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Aristotle On The Truth Of Things, John Thorp

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle on the truth of things

Abstract

Most of Aristotle's texts dealing with truth are unexceptionable: truth belongs only to sentences or beliefs, and it does so in virtue of a correspondence between those sentences or beliefs and the things in the world that they are about. Single words cannot be true, and the things in the world, whether single or compound, cannot be true either. There is however one text, Chapter 10 of Book Theta of the Metaphysics, that breaks with these familiar and comfortable views; it allows that single words or thoughts can be true, and also …

Ontological Independence In Aristotle's Categories, Phil Corkum

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle holds that substances (such as you and me) are ontologically independent from nonsubstances (such as our qualities and quantities) but nonsubstances are ontologically dependent on substances. There is then an asymmetry between substances and nonsubstances with respect to ontological dependence. Such asymmetry is widely and rightly thought to be a lynchpin of Aristotelian metaphysics. What is really real for Aristotle are such ordinary objects as you and me. Our properties - my paleness, your generosity - inhabit Aristotle's ontology only in so far as they are ours. This much we can all agree on; and I'll only briefly rehearse …

Aristotle On Existential Import And Nonreferring Subjects, Scott Carson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Much contemporary philosophy o f language has shown considerable interest in the relation between our linguistic practice and our metaphysical commitments, and this interest has begun to influence work in the history of philosophy as well. In his Categories and De interpretatione, Aristotle presents an analysis of language that can be read as intended to illustrate an isomorphism between the ontology of the real world and how we talk about that world. Our understanding of language is at least in part dependent upon our understanding of the relationships that exist among the enduring πράγματα that we come across in our …

Parmenides: 'To Be' Or 'Not To Be', Victorino Tejera

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I will seek to test the possibility that Parmenides was referring, in the Way of Being (the Aletheia), to existence-as-a-whole. According to this hypothesis Parmenides, in expounding 'the first way' should be understood to be making clear what can be said without contradiction about existence-as-a-whole, i.e. about what is, about Being.