Richard Neels

Recent scholarship has paid too little attention to the structure of fundamentality at work amongst the Forms in Plato’s Parmenides. In this paper I argue that the Forms in the deductions of Parmenides stand to one another in a rather intricate and unique structure of fundamentality. All conceptual Forms are, in part, dependent on other Forms. However, in part, all Forms are also independent (i.e. they are in part foundational entities). Any one Form is thus partially dependent on the other Forms and partially an independent entity. I label this view Metaphysical Foundherentism and show that it is unique among contemporary schemes of fundamentality.

It is well-known that Kant at some point thought the faculty of imagination was a necessary and autonomous faculty of the mind working in conjunction with sensibility and understanding to perform cognition. However, many scholars in the last 50 years have argued that Kant abandoned this view of the imagination and relegated its activities to the faculty of the understanding. In this paper, I join some recent scholars in pushing back against this view. I argue that the role of imagination in the Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason requires it to perform the necessary task of mediating between the non-conceptual intuitions of the sensibility and the concepts of the understanding. I argue that imagination cannot do this if it is the performance of the faculty of the understanding. Hence, it must be a faculty distinct from the understanding. I also explore how the schemata are initially generated by the imagination and later refined by the concepts of the understanding.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Heraclitus’ use of opposites and how they feature in his explanation of the cosmos. It argues that the so-called “unity of opposites’ thesis does not exhaust Heraclitus’ interest in opposites. It contrasts Heraclitus with his Ionian predecessors, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who treated opposites as fundamental explanantia for the cosmos. Viewed from this perspective, Heraclitus’ opposites appear to be explananda—things to be explained. The paper argues that this analysis of Heraclitus’ use of opposites reveals some features of his theory of explanation. Heraclitus rejects explanatory fundamentality but promotes the idea of a cosmos whose various parts explain its other parts. Opposites are both explananda and (non-fundamental) explanantia along with all the parts of the cosmos. Interestingly, Heraclitus’ cosmos itself appears to be both an explanandum and an explanans.

ABSTRACT Plato’s Theaetetus has often been thought to contain an epistemological regress. According to an argument in the final part of the dialogue, knowledge is true belief with an account. On this view, knowledge of x is based on knowledge of an account of x. But an account of x is itself composed of epistemic items which need to be based on further known accounts, and so the regress ensues. According to some, Plato endorses epistemological coherentism in the Theaetetus. On this view the regress is blocked since epistemic accounts reciprocate, and epistemic items are known by interrelating the items in question within their restricted domains. In this paper, I argue that the there is no support from the text for restricting knowledge within domains—indeed, there are even conceptual worries with this restriction. But without this restriction, a coherentist reading of knowledge in Theaetetus fails since it entails that knowledge of anything requires knowledge of everything per impossibile. I offer a remedy for this issue by arguing that Plato countenanced an intermediate cognitive-epistemic state which we can call Imperfect Knowledge. Perfect Knowledge of x can rest, I argue, on an account whose items are known only imperfectly provided certain conditions are met. On the view I promote, learning begins with perception, proceeds to true judgement, attains imperfect knowledge and ultimately attains perfect knowledge. The upshot of my argument is novel support for the coherentist interpretation of learning and knowledge in Theaetetus.

The early Greek philosophers pioneered important philosophical and theological concepts that are still with us today. The concept of omnipresence is a case in point. Thales is reported to have said that ‘all things are full of gods’. Anaximander states that a boundless substance ‘contains all things and steers all things’; Xenophanes that God is immobile but shakes all things with his mind; Anaxagoras that ‘everything is in everything’. With respect to specifically divine omnipresence, it isn’t until Heraclitus that we find a clear and robust commitment to an omnipresent God. What sets Heraclitus’ theology apart from his predecessors’ is that it is more developed and integrated into a holistic metaphysical worldview. Heraclitus also invented a philosophically rich metaphor for the mode of divine omnipresence in the world: oil-spice mixture. This chapter offers an examination of Heraclitus’ theology and explores its relation to the concept of divine omnipresence in philosophical-theology.

I present a problem concerning the predication of elemental qualities in Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption: What is the subject of predication for the elemental qualities? The usual answer in the scholarship is either the elements themselves, or prime matter (traditionally conceived). I argue that neither can perform this role. Instead, I explore the possibility that the elemental qualities are individually predicated of their own material principle. I show that this solution fits the text and solves the problem of predication of elemental qualities. I conclude by offering some comments on the status of the elemental contraries and demonstrate the benefits of my view in conjunction with some recent scholarship on the elemental contraries.

Are there any metaphysically basic (i.e., absolutely fundamental) entities in the cosmos on which all the other entities in the cosmos depend? If not, how are the various entities in the cosmos related to each other in terms of relative fundamentality? These questions have been of interest since the birth of philosophy. In this paper I argue that, for the early Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, there are no metaphysically basic entities. Rather, 1) the various entities in the cosmos are metaphysically interdependent and 2) the cosmos itself and its parts are metaphysically interdependent. I call this view cosmic interdependence. I demonstrate its distinctiveness and argue for its contemporary significance with respect to the grounding structure of quantum entanglement.

The earliest recorded philosophical use of the term "phusis" occurs in the fragments of Heraclitus (most notably at B1 and B123). Phusis, in the non-philosophical writings relevant to Heraclitus’s time (e.g. from Homer to Aeschylus and Pindar), was generally used to characterize the external physical appearance of something. Heraclitus, on the other hand, seems to have used the term in the completely opposite manner: an object’s phusis is hidden (kruptesthai) and greater (kreissōn) than the external appearance (B123 and B54). Despite this difference, Heraclitus’s use has an affinity with the common use in his time: phusis is used to characterize things. In B1, for example, Heraclitus makes it clear that he is interested in explaining the nature of each thing as opposed to some cosmic principle of Nature. By examining various fragments, I make the case that the phusis of a thing, for Heraclitus, can be defined as the set of opposites necessarily inherent in an object upon which all objects of that kind depend for their existence. The interesting result is that Heraclitus’s novel use of phusis happens to be the foundation for one of the ways in which opposites form a unity. This particular thesis states that there are essential properties inherent in objects which are pairs of opposites sufficient to determine the unity of the object in question. If this is right, then we can read some fragments which contain descriptions of worldly objects (e.g. bows, lyres, rivers, barley drinks etc.) in a new light. These descriptions of worldly objects might not be meant to stand as metaphoric symbols for cosmic principles, as is often thought; rather, they can be read as instances of Heraclitus attempting to do a metaphysics of objects.