-
Change in Aristotle's Physics 3In Brad Inwood (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Volume 39, Oxford University Press. 2010.
-
20Physics I.6: A third and underlying principleIn Katerina Ierodiakonou, Paul Kalligas & Vassilis Karasmanis (eds.), Aristotle's Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford University Press. pp. 190-228. 2019.Physics I 6 addresses the question of the number of principles and motivates the need for an underlying principle in addition to the contrary ones argued for in chapter 5. Physics I 6 ends in aporia about whether there are two or three principles, an aporia which is resolved with Aristotle’s own account in I 7. This chapter focuses on two issues. First, it explores how Aristotle’s arguments for contrary and underlying principles give rise to the aporia. Second, it discusses Aristotle’s puzzling …Read more
-
On Generation and Corruption II.7In Panos Dimas, Andrea Falcon & Sean Kelsey (eds.), Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption Book II: Introduction, Translation, and Interpretative Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 151-177. 2022.
-
40Aristotle’s First Moves Regarding Perception: A Reading of (most of) De Anima 2.5Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105 (1): 68-117. 2023.Whereas scholars often look to De Anima 2.5 to support one or another understanding of the sense in which perception, for Aristotle, qualifies as an alteration and qualitative assimilation to the sense-object, I ask the more basic question of what the chapter is meant to establish or accomplish with respect to the question whether perception is an alteration. I argue that the chapter does not presuppose or legitimate the view that perception is an alteration where it is thought to, and that it i…Read more
-
71Mixture, Generation and the First Aporia of Aristotle’s GC 1.10Phronesis 66 (2): 139-177. 2021.This paper concerns the classification of the process of mixture, for Aristotle, and the related issue of the manner in which the ingredients remain present once mixed. I argue that mixture is best viewed as a kind of substantial generation in the context of the GC and, accordingly, that the ingredients do not enjoy the kind of strong presence within a mixture usually attributed to them. To do this, I critically examine the most promising versions of the standard view and offer a new interpretat…Read more
-
106Change, Agency and the Incomplete in AristotlePhronesis 62 (2): 170-209. 2017.Aristotle’s most fundamental distinction between changes and other activities is not that ofMetaphysicsΘ.6, between end-exclusive and end-inclusive activities, but one implicit inPhysics3.1’s definition of change, between the activity of something incomplete and the activity of something complete. Notably, only the latter distinction can account for Aristotle’s view, inPhysics3.3, that ‘agency’—effecting change in something, e.g. teaching—does not qualify strictly as a change. This distinction i…Read more
-
234Senses of Dunamis and the Structure of Aristotle’s Metaphysics ΘPhronesis 56 (4): 388-425. 2011.This essay aims to analyze the structure of Aristotle's Metaphysics Θ by explicating various senses of the term δύναµις at issue in the treatise. It is argued that Aristotle's central innovation, the sense of δύναµις most useful to his project in the treatise, is the kind of capacity characteristic of the pre-existent matter for substance. It is neither potentiality as a mode of being, as recent studies maintain, nor capacity for `complete' activity. It is argued further that, in starting with t…Read more