Aristotle's On the Soul

Aristotle's On the Soul aims to uncover the principle of life, what Aristotle calls psuchē (soul). For Aristotle, soul is the form which gives life to a body and causes all its living activities, from breathing to thinking. Aristotle develops a general account of all types of living through examining soul's causal powers. The thirteen new essays in this Critical Guide demonstrate the profound influence of Aristotle's inquiry on biology, psychology and philosophy of mind from antiquity to the present. They deepen our understanding of his key concepts, including form, reason, capacity, and activity. This volume situates Aristotle in his intellectual context and draws judiciously from his other works as well as the history of interpretation to shed light on his intricate views. It also highlights ongoing interpretive debates and Aristotle's continuing relevance. It will prove invaluable for researchers in ancient philosophy and the history of science and ideas.

Mere Possibilities

The mere possibilities are the possibilities that are not also actual. It would seem that they have no being but some attempts to account for them effectively give being to them: to say that they are actual at some other world or that they reside within the causal powers of things. This seems to grant mere possibilities both non-being and being, against Parmenideanism. Instead, a fictionalist stance is advanced wherein mere possibilities are fictional recombinations of already existing elements. Such recombinations have no being themselves but they can still be grounded in what there is. The Parmenidean preference is for a grounding in nature rather than other possible worlds since our knowledge of other worlds is largely informed by our knowledge of this world.

Abstract Objects in the Causal Order

<p>Abstract entities have long been viewed as entities that lack causal powers; that is, they cannot be constitutive of causes or effects. This thesis aims to reject this claim and argue that abstract objects are indeed part of the causal order. I will call this thesis ‘AOCO’ for short. In the first chapter I argue that other philosophers have committed themselves to the claim that some abstract objects have been caused to come into existence. In the second chapter, I argue that the best solution to Benacerraf’s problem is to concede that abstract objects have a causal influence on what we believe. In the third chapter I examine and evaluate objections to AOCO.</p>

Abstract Objects in the Causal Order

<p>Abstract entities have long been viewed as entities that lack causal powers; that is, they cannot be constitutive of causes or effects. This thesis aims to reject this claim and argue that abstract objects are indeed part of the causal order. I will call this thesis ‘AOCO’ for short. In the first chapter I argue that other philosophers have committed themselves to the claim that some abstract objects have been caused to come into existence. In the second chapter, I argue that the best solution to Benacerraf’s problem is to concede that abstract objects have a causal influence on what we believe. In the third chapter I examine and evaluate objections to AOCO.</p>

The Roots of Occasionalism? Causation, Metaphysical Dependence, and Soul-Body Relations in Augustine

It has long been thought that Augustine holds that corporeal objects cannot act upon incorporeal souls. However, precisely how and why Augustine imposes limitations upon the causal powers of corporeal objects remains obscure. In this paper, the author clarifies Augustine’s views about the causal and dependence relations between body and soul. He argues that, contrary to what is often thought, Augustine allows that corporeal objects do act upon souls and merely rules out that corporeal objects exercise a particular kind of causal power (that of efficient or sustaining causes). He clarifies how Augustine conceives of the kind of causal influence exercised by souls and bodies.

‘Meditatio Mortis’

The Cartesian Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) sometimes refers to philosophy as meditatio mortis, which he understands as the separation of the mind from the body. This chapter outlines the ways that Clauberg amends the Cartesian accounts of the union of mind and body and of the nature of life and death in such a way as to be able to accommodate this view of philosophy. It argues that Clauberg adopts a broader account of life and death than Descartes, and alters the nature and extent of the mind’s and body’s respective causal powers to that end. Finally, the chapter looks at the implications of this conception of philosophy in Clauberg’s broader philosophical and theological context. Not only does philosophical contemplation provide no guidance in the practical sphere – including in theology – but it can be detrimental to our everyday lives.

Plato’s Forms as powers

This chapter introduces Plato’s fundamental entities, the Forms. It focuses on his view that the Forms are causal powers, and his innovative stance that the Forms are transcendent entities; it argues that Plato’s Forms are transcendent powers. This raises the (difficult) question of what kind of causal efficacy transcendent entities can have on things in the physical world. By showing that Plato’s Forms are causal powers having constitutional causal efficacy, as difference-makers, like Anaxagoras’s Opposites, the chapter begins to build the case for what I call Plato’s Anaxagoreanism. If the Forms operate like Anaxagoras’s Opposites, by constitutional causal efficacy, except that they are transcendent, how can features of objects in the physical world be constitutionally derived from features of transcendent entities, the Forms? The chapter argues that Plato thinks of the causal efficacy of the Forms on the model of the normativity of mathematics and geometry over the sensible world.

Anaxagoras’s metaphysical foundations

This chapter introduces Anaxagoras’s metaphysics and the relations of fundamentality and composition that hold between entities in his ontology: the Opposites (properties), stuffs, objects, the so-called seeds (i.e., reified structures), and nous with its vortex. The chapter argues that the crux of Anaxagoras’s metaphysics, which will also influence Plato the most, is the stance that parts of properties are parts of objects. Objects are qualified by properties by having parts of properties (in preponderance) within their constitution. Thus, constitutional overlap is the ‘mechanism’ by which Anaxagoras accounts for the qualification of objects. The chapter provides an account of Anaxagoras’s Opposites as causal powers and explains the type of causal efficacy the Opposites have in the world: constitutional causal efficacy.

Uncertainty, Possibility, and Causal Power in QCA

Uncertainty undermines causal claims; however, the nature of causal claims decides what counts as relevant uncertainty. Empirical robustness is imperative in regularity theories of causality. Regularity theory features strongly in QCA, making its case sensitivity a weakness. Following qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) founder Charles Ragin’s emphasis on ontological realism, this article suggests causality as a power and thus breaks with the ontological determinism of regularity theories. Exercising causal powers makes it possible for human agents to achieve an outcome but does not determine that they will. The article explains how QCA’s truth table analysis “models” possibilistic uncertainty and how crisp sets do this better than fuzzy sets. Causal power is at the heart of critical realist philosophy of science. Like Ragin, critical realism suggests empirical analysis as merely describing underlying causal relationships. Empirical statements must be substantively interpreted into causal claims. The article is critical of “empiricist” QCA that infers causality from the robustness of set relationships.