Resenha do artigo "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives", de Philippa Foot.

Our aim in this essay is to present some David Hume’s contributions on reasons for action’s debate. We tried to do this mainly from the discussions presented in the chapters “Of liberty and necessity”, from his An enquiry concerning human understanding, and “Of the general principles of morals” and “Concerning moral sentiment”, both from his An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. Starting from Bernard Williams' provocation in his description of what would be a “sub-Humean” model about reasons for action, (...) we intend to present what the “properly Humean” model of understanding the subject would be. The efforts for this attempt were spent in three different ways, respectively concerning in to reconstruct the Humean argument. The relationships between feelings, sentiments, reason, actions, motivation for action and moral judgments are discussed, in the first section, while tributaries of the debate of the dispositions of the understanding about freedom and necessity that are related to Hume’s attempts to comprehend the human condition in its epistemological aspects. In the second and in the third sections, we seek to expose the possible understanding of the concepts mentioned above within the Humean framework to moral philosophy itself. From this, we can affirm that for Hume the reasons for action, that is, the elements that could be characterized as motivators for actions and behaviors can be said to reside ultimately in the subjectivity of the human condition and be originated from human sensitivity which is in turn constituted by passions, emotions, will, desires and moral sentiments. (shrink)

Our aim in this essay is to make some reflections on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics’ possible contributions about the discussion on reasons for action. We tried to do this mainly exposing the arguments from the chapters “What utilitarianism is” and “Of the ultimate sanction of the principle of Utility” from his “Utilitarianism”. Our efforts for this attempt are spent at three different ways: in the first two, we tried to reconstruct the argument put forward by the Victorian philosopher and, (...) from this basis, the third way in turn consists in postulate some thoughts about these issues that in according to our observations can be asked in order to comprehend the structuring of human agency. In summary we argue that for Stuart Mill rationality of action constitutes itself in that: if happiness is the greatest good, individuals act for their own happiness, and because of that they seek their own good; however, as this is not an agent-relative perspective but insofar a neutral-agent one, this reasoning must be extended to the general scope. Thus, understanding happiness in the sense that it is a design of every single human act, Stuart Mill consequentialism argues regarding the whole general amount of happiness and not only subjective self-realization of a particular human being. Actions, therefore, which in the personal domain do not aim at anything other than the happiness or good of the own individual him/herself, have a rational justification to be guided in order to what promotes the good or general happiness, thus characterizing the principle of hedonic utility as a moral rule and reason for action as humanity's pattern of action. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contrast between scientific knowledge and opinion as it is presented by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics A.33. Aristotle's contrast is formulated in terms of understanding or not understanding some "necessary items". I claim that the contrast can only be understood in terms of explanatory relevance. The "necessary items" are middle terms (or explanatory factors) that are necessary for the fully appropriate explanation. This approach gives a coherent interpretation of each step in the chapter.

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda into Portuguese.

My aim is to examine Aristotle's hylomorphism as a model for scientific explanation of living beings. I argue that the issue of matter-form relation should be connected with the opposition between the necessity of material and efficient causes and the teleology of forms. Form (as "telos") is a principle able to organize the appropriate conjunction of material and efficient causes. Formal and final causes are not a trick for filling the "gap in causation", nor are they bare heuristic tools for (...) inquiring into the "true" causes. The primacy of formal and final causes guarantees an appropriate account of material and efficient causes inasmuch as form and "telos" are responsible for bending and organizing the original dispositions of the material elements. (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.

Tradução para o Português de Ethica Nicomachea VI.

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)

Collective volume with papers by alumni and students from the Campinas Aristotle Group.

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)

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.

Translation of Aristotle's Parts of Animals Book I into Portuguese, with full commentaries.

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.

This chapter argues in favour of three interrelated points. First, I argue that demonstration (as expression of scientific knowledge) is fundamentally defined as knowledge of the appropriate cause for a given explanandum: to have scientific knowledge of the explanandum is to explain it through its fully appropriate cause. Secondly, I stress that Aristotle’s notion of cause has a “triadic” structure, which fundamentally depends on the predicative formulation (or “regimentation”) of the explanandum. Thirdly, I argue that what has motivated Aristotle to (...) choose the syllogism as a demonstrative tool was precisely the fact that syllogisms are apt to express causal relations in their triadic structure. Instead of complaining against Aristotle’s preference for the syllogisms as demonstrative tools, I argue that Aristotle was fully aware of the advantages of regimenting the explanandum into a predication. One of these advantages is to abandon a purely extensional standpoint and to highlight the importance of the notion of relevancy in explanation. (shrink)

What place do experiences of beauty have in a meaningful life? A marginal one, at best, it would seem, if one looks at the current literature in analytic philosophy. Treatments of beauty within so-called “analytic existentialism” tend to suffer from four limitations: beauty is neglected, reduced to artistic production, saddled to theology, or taken as a mere application of a broader theoretical framework. These discussions fail to engage with the rich tradition of philosophical aesthetics. In this essay, I begin by (...) responding to the contention that experiences of beauty cannot lend life meaning because they are passive. Drawing on work in philosophical aesthetics, I then argue that encounters with the beautiful count as genuinely meaning-conferring because they have features commonly taken as marks of meaningfulness. (shrink)

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

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)

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)

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)

Paul Guyer is well known for defending the claim that freedom, understood as the capacity to set ends, is Kant’s fundamental value. In contrast, I have developed a reading of Kant’s ethics that places autonomy and community at the heart of Kant’s ethics. At the heart of my account is a conception of autonomy understood as what I call the capacity for sovereignty. I argue that these two positions can be made compatible. To do this involves making a distinction between (...) the concepts of dignity and value and arguing that although autonomy, understood as the capacity for sovereignty, is the source of the dignity of humanity, this is compatible with the claim that the ultimate value for Kant is freedom understood as the capacity to set ends. To explain how this is possible I appeal to Wilfrid Sellars Kantian account of the moral point of view in Science and Metaphysics. (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)

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

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)

This paper discusses the following question: why was the term “dunatos” (“possible”) employed by Aristotle as an alternative label for imperfect syllogisms in his discussion of assertoric syllogistic? My answer ascribes to Aristotle a bottom up perspective, in which he stresses what is necessary in the premise-pairs to attain target conclusions of a given form within a given figure. I argue that “dunatos” is employed by Aristotle to stress that an imperfect syllogism is always one of the possible options to (...) attain a conclusion of a given form within a given figure. I also argue that this picture sheds some light on Aristotle’s clarifications of the final clause in his definition of syllogism. (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)

This paper explores the perversion of reality in the context of advanced technologies, such as AI, VR, and AR, through the lens of Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality and the precession of simulacra. By examining the transformative effects of these technologies on our perception of reality, with a particular focus on the usage of digital avatars, the paper highlights the blurred distinction between the real and the simulated, where the copy becomes more ‘real’ than the original. Drawing on Baudrillard’s concept (...) of hyperreality, the paper delves into the perversion of reality as individuals seek refuge in virtual pleasure paradises and embrace artificial pleasures through their digital avatars, disconnecting from genuine human experiences. The convergence of AI, VR, and AR technologies amplifies this hyperreal condition, where digital avatars mimic or surpass the depth of human relationships, challenging our understanding of what is real. In line with Baudrillard’s theory, the paper explores the objectification and commodification of reality within digital spaces, specifically examining the digital avatars’ role in the erosion of genuine human connections. It explores the implications of these avatars in terms of consent, exploitation, and loss of authenticity, echoing Baudrillard’s concerns about the distortion of reality in contemporary society. Recognizing the implications of these technologies, the paper calls for a critical reflection on their transformative power. It emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of the hyperreal condition and ethical responsibility in engaging with AI, VR, and AR, particularly in relation to the usage of digital avatars. By resisting the seductive allure of digital escapism and preserving genuine human connections, we can navigate the perversion of reality and cultivate empathy, compassion, and meaningful interactions that transcend the simulated experiences offered by technology. (shrink)

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)

This paper explores the intersection of René Girard's mimetic theory and the algorithmic society, particularly in the context of the potential advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Girard's theory, which elucidates the dynamics of desire, rivalry, scapegoating, and the sacrificial crisis, provides a unique lens through which to examine the complexities of our relationship with AI and its role in the creation of the sacred. As individuals increasingly rely on AI recommendations, the distinction between personal choice and algorithmic manipulation becomes (...) less clear, raising concerns about the authenticity of cultural expressions and the role of algorithms in shaping cultural narratives. The triangular structure of desire, with AI as the model and individuals as the imitators, underscores the power of algorithms in this process. The sacrificial crisis, a key concept in Girard's theory, becomes a critical point of reflection in the algorithmic society. The exposure of the scapegoating mechanism reveals the destructive potential of algorithmic manipulation and calls for new forms of understanding, empathy, and non-violent solutions. This paper argues that recognizing the sacrificial crisis can prompt individuals and society to critically examine the impact of AI's influence, challenge the narratives it perpetuates, and reclaim agency in the face of algorithmic dominance. This paper further discusses the potential implications of the emergence of AGI, which could intensify the influence of algorithms on the creation of the sacred due to its advanced cognitive capabilities and deep understanding of human desires and behaviors. This could fuel a rapid evolution of the mimetic ecosystem, with profound implications for personal freedom, independent decision-making, and the formation and preservation of individual identity. This paper concludes by emphasizing the need for responsible algorithmic practices and ethical considerations to ensure that the creation of the sacred serves the common good in the algorithmic society. (shrink)

I discuss in this paper Aristotle’s definition of nature in Physics 192b 20-23. I intend to prove that this definition has to be taken as a set of three (not only two) conditions: the first condition just establishes that nature is a sort of cause; the second condition concerns the relationship between nature and the natural thing that has it as a cause; the third condition concerns the relationship between nature and the properties that natural things have from nature’s causality.

Proclus, head of the Philosophy School at Athens for fifty years, was one of the leading philosophical figures in Late Antiquity. Lucas Siorvanes here introduces Proclus to English-language readers, discussing his metaphysics and theory of knowledge and focusing in particular on his Neo-Platonism. Proclus lived in the turbulent fifth century A.D., a time of struggles among Christians, Jews, and pagans, the invasion of Attila the Hun, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the rise of the Eastern Roman (...) Empire in Byzantium. While Late Antiquity has been regarded as a time of superstition and forbiddingly complex philosophies, recent scholarship has shown it to be full of cultural and intellectual vigor. During Proclus's tenure as head of the Philosophy School, he systematized Neo-Platonism as the summit of ancient Greek thought, brought it to its peak of influence, and became responsible for the form in which it was transmitted to the Byzantine, Western European, and Islamic civilizations. Siorvanes's extensive original research presents Proclus as much more than just a metaphysician. He surveys all of Proclus's philosophical interests—including religion, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and poetry—revealing the philosopher's central concern with the problems of being and knowledge and relating the ideas of Proclus to those of such other major thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy. To help the newcomer, Siorvanes supplies more than 200 quotations from Proclus's works. He also traces the impact of Proclus's Neo-Platonism across cultures, religions, and centuries, in such diverse areas as Christian and Islamic theologies, Renaissance art, Kepler's astronomy, Romantic poetry, Emerson's thought, modern philosophy and science, and current popular phrases. (shrink)

Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda. It accompanies the translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda into Portuguese in the same volume of the journal.

Davidsonian event semantics is often taken to form an unhappy marriage with compositional semantics. For example, it has been claimed to be problematic for semantic accounts of quantification Proceedings of the 16th Amsterdam Colloquium, 2007), for classical accounts of negation Semantics and contextual expression, 1989), and for intersective accounts of verbal coordination. This paper shows that none of this is the case, once we abandon the idea that the event variable is bound at sentence level, and assume instead that verbs (...) denote existential quantifiers over events. Quantificational arguments can then be given a semantic account, negation can be treated classically, and coordination can be modeled as intersection. The framework presented here is a natural choice for researchers and fieldworkers who wish to sketch a semantic analysis of a language without being forced to make commitments about the hierarchical order of arguments, the argument-adjunct distinction, the default scope of quantifiers, or the nature of negation and coordination. (shrink)

Thomas Reid argues that both perception and memory involve a conception of an object and usually cause a corresponding belief. According to defenders of the constitutive interpretation, such as Rebecca Copenhaver, the belief is constitutive of acts of perception and memory. I instead argue for a causal interpretation: although in normal circumstances perceiving and remembering cause a corresponding belief, the belief is not constitutive of perception or memory. Copenhaver's strongest argument for the constitutive interpretation is that perception essentially represents objects (...) as present, while memory essentially represents objects as past; since such tense markers can only occur within the beliefs, the beliefs must be an essential aspect of perception and memory. I argue, in contrast, that temporal markers are contained in our conceptions of objects, so beliefs do not play an essential role in distinguishing between perception and memory. Such a reading presupposes a “thick” interpretation of what Reid means by a conception, according to which a Reidian conception is a mode of presentation of the object apprehended. (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)

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)

This paper is about the phenomenon of encoding, more specifically about the encoded extension of agency. The question of code most often emerges from contemporary concerns about the way digital encoding is seen to be transforming our lives in fundamental ways, yet seems to operate ‘under the surface’ as it were. In this essay I suggest that the performative outcomes of digital encoding are best understood within a more general horizon of the phenomenon of encoding – that is to say (...) as norm- or rule-governed material enactments accepted (or taken for granted) as the necessary conditions for becoming. Encoded material enactments translate/extend agency, but never exactly. I argue that such encoded extensions are insecure, come at a cost and are performative. To illustrate this I present a brief discussion of some specific historical transitions in the encoding of human agency: from speech to writing, to mechanical writing, and finally to electronic writing. In each of these translations I aim to show that agency is translated/extended in ways that have many unexpected performative outcomes. Specifically, through a discussion of the digital encoding of writing, as reuse, I want to suggest the proposition that all agency is always borrowed (or ‘plagiarized’) – i.e. it is never originally human. As encoded beings we are never authors, we are rather more or less skilful reusers. To extend agency we have to submit to the demands of encoding and kidnap that encoding simultaneously – enabling constraints in Butler’s language. Our originality, if there is any, is in our skill at kidnapping the code and turning it into an extension of our agency, that is to say, our skill at resignification – to be original we need to be skilful ‘parasites’, as suggested by Serres. (shrink)

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)

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.