Books
Aristotle's Four Causes. New York: Peter Lang, 2019.
Aristotle's distinction of four causes can be derived by combining the
distinction between natural things and processes with the distinction
between that out of which something comes to be and what it comes to
be. It follows that the matter of a thing is something that
potentially is this thing and the formal cause of this thing is what it
potentially is. Likewise, the efficient cause of a process may be
taken to be something that potentially is this process, and the final
cause may be taken to be the typical course of the process it comes to
be.
Preview of introduction and
table of contents (pdf)
Conscientia bei
Descartes. Freiburg: Alber Verlag, 2006.
Descartes used
"conscientia", which is commonly translated as "consciousness,"
according to the traditional meaning of the Latin term that we also find
in the writings of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and later scholastics. Thus
for Descartes, conscientia is not a kind of speculative
self-knowledge, inner observation or reflective awareness. Rather, it
is a kind of practical knowledge.
Gibt es eine Rehabilitation
der Cartesischen Psychologie? Master thesis, Leipzig 2000.
According to Descartes, substances are correlates of
distinct ideas, that is, of ideas that may be defined without
reference to other ideas. The key concepts of psychology cannot be
distinct and therefore cannot correspond to substances. Therefore,
psychology cannot be an independent discipline.
Papers and Abstracts
2023
In order to understand Avicenna's introduction of an "Agent Intellect", we need to think of intellectual cognition as a special case of a much more general phenomenon.
I examine several instances of philosophical uses of qualifiers ("insofar as", "qua"), taken from Aristotle, Avicenna, Descartes, Kant, and 20th c. action theory. In the light of these examples, I discuss several accounts of how such qualifiers work.
2022
The Significance of Aristotle’s Four Causes in Design Research (teaser, pdf)
Aristotle's distinction of four causes as it applies to artifacts.
Aitiai as Middle Terms (teaser, pdf)
If aitiai are middle terms of explanatory syllogisms, they must be the same as their effects.
Quiddities and Repeatables (teaser, pdf)
A defence of Avicenna's account of universals.
2021
A short piece on the predicative structure of actions.
Meta Logou in Plato's Theaetetus (abstract, pdf)
The regress at the end of Plato’s Theaetetus may be avoided by defining theoretical knowledge as true belief that results from a successful and proper exercise of a rational capacity (a dunamis meta logou).
2020
Eternal Return, Non-Temporal (pdf)
On Nietzsche's "eternal return".
2019
On Heidegger's "authentic self".
2018
Lichtenberg's Point (abstract, pdf)
Not all versions of Lichtenberg's Point affect all versions of Descartes' cogito argument.
Self-Knowledge, Estrangement, and Social Metabolism (abstract, pdf)
An account of alienation as disruption of extended metabolism.
2017
Über die "Ursachen" von Texten
( abstract, pdf)
On applying Aristotle's four causes in hermeneutics. I ask why Aristotle's causes are four and what they are meant to apply to. Then I discuss Walter of Bruge's treatise on the Four Causes of Theology.
The Man Without Properties (abstract, pdf)
Aristotle's essences are not properties, and that certain passages in Aristotle make sense only if we do not take accidents to be properties either.
2016
2015
Aristoteles' Beschreibung der ethischen Tugenden (abstract, pdf)
On the linguistic form of Aristotle's account of the virtues (generic singular, future tense, modal qualifiers).
2014
Instance is the Converse of Aspect (abstract, pdf)
According to Donald Baxter's Aspect Theory of Instantiation, a particular instantiates a universal when an aspect of the particular is also an aspect of the universal. According to an improved version of this account, this happens when the universal itself is an aspect of the particular.
Plato's Ingredient Principle (abstract, pdf)
We can accept Plato's "ingredient principle" when we replace the distinction between things and properties with a slightly different one.
The Inner Man as Substantial Form (pdf)
When Descartes calls the soul of a human being an immaterial substance, he does not contradict the Aristotelian doctrine according to which the soul of a person is the substantial form of her body. (Originally written in 2006.)
2013
Was in uns geschieht, insofern es uns bewusst ist
(pdf)
According to Descartes, a thought is what happens in us if and insofar as we are conscious of it. This means that what happens in us is a thought only in a certain respect. It is something other than a thought, namely consciousness of a thought, in another respect.
Virtues are not character traits of individual agents, but generic ways of acting; this is why Anscombe found them important, and this is how Aristotle talks about them.
2011
Two Epistemic Directions of Fit (short version, pdf)
I use Austin's distinction of two directions of fit in order to explain how a priori knowledge is possible.
2010
Anscombe über
Flächenbombardement und Abtreibung
Outline for a teaching sample.
2009
The Aristotelian doctrine of four causes naturally arises from the combination of the two distinctions (a) between things and changes, and (b) between that which potentially is a certain thing or change and what it potentially is.
Eine Verteidigung des typologischen
Artbegriffs ( pdf)
The biological species concept rests on the notion of reproduction, which we can only apply if we know what counts as a result of successful reproduction. Therefore, it presupposes the typological species concept and cannot, as Ernst Mayr thinks, replace it.
2008
Tugenden und Absichten
(abstract, pdf)
Intentions are not events that cause an action, but that in terms of which we describe and action when we describe it as intentional. Likewise, virtues are not character traits that reliably cause certain behaviour, but that in terms of which we describe certain generic behaviour.
This is not a translation of "Tugenden und Absichten," but a presentation with similar content. Among other things, I argue that intentions are terms in which intentional actions are properly classified and described; and virtues are for generic actions what intentions are for particular actions.
Substance, Reality, and Distinctness (abstract, pdf)
Descartes claims that God is a substance and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible.
2007
Descartes uses 'conscientia' in the traditional sense, roughly meaning 'moral conscience'.
2006
Der Fortbestand von
Lebewesen (abstract,
pdf)
For something to be a living being is to engage in activities whose success is determined by criteria that emerge exclusively from a proper account of the nature of the living being in question.
Korrigierbarkeit
als Merkmal des Mentalen (pdf)
Descartes defines the mind as something whose activities are subject to an evaluation according to which they are, in principle, corrigible.
In Metaphysics Z3, Aristotle suggests that matter may be that about a composite substance or "this such" to which a bare "this" would refer in isolation. However, since a bare "this" would refer to nothing, Aristotle rejects this conception of matter.
Al-Ghazali on the Incoherence of "Substance" (pdf)
Forms and potentials inhere in a receptacle that exemplifies them, whereas universals and possibilities may inhere in a substratum that does not exemplify them, such as the intellect.
Naturteleologie, reduktiv
(pdf)
Life is not a describable property of things. In order to understand what life is, we must start with our conception of the life that we know, human life, and reduce the notion of this life to a notion of mere life.
Generic Ways of Functioning (pdf)
A close paraphrase of Heidegger's Being and Time §18 on how we make sense of items in the world in terms of their generic ways of functioning.
2005
Something is a document insofar as its official function is to compensate for the impossibility of immediately acquiring information that has a function (= plays a role in a practice).
Erst Denken, dann Heiraten (pdf)
An essay on getting married.
2000-2004
Cartesian Conscientia (abstract, pdf)
Descartes uses 'conscientia' in the traditional sense, roughly meaning 'moral conscience'.
Social Facts Explained and Presupposed (pdf)
Inpidualistic theories of Social Facts are not altogether circular, but they still start on the wrong foot.
Review of Pawlenka, ed., Sportethik
Schuld und
Gewissen bei Abelard
(pdf)
Moral conscience in early medieval ethics.
Holistic arguments for Inpidualism (pdf)
Holism, in one of its varieties, is not the opposite of individualism. Rather, individualism is its consequence.
Luhmann und die Formale Mathematik
(pdf)
The use of George Spencer Brown's Logic of Distinctions by the Sociologist Niklas Luhmann.
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