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The Logic of the Third ManIn Gail Fine (ed.), Plato, Volume 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 1999.
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18Controlling growth of the wing: Vestigial integrates signals from the compartment boundariesBioessays 18 (11): 855-858. 1996.In the past few years it has become apparent that the anterior/posterior (A/P) and dorsal/ventral (D/V) compartmant boundaries serve as the source of longrange signals that organize the A/P and D/V axes of the Drosophila wing. Recent work suggests that the vestigial gene may function as a nodal point through which the growth‐controlling activity of these two patterning systems is integrated(1).
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23Divine SubstanceNoûs 16 (2): 334-339. 1982.Review of Divine Substance, by Christopher Stead (Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1977)
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Hylomorphism and Functionalism 1In Martha C. Nussbaum & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle's de Anima, Oxford University Press Uk. 1992.Myles Burnyeat, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University, disputes functionalist interpretations of Aristotle. Moreover, he contends that a correct understanding of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind leads to the realization that the only thing to do with it is to reject it. This essay argues that Burnyeat has failed to refute either Aristotle or his functionalist interpreters.
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Alteration and Persistence: Form and Matter in the Physics and De Generatione et CorruptioneIn Christopher John Shields (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle, Oxford University Press Usa. 2012.Aristotle's Physics is a study of nature and of natural objects. According to him, these objects—either all of them or at least some of them—are in motion. That is, they are kinoumena, things that are subject to change. The first book of the Physics is largely devoted to this task. The account of substantial change in the Physics is devoid of any commitment to prime matter. Aristotle also takes up the topics of alteration and coming-to-be in De Generatione et Corruptione. He adopts a kind of con…Read more
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Analysing Plato's Arguments: Plato and PlatonismOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 173-200. 1992.
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69Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and HPhilosophical Review 102 (3): 397. 1993.Review of Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and H, by Michael J. Loux (Cornell University Press: 1991)
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37Socrates, Philosophy in Plato's Early DialoguesPhilosophical Review 90 (1): 153. 1981.Review of Socrates, Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues, by Gerasimos X. Santas
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Incorrigibility, Avowals and the Concept of Unconscious DesireDissertation, Cornell University. 1967.
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145Plato's Method of DivisionIn J. M. E. Maravcsik (ed.), Patterns in Plato's thought, Reidel. pp. 181--191. 1973.Critical discussion of J.M.E. Moravcsik's paper on Plato's method of division.
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356Socrates on the definition of PietyJournal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1): 1-13. 1971.The central argument in the Euthyphro is the one Socrates advances against the definition of piety as "what all the gods love." The argument turns on establishing that a loved thing (philoumenon) is 1) a loved thing because it is loved (phileitai), not 2) loved because it is a loved thing. I suggest that this claim can be understood and found acceptable if we take "because" to be used equivocally in it. Despite the equivocation, Socrates' argument is valid, showing that Euthyphro cannot offer th…Read more
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221Aristotle on the Principle of Non-ContradictionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (3): 359-370. 1986.Critical discussion of Alan Code's paper "Aristotle's Investigation of a Basic Logical Principle: Which Science Investigates the Principle of Non-Contradiction?"
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103Alteration and Persistence: Form and Matter in the Physics and Gen. et Corr.In Christopher John Shields (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 205. 2012.Aristotle takes up the topic of change (or coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be) in both the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione. He distinguishes between simple coming-to-be (substantial change), as when something comes into existence, and qualified coming-to-be (accidental change), as when an already existing thing alters, or moves, or changes in some other way. But he also maintains a persistence principle: that in every change, whether simple or qualified, there is something that persists th…Read more
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237Individual and Essence in Aristotle's MetaphysicsPaideia (Special Aristotle Edition): 75-85. 1978.Aristotle's claim in Metaphysics Z.6 that "each substance is the same as its essence" has long puzzled commentators. For it seems to conflict with two other Aristotelian theses: (1) primary substances are individuals (e.g., Socrates and Callias), and (2) essences are universals (e.g., Man and Horse). Three traditional solutions to this difficulty are considered and rejected. Instead, to make the Z.6 equation consistent with (1) and (2), I propose that it be interpreted to be making something oth…Read more
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183Aristotle and IndividuationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 41-65. 1984.It is traditionally maintained that according to Aristotle, matter provides a principle of individuation. Objections of several sorts have been raised against this interpretation. One objection holds that for Aristotle it is form, rather than matter, that individuates. A more radical objection is that Aristotle does not propose any principle of individuation at all. Any adequate discussion of this issue must make clear precisely what problems such a principle is meant to address. This in turn re…Read more
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22Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito: Critical EssaysRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Plato's Euthyrphro, Apology, andCrito portray Socrates' words and deeds during his trial for disbelieving in the Gods of Athens and corrupting the Athenian youth, and constitute a defense of the man Socrates and of his way of life, the philosophic life. The twelve essays in the volume, written by leading classical philosophers, investigate various aspects of these works of Plato, including the significance of Plato's characters, Socrates's revolutionary religious ideas, and the relationship betw…Read more
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180The logic of the third manPhilosophical Review 80 (4): 448-475. 1971.The main lines of interpretation offered to date of the Third Man Argument in Plato's Parmenides (132a1-b2) are considered and rejected. A new, set-theoretic, reconstruction of the argument is offered. It is concluded that the philosophical point of the argument is different from what it has been generally supposed to be: Plato is pointing out the logical shortcomings in his earlier formulated principle of One-Over-Many.
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111Analyzing Plato's Arguments: Plato and PlatonismIn James Carl Klagge & Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), Methods of Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues, Oxford University Press. 1992.The historian of philosophy often encounters arguments that are enthymematic: they have conclusions that follow from their explicit premises only by the addition of "tacit" or "suppressed" premises. It is a standard practice of interpretation to supply these missing premises, even where the enthymeme is "real," that is, where there is no other context in which the philosopher in question asserts the missing premises. To do so is to follow a principle of charity: other things being equal, one int…Read more
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252Readings in ancient Greek philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle (edited book)Hackett Publishing Company. 2016.Soon after its publication, Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy was hailed as the favourite to become "the 'standard' text for survey courses in ancient philosophy. Over twenty years later that prediction has been borne out: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy still stands as the leading anthology of its kind. It is now stronger than ever: This 5th Edition features a completely revised Aristotle unit, with new translations, as well as a newly revised glossary. The Plato unit offers new transla…Read more
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126Kooky objects revisited: Aristotle's ontologyMetaphilosophy 39 (1). 2008.This is an investigation of Aristotle's conception of accidental compounds (or "kooky objects," as Gareth Matthews has called them)—entities such as the pale man and the musical man. I begin with Matthews's pioneering work into kooky objects, and argue that they are not so far removed from our ordinary thinking as is commonly supposed. I go on to assess their utility in solving some familiar puzzles involving substitutivity in epistemic contexts, and compare the kooky object approach to more mod…Read more
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1Accidental Beings in Aristotle's OntologyIn David Keyt, Georgios Anagnostopoulos & Fred D. Miller (eds.), Reason and analysis in ancient Greek philosophy: essays in honor of David Keyt, Springer. pp. 231-242. 2013.This is an examination of Aristotle's notion of an "accidental being" -- something intermediate between a substance and a property. An accidental being (sometimes called "accidental compound" or "kooky object") is an ephemeral object, typically the compound of a substance and a property, that exists for only as long as its components are united. I set out the role that accidental beings play in Aristotle's solutions to several philosophical problems. I also investigate the similarity between the…Read more
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159The One and the ManyReview of Metaphysics 21 (4): 630-655. 1968.We discuss Aristotle's "Categories" as an answer to Plato's One-over-Many argument. For Plato, F-ness is something "over against" particular F things; to predicate "F" of these things is to assert that they all stand in a certain relation to F-ness. Aristotle answers that predication is classification; and there being a classification of a certain sort is a fact correlative with there being things classifiable in the way the classification in question would classify them.
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224Essentialism in AristotleReview of Metaphysics 31 (3): 387-405. 1978.Quine, in an influential passage, characterizes a certain kind of metaphysical view as "Aristotelian essentialism." Recent work on Aristotle suggests that he may not have been an essentialist in Quine's sense. This paper examines the question whether, and to what extent, Aristotle is committed to the kind of essentialism Quine discusses. Various promising areas of Aristotle's thought (alteration vs. coming-to-be and passing-away, kath' hauto predication) are examined and found wanting as sources…Read more
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51The Concept of Pleasure (review)Philosophical Review 78 (3): 386-390. 1969.Review of The Concept of Pleasure, by David L. Perry (Mouton:1967)
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168SubstancesIn Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle, Wiley-blackwell. 2008.This is a survey of Aristotle's development of the concept of substance in the Categories and Book VII (Zeta) of the Metaphysics. We begin with the Categories conception of a primary substance as that which is not "in a subject" -- i.e., not ontologically dependent on anything else -- and also not "said of a subject" -- i.e., not predicated of any item beneath it in its categorial tree. This gives us the idea of primary substances as ontologically basic individuals, the fundamental subjects of p…Read more
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300Aristotle's metaphysicsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title "Metaphysics" was the treatise by Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title or even describe his field of study as 'metaphysics'; the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotle's works. The title 'metaphysics' -- literally, 'after the Physics' -- very li…Read more
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245Wants and lacksJournal of Philosophy 64 (14): 455-456. 1967.Anthony Kenny says it is impossible to want what one already has and knows one has. We present a counter-example and then suggest that Kenny may have been misled by the fact that wanting expresses itself in goal-directed behavior. From the truism that one's behavior cannot be directed toward a goal that one knows one has already attained, Kenny may have been led to suppose that behavior directed toward an as yet unattained goal cannot express one's desire for what one has and knows one has.
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238Hylomorphism and FunctionalismIn Martha Craven Nussbaum & Amélie Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle's De anima, Oxford University Press. pp. 57-73. 1995 [1992].
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3On Aristotle's CategoriesCornell University Press. 1991.Translation with notes of Ammonius' Commentary on Aristotle's Categories.
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Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |