Volume 93, Issue 2

Central to Aristotle's metaphysics and epistemology is the claim that ‘ aitia ’ – ‘cause’ – is “said in many ways”, i.e., multivocal. Though the importance of the four causes in Aristotle's system cannot be overstated, the nature of his pluralism about aitiai has not been addressed. It is not at all obvious how these modes of causation are related to one another, or why they all deserve a common term. Nor is it clear, in particular, whether the causes are related to one another as species under a single genus, such that there is a univocal definition of ‘ aitia ’ which applies to all of them, or whether Aristotle means to assert that the four causes are homonyms. It is argued here that although there are strong reasons to group the four causes together, there are also powerful considerations on the side of homonymy. It is further argued that the four causes are more closely tied to the ontological theory of categories and predication than is often recognized. As a result, we can reconcile the competing demands of unity and plurality by taking one mode of causation, the formal cause, as basic, and accounting for the other modes with reference to it, in the manner of so-called pros hen homonyms.

In his Pyrrhonian Outlines , Sextus Empiricus employs an argument based upon the possibility of disagreement in order to show that one should not assent to a Dogmatic claim to which at present one cannot oppose a rival claim. The use of this argument seems to be at variance with the Pyrrhonian stance, both because it does not seem to accord with the definition of Skepticism and because the argument appears to entail that the search for truth is doomed to failure. In the present paper, I examine the passages in which Sextus utilizes the argument from possible disagreement and offer an interpretation that makes the use of this argument compatible with the Pyrrhonian outlook.

For Descartes, consciousness is closely connected to the intellective perception of thought. This paper argues that the prevalent interpretations of Descartes's account of consciousness in terms of higher-order perception and self-representation fail. These interpretations mistakenly assume that Cartesian consciousness possesses the same theoretical structure in all cases. It is shown by a close analysis of relevant passages that for Descartes the consciousness of perceptions and the consciousness of volitions have different theoretical structures. From this analysis a more adequate picture of Cartesian consciousness is developed and, finally, compared with a recent reconstruction provided by Vili Lähteenmäki.

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Charles S. Peirce's direct criticisms of the transcendental method in philosophy are effective. I will present two different views on transcendental arguments by introducing two ways of accounting for Kant's transcendental project. We will see that Peirce's criticisms are directed against a picture of transcendental philosophy which is in line with what I will call the justificatory account of Kant. Since this view is totally in contrast to what I will call the alternative account, Peirce's criticisms of the former cannot be considered a refutation of the latter. As far as Peirce's criticisms attack only justificatory accounts of transcendental philosophy, they are not in conflict with transcendental readings of his philosophy along the lines of the alternative account.

According to one of Leibniz's theories of contingency a proposition is contingent if and only if it cannot be proved in a finite number of steps. It has been argued that this faces the Problem of Lucky Proof , namely that we could begin by analysing the concept ‘Peter’ by saying that ‘Peter is a denier of Christ and …’, thereby having proved the proposition ‘Peter denies Christ’ in a finite number of steps. It also faces a more general but related problem that we dub the Problem of Guaranteed Proof . We argue that Leibniz has an answer to these problems since for him one has not proved that ‘Peter denies Christ’ unless one has also proved that ‘Peter’ is a consistent concept, an impossible task since it requires the full decomposition of the infinite concept ‘Peter’. We defend this view from objections found in the literature and maintain that for Leibniz all truths about created individual beings are contingent.