This volume consists of a brief introduction and nine outstanding essays divided into three parts, namely, "Aristotle and Plotinus," "Aristotle and Late Greek Thought," and "Aristotle in Byzantium and Islam." The volume concludes with notes about the contributors and an index.

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds (...) to these essays. (shrink)

Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is one of the most prominent theories employed in deep parsing of natural language. Many linguistic theories are arguably best formalized in extensions of modal or dynamic logic (Keller, Feature logics, infinitary descriptions and grammar, 1993; Kracht, Linguistics Philos 18:401–458, 1995; Moss and Tiede, In: Blackburn, van Benthem, and Wolther (eds.) Handbook of modal logic, 2006), and HPSG seems to be no exception. Adequate extensions of dynamic logic have not been studied in detail, however; the (...) most important aspect is the reference to sets of substructures. In this paper, an adequate extension is identified, and some important results are established: Satisfiability is highly undecidable, and model checking is shown to be in EXPTIME and PSPACE-hard. A fragment with polynomial time model checking procedures is identified; it is shown to cover considerable fragments of HPSG. (shrink)

The Past Masters Søren Kierkegaard : Samlede Vårker database is based on the third edition of Kierkegaard's complete works in Danish, and has been edited by Professor Alistair McKinnon of McGill University.

This 1999 book demonstrates a method for reading the texts of Aristotle by revealing a continuous line of argument running from the Physics to De Caelo. The author analyses a group of arguments that are almost always treated in isolation from one another, and reveals their elegance and coherence. She concludes by asking why these arguments remain interesting even though we now believe they are absolutely wrong and have been replaced by better ones. The book establishes the case that we (...) must rethink our approach to Aristotle's physical science and Aristotelian texts, and as such will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking amongst philosophers, classicists, and historians of science. (shrink)

Williams’s attack on the ‘morality system’ in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy was preceded by his famous but misunderstood essay ‘Moral Luck’. This essay pursues two principal aims. First and foremost, I take a fresh look at Williams’s argument in ‘Moral Luck’, to assess its defensibility. Second, I investigate how Williams’s treatment of moral luck shapes and informs the wider assault on the ‘morality system’ which reached its fullest expression in the later work. We can learn something about both (...) of Williams’s projects—his defence of moral luck, and his attack on the morality system—by seeing how each of these projects contributes to the other. Drawing on Williams’s discussion of Gauguin’s desertion of his family for a life of artistic endeavour in Tahiti, six interpretations of Williams’s argument are suggested. While some of these are better than others, none is completely satisfying or convincing. It is suggested, in conclusion, that the attack on anti-luckism does not make an indispensable contribution to Williams’s attack on the morality system. (shrink)

Research involving recently deceased humans that are physiologically maintained following declaration of death by neurologic criteria—or ‘research involving the recently deceased’—can fill a translational research gap while reducing harm to animals and living human subjects. It also creates new challenges for honouring the donor’s legacy, respecting the rights of donor loved ones, resource allocation and public health. As this research model gains traction, new empirical ethics questions must be answered to preserve public trust in all forms of tissue donation and (...) in the practice of medicine while respecting the legacy of the deceased and the rights of donor loved ones. This article suggests several topics for immediate investigation to understand the attitudes and experiences of researchers, clinical collaborators, donor loved ones and the public to ensure research involving the recently deceased advances ethically. (shrink)

IN Physics VIII, 10, Aristotle seems to commit a serious mistake: just before concluding that the first mover required by all motion everywhere remains invariable and without parts or magnitude, Aristotle apparently locates this mover on the circumference of the cosmos.

In Bester’s article (2018) challenging the use of the harm principle and advocating sole reliance on the use of a best interest standard (BIS) in pediatric decision-making, we believe that the auth...

An unaltered reprint of the K. Paul, French and Co. edition of 1882, translated, introduced and annotated by W. Ogle.

ARISTOTLE IS UNIVERSALLY credited with inventing the concept of teleology: "nature is among the causes which act for the sake of something." "That for the sake of which" is a thing's purpose, its end, the goal at which it aims. Taking Aristotle's physics as a focal point for his philosophy of nature, I shall argue that teleology functions within his theory of nature not only substantively, but also procedurally. First, then, I shall explain what I mean by teleology as procedure (...) and then show how this procedure relates both to problems within physics and to Aristotle's conception of physics as a science. (shrink)

IN Physics VIII, Aristotle asks if motion is eternal or if it began only to end someday. He concludes in the first chapter that motion must be eternal; the remainder of Physics VIII resolves three objections to this conclusion. Consequently, the arguments of Physics VIII, 2-10 indirectly substantiate the eternity of motion in things. However, these arguments have often been associated with rather different questions, for example how does this mover produce motion--is it a moving cause or a final cause?--and (...) is this mover God or some other mover? (shrink)

In the fifth century A.D., Proclus served as head of the Academy in Athens that had been founded 900 years earlier by Plato. Proclus was the last great systematizer of Greek philosophy, and his work exerted a powerful influence in late antiquity, in the Arab world, and in the Renaissance. His treatise_ On the Eternity of the World _formed the basis for virtually all later arguments for the eternity of the world and for the existence of God; consequently, it lies (...) at the heart of neoplatonic philosophy and the controversy between pagans and Christians at the end of antiquity. Proclus’s eighteen Arguments were quoted within John Philoponus’ polemic against him, written in the sixth century; but the opening pages of the sole extant manuscript, which contained the first Argument, have been lost. In this book, Helen Lang and A.D. Macro present the seventeen Arguments preserved by Philoponus and translate them as an independent work. The first Argument, which survives in Arabic, is also included and makes this the only complete edition of _On the Eternity of the World_ since antiquity. This bilingual edition comprises the seventeen Arguments in Greek and English, along with an introduction, synopses, and detailed notes which help readers with or without Greek to understand them philosophically and historically. Two appendices complete the volume: the Arabic text of the first Argument, also with English translation and notes, and the first modern edition of an important Latin translation from the Renaissance. In a valuable introduction, Lang and Macro examine the complex history of these Arguments. Together with its excellent annotations, and English and Greek texts en face, the publication of Proclus’s _On the Eternity of the World_makes available an influential work by a major figure in the history of late Greek philosophy. (shrink)

This article considers the definition of nature as given by Aristotle in "Physics" II and the commentaries on it by Philoponus and Thomas Aquinas. Through Aristotle's definition and its treatment in two commentaries, we can see how each philosopher defines philosophy as an enterprise and the problems encompassed by it. I conclude that the conception of philosophy, and consequently its problems, is quite distinct in each case and should be considered as such; as a further consequence, the whole notion of (...) "commentaries" should be rethought. (shrink)

This paper presents the idea, structure, history, goals, and accomplishments of mathematics and science laboratories as they have been organized and taught at Trinity College. The laboratories are designed to develop specific science and mathematics problem-solving skills, presenting them within the context of humanities-related inquiry (e.g. neural network theory within the context of philosophy of mind). These laboratories are especially valuable in providing humanities students with literacy in advanced science and mathematics materials that, since they are not requisite for humanities (...) majors, humanities students would not be exposed to otherwise. Especially in the case of philosophy, laboratories bear the additional benefit of dissolving insularity, opening up study onto directly relevant fields and enriching and informing philosophical inquiry. The author concludes by considering philosophy’s relationship to science and mathematics, what these relationships imply for how a philosophy education should be structured, and the important role that science and mathematics laboratories play in that education. (shrink)