Where do computer games "happen"? The articles collected in this pioneering volume explore the categories of "space," "place," and "territory" to lay the groundwork for the study of spatiality in games.

There is a well-known tension in Plotinus' thought regarding the location of the intelligible region. He appears to make three mutually incompatible claims about it: (1) it is everywhere; (2) it is nowhere; and (3) it borders on the heavens, where the third claim is associated with Plotinus' affection for cosmic religion. Traditionally, although scholars have found a reasonable way to make sense of the compatibility of the first two claims, they have sought to relieve the tension generated by (3) (...) by both downplaying the importance of cosmic religion to Plotinus and reinterpreting his spatial language metaphorically. In this paper I argue that both of these maneuvers are unsatisfactory. Rather, it is possible to reconcile Plotinus' metaphysics with the world-view of cosmic religion (CR world-view), i.e., to retain the spatial sense of Plotinus' language without making his metaphysics incoherent. In the first part of this paper, I show that cosmic religion is not just an awkward appendage to Plotinus' metaphysics. After explaining what cosmic religion involves, I argue that the CR world-view is in fact central to his natural philosophy. Then, I turn to the problem of the compatibility between cosmic religion and Plotinus' thought. By carefully considering how Aristotle's Prime Mover is present to his universe, I show how we can make claims (2) and (3) compatible for Plotinus. Then, I argue that Plotinus' own account of the omnipresence of soul and its powers' actualizations in particular locations provides a parallel to the problem of the compatibility between (1) and (3), and further that these two accounts can be combined to resolve completely the tension between the CR world-view and Plotinus' metaphysics. In the final section, I discuss the implications this has for our understanding of the soul's ascent and descent. (shrink)

Following the traces of some references to pre-existing matter in the Septuagint, the article analyses the interpretation of Gen 1, 2a in Philo of Alexandria’s De opificio mundi with a focus on his omission of the ἀκατασκεύαστος character of the earth. Philo’s interpretation is closely linked to his conception of emptiness and to his pioneering defence of a creation ex nihilo. In his cosmology, which is articulated as a dual interpretation of the Genesis and Plato’s Timaeus, the matter plays an (...) essential role. Philo justifies its existence on Aristotelian-Stoic grounds, highlighting the process of gradual refinement whereby matter passes from being a rough ὕλη to being an elaborate type of οὐσία. (shrink)

A generous postdoctoral grant from the Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University enabled this research. I conducted the very earliest stage of the work while holding a postdoctoral position at the Minerva Humanities Center and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at TAU, which I would also like very much to thank. Participants in the workshop of the School of Philosophy, Linguistics and Science Studies in TAU under the direction of Professor (...) Yossef Schwartz provided useful comments on an early draft. I reserve special thanks to Daniel Dovrat, Yiftah Elazar, Ori Belkind, Eyal Chowers, and Shaul Katzir for their perspicacious remarks and ongoing encouragement.When... (shrink)

Recent scholarship has recognized some thematic connections related to onto-cosmological issues between two late Platonic dialogues, such as Philebus and Timaeus, and has tried to explain them in different ways. The aim of this paper is to contribute to such a debate by analysing an ancient exegesis of Timaeus 35a1-b4, that of Plutarch of Chaeronea, which made use of the ontological sections of the Philebus in his treatise on the cosmogony of the Timaeus. More specifically, this analysis will show that (...) the notions of ‘limit’ and ‘unlimitedness’ played a decisive role in the shaping of the “essence” of the world-soul according to Plutarch. (shrink)

I argue that Plato thinks that a sunaition is a mere tool used by a soul (or by the cosmic nous) to promote an intended outcome. In the first section, I develop the connection between sunaitia and Plato’s teleology. In the second section, I argue that sunaitia belong to Plato’s theory of the soul as a self-mover: specifically, they are those things that are set in motion by the soul in the service of some goal. I also argue against several (...) popular and long-standing interpretations, namely, that sunaitia correspond to Aristotle’s idea of hypothetical necessity, that sunaitia are the ‘how’ in an explanation (whereas the true cause is the ‘why’), and that Plato’s causal views should be read through Aristotle’s fourfold schema. I conclude the article by surveying the history of sunaitia after Plato’s usage. (shrink)

The ‘traditional’ interpretation of the Receptacle in Plato’s Timaeus maintains that its parts act as substrata to ordinary particulars such as dogs and tables: particulars are form-matter compounds to which Forms supply properties and the Receptacle supplies a substratum, as well as a space in which these compounds come to be. I argue, against this view, that parts of the Receptacle cannot act as substrata for those particulars. I also argue, making use of contemporary discussions of supersubstantivalism, against a substratum (...) interpretation that separates substratum and space in the Timaeus. (shrink)

Place is the most fundamental concept in architecture and is a necessity of architectural design, and since we face changes in our understanding of place notion in the modern era which have had distinctly profound and sometimes unpleasant effects on modern and subsequent designs- in a way that architecture has largely neglected its primary task of making the noble place of human life, and its responsibility in human dwelling dimension- in order to find the roots of the evolution in place (...) nature and its meaning, we will answer these two question: what the concept of place has been for ancient thinkers? What have been the reasons for changing the understanding of place in the modern era? How these changes have affected the understanding of place in modern architecture? and yet we will try to understand the concepts of place in ancient Greece (as the origin of western thoughts especially modern thinking) versus the modern, and finally the main findings of this study are the massive semantic transformation of place in modern age and its replacement by space in modern architecture design which mainly is the result of major attention paid to the extendedness of place, the emergence of functionalism in degradation of place, and the commercialization of place. (shrink)

Plato's dialogue the Timaeus-Critias presents two connected accounts, that of the story of Atlantis and its defeat by ancient Athens and that of the creation of the cosmos by a divine craftsman. This book offers a unified reading of the dialogue. It tackles a wide range of interpretative and philosophical issues. Topics discussed include the function of the famous Atlantis story, the notion of cosmology as 'myth' and as 'likely', and the role of God in Platonic cosmology. Other areas commented (...) upon are Plato's concepts of 'necessity' and 'teleology', the nature of the 'receptacle', the relationship between the soul and the body, the use of perception in cosmology, and the work's peculiar monologue form. The unifying theme is teleology: Plato's attempt to show the cosmos to be organised for the good. A central lesson which emerges is that the Timaeus is closer to Aristotle's physics than previously thought. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

In the Timaeus, Plato makes a distinction between reason and necessity. This distinction is often accounted for as a distinction between two types of causation: purpose oriented causation and mechanistic causation. While reason is associated with the soul and taken to bring about its effects with the good and the beautiful as the end, necessity is understood in terms of a set of natural laws pertaining to material things. In this paper I shall suggest that there are reasons to reconsider (...) the latter part of this account and argue for a non-mechanistic understanding of necessity. I will first outline how the notion of necessity is introduced in the dialogue. I will then show how a mechanistic account of necessity fails to capture Plato’s purpose of treating it as a causal factor; and, finally, argue that this purpose is better understood as an attempt, on Plato’s part, to account for the causal origin of disorder and irrationality, an origin articulated in terms of a pre-cosmic situation and the notoriously difficult notion of the third kind. (shrink)