Tag Archives: Aristotle

Why fMRI scans explain not one human behavior

Posted on February 14, 2017 by

A therapist once tried to explain to me why people in states of extreme anger aren’t able to reason: if you monitor the brain of someone in such a state on an fMRI scan, you’ll see the frontal cortex — … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Criticizing Aristotle on “substance”

Posted on May 6, 2016 by

Here’s a simplified criticism of the Aristotelian theory of substance. For Aristotle, a substance has three components: matter, form, and accidents, each playing a different explanatory role. Consider a tree. It’s one thing, but also a member of a particular natural … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spinoza, Platonist?

Posted on April 16, 2016 by

Spinoza notoriously argues that there is only (and could only be) one substance (Ethics 1p14), “God or nature” (1p29s) and everything else, including human persons, is just a “modification” of the attributes of God (2p10). But he has a very high bar for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Aristotle’s Bifocal View of the Passions

Posted on April 15, 2016 by

Early in book 1 of De Anima, Aristotle considers how to characterize the passions, and concludes, “τὰ πάθη λόγοι ἔνυλοί εἰσιν” (403a26). Passions are “reasons embedded in matter.” For example, he suggests that anger can appropriately be depicted a series of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

McDowell, “Mind and World” — Reason and Nature

Posted on August 6, 2015 by

In “Reason and Nature,” the fourth lecture that composes Mind and World, McDowell proposes “to start uncovering the presumably deep mental block that produces this uncomfortable situation,” namely, the anxious oscillation between the Myth of the Given and a Space of … Continue reading →

Posted in Aristotle, Epistemology, Human nature, John McDowell, John O'Callaghan, Language, Mind and World, Reason, Space of Reasons | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ramanuja Against Shankara’s Intellectualism

Posted on July 21, 2015 by

In his commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, Shankara (8th-9th c.) insists, “That the knowledge of Brahman refers to something which is not a thing to be done, and therefore is not concerned either with the pursuit or the avoidance of any … Continue reading →

Posted in Aristotle, Epistemology, Hinduism, Plato, Ramanuja, Shankara, Thomas Aquinas, Virtue | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hume’s Lockean misstep

Posted on July 1, 2015 by

A key step in Hume’s argument against the rationality of induction is the following: “It is agreed on all hands that there is no known connection between the sensible qualities and the secret powers,” “on which the influence of these … Continue reading →

Posted in Aristotle, David Hume, Epistemology, George Berkeley, Hume, Induction, James Ross, John Locke, Matter, Perception, Thought and World | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment