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16Aristotle's Theory of Substance : The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta: The Categories and Metaphysics ZetaOxford University Press UK. 2000.Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long…Read more
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16Aristotle’s Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics ZetaOxford University Press UK. 2000.Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long…Read more
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Human Nature and Natural Knowledge. Essays Presented to Marjorie Grene on the Occasion of Her Seventy-Fifth BirthdayBoston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 89 3-381. 1986.
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5The Science and Axioms of BeingIn Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.This chapter contains sections titled: Aristotle's Declaration of a General Science of Being qua Being A Problem for the Science of Being The Content of the General Science of Being Including Axioms in the General Science of Being The Notion of the Firmest Principle Proving Something about an Axiom: the Indubitability Proof of PNC PNC as the Ultimate Principle Defending an Axiom: the Elenctic Proof of PNC Theology and the General Science of Being Notes Bibliography.
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51Keeping the Matter in Mind: Aristotle on the Passions and the SoulPacific Philosophical Quarterly 76 (3-4): 183-221. 1995.This paper considers I) whether Aristotle's notion of form is 'compositionally plastic' and II) whether matter is in any way to be included in the form of natural things. It pursues (I) and (II) with respect to two texts only: De Anima I-2's socalled definition of anger and the notorious young Socrates passage from Metaphysics VII.11. Neither passage supports indusion of anything material in the form and both are consistent with compositional plasticity. To thus extent the support what I call th…Read more
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52. Subjects and Substance in Metaphysics Z 3In Christof Rapp (ed.), Aristoteles: Metaphysik. Die Substanzbücher (Z, H, Θ), Akademie Verlag. pp. 41-73. 1996.
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56Nozick on Explaining NothingPhilosophy Research Archives 10 337-346. 1984.This paper raises some difficulties with the strategy suggested in Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations for explaining why there is something rather than nothing. I am concerned less with his adoption of an egalitarian, as opposed to inegalitarian, explanatory stance (the net effect of which is to detach for independent consideration the question, “Why is there something?”) than with his use of a crucial assumption in reasoning from the egalitarian point of view. I argue that this assumpti…Read more
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24Singular Statements and Essentialism in AristotleCanadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (sup1): 67-88. 1984.
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111Negation and Quantification in AristotleHistory and Philosophy of Logic 11 (2): 131-150. 1990.Two main claims are defended. The first is that negative categorical statements are not to be accorded existential import insofar as they figure in the square of opposition. Against Kneale and others, it is argued that Aristotle formulates his o statements, for example, precisely to avoid existential commitment. This frees Aristotle's square from a recent charge of inconsistency. The second claim is that the logic proper provides much thinner evidence than has been supposed for what appears to b…Read more
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27Chapter 5. Aristotle on the Mind’s Self-MotionIn Mary Louise Gill & James G. Lennox (eds.), Self-Motion: From Aristotle to Newton, Princeton University Press. pp. 81-116. 2017.
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121Aristotle on the Impossibility of Anaximander’s apeiron: On Generation and Corruption, 332a20-25Phronesis 58 (1): 17-31. 2013.In On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle rejects the very possibility of such a thing as Anaximander’s apeiron. Characterized as a kind of intermediate stuff, the apeiron turns out to consist of contraries and as such is impossible. Commentators have rightly noted this point and some have also indicated that Aristotle offers an argument of sorts for his negative estimate. However, the argument has received scant attention, and it is fair to say that it remains unclear exactly why Aristotle rej…Read more
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122Aristotle's theory of substance: the Categories and Metaphysics ZetaOxford University Press. 2000.Michael Wedin argues against the prevailing notion that Aristotle's views on the nature of reality are fundamentally inconsistent. According to Wedin's new interpretation, the difference between the early theory of the Categories and the later theory of the Metaphysics reflects the fact that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works--the earlier focusing on ontology, and the later on explanation.
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208Aristotle on the Firmness of the Principle of Non-ContradictionPhronesis 49 (3): 225-265. 2004.In "Metaphysics" Gamma 3 Aristotle declares that the philosopher investigates things that are qua things that are and that he therefore should be able to state the firmest principles of everything. The firmest principle of all is identified as the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). The main focus of Gamma 3 is Aristotle's proof for this identification. This paper begins with remarks about Aristotle's notion of the firmness of a principle and then offers an analysis of the firmness proof for P…Read more
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103A curious turn in metaphysics gamma: Protagoras and strong denial of the principle of non-contradictionArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85 (2): 107-130. 2003.
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65The Scope of Non-Contradiction: A Note on Aristotle's 'Elenctic' Proof in "Metaphysics" Γ 4Apeiron 32 (3): 231-242. 1999.
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17‘Said of and ‘Predicated of' in the CategoriesPhilosophy Research Archives 5 418-432. 1979.Anyone with more than casual interest in Aristotle's Categories knows the convention that "predicated of" ["κατηγορεἳται"] marks a general relation of predication while "said of" ["λέγεται"] is reserved for essential predication. By "convention" I simply mean to underscore that the view in question ranks as the conventional or received interpretation. Ackrill, for example, follows the received view in holding that only items within the same category (not arbitrarily, of course) can stand in the …Read more
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13Aristotle’s Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics ZetaPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (207): 256-258. 2002.