This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

The Eleatic Visitor speaks forcefully when he insists, ‘Necessarily, whenever there is speech, it is speech of something; it is impossible for it not to be of something’. For ‘if it were not of anything, it would not be speech at all; for we showed that it is impossible for there to be speech that is speech of nothing’. Presumably, at 263c10, when he claims to have ‘shown’ that it is impossible for speech to be of nothing, the Visitor is (...) referring back to the Parmenidean puzzles at Sophist 237ff. (shrink)

Abstract I argue for a new interpretation of the argument for the non-identity of Being and Difference at Sophist 255c-e, which turns on a distinction between modes of being a property. Though indebted to Frede (1967), the distinction differs from his in an important respect: What distinguishes the modes is not the subject's relation to itself or to something numerically distinct, but whether it constitutes or conforms to the specification of some property. Thus my view, but not his, allows self-participation (...) for Forms. Against Frede and the more traditional interpretation, I maintain that the distinction is not introduced by way of the pros alla / kath' hauta distinction, or by way of uses or senses of the verb `to be', but is established prior to the argument and is deployed in its frame. Moreover, since I read the argument's scope as restricted to properties in what I shall call the attribute mode, my interpretation can explain, as its rivals cannot, why the criterion of difference at 255d6-7 does not apply to the Form, Difference, itself. (shrink)

Simplicius reports that Xenocrates and Andronicus reproached Aristotle for positing an excessive number of categories, which can conveniently be reduced to two: τὰ καθ᾽αὑτά and τὰ πρός τι. Simplicius, followed by several modern commentators, interprets this move as being equivalent to a division into substance and accidents. I aim to show that, as far as Xenocrates is concerned, this interpretation is untenable and that the substance-accidents contrast cannot be equivalent to Xenocrates’ per se-relative one. Rather, Xenocrates aimed to stress the (...) primacy of Plato’s binary distinction of beings, as presented at Sophist 255c13–4, over Aristotle’s list of the categories. (shrink)

Sophist 255c14 distinguishes καθ’ αὑτά and πρὸς ἄλλα (in relation to others). Many commentators identify this with the ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ category distinction. However, terms such as ‘same’ cannot fit into either category. Several reliable manuscripts read πρὸς ἄλληλα (in relation to each other) for πρὸς ἄλλα. I show that πρὸς ἄλληλα is a palaeographically plausible reading which accommodates the problematic terms. I then defend my reading against objections.

This paper considers the use that Plato makes of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in his engagements with eristic refutations. By examining Plato’s use of the principle in his most detailed engagements with eristic—in the Sophist, the discussion of “agonistic” argumentation in the Theaetetus, and especially the Euthydemus—I aim to show that the pressure exerted on Plato by eristic refutations played a crucial role in his development of the PNC, and that the principle provided him with a much more sophisticated means (...) of demarcating philosophical argumentation from eristic than he is generally thought to have. In particular, I argue that Plato’s qualified formulation of the PNC restricts the class of genuine contradictions in such a way that reveals the contradictions that eristics produce through their refutations to be merely apparent and that Plato consistently appeals to his qualified conception of genuine contradiction in his encounters with eristics in order to demonstrate that their refutations are merely apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting that the conception of genuine contradiction afforded by the PNC did not just provide Plato with a way of demarcating genuine from eristic refutations, but also with an answer to substantive philosophical challenges that eristics raised through their refutations. (shrink)

Plato’s demiurge makes a series of questionable decisions in creating the world. Most notoriously, he endeavors to replicate, to the extent possible, some of the features that his model possesses just insofar as it is a Form. This has provoked the colorful complaint that the demiurge is as raving mad as a general contractor who constructs a house of vellum to better realize the architect’s vellum plans (Keyt 1971). The present paper considers the sanity of the demiurge’s reasoning in light (...) of Timaeus 32c5-33b1, where he invokes considerations of wholeness, completeness, uniqueness, and eternality in deciding to build the body of the world from all of each of the simple bodies. Since the passage makes no appeal to the demiurge’s intelligible model, one can mine it for indications of the value that the demiurge takes those features to have independent of mimetic goals. I argue that, for Plato, those features are intrinsically good-making and, thus, that it is not only appropriate for them to characterize Forms qua Forms but also that it is appropriate for the demiurge to aim at replicating them, to the extent possible, in his creation. In particular, I argue that the demiurge’s success in instilling a circumscribed version of each feature in his creation helps to qualify it as a genuine being despite the fact that it comes to be. (shrink)

Resumen En esta nota presento la teoría unificada de las oraciones copulativas propuesta por Andrea Moro, quien sostiene que el verbo ser no es más que un soporte para la flexión verbal, independientemente de las peculiaridades gramaticales y semánticas de las oraciones adscriptivas, identificativas y existenciales en que aparece. Primero contextualizo la propuesta de Moro; después explico la manera en que Moro aclara una anomalía sintáctica que parece corroborar la supuesta polisemia del verbo ser. Por último, comento algunas omisiones de (...) relevancia filosófica en la historia del verbo ser contada por Moro.In this note I present the unified theory of copular sentences proposed by Andrea Moro, who maintains that the verb to be is nothing more than a support for verbal inflection, regardless of the grammatical and semantic peculiarities of the ascriptive, equative, and existential sentences in which it appears. First, I contextualize Moro's proposal. Then, I explain how Moro clarifies a syntactic anomaly that seems to corroborate the alleged polysemy of the verb to be. Lastly, I comment on some omissions of philosophical relevance in the history of the verb to be told by Moro. (shrink)

The Stoics have often been compared to the earthborn Giants in the Battle of Gods and Giants in Plato’s Sophist, but with diverging opinions about the lessons they drew in reaction to Plato. At issue are questions about what in the Sophist the Stoics were reacting to, how the Stoics are like and unlike the Giants, the status of being for the Stoics, and the extent to which they were Platonizing with their incorporeals. With these open questions in mind, I (...) reexamine the Sophist from the Stoic perspective, finding eight distinct challenges that are likely to have been salient to the Stoics, and offer a new account of the Stoics as responding to these challenges with an innovative ontology that prises apart something from being to make room for what is not, and a sophisticated one-world metaphysics that grounds everything there is in two fundamental bodies. (shrink)

This page is dedicated to an analysis of the first section of Parmenides' Poem, the Way of Truth, with a selection of critical judgments by the most important commentators and critics. In the Annotated Bibliography I list the main critical editions (from the first printed edition of 1573 to present days) and the translations in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, with a selection of studies on Parmenides; in future, a section will be dedicated to an examination of some critical (...) variants of the Greek text, with particular attention to corrections to the Diels-Kranz (abbreviated DK) edition of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. The fragments of Parmenides' Poem are cited according to Diels-Kranz numbering system as adopted in the 6th edition, Berlin 1952; the Poem is divided into three parts: the Proem fr. I, 1-32; the Way of Truth (Alethéia) from fr. II to VIII, 49, and the Way of Mortal Opinion (Doxa) fr. VIII, 50 to XIX, 3. (shrink)