Volume 99, Issue 1

Abstract: I argue that according to Socrates in the Phaedo we should not merely evaluate bodily pleasures and desires as worthless or bad, but actively avoid them. We need to avoid them because they change our values and make us believe falsehoods. This change in values and acceptance of falsehoods undermines the soul’s proper activity, making virtue and happiness impossible for us. I situate this account of why we should avoid bodily pleasures within Plato’s project in the Phaedo of providing Pythagorean and Orphic ideas with clearer meanings and better justifications.

Abstract: This paper challenges the widespread assumption that the strong-willed person, the enkratēs, cannot have Aristotle’s virtue of practical wisdom (phronēsis). It argues that the attribution of phronēsis to the enkratēs is needed to make sense of (1) Aristotle’s praise of both the rational and the irrational part of the enkratēs’ soul, (2) Aristotle’s conception of the weak-willed person (the akratēs) as ignorant and as lacking the particular premise, (3) Aristotle’s conception of phronēsis in Nicomachean Ethics NE VI.5–9. Furthermore, it shows that the claim that the enkratēs is phronimos is consistent with Aristotle’s doctrine of the unity of the virtues, as expressed in NE VI.12–13.

Abstract: Pierre Bayle shows that, in order to avoid devastating objections, materialism should postulate that the property of thinking does not emerge from certain material combinations but is by nature present everywhere in matter – a hypothesis recently revived and labelled “panpsychism.” There are reasons for entertaining the idea that Bayle actually considers this enhanced materialism to be sound, as it might use the same line of defence that Bayle outlined for Stratonism. However, this would lead to a view similar to Locke’s superaddition theory, and I contend that such cannot be Bayle’s position because he embraces the Cartesian principle that each substance has only one principal attribute. As a consequence, for Bayle any system that conjoins thought with matter in the same simple substance is untenable. By contrast, this makes clear which kinds of metaphysics and epistemology modern panpsychists need to adopt in order to defend their view.

Abstract: Given the sharp distinction that follows from Hume’s Fork, the proper epistemic status of propositions of mixed mathematics seems to be a mystery. On the one hand, mathematical propositions concern the relation of ideas. They are intuitive and demonstratively certain. On the other hand, propositions of mixed mathematics, such as in Hume’s own example, the law of conservation of momentum, are also matter of fact propositions. They concern causal relations between species of objects, and, in this sense, they are not intuitive or demonstratively certain, but probable or provable. In this article, I argue that the epistemic status of propositions of mixed mathematics is that of matters of fact. I wish to show that their epistemic status is not a mystery. The reason for this is that the propositions of mixed mathematics are dependent on the Uniformity Principle, unlike the propositions of pure mathematics.