Aristotle’s Refutation of the Eleatic Argument in Physics I.8

In this paper, I show that Aristotle’s refutation of the Eleatic argument in Physics I.8 is based on the idea that a thing at the starting point of coming to be is composite and is made up of what underlies and a priva­tion. In doing so, I clarify how the concept of accidentality as used in his solution should be understood in relation to the composite nature of what comes to be. I also suggest an explanation of why Aristotle’s discus­sion of the Eleatic dilemma in Physics I.8, unlike his discussion in the previous chapter, is not clear.

Truth in Practical Reason: Practical and Assertoric Truth in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Truth has always been a controversial subject in Aristotelian scholarship. In most cases, including some well-known passages in the Categories, De Interpretatione and Metaphysics, Aristotle uses the predicate ‘true’ for assertions, although exceptions are many and impossible to ignore. One of the most complicated cases is the concept of practical truth in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics: its entanglement with action and desire raises doubts about the possibility of its inclusion to the propositional model of truth. Nevertheless, in one of the most extensive studies on the subject, C. Olfert has tried to show that this is not only possible but also necessary. In this paper, we explain why trying to fit practical truth into the propositional model comes with insurmount­able problems. In order to overcome these problems, we focus on multiple aspects of practical syllogism and correlate them with Aristo­tle’s account of desire, happiness and the good. Identifying the role of such concepts in the specific steps of practical reasoning, we reach the conclusion that practical truth is best explained as the culmination of a well-executed practical syllogism taken as a whole, which ultimately explains why this type of syllogism demands a different approach and a different kind of truth than the theoretical one.

An Ontology for the In-Between of Motion: Aristotle’s Reaction to Zeno’s Arguments

This paper proposes an interpretation of Books V and VI of Aristotle’s Physics as being (at least partly) a reaction to Zeno’s four “arguments against motion” that Aristotle expounds and discusses in Phys. VI 9. On the basis of a detailed textual analysis of that chapter, I show that Zeno’s arguments rest on a frame of a priori notions such as part and whole, in contact, between, limit, etc., which Aristotle takes over in order to account for the inner structure (here called “the In-Between”) common to all facts of motion and change. That frame allows him to develop a specific ontology for that inner structure – although it exists only potentially according to the Aristotelian orthodoxy – because he needs such an ontology in order to vindicate the reality of motion and change.

Eleatic Ontology in Aristotle: Introduction

The introduction summarizes the six new papers collected in Volume 1, Tome 5: Eleatic Ontology and Aristotle. The papers take a fresh look at virtually every aspect of Aristotle’s engagement with Eleaticism. They are particularly concerned with Aristotle’s responses to Parmenidean monism, the Eleatic rejection of change, and Zeno’s paradoxes. The contributions also focus on the ways in which Aristotle developed several of his own theories in metaphysics and natural science partly in reaction to Eleatic puzzles and arguments.

What about Plurality? Aristotle’s Discussion of Zeno’s Paradoxes

While Aristotle provides the crucial testimonies for the paradoxes of motion, topos, and the falling millet seed, surprisingly he shows almost no interest in the paradoxes of plurality. For Plato, by contrast, the plurality paradoxes seem to be the central paradoxes of Zeno and Simplicius is our primary source for those. This paper investigates why the plurality paradoxes are not examined by Aristotle and argues that a close look at the context in which Aristotle discusses Zeno holds the answer to this question.

Aristotle, Eleaticism, and Zeno’s Grains of Millet

This paper explores how Aristotle rejects some Eleatic tenets in general and some of Zeno’s views in particular that apparently threaten the Aristotelian “science of nature.” According to Zeno, it is impossible for a thing to traverse what is infinite or to come in contact with infinite things in a finite time. Aristotle takes the Zenonian view to be wrong by resorting to his distinction between potentiality and actuality and to his theory of mathematical proportions as applied to the motive power and the moved object (Ph. VII.5). He states that some minimal parts of certain magnitudes (i.e., continuous quantities) are perceived, but only in potentiality, not in actuality. This being so, Zeno’s view that a single grain of millet makes no sound on falling, but a thousand grains make a sound must be rejected. If Zeno’s paradoxes were true, there would be no motion, but if there is no motion, there is no nature, and hence, there cannot be a science of nature. What Aristotle noted in the millet seed paradox, I hold, is that it apparently casts doubt on his theory of mathematical proportions, i.e., the theory of proportions that holds between the moving power and the object moved, and the extent of the change and the time taken. This approach explains why Aristotle establishes an analogy between the millet seed paradox, on the one hand, and the argument of the stone being worn away by the drop of water (Ph. 253b15–16) and the hauled ship, on the other.

Bycie – nie bycie, prawda – fałsz w koncepcji Arystotelesa

The basis of Aristotle’s arguments about truth and falsity is formulated syntactically according to the distinctions of ‘to be’ as the predicative affirmation - composition and, correspondingly, ‘not to be’ as negation – separation. As the nominal defining characteristic of falsity is contradic­tion, so of truth is non-contradiction. The expression of truth or falsity in the declarative sentence of affirmation or negation is a function of thinking as a human cognitive disposition under the semantic figures of categorical predication. In addition, we cite Aristotle’s more important texts on the true intellection of non-composites (indivisibles), the inves­tigation of truth and probability, the diagnosis of falsehood, the truthful­ness and lying. Finally, a mention of modern adaptations of Aristotle’s concept of truth.

Aristotle’s Mixture in its Medical and Philosophical Background: The Hippocratic De victu and the Aristotelian De generatione et corruptione

Aristotle’s notion of qualitative interaction ruling both the process of mixture and the process of reciprocal elemental transmutation is based upon the idea of a physical contrariety endowed with two extremes and a wide central area where the opposite forces reach different equilibrium points (i.e., the so-called mixtures) or can be present to the fullest degree (in this case we do not have a mixture, but an element). Differently from previous scholarship which attributes this notion specifically to Aristotle, we have found, in a text which Aristotle seems to have been acquainted with, the Hippocratic De victu, an incipient structure of a contrariety endowed with extremes and a central area where opposite forces meet and yield respective equilibrium points, mixtures, which, as in Aristotle, give an account of the variety of beings existing in the world. In this article, we suggest the possibility that in the development of the Aristotelian thinking about elemental and qualitative dynamics, the Hippocratic De victu may have contributed to suggesting to Aristotle a way of envisioning the structure of his basic physical contrarieties.

Monism in Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.3–5

Scholars have often seen Parmenides as entirely opposed to earlier materialistic philosophy. In this paper I argue that what is more striking in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book I is the degree of continuity that he sees between Parmenides and the material monists. I explore this coupling of Parmenides with the material monists to understand better what he takes to be distinctive and problematic with Parmenides’ monism.

Livio Rossetti nella terra incognita degli Eleati

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