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Existence Claims In The Posterior Analytics, Richard D. Mckirahan Jr.

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Existence Claims in the Posterior Analytics

Richard McKirahan

This paper treats several questions about the place of existence claims in theory of science presented in the Posterior Analytics. On the basis of a close reading of the text it shows that Aristotle identifies existence claims as a distinct kind of scientific principles (alongside definitions and common principles), that what these principles declare to exist are the subjects as opposed to the attributes that the science studies (triangles, as opposed to the property of having angles equal to two right angles), and not all the subjects, but a subset of them, …