those sciences

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 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 students being initiated into philosophy. These students have already left behind a mythical world-view, but not all are..

Aristotle 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 universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27 34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science is the same in genus as the superordinate, but different in species.

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.

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, according to which the presence of a principle on one column of the table will carry with it another principle within the same column; 3) a close analysis of Aristotle's arguments shows that he thought that the table expresses real causal relationships; and 4) Aristotle faults the table of opposites with positing its principles as having universal application and with not distinguishing between those principles that are causally prior and those that are posterior. Aristotle's account of scientific explanation and his own explanations that he developed in accordance with this account are in part the result of his critical encounter with this prescientific Pythagorean table.

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

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 predictions, seeing which are common to which species. Pacius, on the other hand, takes Aristotle to be saying that a genus is studied scientifically through first determining the infimae species that fall under that genus. This interpretation attributes to Aristotle a distinction between primary and derivative subjects. I argue for Pacius’s interpretation, defending it against Barnes’s objections.Author Keywords: Demonstration; Definition; Aristotle; Species; Principles