Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)

This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises. Its main purposes are, first, to determine the function, structure, and explanatory power of teleological explanations in four of Aristotle’s natural treatises, that is, in Physica (book II), De Anima, De Partibus Animalium (including the practice in books II-IV), and De Caelo (book II). Its second purpose is to confront these findings about Aristotle’s practice in the natural treatises with (...) the theoretical picture of the structure of teleological explanations gained from Aristotle’s theory of scientific demonstration. For this purpose a new interpretation of Analytica Posteriora II.11 is presented. This study thereby contributes to recent scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s philosophy of science and his philosophy of nature, while at the same time adding to our knowledge of Aristotle’s notion of teleology in terms of its explanatory merits and limits. (shrink)

Resumen: En De interpretatione Aristóteles distingue entre voces articuladas e inarticuladas. Mientras que la voz articulada se compone de una combinación de vocales y consonantes, la voz inarticulada equivale a cualquier sonido emitido por animales no humanos. Sin embargo, al-Fārābī cuestiona esta visión. En su Gran Comentario a De Interpretatione, corrige la postura de Aristóteles y desarrolla una argumentación que toma en cuenta algunas consideraciones sobre el comportamiento de los animales no humanos en algunos de los tratados de Aristóteles sobre (...) los animales. Tras presentar la postura de al-Fārābī en torno al "lenguaje" en los animales no humanos, discuto brevemente hasta qué punto las capacidades de los animales no humanos para expresarse y comunicarse amplían nuestra comprensión de lo que podríamos entender por lenguaje.: In De Interpretatione Aristotle distinguishes between articulate and inarticulate voices. While articulate voices are a combination of vowels and consonants, inarticulate voices would be any sound uttered by non-human animals. Nevertheless, al-Fārābī debated this view. In his Long Commentary on the De Interpretatione, he amends Aristotle's position and develops an argumentation that takes into account some considerations regarding nonhuman animals' behavior found in Aristotle's treatises on animals. After presenting al-Fārābī's views concerning the "language" of non-human animals, I briefly discuss to what extent the capacities of non-human animals to express and communicate themselves broadens our comprehension of what we might understand by language. (shrink)