First pages of Asclepius’s commentary to Aristotle’s Metaphysics contain several important testimonies regarding the origins of this work. One represents an attempt to explain the evident editorial ...flaws, such as discontinuities and lacunae, and on the other hand presence of repetitions and loanwords. These flaws are attributed to Aristotle’s disciple, Eudemus of Rhodes. The second piece of information concerns the presumable authorship of the book Alpha maior. It was supposedly written down by Eudemus’s nephew, Pasicles. Finally, we find a mention on Aristotle’s book On wisdom, which may refer both to the dialog On philosophy, as well as to the first books of Metaphysics. While commenting on the book, Asclepius provides a general assessment of the whole book, in which he sees a first lecture on divinity and elaboration of the most venerable of the sciences, philosophy, which is sometimes referred to as the first philosophy due to its priority to all other sciences and arts.
The epistemic value of metaphysics Arroyo, Raoni Wohnrath; Arenhart, Jonas R. Becker
Synthese (Dordrecht),
08/2022, Letnik:
200, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
It is sometimes argued that, given its detachment from our current most successful science, analytic metaphysics has no
epistemic value
because it contributes nothing to our knowledge of reality. ...Relatedly, it is also argued that metaphysics properly constrained by science can avoid that problem. In this paper we argue, however, that given the
current
understanding of the relation between science and metaphysics, metaphysics
allegedly
constrained by science suffers the same fate as its unconstrained sister; that is, what is currently thought of as scientifically respectful metaphysics may end up also being without epistemic value. The core of our claim is that although much emphasis is put on the supposed difference between unconstrained analytic metaphysics, in opposition to scientifically constrained metaphysics, it is largely forgotten that no clear constraining relation of metaphysics by science is yet available.
Several advocates of the lively field of “metaphysics of science” have recently argued that a naturalistic metaphysics should be based solely on current science, and that it should replace more ...traditional, intuition-based, forms of metaphysics. The aim of the present paper is to assess that claim by examining the relations between metaphysics of science and general metaphysics. We show that the current metaphysical battlefield is richer and more complex than a simple dichotomy between “metaphysics of science” and “traditional metaphysics”, and that it should instead be understood as a three dimensional “box”, with one axis distinguishing “descriptive metaphysics” from “revisionary metaphysics”, a second axis distinguishing a priori from a posteriori metaphysics, and a third axis distinguishing “commonsense metaphysics”, “traditional metaphysics” and “metaphysics of science”. We use this three-dimensional figure to shed light on the project of current metaphysics of science, and to demonstrate that, in many instances, the target of that project is not defined with enough precision and clarity.
O zasadach natury Aquinas, Thomas
Roczniki filozoficzne,
2016, 2016-00-00, Letnik:
64, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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This text is a translation of the treatise De principiis naturae (On the Principles of Nature), written by Thomas Aquinas. It provides a description of the basic questions occupying the philosophy of ...nature and metaphysics as Aquinas sees them. These questions are, first and foremost, the ones concerning the phenomenon of becoming, which, according to Aquinas, constitutes the basic object of investigations conducted by the philosopher of nature. In the treatise, Aquinas distinguishes substance from accidents; describes the composite of matter and form, the four kinds of causes and how they are related to one another; and, finally, presents different kinds of necessity and identity.
This article explains Schopenhauer's ʺEssay on Spirit Seeingʺ and his physiology of dream production and sets it in contrast to Nietzsche's understanding of dreams. The relationship of dreams to ...wakeful ideas about the world according to Schopenhauer is further developed with reference to passages from the Manuscript remains. As a result, the author proposes that the contrast between dream and wakeful realities sharpens the appreciation of wakefulness, and is not in conflict with reality (as Nietzsche had proposed). The sphere of representation as the location shared by dreams and wakeful realities is substantiated further with examples of dreams from the literary fiction of Wilkie Collins, Heiner Müller and Thomas Bernhard. These serve to emphasize the suprapersonal dynamics of dreams described by Schopenhauer. In conclusion, the author establishes parallels between dreams and literary fiction and notes that literary fiction, while not reality, may well be - in some instances at least - the truth about reality.
I put forth and defend a novel metaphysical account of organized social groups (e.g., pick-up basketball teams, families, and rock bands) as composite wholes that may vary in their constitutions. ...Currently, there are a number of competing accounts concerning what it is to be an organized social group. For example, one such account identifies these things with the pluralities of their members. Another account takes them, instead, to be sets that have certain kinds of objects as elements.While these competing theories may have some intuitive appeal, they do not adequately capture the intuitive persistence conditions of organized social groups. The first paper of this dissertation, titled “On organized social groups and their persistence conditions”, aims to show this. In this paper, I examine three leading accounts of organized social groups and argue that none of them can accommodate a perfectly possible organized social group that changes its membership over time, changes the functional relations in which its members must stand over time, and eventually ceases to exist.In the second paper, “What is an organized social group?” I propose and sketch out a novel metaphysical account of organized social groups, one that I think adequately accommodates the various changes that such things can (or might) endure. I proceed in two main sections. In the first section, I show that the relationship between a material object and its parts is intuitively analogous to the relationship between an organized social group and its members, and so we are prima facie warranted in treating these relationships similarly. I then briefly lay out an account of the relationship between a material object and its parts that is particularly fitting for our purposes. In the second section, I use this account as a guide for sketching out a theory of organized social groups, which I call ‘the function correspondence account’. After laying out the function correspondence account’s postulates, I show that it can secure desired results concerning the intuitive persistence conditions of organized social groups.There are, nevertheless, some worries that one might have about the function correspondence account. One consequence of the account is that its truth entails that an organized social group exists only if it has members, which is incompatible with the commonly held intuition that some organized social groups may exist despite being memberless. The third and final paper of this dissertation, titled “Memberless organized social groups”, addresses this potential major worry.In “Memberless organized social groups” I examine cases that seem to support the intuition that organized social groups may exist despite having no members. I show that such cases do not entail that organized social groups may exist memberlessly. Further, I show that the function correspondence account is perfectly compatible with such cases, and that the manner by which it may accommodate them is independently motivated. I then go on to argue that we have good reason to reject the possibility of memberless organized social groups. The acceptance of memberless organized social groups, I argue, comes at the steep, theoretical price of effectively preventing organized social groups from being the kinds of things that may interact with the material world.
Ted Sider suggests that the notion of grounding has an awkward dilemma at its foundation although the notion of grounding is an intellectual success (Sider 2, 2020). In my master’s thesis, I expound ...the dilemma of grounding and three viable solutions: the Aboutness Solution, the Bennettian Solution, and the Infinite Regress Solution. I argue that the Aboutness Solution is the best solution for the dilemma for the friends of grounding.
Neo-Carnapian deflationism is an approach to metaphysics that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. The movement behind it takes inspiration from Carnap's (1950) paper Empiricism, Semantics ...and Ontology, and looks to deflate metaphysical questions and disputes, showing them to be insubstantial, since they turn on questions of language rather than metaphysics. I hold that this is all to the good. However, I argue that neo-Carnapianism is problematised by specific metasemantic assumptions, specifically the assumptions of representationalism. If we hold a representationalist view of language, then neo-Carnapianism fails. Over the course of this thesis, I will show how representationalism causes problems for the neo-Carnapian account, and argue for an alternative metasemantic approach - global expressivism - that we can substitute to save it. Global expressivism is itself a difficult position to make clear, so I will spend a significant amount of time demonstrating its core principles, before showing how to combine it with neo-Carnapianism, providing a deflationary approach to metasemantics to complement our deflationary approach to metaphysics.
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