Translation of Aristotle's Physics I-II into Portuguese, with commentaries. Tradução para o português dos livros I e II da Física de Aristóteles, com comentários.

This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but can't. For instance, why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran to the store for five minutes? Why is five pounds of books acceptable, but *five pounds of book not acceptable? What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a (...) swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth? And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous? The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect, plural and mass reference, measurement, and distributivity. In this book, Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains, connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology, and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above. (shrink)

This book discusses Aristotle’s notions of essence and substance as they are developed in Metaphysics ZH. I examine Aristotle's argument at length and defends an unorthodox interpretation according to which his motivation is to provide an answer against a conflation between criteria for existential priority (delivering substances as primary beings) and criteria for explanatory priority (delivering essences as primary principles).

This is an introductory handbook for some of the main themes around the notion of predication in Aristotle. It does not aim at being exhaustive, but only sketches some important lines about the subject; it contains an introductory essay, besides the translation (into Portuguese) and commentary of basic texts (such as Posterior Analytics I-22, Categories 1-5, Interpretation 1-6 etc.).

Translation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics I into Portuguese, with a few notes, experimental glossary and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2003/4, was preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

In Posterior Analytics 71b9 12, we find Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge. The definiens is taken to have only two informative parts: scientific knowledge must be knowledge of the cause and its object must be necessary. However, there is also a contrast between the definiendum and a sophistic way of knowing, which is marked by the expression “kata sumbebekos”. Not much attention has been paid to this contrast. In this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s definition paying due attention to this contrast (...) and to the way it interacts with the two conditions presented in the definiens. I claim that the “necessity” condition ammounts to explanatory appropriateness of the cause. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics IV and VI, with notes. The translation is preliminary and intended as a provisional teaching tool to be also used in seminars and discussions with peers in order to reach a more elaborated version.

Tradução preliminar em pré-print. A Tradução definitiva é a de 2009.

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces a contrast in (...) terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

Algorithms, or rather algorithmic actions, are seen as problematic because they are inscrutable, automatic, and subsumed in the flow of daily practices. Yet, they are also seen to be playing an important role in organizing opportunities, enacting certain categories, and doing what David Lyon calls “social sorting.” Thus, there is a general concern that this increasingly prevalent mode of ordering and organizing should be governed more explicitly. Some have argued for more transparency and openness, others have argued for more democratic (...) or value-centered design of such actors. In this article, we argue that governing practices—of, and through algorithmic actors—are best understood in terms of what Foucault calls governmentality. Governmentality allows us to consider the performative nature of these governing practices. They allow us to show how practice becomes problematized, how calculative practices are enacted as technologies of governance, how such calculative practices produce domains of knowledge and expertise, and finally, how such domains of knowledge become internalized in order to enact self-governing subjects. In other words, it allows us to show the mutually constitutive nature of problems, domains of knowledge, and subjectivities enacted through governing practices. In order to demonstrate this, we present attempts to govern academic writing with a specific focus on the algorithmic action of Turnitin. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics I-III into Portuguese, with a few notes and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2007, is preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

I discuss the exact meaning of the thesis according to which the object of scientific knowledge is necessary. The thesis is expressed by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, in his definition of scientific knowledge. The traditional interpretation understands this definition as depending on two parallel and independent requirements, the causality requirement and the necessity requirement. Against this interpretation, I try to show, through the examination of several passages that refer to the definition of scientific knowledge, that the necessity requirement specifies (...) more exactly the causality requirement: what cannot be otherwise is the explanatory relation between the explanandum and the cause by which it is what it is. (shrink)

I discuss an important feature of the notion of cause in Post. An. 1. 13, 78b13–28, which has been either neglected or misunderstood. Some have treated it as if Aristotle were introducing a false principle about explanation; others have understood the point in terms of coextensiveness of cause and effect. However, none offers a full exegesis of Aristotle's tangled argument or accounts for all of the text's peculiarities. My aim is to disentangle Aristotle's steps to show that he is arguing (...) in favour of a logical requirement for a middle term's being the appropriate cause of its explanandum. Coextensiveness between the middle term and the attribute it explains is advanced as a sine qua non condition of a middle term's being an appropriate or primary cause. This condition is not restricted either to negative causes or to middle terms in second‐figure syllogisms, but ranges over all primary causes qua primary. (shrink)

Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. John Campbell’s relational theory is a prominent representative of the latter (...) approach, and the main focus of this paper. We argue that Campbell’s theory is problematic for a variety of reasons, through which runs a common thread: most of the problems that the theory is faced with arise from the relational view of perception that he endorses, and, more generally, they suggest that perceptual experience is not sufficient for an analysis of joint attention. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda into Portuguese.

Tradução para o Português de Ethica Nicomachea VI.

A strong case has been made for the role and value of mechanistic explanation in neuroscience and molecular biology. A similar demonstration in other domains of scientific investigation, however, remains an important challenge of scope for the new mechanists. This article helps answer that challenge by demonstrating one valuable role mechanisms play in phylogenetics. Using the transition/transversion rate parameter as a case example, this article argues that models embedded with mechanisms produce stronger phylogenetic tree hypotheses, as measured by maximum likelihood (...) logL values. Two important implications for the new mechanistic account of explanation are considered. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the nature and the importance of a third kind of sophistic argument that is not always found in the classification of those arguments in the secondary literature. An argument of the third kind not only is a valid one, but is also constituted of true propositions. What makes it a sophistic argument is the fact that it produces a false semblance of scientific explanation: its explanation seems to be appropriate to the explanandum without being so. (...) Evidence from this kind of argument comes from Sophistic Refutations 11, and Brison’s attempt to square the circle should be counted as one of its instances. (shrink)

I discuss what Aristotle means when he say that scientific demonstration must proceed from necessary principles. I argue that, for Aristotle, scientific demonstration should not be reduced to sound deduction with necessary premises. Scientific demonstration ultimately depends on the fully appropriate explanatory factor for a given explanandum. This explanatory factor is what makes the explanandum what it is. Consequently, this factor is also unique. When Aristotle says that demonstration must proceed from necessary principles, he means that each demonstration requires the (...) principle that is the necessary one for the fully appropriate explanation of its explanandum. This picture also provides a key to understand Aristotle's thesis that scientific explanation depends on essences: it is the essence of the attribute to be explained that should be stated as the fully appropriate explanatory factor. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s notion of priority with the specific aim of capturing the sort of priority that characterizes the primacy of substances in his metaphysics. I reject the traditional interpretation, which understands the ontological priority of substances in terms of independent existence. But there are rather two sorts of priority: the ontological priority of substances should be understood in terms of completeness, whereas the ontological priority of “substances-of-something” (the essences) is a causal-explanatory priority. Furthermore, an important piece of Aristotle’s (...) argument against Platonism is that these two sorts of priority – namely, the completeness priority and the causal-explanatory priority – should be kept distinct. (shrink)

Este livro é um 'ancestral' em pré-print do meu livro de 2006, Introdução à Teoria da Predicação em Aristóteles (ISBN 978-85-268-0716-1), publicado pela Editora da Unicamp (ver https://www.academia.edu/6912408/Introdu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%C3%A0_teoria_da_predica%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Arist %C3%B3teles). O ancestral foi felizmente muito citado, mesmo depois da aparição do livro definitivo em 2006. -/- This is an ancestor (in pré-print) of my 2006 Book, 'Introdução à Teoria da Predicação em Aristóteles' (ISBN 978-85-268-0716-1), published by Editora da Unicamp (see https://www.academia.edu/6912408/Introdu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%C3%A0_teoria_da_predica%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Arist %C3%B3teles). The ancestor was cited by many, even after the definitive book (...) appeared in 2006. (shrink)

I have two aims in this paper. First, I argue that, in Aristotle’s theory of the four causes, there is a basic and common feature by which all causes are causes: they all work in a triadic framework in which they explain why a given attribute holds of a given underlying thing. Secondly, I argue against a version of “compatibilism” according to which each kind of cause is complete in its own domain and does not compete with any other kind. (...) I claim that there are priority relations according to which some kinds of cause are subordinated to others, even if these relations do not hold in every cases. (shrink)

I discuss in this paper the six requirements Aristotle advances at Posterior Analytics A-2, 71b20-33, for the premisses of a scientific demonstration. I argue that the six requirements give no support for an intepretation in terms of “axiomatization”. Quite on the contrary, the six requirements can be consistently understood in a very different picture, according to which the most basic feature of a scientific demonstration is to explain a given proposition by its appropriate cause.

This paper discusses some issues concerning the definition of moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics 1106b 36- 1107a 2. It is reasonable to expect from a definition the complete enumeration of the relevant features of its definiendum, but the definition of moral virtue seems to fail in doing this task. One might be tempted to infer that this definition is intended by Aristotle as a mere preliminary account that should be replaced by a more precise one. The context of the argument (...) Aristotle develops in Book II of his NE give us some help. I argue that the definition of moral virtue, once considered in the light of its context, is far from being an incomplete and provisional account: it rather introduces coherently the same notion of moral virtue that Aristotle employs in other texts (as in Nicomachean Ethics VI 13). My main proposal is that the way in which "hexis" is understood in the context of previous chapters allows Aristotle to encode in it the notion of an ability to do the right things regularly. Thus, moral virtue is a "hexis prohairetike etc.", but the ability to do the right things regularly is already encoded in the occurrence of "hexis" in the definiens account of moral virtue, as if Aristotle meant "hexis [praktike] prohairetike". (shrink)

Public participation in scientific research has gained prominence in many scientific fields, but the theory of participatory research is still limited. In this paper, we suggest that the divergence of values and goals between academic researchers and public participants in research is key to analyzing the different forms this research takes. We examine two existing characterizations of participatory research: one in terms of public participants' role in the research, the other in terms of the virtues of the research. In our (...) view, each of these captures an important feature of participatory research but is, on its own, limited in what features it takes into account. We introduce an expanded conception of norms of collaboration that extends to both academic researchers and public participants. We suggest that satisfying these norms requires consideration of the two groups' possibly divergent values and goals, and that a broad characterization of participatory research that starts from participants' values and goals can motivate both public participants’ role in the research and the virtues of the research. The resulting framework clarifies the similarities and differences among participatory projects and can help guide the responsible design of such projects. (shrink)

I discuss Aristotle's treatment of essence and definition in Metaphysics VII.4. I argue that it is coherent and perfectly in accord with its broader context. His discussion in VII.4 offers, on the one hand, minimal criteria for what counts as definition and essence for whatever kind of object, but also, on the other hand, stronger criteria for a primary sort of definition and essence—and thereby it serves the interest of book VII in pointing to the explanatory power of the essence (...) of composite substances. (shrink)

I discuss the argument Aristotle ascribes to Parmenides at Physics 186a23-32. I discuss (i) the reasons why Aristotle considers it as eristic and inconclusive and (i) the solution (lusis) Aristotle proposes against it.

Trata-se de tradução do Hípias Maior de Platão para o Português, com algumas notas de elucidação e justificação das opções.

John Danaher and Sven Nyholm have argued that automation, especially of the sort powered by artificial intelligence, poses a threat to meaningful work by diminishing the chances for meaning-conferring workplace achievement, what they call “achievement gaps”. In this paper, I argue that Danaher and Nyholm’s achievement gap thesis suffers from an ambiguity. The weak version of the thesis holds that automation may result in the appearance of achievement gaps, whereas the strong version holds that automation may result on balance loss (...) in possibilities for workplace achievements, i.e., in the appearance of an overall gappier work landscape. Against the strong version of the achievement gap thesis, I characterize situations where automation may result in boons to meaning-conferring workplace achievements: the appearance of what I call achievement spread and achievement swaps. Nevertheless, Danaher and Nyholm are right to worry about some uses of automation whereby human workers become subservient to AI. But these situations are better framed, I argue, as autonomy gaps rather than achievement gaps. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle’s teleology in natural science (more specifically, in biology) is not incompatible with his admissions of the “brute necessity” of the movements of matter. Aristotle thinks that the brute necessity emerging from the movements of matter is not sufficient to explain why living beings are what they are and behave the way they behave. Nevertheless, Aristotle takes this brute necessity to be a sine qua non condition in biological explanations. The full explanation of the features of living (...) beings requires the hylomorphic model, in which the brute necessity belonging to the matter is subordinated to the teleological causality of the form. The model for which I argue is pretty much Balme’s “cybernetic”. However, I explore some aspects of Aristotle’s texts that have not received much attention in the recent literature. (shrink)

I discuss some of Aristotle’s scattered remarks from which one can construct his conception of matter. Aristotle seems to oscillate between two conceptions: one in which matter is the principle of becoming, another in which matter is a constituent element with no contribution for processes of becoming. Sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a thing independent in itself, and the correlated form is a feature that does not contribute to the matter’s essence, nor is a necessary condition for its existence. But (...) sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a constituent element the existence of which depends on the whole thing it is the matter of. These different approaches to matter seem to suggest an inconsistent theory of matter. However, I argue that, quite to the contrary, Aristotle has a consistent theory about matter. One of my main points is to distinguish contexts in which Aristotle is indeed talking about matter in general from contexts in which he uses the term “matter” to refer to a given thing that was previously taken as matter and to talk about that thing not qua matter, but qua the thing it is. (shrink)

Information and communication technology is changing many aspects ofhuman endeavour and existence. This is beyond dispute for most. Whatare contested are the social and ethical implications of thesechanges. Possible sources of these disputes are the multiple ways inwhich one can conceptualize and interpret the informationtechnology/society interrelationship. Each of these ways ofconceptualization and interpretation enables one to see theinformation technology/society relationship differently and thereforeconstrue its social and ethical implications in a different manner. Atthe center of this technology/society interrelationship we find manycomplex (...) questions about the nature of the human, the technical,agency, autonomy, freedom and much more. This is indeed a vastintellectual landscape, which can obviously not be explored here inits fullness. This entry is about just one particular perspective onthis landscape. It is primarily concerned with the phenomenologicalapproach to interpreting information technology and its social andethical implications. It should be noted from the start that there isnot a unified phenomenological tradition or approach to informationtechnology in particular, or other phenomena more generally. Thephenomenological tradition consists of many different approaches thatshare certain characteristics but not all. We may however suggest, with Don Ihde,that they all accept that “phenomenology investigates theconditions of what makes things appear as such [as that which we takethem to be].” Differently stated, phenomenology suggests thatthere is a co-constitutive relationship between us and the phenomenawe encounter in our engagement with the world. In this sensephenomenologists would suggest that to understand thetechnology/society relationship we need to reveal how theyco-constitute each other—i.e. draw on each other for theirongoing meaning and sense. We will elaborate more precisely what thismeans in section 2 below. However, in order to understand the distinctiveness of thephenomenological approach other possible ways of interpreting thistechnology/society relationship will also be outlined brieflybelow., It can be said that information technology has become in a very realsense ubiquitous. Most everyday technologies such as elevators,automobiles, microwaves, watches, and so forth depend onmicroprocessors for their ongoing operation. Most organizations andinstitutions have become reliant on their information technologyinfrastructure to a lesser or greater degree. Indeed informationtechnology is seen by many as a cost-efficient way to solve amultitude of problems facing our complex contemporary society. One canalmost say that information technology has become construed as thedefault technology for solving a whole raft of technical and socialproblems such as health provision, security, governance, etc. Onecould also argue that it has become synonymous with society’sview of modernization and progress. For most it seems obvious thatinformation technology has made it possible for humans to continue toconstruct increasingly complex systems of coordination and socialordering—systems without which contemporary society would not beable to exist in its present form. To say the least, we, ascontemporary human beings, have our manner of being made possiblethrough a rather comprehensive entanglement with information andcommunication technology. Indeed, the economic, organizational andsocial benefit of information technology is not widely disputed. Thedispute is more often about the way information technology is changingor transforming the social domain, and in particular, the ethicaldomain. This dispute is largely centered around different ways ofconceptualizing and interpreting the nature of our entanglement withinformation technology. This debate is not merely an academic debateabout different and competing theoretical ‘models.’Rather, these different ways of conceptualizing it is central to ourunderstanding of how we go about managing our increasingly entangledrelationship with information technology. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX and X (Theta & Iota) into Portuguese, with a few notes, experimental glossary and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2004, is preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

Genetic explanation of complex human behavior presents an excellent test case for pluralism. Although philosophers agree that successful scientific investigation of behavior is pluralistic, there remains disagreement regarding integration and elimination—is the plurality of approaches here to stay, or merely a waystation on the road to monism? In this paper we introduce an issue taken very seriously by scientists yet mostly ignored by philosophers—the missing heritability problem—and assess its implications for disagreement among pluralists. We argue that the missing heritability problem, (...) which isn’t going anywhere any time soon, implies that pluralism in behavior genetics is both practically ineliminative and theoretically non-integrative. (shrink)

The paper generalizes Van McGee's well-known result that there are many maximal consistent sets of instances of Tarski's schema to a number of non-classical theories of truth. It is shown that if a non-classical theory rejects some classically valid principle in order to avoid the truth-theoretic paradoxes, then there will be many maximal non-trivial sets of instances of that principle that the non-classical theorist could in principle endorse. On the basis of this it is argued that the idea of classical (...) recapture, which plays such an important role for non-classical logicians, can only be pushed so far. (shrink)

Non‐classical logicians do not typically reject classically valid logical principles across the board. In fact, they sometimes suggest that their preferred logic recovers classical reasoning in most circumstances. This idea has come to be known in the literature as ‘classical recapture’. Recently, classical logicians have raised various doubts about it. The main problem is said to be that no rigorous explanation has been given of how is it exactly that classical logic can be recovered. The goal of the paper is (...) to address this problem. First, I discuss a number of different ways to characterize the idea of classical recapture and I examine how far it can be pushed. Secondly, I argue that a palatable form of classical recapture is given by the thought that classical logic can be retained for statements that are grounded (in Kripke’s sense). To substantiate this view I provide a formal fixed‐point semantics for a language containing a predicate standing for the concept of groundedness and I address a couple of objections that have been deployed against the claim that classical recapture can aid the non‐classical logician’s cause. (shrink)

I discuss the methodological passage in the begin- ning of Ethica Eudemia I.6 (1216b26-35), which has received attention in connection with Aristotle’s notion of dialectic and his methodology in Ethics. My central focus is not to discuss whether Aristotle is prescribing and using what has been called the method of endoxa. I will focus on how this passage coheres with the remaining parts of the same chapter, which also are advancing methodological remarks. My claim is that the meth- od of (...) Ethica Eudemia I.6 is in agreement with many features of Aristotle’s theory of explanation as presented in the Posterior Analytics: Aristotle’s main concern is a warning against misuses of explanatory arguments. (shrink)

This paper explores some aspects of Aristotle’s notion of subject for predications. I examine the argument Aristotle develops in Posterior Analytics I.22, 83a1-14. I argue that the notion advanced by Aristotle in that argument is different from the one found in his Categories, although they are far from being incompatible with each other. I also add some philological considerations to justify the Portuguese translation of “hypokeimenon” as “algo subjacente” (“underlying thing”) instead of “sujeito” (“subject”).

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics V.1-8 with a few notes.

In the literature on self-referential paradoxes one of the hardest and most challenging problems is that of revenge. This problem can take many shapes, but, typically, it besets non-classical accounts of some semantic notion, such as truth, that depend on a set of classically defined meta-theoretic concepts, like validity, consistency, and so on. A particularly troubling form of revenge that has received a lot of attention lately involves the concept of validity. The difficulty lies in that the non-classical logician cannot (...) accept her own definition of validity because it is given in a classical meta-theory. It is often suggested that this mismatch between the consequence relation of the account being espoused and the consequence relation of the meta-theory is a serious embarrassment. The main goal of the paper is to explore whether certain substructural accounts of the paradoxes can avoid this sort of embarrassment. Typically, these accounts are expressively incomplete, since they cannot assert in the object language that certain invalid arguments are in fact invalid. To overcome this difficulty I develop a novel type of hybrid proof-procedure, one that takes invalidities to be just as fundamental as validities. I prove that this proof-procedure enjoys a number of interesting properties and I analyze the prospects of applying it to languages capable of expressing self-referential statements. (shrink)

Bietti, Tilston and Bangerter take an evolutionary approach towards memory transmission and storytelling, arguing that storytelling plays a central role in the creation and transmission of cultural information. They suggest that storytelling is a vehicle to transmit survival‐related information that helps to avoid the costs involved in the first‐hand acquisition of that information and contributes to the maintenance of social bonds and group‐level cooperation. Furthermore, Bietti et al. argue that, going beyond storytelling’s individualist role of manipulating the audience to enhance (...) fitness of the narrator, that these adaptive functions of storytelling may well be assigned to other forms of language use besides narration (e.g., instructional discourse and argumentation). Based on this evidence, Bietti and colleagues claim that the specific adaptive function of storytelling lies in making sense of non‐routine, uncertain, or novel situations, thereby enabling collective sensemaking. (shrink)

During the second half of the nineteenth century, electronegativity has been one of the most relevant chemical concepts to explain the relationships between chemical substances and their possible reactions. Specifically, EN is a property of the substances that allows them to attract external electrons in bonding situations. The problem arises because EN cannot be measured directly. Indeed, the only way to measure it is through different properties that do can be directly measured, for instance enthalpy, ionization energies or electron affinities. (...) What is particularly troubling about this case in quantum chemistry is that the different models used to describe and quantify EN are incompatible but, in a certain sense, equivalent because the same EN scale results in all of them. By analyzing Linus Pauling’s and Robert Mulliken’s models of EN, it will be argued that, if we remain cling to a traditional representative conception of models, we cannot understand the meaning of the information provided by those models. Indeed, if we do not want to adopt an instrumentalist point of view concerning chemical knowledge, we should reconsider by virtue of what a model represents the system, or, in other words, which the factors that determine the representative power of a model are. I will propose a new perspective that incorporates the role of experimental techniques in the very notion of representation; this perspective allows us to understand how supposedly incompatible models of the same target system can be both simultaneously representative. (shrink)

In Prior Analytics I.30, Aristotle seems too much optmistic about finding out the principles of sciences. For he seems to say that, if our empirical collection of facts in a given domain is exhaustive or sufficient, it will be easy for us to find out the explanatory principles in the domain. However, there is a distance between collecting facts and finding out the explanatory principles in a given domain. In this paper, I discuss how the key expression in the sentence (...) at 46a25 should be interpreted: “the true characteristics of things” (“τῶν ἀληθῶς ὑπαρχόντων τοῖς πράγμασιν”). I argue that, on a more accurate interpretation of the expression, Aristotle’s point would cease to look like a piece of naïve or even silly optimism. (shrink)