Victor Caston

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy provides, twice each year, a collection of the best current work in the field of ancient philosophy. Each volume features original essays that contribute to an understanding of a wide range of themes and problems in all periods of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the beginnings to the threshold of the middle ages. From its first volume in 1983, OSAP has been a highly influential venue for work in the field, and has often featured essays of substantial length as well as critical essays on books of distinctive importance. Volume LIX contains an examination of: Aristotle’s reception of Empedocles’ ideas about harmonia and love in developing his own conception of the soul; Plato’s portrayal of the disembodied soul and how it can be the subject of bodily desires; how the philosopher rulers in Plato’s Republic are motivated to rule through bonds of philia to their fellow citizens; how Aristotle, while denying that there are magnitudes that are actually infinite, allows that there are infinitely many things; Aristotle’s distinction between the many senses of being in Metaphysics Δ. 7 and the relation between existence and predication; and the explanation of Carneades’ reasons for not writing philosophical works in Philodemus’ Index Academicorum (PHerc. 1021).

Many fragments from Theophrastus on perception are preserved by the late Neoplatonist, Priscian of Lydia. After preliminary source criticism concerning how to identify the fragments, I turn to Theophrastus’ discussion of perceiving and perceptual awareness. While he clearly rejects literalism, he also does not embrace “spiritualism”: he argues instead that we receive the defining proportions of perceptible qualities in the sense organ, though in different contraries than in the perceptible (thereby avoiding literalism). If Priscian’s report is faithful, Theophrastus also accepts a moderate capacity reading of De anima III.2, locating awareness in a central monitoring sense, common to the individual modalities; and this has further implications for the unity of consciousness. Theophrastus’ method, though aporetic in form, is nonetheless a constructive engagement with the same texts of Aristotle’s we have ourselves, in the service of a joint research program in psychology that he shared with his colleague and former teacher.

Recent interpreters portray Aristotle as a Protagorean antirealist, who thinks that colors and other perceptibles do not actually exist apart from being perceived. Against this, I defend a more traditional interpretation: colors exist independently of perception, to which they are explanatorily prior, as causal powers that produce perceptions of themselves. They are not to be identified with mere dispositions to affect perceivers, or with grounds distinct from these qualities, picked out by their subjective effect on perceivers (so-called “secondary qualities”). Rather, they are intrinsic qualities of objects, which are in reality just as they appear to be. At the same time, Aristotle rejects any “simple theory of color” according to which the essence and nature of colors is fully revealed in experience. Although the character of perceptibles as they are experienced is “better known to us,” their essence and nature only comes to be known through a correct theory.

There is widespread agreement today that the problem of intentionality--roughly, the problem of how mental states can be "directed at an object" or have content--constitutes one of the central and abiding difficulties in the philosophy of mind. What is not widely recognized is that the ancient Greeks had a great deal to say about the topic. Contemporary discussions most often begin with the work of the nineteenth century philosopher, Franz Brentano; but Brentano himself did not regard his idea as original at all, tracing it back instead to Aristotle and in particular to the theory of perception in the De anima. Brentano was right only in his general claim, however: most of the doctrines he appealed to are in fact incompatible with intentionality. To find evidence of such a concept, we must look elsewhere in Aristotle's corpus, in particular to his short psyschological essays and his polemical work, the Peri ideon. Here Aristotle clearly sets out the issues in terms of the problem of "presence in absence" and the problem of error, and argues against several theories as unable to account for this; more importantly, he offers his own proposals as to how an adequate account might be formulated. These proposals explicitly rely on the notion of an internal representation that represents in virtue of its magnitudes and causal powers. Aristotle's proposals thus bear a closer resemblance to contemporary naturalistic accounts of intentionality in terms of mental representations than to Brentano's own conception.

This book presents some of the most recent trends and developments in Presocratic scholarship. A wide range of topics are covered - from the metaphysical to the moral to the methodological - as well as a broad a range of authors: from recognized figures such as Heraclitus and Parmenides to Sophistic thinkers whose place has traditionally been marginalized, such as Gorgias and the author of the Dissoi Logoi. Several of the pieces are concerned with the later reception and influence of the Presocratics on ancient philosophy, an area of study important both for the light it sheds on our evidence for Presocratic thought and for understanding the philosophical power of their ideas. Drawing together contributions from distinguished authorities and internationally acclaimed scholars of ancient philosophy, this book offers new challenges to traditional interpretations in some areas of Presocratic philosophy and finds new support for traditional interpretations in other areas.

Aristotle's discussion of perceiving that we perceive has points of contact with two contemporary debates about consciousness: the first over whether consciousness is an intrinsic feature of mental states or a higher-order thought or perception; the second concerning the qualitative nature of experience. In both cases, Aristotle's views cut down the middle of an apparent dichotomy, in a way that does justice to each set of intuitions, while avoiding their attendant difficulties. With regard to the first issue?the primary focus of this paper?he argues that consciousness is both intrinsic and higher-order, due to its reflexive nature. This, in turn, has consequences for the second issue, where again Aristotle seeks out the middle ground. He is committed against qualia in any strong sense of the term. Yet he also holds that the phenomenal quality of experience is not exhausted by its representational content