This book examines an important area of Aristotle's philosophy: the generation of substances. While other changes presuppose the existence of a substance (Socrates grows taller), substantial generation results in something genuinely new that did not exist before (Socrates himself). The central argument of this book is that Aristotle defends a 'hylomorphic' model of substantial generation. In its most complete formulation, this model says that substantial generation involves three principles: (1) matter, which is the subject from which the change proceeds; (2) (...) form, which is the end towards which the process advances; and (3) an efficient cause, which directs the process towards that form. By examining the development of this model across Aristotle's works, Devin Henry seeks to deepen our grasp on how the doctrine of hylomorphism - understood as a blueprint for thinking about the world - informs our understanding of the process by which new substances come into being. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two methodological questions that arise from Plato’s account of collection and division. First, what place does the method of collection and division occupy in Plato’s account of philosophical inquiry? Second, do collection and division in fact constitute a formal “method” (as most scholars assume) or are they simply informal techniques that the philosopher has in her toolkit for accomplishing different philosophical tasks? I argue that Plato sees collection and division as useful tools for achieving two distinct (...) goals – generating real definitions and discovering the basic natural kinds of a given domain of knowledge – both of which occupy a preliminary stage in his account of philosophical inquiry. As to the second question, I claim that the evidence for seeing collection and division as a formal method is weak. Although Plato calls the procedure a technê and a methodos, he makes no real attempt to formalize it in any way. For Plato, collection and division do not constitute an algorithmic process that can be learned from a rule book. Instead the ability to collect and divide properly are skills that good dialecticians must acquire through the kind of hands-on training illustrated by the Sophist and Statesman. Whereas Aristotle insists on formal rules for making proper divisions, Plato seems to emphasize the need to recognize where the natural joints of the world are. In this sense, Plato’s Sophist and Statesman and Aristotle’s Topics and Analytics present two very different pictures of collection and division. (shrink)

Histories of liberalism often begin with the observation that, prior to the French Revolution, the term ‘liberal’ originally referred to a state of mind. In England, it had been used ‘to denote ass...

"Darkness from vain philosophy" -- Hobbes's natural philosophy -- Religion and theology I: "of religion" -- Religion and theology II: Hobbes's natural theology -- Religion and theology III: Hobbes's confrontation with the Bible -- Hobbes's political philosophy I: man and morality -- Hobbes's political philosophy II: the Hobbesian commonwealth -- Appendix: the engraved title page of Leviathan.

This article reconsiders the relationship between interpretivism about belief and normative standards. Interpretivists have traditionally taken beliefs to be fixed in relation to norms of interpretation. However, recent work by philosophers and psychologists reveals that human belief attribution practices are governed by a rich diversity of normative standards. Interpretivists thus face a dilemma: either give up on the idea that belief is constitutively normative or countenance a context-sensitive disjunction of norms that constitute belief. Either way, interpretivists should embrace the intersubjective (...) indeterminacy of belief. (shrink)

I here present a feminine voice version of the moral case against abortion and draw from it some conclusions for public policy. My motto is solidarity with the last and least. The unborn individual is “one of us”—to be welcomed, not dismissed as a burden on society. Abortion, I argue, is bad for women, bad for children, and bad for the rest of us. Public policy should reflect these conclusions.

Many psychologists studying lay belief attribution and behavior explanation cite Donald Davidson in support of their assumption that people construe beliefs as inner causes. But Davidson’s influential argument is unsound; there are no objective grounds for the intuition that the folk construe beliefs as inner causes that produce behavior. Indeed, recent experimental work by Ian Apperly, Bertram Malle, Henry Wellman, and Tania Lombrozo provides an empirical framework that accords well with Gilbert Ryle’s alternative thesis that the folk construe beliefs as (...) patterns of living that contextualize behavior. (shrink)

A general article discussing philosophical issues arising in connection with Aristotle's "Generation of Animals" (Chapter from Blackwell's Companion to Aristotle).

In Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee reveals that American man of integrity Atticus Finch harbors deep-seated racist beliefs. Bob Ewell, Finch's nemesis in To Kill a Mockingbird, harbors the same beliefs. But the two men live out their shared racist beliefs in dramatically different fashions. This article argues that extant dispositionalist accounts of belief lack the tools to accommodate Finch and Ewell's divergent styles of believing. It then draws on literary and philosophical character studies to construct the required tools.

In a recent article in this journal, Krzysztof Poslajko reconstructs—and endorses as probative—a dilemma for interpretivism first posed by Alex Byrne. On the first horn of the dilemma, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to an ideal interpreter (and thus loses any connection with actual folk psychological practices). On the second horn, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to individuals’ judgements (and thus denies the possibility of error). I show that this is a false dilemma. By (...) taking a model-theoretic approach to folk psychology, and marrying interpretivism with dispositionalism, interpretivists can viably reject the notion of an ideal (or canonical) interpreter—and relativize attitudes to actual lay interpreters—without taking on board the unacceptable epistemological consequences of allowing that attitudes are judgement-dependent. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan’s Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan’s background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan’s Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

I have proposed wedding the theories of belief known as dispositionalism and interpretivism. Krzysztof Poslajko objects that dispositionalism does just fine on its own and, moreover, is better off without interpretivism’s metaphysical baggage. I argue that Poslajko is wrong: in order to secure a principled criterion for individuating beliefs, dispositionalism must either collapse into psychofunctionalism (or some other non-superficial theory) or accept interpretivism’s hand in marriage.

Double dissociations between perceivable colors and physical properties of colored objects have led many philosophers to endorse relationalist accounts of color. I argue that there are analogous double dissociations between attitudes of belief—the beliefs that people attribute to each other in everyday life—and intrinsic cognitive states of belief—the beliefs that some cognitive scientists posit as cogs in cognitive systems—pitched at every level of psychological explanation. These dissociations provide good reason to refrain from conflating attitudes of belief with intrinsic cognitive states (...) of belief. I suggest that interpretivism provides an attractive account of the former. Like colors, attitudes of belief evolved to be ecological signifiers, not cogs in cognitive systems. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind (from eliminative materialists to psychofunctionalists to interpretivists) generally assume that a normative ideal delimits which mental phenomena exist (though they disagree about how to characterize the ideal in question). This assumption is dubious. A comprehensive ontology of mind includes some mental phenomena that are neither (a) explanatorily fecund posits in any branch of cognitive science that aims to unveil the mechanistic structure of cognitive systems nor (b) ideal (nor even progressively closer to ideal) posits in any given (...) folk psychological practice. Indeed, one major function of scientific psychology has been (and will be) to introduce just such (normatively suboptimal but real) mental phenomena into folk psychological taxonomies. The development and public dissemination of IQ research over the course of the 20th Century is a case in point. (shrink)

A pluralistic approach to folk psychology must countenance the evaluative, regulatory, predictive, and explanatory roles played by attributions of intelligence in social practices across cultures. Building off of the work of the psychologist Robert Sternberg and the philosophers Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett, I argue that a relativistic interpretivism best accounts for the many varieties of intelligence that emerge from folk discourse. To be intelligent is to be comparatively good at solving intellectual problems that an interpreter deems worth solving.

A hypnotic induction produces different patterns of spontaneous experiences across individuals. The magnitude and characteristics of these responses covary moderately with hypnotic suggestibility, but also differ within levels of hypnotic suggestibility. This study sought to identify discrete phenomenological profiles in response to a hypnotic induction and assess whether experiential variability among highly suggestible individuals matches the phenomenological profiles predicted by dissociative typological models of high hypnotic suggestibility. Phenomenological state scores indexed in reference to a resting epoch during hypnosis were submitted (...) to a latent profile analysis. The profiles in the derived four-class solution differed in multiple experiential dimensions and hypnotic suggestibility. Highly suggestible individuals were distributed across two classes that exhibited response patterns suggesting an inward attention subtype and a dissociative subtype. These results provide support for dissociative typological models of high hypnotic suggestibility and indicate that highly suggestible individuals do not display a uniform response to a hypnotic induction. (shrink)

The present is characterized by the ontological crisis of the political subject and by the increasingly clear approach of radical political praxis to the libertarian thesis of rejection of the delegation of power and approach to direct action. Taking to the streets, assembly, direct action, individual insurrection, and daily resistance are some of the tools that characterize the new forms of resistance. However, where do these forms come from? This article aims to analyze the way in which poststructuralism, anarchism and (...) intersectional and decolonial feminisms act as a source of inspiration for these new forms of radical political resistance. (shrink)

In his seminal essay “The Philosophical Basis of Eighteenth-Century Racism”, Richard Popkin argued that, when one looks more closely at some of the Enlightenment’s most important thinkers, one is c...

This study tested the prediction that dissociative tendencies modulate the impact of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in different subtypes of highly suggestible individuals. Low suggestible , low dissociative highly suggestible , and high dissociative highly suggestible participants completed the Stroop color-naming task in control and hypnosis conditions. The magnitude of conflict adaptation was used as a measure of cognitive control. LS and LDHS participants displayed marginally superior up-regulation of cognitive control following a hypnotic induction, whereas HDHS participants’ performance (...) declined. These findings indicate that dissociative tendencies modulate the influence of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in high hypnotic suggestibility and suggest that HS individuals are comprised of distinct subtypes with dissimilar cognitive profiles. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se pone de relieve una tesis del último Kuhn que ha sido, y aún es, desatendida: el carácter no universal del lenguaje. Luego de ubicarla en los textos y contextos teóricos donde aparece, se intenta aclararla a partir de algunos de sus textos posteriores. En este afán, el trabajo presente en primer lugar muestra, cómo, deben ser modificadas algunas de las propuestas filosóficas atribuidas al Kuhn clásico para poder comprender esta tesis y en segundo lugar, intenta (...) dar cuenta muy brevemente de ciertas innovaciones filosóficas del último Kuhn. Además, se comparan algunas de esas nuevas tesis de Kuhn con sus posibles -aunque nunca explicitados- interlocutores, a saber: N. Chomsky y J. Fodor. This paper draws attention to one of the theses of the Later Kuhn, which has been ignored: the non-universal character of language. After locating the thesis in the texts and theoretical contexts in which it appears, it is attempted to be clarified in view of some of his later texts. In regard of this, the paper firstly shows, how some of the philosophical proposals attributed to the Early Kuhn must be modified in order to understand it. Secondly, a very brief account for certain philosophical innovations in the Later Kuhn is attempted to be given. In addition, some of Kuhn's new theses are compared with his most likely, even if never explicit, interlocutors, namely N. Chomsky and J. Fodor. (shrink)

Psychometric g—a statistical factor capturing intercorrelations between scores on different IQ tests—is of theoretical interest despite being a low-fidelity model of both folk psychological intelligence and its cognitive/neural underpinnings. Psychometric g idealizes away from those aspects of cognitive/neural mechanisms that are not explanatory of the relevant variety of folk psychological intelligence, and it idealizes away from those varieties of folk psychological intelligence that are not generated by the relevant cognitive/neural substrate. In this manner, g constitutes a high-fidelity bridge model of (...) the relationship between its two targets and, thereby, helps demystify the relationship between folk and scientific psychology. (shrink)

In this first book-length examination of the Cartesian theory of visual perception, Celia Wolf-Devine explores the many philosophical implications of Descartes’ theory, concluding that he ultimately failed to provide a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception. Wolf-Devine traces the development of Descartes’ thought about visual perception against the backdrop of the transition from Aristotelianism to the new mechanistic science—the major scientific paradigm shift taking place in the seventeenth century. She considers the philosopher’s work in terms of its background (...) in Aristotelian and later scholastic thought rather than looking at it "backwards" through the later work of the British empiricists and Kant. Wolf-Devine begins with Descartes’ ideas about perception in the _Rules _and continues through the later scientific writings in which he develops his own mechanistic theory of light, color, and visual spatial perception. Throughout her discussion, she demonstrates both Descartes’ continuity with and break from the Aristotelian tradition. Wolf-Devine critically examines Cartesian theory by focusing on the problems that arise from his use of three different models to explain the behavior of light as well as on the ways in which modern science has not confirmed some of Descartes’ central hypotheses about vision. She shows that the changes Descartes made in the Aristotelian framework created a new set of problems in the philosophy of perception. While such successors to Descartes as Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume accepted the core of his theory of vision, they struggled to clarify the ontological status of colors, to separate what is strictly speaking "given" to the sense of sight from what is the result of judgments by the mind, and to confront a "veil of perception" skepticism that would have been unthinkable within the Aristotelian framework. Wolf-Devine concludes that Descartes was not ultimately successful in providing a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception, and because of this, she suggests both that changes in the conceptual framework of Descartes are in order and that a partial return to some features of the Aristotelian tradition may be necessary. (shrink)

This paper reports on an action research project about organizational change by a regional food bank in New York State’s southern tier. While the project team initially included a sociologist, food bank leadership and staff, it expanded to involve participants in food access programs and area college students. This paper combines findings from qualitative research about the food bank with findings generated through a collaborative inquiry about a ten-year process of organizational change. We ask how a regional food bank can (...) change its approach to address root causes of hunger. Acknowledging that narrow, pragmatic definitions of hunger promote charitable responses, our collaboration is grounded in structural understandings of poverty that refuse to blame the poor or treat poverty as an accident. Decades-long economic restructuring, deindustrialization and a rise in the service economy have resulted in growing inequality and long-term demand for “emergency” food in New York State. We outline critiques by scholars and practitioners of the emergency food regime. Description and analysis of the organizational change efforts of the Food Bank of the Southern Tier combine discourse analysis, collaborative inquiry, interviews, and participant observation. Discourse analysis of the agency’s strategic plans documents changes in aspirations, exposure to new epistemic communities and repertoires of actions. Interviews with participants evidence impacts of the organization’s advocacy and education programs on people with lived experience in poverty. Through a participatory process, we developed a collaborative chronology of phases of organizational change. Collaborative analysis of organizational changes demonstrates new definitions of the problem, a shift in service focus, changing outcomes and increased funding for advocacy. While recognizing substantial constraints, this project contributes to evidence that food banks may shift their discourse and practices beyond charity. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S39-S41, March‐April 2022.

This paper studies the relationship between organizational ethical climate and the forms of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), including in-role and extra-role behaviors, and examines the mediating effect of employee loyalty. A sample of employees from a traditional Hong Kong-based company was used as a study group. The purpose of this study was to examine the causes and implications of how various ethical work climates affect employee performance. Based on a model proposed by Victor and Cullen, ethical climate is arranged from (...) lower levels to higher levels. The results suggest that lower levels of ethical climate (instrumentality and independence), characterizing a weak relational contract between employee and employer, are associated with negative extra-role behavior. In contrast, higher levels of ethical climate (caring and law-and-code), symbolic of a strong relational contract at work, are associated with positive extra-role behavior. Moreover, normative commitment mediated a positive relationship between caring and identification with the company, whereas attitudinal loyalty mediated the negative relationship between independence and altruism. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This study examines what Social Studies teachers can learn from Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) in terms of the content that club members examine and the queer pedagogical approaches they employ. Find...

The field of bioethics is calling for a new generation of scholars equipped with the normative, empirical, and practical knowledge and expertise to prioritize equity concerns largely underrepresent...

Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief (...) theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. (shrink)

This book consolidates emerging research on Aristotle's science and ethics in order to explore the extent to which the concepts, methods, and practices he developed for scientific inquiry and explanation are used to investigate moral phenomena. Each chapter shows, in a different way, that Aristotle's ethics is much more like a science than it is typically represented. The upshot of this is twofold. First, uncovering the links between Aristotle's science and ethics promises to open up new and innovative directions for (...) research into his moral philosophy. Second, showing why Aristotle thinks ethics can never be fully assimilated to the model of science will help shed new light on his views about the limits of science. The volume thus promises to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological foundations of Aristotle's ethics. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay argues for lyric as an anthropomorphic pattern of thought which shapes our readings of poetry and Earth. Theorizing what I call "lyric geology," the essay foregrounds two critical conjunctions: (1) the historical co-emergence of the normative lyric subject and the human species as geologic agent; and (2) the anthropomorphic genealogy of literary criticism called "lyricization" as it dovetails with Sylvia Wynter's account of the "over-representation" of colonial man as "the human itself." Reading across a seemingly eclectic archive—Charles Lyell, (...) Robert Knox, Richard Owen, and a maroon known in the Mauritian imperial archive as Simon—I show how the colonial anthropos as self-consciously theorized in and across the nineteenth century materially effectuates on a planetary scale the very racialized anthropomorphosis fallaciously naturalized as lyric. So understood, man's generic "over-representation" and lyric are co-constitutive projects. Together, they proliferate a human fantasy whose flat speciesism at once reproduces and effaces white supremacist violence and colonial dispossession. (shrink)

The U.S. health care system is ostensibly market based and therefore at least partially reliant on competition and consumer demand to regulate costs. Yet information about an essential feature of market transactions—costs—is typically obscure to patients until long after treatment. When discussing what must be disclosed for informed consent, the same list of required information is often mentioned regardless of the health care system in question, and information about costs rarely merits a place within this list. However, our assumptions about (...) what a moral principle requires need to be responsive to the realities of the health care system in which the principle is applied.This paper explores the moral foundations of disclosure and informed consent to argue that, in a market‐based system of the sort found in the United States, these same considerations support a requirement to disclose out‐of‐pocket costs before patients receive care. Next, I consider two objections to this view: first, that health care practitioners should focus solely on medical considerations in their encounters with patients and, second, that disclosing out‐of‐pocket costs would be too difficult to be mandated. I argue that medical and financial interests are inseparable within the U.S. health care system. If the difficulties in disclosing costs are deemed insurmountable, then the current system may prove unsustainable, both morally and financially, since we face the same practical impediments to implementing any meaningful consumer‐driven, market‐based health care reform. Finally, I explore some of the consequences of failing to disclose costs. The requirements of disclosing costs can be supported by the principle of respect for autonomy, regardless of the consequences, but in light of the consequences of the decision of whether to disclose, a concern about justice provides further support. (shrink)

The principle of beneficence directs healthcare practitioners to promote patients’ well-being, ensuring that the patients’ best interests guide treatment decisions. Because there are a number of distinct theories of well-being that could lead to different conclusions about the patient’s good, a careful consideration of which account is best suited for use in the medical context is needed. While there has been some discussion of the differences between subjective and objective theories of well-being within the bioethics literature, less attention has been (...) given to the questions of what work a theory of well-being needs to do in bioethics and which standards of success ought to be used in selecting a theory of well-being for use in medicine. In this article, I argue that traditional theories of well-being developed in philosophy are not well suited to meet the needs of the medical context. For the principle of beneficence to be most useful, the underlying account of well-being should satisfy two conditions: first, it needs to lead to a concrete, action-guiding determination of the patient’s good; and, second, any recommendations it offers need to be justifiable to patients. Standard accounts of well-being have difficulty satisfying both conditions. Exploring the limitations of these theories when applied to treatment dilemmas helps point the way toward the development of an account of well-being better suited to healthcare. (shrink)

The paper concentrates on the Chinese philosophical strand of Daoism and analyses in how far this philosophy can contribute to new directions in management theory. Daoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy, which can only be traced back roughly to about 200 or 100 BC when during Han dynasty the writers Laozi and Zhuangzi were identified as “Daoists”. However, during Han dynasty Daoism and prevalent Confucianism intermingled. Generally, it is rather difficult today to clearly discern Daoist thought from other philosophical strands (...) as in the same period also Buddhism, Mohism and Legalism shaped contemporary thinking. Furthermore, there is a difference between the religious practice of Daoism in the sense of popular religion and the theoretical basis of Daoist thought presented in Laozi and Zhuangzi. The religious practice in contrast can have very mystical elements, which are linked to superstition. Moreover, there is also the question of in how far Daoist thought and practice is still prevalent at all in Chinese society today. Hence, the picture of Daoism is heterogeneous, first, regarding the question of what can be defined as the “original core” of Daoism, second, the difference between thought and religious practice, and third, the question of the prevalence of Daoist thought in China today. This paper offers a broader discussion regarding the potential ways of application of Daoist thought today over five parts. First, it illuminates the most important values taught under the name of Daoism. Thereby, it focuses on the Daoist thought and leaves out the actual religious practice together with its mystical elements. Second, these values are then put into the management context to analyse in how far Daoism can broaden our contemporary understanding of management in general and different management styles in particular. Third, Daoism in a management context is then contrasted with the comparably rigid Confucian doctrine also applied in a business context. Here, the application of Daoist and Confucian thought in the fields of leadership, management and corporate ethics is presented and compared. Fourth, insights into the real business practice in China regarding Chinese philosophies like Daoism and Confucianism in fields like management, strategy or corporate ethics are provided. Fifth, an outlook is presented where Daoism is discussed in the context of contemporary debates on sustainability and CSR. Here, the proposed paper illuminates in how far the philosophy of Daoism can also contribute to a more holistic understanding of sustainability and CSR today, thereby contributing to more innovative solutions in management. (shrink)

Firms face mounting pressure to appoint ethical leaders who will avoid unnecessary risk, scandal and crisis. Alongside mounting evidence that narcissistic leaders place organizations at risk, there is a growing consensus that women are more ethical, transparent and risk-averse than men. We seek to interrogate these claims by analyzing whether narcissism is as prevalent among women CEOs as it is among men CEOs. We further analyze whether narcissistic women CEOs take the same types of risk as narcissistic men CEOs. Drawing (...) on social role and token theories, we test hypotheses related to gender differences in the prevalence and impact of CEO narcissism on firm-level practices. Using a unique dataset that includes a large sample of CEOs of S&P 1500 companies from 1992 through 2014, we create a narcissism composite score for each CEO based on their photograph size in the annual report, and their cash earnings and non-cash earnings relative to the next highest paid executive. We find that women CEOs are less likely to exhibit narcissistic personality traits compared to men CEOs. Furthermore, we find that gender moderates the relationship between narcissistic CEOs and our outcome variables of risk-taking and questionable behaviors. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of Descartes’s method of doubt. It wields an examination of Descartes’s pedagogy—as exemplified by The Search for Truth as well as the Meditations—to make the case for the sincerity (as opposed to artificiality) of the doubts engendered by the First Meditation. Descartes was vigilant about balancing the need to use his method of doubt to achieve absolute certainty with the need to compensate for the various foibles of his scholastic and unschooled readers. Nevertheless, Descartes endeavored (...) to instill willful, context-independent, universal doubt across his readership. If all goes well, readers of the Meditations are like method actors; the Meditator is the character they are meant to bring to life, via the method of meditating on reasons for doubt. The article concludes with the suggestion that Descartes was the same kind of skeptic as the early Academic skeptics Arcesilaus and Carneades. (shrink)

In this paper I address an important question in Aristotle’s biology, What are the causal mechanisms behind the transmission of biological form? Aristotle’s answer to this question, I argue, is found in Generation of Animals Book 4 in connection with his investigation into the phenomenon of inheritance. There we are told that an organism’s reproductive material contains a set of "movements" which are derived from the various "potentials" of its nature (the internal principle of change that initiates and controls development). (...) These movements, I suggest, function as specialized vehicles for communicating the parts of the parent’s heritable form during the act of reproduction. After exploring the details of this mechanism, I then take up Aristotle’s theory of inheritance proper. At the heart of the theory are three general principles (or 'laws') that govern the interactions between the maternal and paternal movements, the outcome of which determines the pattern of inheritance for the offspring. Although this paper is primarily aimed at providing a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s account of inheritance, the results of that analysis have implications for other areas of Aristotle’s biology. One of the most interesting of these is the question of whether Aristotle’s biology is anti-evolutionary (as traditionally assumed) or whether (as I argue) it leaves room for a theory of evolution by natural selection, even if Aristotle himself never took that step. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the level of gender bias in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals while exercising due care in the analysis of its arguments. I argue that while the GA theory is clearly sexist, the traditional interpretation fails to diagnose the problem correctly. The traditional interpretation focuses on three main sources of evidence: (1) Aristotle’s claim that the female is, as it were, a “disabled” (πεπηρωμένον) male; (2) the claim at GA IV.3, 767b6-8 that females are (...) a departure from the kind; and (3) Aristotle’s supposed claim at GA IV.3, 768a21-8 that the most ideal outcome of reproduction is a male offspring that perfectly resembles its father. I argue that each of these passages has either been misunderstood or misrepresented by commentators. In none of these places is Aristotle suggesting that females are imperfect members of the species or that they result from the failure to achieve some teleological goal. I defend the view that the GA does not see reproduction as occurring for the sake of producing males; rather, what sex an embryo happens to become is determined entirely by non-teleological forces operating through material necessity. This interpretation is consistent with Aristotle’s view in GA II.5 that females have the same soul as the male (741a7) as well as the argument in Metaphysics X.9 that sexual difference is not part of the species form but is an affection (πάθος) arising from the matter (1058b21-4). While the traditional interpretation has tended to exaggerate the level of sexism in Aristotle’s
developmental biology, the GA is by no means free of gender bias as some recent scholarship has claimed. In the final section of the paper I point to one passage where Aristotle clearly falls back on sexist assumptions in order to answer the difficult question, “Why are animals divided into sexes?”. I argue that this passage in particular poses a serious challenge
to anyone attempting to absolve Aristotle’s developmental biology of the charge of sexism. (shrink)