Philosophy Commons^™

On The Meaning Of Kategoria In Aristotle's Categories, John P. Anton

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

All the commentators who have suppressed the terminological difference between predicate and predication (κατηγορούμενον and κατηγορία) conclude that kategoria means 'predicate', thus lending their authority to a misreadng of the passages in which Aristotle uses the word κατηγορία to mean 'attributive proposition.' In this paper I take the position presented as an argument to support a different reading and with the hope that the established interpretation can be challenged through a fresh examination of the textual testimonies to accommodate the suppressed part of Aristotle's theory of categories as ultimate types of canonical propositions. The thesis that i seek to advance …

Some Remarks On Some Neoplatonic Discussions Of Some Mathematical Concepts, Ian Mueller

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Despite their reverence for Plato, the Neoplatonists tended to associate mathematics very closely with the sensible. I here discuss two issues frequently raised in Neoplatonic discussions of the category of quantity. Both concern disputes about the relation of priority between two concepts, in one case quantity and quality, in the other the discrete and continuous.

Hierocles: Theory And Argument In The Second Century Ad, Brad Inwood

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I propose a consideration of two important questions concerning the traditional Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis, in an attempt to see the sort of position Hierocles takes on these central questions, to determine something about the intellectual milieu in which he operated and about his philosophical style. The larger goal will be to present a partial picture of Stoic philosophical activity in this later period which, I hope, will justify the belief that phllosophically interesting Stoicism did not die out with Poseidonius. The two questions are these: why does Hierocles devote so much of what survives of the Stoicheiosis to …

Perception, Appearance And Kinesis: The Secret Doctrine Of Plato's Theaetetus, Veda Cobb-Stevens

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

At the end of the examination of the first definition of knowledge we find that both the definition and its (radical) ontological ground have been refuted. Yet in neither case have we been left with the mere negativity of the avoidance of error. For the refutations are not mere refutations. The overturning of the theory of Radical Flux leaves us free to return to the exposition with a clearer eye for the previously hidden truth of the theory of Mitigated Flux, and the destruction of the definition of knowledge as aisthesis by an appeal to the functioning of the soul …

What Plato's Demiurge Does, Richard D. Mohr

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The paper argues that the project of Plato’s craftsman-like god is directed to an epistemological end rather than an aesthetic one. The Demiurge is chiefly bent on improving the world’s intelligibility rather than its looks. Specifically, the paper argues that what the Demiurge does is to introduce standards or measures into the phenomenal realm by imaging as best he can the nature of Forms where Forms are construed as standards or measures. The two most spectacular examples of Demiurgic crafting on this model are: 1) his crafting the rational world-soul, which serves both as an object of human cognition, and …

Plato's Unwritten Dialectic Of The One And The Great And Small, John Niemeyer Findlay

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this essay Findlay summarizes his position that the Unwritten Doctrines of Plato, as outlined by Proclus, are essential for understanding the ontological theories of Plato's major dialogues.

A. Preus

The 'Third Man Argument' And The Text Of The Parmenides, Robert G. Turnbull

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I attempt to show that the 'Large' argument of Parmenides 132 must be understood as part of the attempt to clarify Socrates' response to Zeno. The threat to that response is to the requirement that each form be one and not many. But it is also a threat to the very idea of having a share of a form. In context, the argument is underbrush clearing, getting an unworkable idea out of the way.

Participation In Plato's Dialogues: Phaedo, Parmenides, Sophist, And Timaeus, Leo Sweeney S.J.

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

What was important to Plato was formal causality. From experiencing that many existents are (say) beautiful, he realized that there is a form or essence of beauty. And this causes the beauty in things by its presence somehow in them. Formal causality and participation are two sides of the same coin. But Plato came to realize that his view of participation was incomplete. In the Parmenides and Sophist he joined participation with exemplarity and efficiency.

Aristotle On Women, Francis Sparshott

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Sex differentiation is a pervasive and striking feature of the animal world, of which humans form a part. Patriarchy and role differentiation between men and women are pervasive phenomena in human societies. Aristotle is not about to re-design the world. But these phenomena are explained and justified at the economic level, and that is not where human values lie. At the higher level of civilized life, the differentiation becomes anomalous. Aristotle never shows how the anomaly is to be overcome. This is partly because the account of the homestead and the treatment of the city as such are not made …

Aristotle On Genus And Differentia In The Topics And Categories, Herbert Granger

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Each of Aristotle's early works, the Topics and the Categories, provides important evidence for Aristotle's holding two accounts of the nature of genus and differentia. In one account genus and differentia are radically distinct in nature. In the other they are much the same. In this paper I make a case for Aristotle holding each account, suggest why he adopts them, and consider which of the two is the earlier one.

Review: The Guide To Practical Pastoring, Paul R. Fink

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 1983.1, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society with the Pacific and Western Divisions of the American Philosophical Association, March and April 1983.

On Natural And Unnatural Arts, Jerry Clegg

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The analogy between art and nature is basic in Aristotle's work, but he keeps it from degenerating into an identity. We explore the differences between artificial and natural processes.

Aristotle's Philosophical Principles Of Mathematics, Hippocrates George Apostle

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Towards An Understanding Of De Anima 432a1: Aristotle's Analogy Between The Soul And The Hand, Sarah J. Shorten

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Construing cognitive processes as life-functions of animals enable him to suggest the view that some of the problems of 'psycho-physical dualism' and 'facts of consciousness' may be philosophical creations after all.

Epicurean Prolepsis, David Glidden

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The paper I presented at the SAGP session was NOT the same as my much longer paper that was subsequently published in Oxford Studies, where I had by then established a fuller philosophical accounting of Epicurean prolepsis as akin to non-conceptual pattern recognition, a purely perceptual facility used by humans and other animals alike. (In this way, my dog recognizes other dogs and distinguishes them from other animals, just as we recognize kinds of things in nature and kinds of situations in our socializing, before we conceptualize and define what we are already habituated to recognizing.) So, the paper …

Eleatic Motions, Wallace Matson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In "Parmenides Unbound," Philosophical Inquiry 2.1 (1980) 345-360, Matson argues that the accomplishment of Parmenides was the fundamental philosophical distinction between what is known certainly by pure reason and, on the other hand, the domain of (mere?) experience. In this paper Matson argues that Zeno's paradoxes are meant to demonstrate the incoherence of Pythagorean philosophy, for example that the arguments of the Pythagoreans commit them to the unreality of motion, a reductio argument. He takes Melissus as directing his arguments against Heracliteans.

Aristotle's Demarcation Of The Senses Of Energeia In Metaphysics Ix,6, Ronald Polansky

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle demarcates in Metaphysics IX.6 three most crucial senses of energeia. There is that which pertains to categorial being, and that which pertains to becoming. Finally, there is energeia involved in the cognitive and affective lives of animals.

Secular Humanism: The Word Of Man, W. David Beck

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Review: Preaching And Preachers, Paul R. Fink

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche Contra Renan, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I mean by the title of this essay to allude to Nietzsche Contra Wagner and thereby to suggest the use which Nietzsche made of Renan in formulating some of his most distinctive thoughts. More specifically I suggest that Nietzsche's later view of history, especially as expressed in The Genealogy of Morals and The Antichrist, is a critique and parody of Renan's History of the Origins of Christianity. (I speak deliberately of Nietzsche's "view of history" rather than his "philosophy of history" because the latter phrase contains too many associations which Nietzsche's view rejects.) What is at issue is not a …

Aristotle And The Functions Of Reproduction, James G. Lennox

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I shall argue that the function of the reproductive capacity is not to perpetuate the kind (or species), but to allow the individual reproducer to be eternal: not eternal without qualifications, but in a way. The basic premise in the arguments which establish this conclusion distinguishes between things which are numerically eternal and those which are formally eternal. This of this latter sort must be members of an everlasting series of individuals which are one-in-form (ἕν εἴδει, in Aristotle's usage). The full understanding of these passages, therefore, requires a proper interpretation of the distinction between numerical and formal unity. with …

Listing Of The 1982-1983 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Episteme And Logos In Plato's Later Thought, Alexander Nehamas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

"What is knowledge?" Plato does try to answer this question, asked at the beginning of the Theaetetus, but the answer is not in the dialogue itself, either negatively (as Cornford argued) or positively (as Fine suggested). His answer is partially given in the Sophist and Statesman: the project of definition has been shown to involve the mastery of the whole field to which the object of definition belongs, and hence a science of the field in question. The dramatic sequels to the Theaetetus are also its doctrinal complements. By making knowledge the object of knowledge, Plato was able to …

Some Heraclitean Problems, Miroslav Marcovich

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Beginning from a critique of the idea that a characteristic thought pattern in Heraclitus is the geometrical proportion (proposed by Hermann Fraenkel and others), the author critically discusses the fragments on which that interpretation rests, and goes on to delineate several characteristic means of expression: Paradox, Folklore Motifs, Traditional Wisdom (proverbs), vivid Similes, and metrical forms. The author concludes by discussing the meaning of "logos" in Heraclitus.

Plato's Theory Of Social Justice In Republic Ii-Iv, Edward Nichols Lee

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato presents the enigmatic and ambiguous formula, "each one doing his own" as his definition of social justice. I will search for the sense that he establishes for that definition: to show how he thinks he has established that that unlikely formula is in fact a reasonable definition of social justice, and to analyze what it means. Plato's theory of justice has its primary sources in sophistic thinking, in particular to the contractarian approach to political philosophy.

The Unambiguity Of Aristotelian Being, Jaakko Hintikka

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper, I shall try to enhance our understanding of Aristotle's thought by relating it to certain contemporary problems and insights of philosophical logicians. One of the most central current issues in philosophical logic is a challenge to a hundred-year old dogma. Almost all twentieth-century philosophers in English-speaking countries have followed Frege and Russell and claimed that the words for being in natural languages — "is," "ist," ἔστι etc.— are ambiguous between the is of predication, the is of existence, the is of identity, and the generic is. The significance of this ambiguity thesis has not been limited to …

Peirce's Critique Of Hegel's Phenomenology And Dialectic, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although Peirce clearly and repeatedly stated his intention to construct a philosophical system, each of his attempts in that direction is at best fragmentary and some are ultimately incoherent. The ambiguities of Peirce's cosmology, his theory of meaning and his conception of truth cannot be avoided by anyone who carefully considers his own "guess at the riddle." Rather than cataloguing these puzzles, I hope to give at least a partial account of why they remain in the work of a philosopher who was avowedly systematic, possessed great analytic and synthetic powers, and had an acute sense of the physiognomy of …

Nietzsche's Graffito: A Reading Of The Antichrist, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Even those writers who have good things to say about Nietzsche usually do not have good things to say abut his penultimate book, The Antichrist. Like Ecce Homo it is often described as at least prefiguring Nietzsche's madness if not (as is sometimes the case) said to be part of that desperate glide itself. Those inclined to reject the book may be encouraged in this view by Nietzsche's statement to Brandes, in November 1888, that The Antichrist is the whole of The Transvaluation of All Values (originally announced as a series of four books) and that Ecce Homo is its …

Agnosticism: Kant, W. David Beck

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter identifies the results of Kant's philosophical system on the contemporary discussion concerning an inerrant revelation. Knowledge, for Kant, is possible only as the forms and categories of the mind organize the raw data of the senses. Beyond this phenomenal world, the mind can only postulate what must or ought to be. It cannot know what is. The first postulate of this practical reasoning is freedom. The individual is autonomous, knows the good, and is capable of willing and doing as he ought.

Within such an epistemological framework, revelation becomes unnecessary, useless, and unverifiable. Inerrancy is not only false …