Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aristotle

  • Remembering Henry Veatch and Rational Man

    Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl

  • Is It Epistemically Certain That There are Substances?

    Herewith, another episode in my ongoing discussion with Lukas Novak.  Here again is his list of propositions that he claims are not only true, but knowable with (epistemic as opposed to psychological) certainty: a) God exists.b) There are substances.c) There are some necessary truths, even some de re necessary truths.d) Human cognition is capable of truth and…

  • Once More on the Bogus Aristotle ‘Quotation’

    The indefatigable Dave Lull delivers again. But first Uncle Bill's lessons for the day: 1) Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations. 2) Do not broadcast unsourced quotations unless you are sure they are correct. 3) Verify the sources of sourced quotations. 4) Correct, if you can, incorrect 'quotations.' 5) Do not willfully mis-attribute!  Or, like…

  • True Whether or Not Aristotle (or Camus) Said It

    Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations. Where did the Stagirite say this? Jumping ahead a couple of millennia, one finds the following bogus Camus quotation on several of those wretched unsourced quotation websites: "I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my…

  • Aristotelian Categoricals and Natural Norms

     Here are some notes on Chapter Two, "Natural Norms,"  of Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness, Oxford UP, 2001.   As I mentioned previously, Foot essays "a naturalistic theory of ethics: to break really radically both with G. E. Moore's anti-naturalism and with the subjectivist theories such as emotivism and prescriptivism that have been seen as clarifications…

  • A Protreptic Puzzler

    A curious passage from Aristotle's Protrepticus: . . . the fact that all men feel at ease in philosophy, wishing to dedicate their whole lives to the pursuit of it by leaving behind all other concerns, is in itself weighty evidence that it is a painless pleasure to dedicate oneself wholeheartedly to philosophy. For no…

  • The Tomb of the Philosopher

    Supposedly found.  Appropriately enough, in Stagira.  How long before Islamists destroy it?

  • Substantial Change, Prime Matter, and Individuation

    Eric Levy wants to talk about prime matter.  I am 'primed' and my powder's dry:  Nihil philosophicum a me alienum putamus. "I consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to me." Change, Accidental and Substantial  There is no change without a substrate of change which, in respect of its existence and identity, does not change during…

  • Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

    I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood: The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them. For the adherent of the…

  • What is Potentiality? An Exploration

    Our Czech friend Vlastimil V. writes, I believe it is precisely the potentiality — or the in principle capacity — of logical thinking, free decisions, or higher emotions that makes killing human embryos morally problematic, seemingly unlike the killing of non-human embryos. This seems to me a promising hypothesis, to say the least. But I…

  • Aristotle on the New Year

    Ed sends his best wishes from London in the form of a quotation from The Philosopher: "Since the 'now' is an end and a beginning of time, not of the same time however, but the end of that which is past and the beginning of that which is to come, it follows that, as the…

  • Substance, Accidents, Incarnation

    This entry is a further installment in a continuing discussion with Tim Pawl, et al., about the Chalcedonian Christological two-natures-one-person doctrine.  Professor Pawl put to me the following question: You ask: “Now if an accident is not the sort of item that can be crucified and bleed, how is it that an individual substance can…

  • More on One Person-Two Natures: Response to Timothy Pawl

    A recent argument of mine questioning the coherent conceivability of the one person-two natures doctrine of Chalcedonian Christology begins with the premise 1. If N is a nature of substance s, then s cannot exist without having N.  Natures are essential to the things that have them.  In possible worlds jargon: If N is a…

  • Is it Coherently Conceivable that One Person Have Two Natures?

    For Shaun Deegan, who 'inspired' a sloppy prototype of the following argument hashed out over Sunday breakfast at a Mesa, Arizona hash house. ……………. The Question More precisely:  is it coherently conceivable that one person, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, the Logos, have both an individual divine nature and an…

  • Bare Particulars versus Aristotelian Substances

    In this entry I will attempt to explain the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian primary substance.  A subsequent post will consider whether this difference is theologically relevant, in particular, whether it is relevant to the theology of the Incarnation. What is a Particular? Particulars in the sense relevant to understanding 'bare particular'…