Volume 96, Issue 2

Abstract: Aristotle’s views on the choiceworthiness of friends might seem both internally inconsistent and objectionably instrumentalizing. On the one hand, Aristotle maintains that perfect friends or virtue friends are choiceworthy and lovable for their own sake, and not merely for the sake of further ends. On the other hand, in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9, Aristotle appears somehow to account for the choiceworthiness of such friends by reference to their utility as sources of a virtuous agent’s robust self-awareness. I examine Aristotle’s views on the utility and choiceworthiness of friends, and offer a novel reading of Nicomachean Ethics IX.9. On this reading, Aristotle accepts a version of instrumental conditionalism about final value , that is, the thesis that goods (including friends) can be choiceworthy for their own sake (i.e., possess final or end value) at least partly on account of their instrumental properties. In articulating what sort of instrumental conditionalism it is reasonable to attribute to Aristotle, I argue that Aristotle appeals to the utility of perfect friends as part of a broadly material causal account of why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. On this reading, perfect friends are not choiceworthy for the sake of their utility in eliciting self-awareness; rather, their choiceworthiness for their own sake is (at least partly) realized in, or constituted by, their conduciveness to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness. This reading, I argue, frees Aristotle from the charge of inconsistency: Aristotle can appeal to the conduciveness of perfect friends to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness as a way of explaining why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake.

Abstract: Beginning with an outline of memory and recollection in Plato and Aristotle, this paper argues that establishing the role of memory and recollection in their mutual relation in Plotinus requires a careful reconstruction. Whereas memory for Plotinus is not a storage of images or imprints that come either from the sensible or the intelligible but rather is a power capable of producing memories, recollection takes the form of a discursive rational rethinking and reproduction of the soul’s experience of the noetic objects. Recollection, then, is a triple motion of the descent, stay, and return of the soul to the intelligible.

Abstract: The scholastics used probabilis as predicate for the legitimate adoption of opinions. In the Middle Ages, an opinion was mainly called probable if it was, according to Aristotle’s topical definition, held by “the wise and the many”. On this basis, two logically incompatible opinions could be considered probable at the same time, yet without entailing the rational assertability of both sides in a dispute. This changed in 17 th century scholasticism. After a short flourishing of watered down, but no longer Aristotelian characterizations of scholastic probability, the predicate probabilis was widely defined as explicitly entailing rational assertability. The simultaneous rational assertability of incompatible opinions by epistemic peers (and hence the possibility of reasonable disagreement) was justified by some scholastics with a distinction between commensurable and incommensurable evidence. Moreover, weak and strong forms of rational assertability were distinguished and, at least by one influential author, explained with a lottery paradox. In summary, detailed accounts of the possibility of reasonable disagreement emerged in Baroque scholasticism.

Abstract: According to Spinoza, there is no categorical distinction between human and non-human animals: they all belong to the same nature and all consist of bodies with corresponding ideas. This thesis gives rise to two problems. How is it possible to distinguish different types of animals, in particular nonrational and rational ones, if all of them have the same metaphysical structure? And why does Spinoza nevertheless claim that human beings have a privileged status that gives them the right to use non-rational animals? This paper examines these two problems, arguing that the solution to both of them lies in Spinoza’s all-embracing naturalism.

Abstract: According to Leibniz’s theory for contingent truths about created individuals, this kind of truth cannot be proved in a finite number of steps, because the analyses of the concepts corresponding to these individuals required for the proofs proceed to infinity. Some commentators pointed out that such truths can luckily be in a finite number of steps. But if they can, Leibniz cannot identify them as contingent ones because, for Leibniz, those truths that can be proved in a finite number of steps are necessary ones. This is the Problem of Lucky Proof. Recently, in this journal, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra and Paul Lodge argued for their new solution to that problem. First, I argue that their solution does not succeed in saving Leibniz from the problem. Secondly, I observe that Leibniz defined a proof a priori of a contingent truth as one from the reason(s) of such a truth, and suggest a shift of the focus of our discussions to this way of proving contingents truths. Thirdly, I propose my solution to the Problem of Lucky Proof relying on that observation.