Dynamis and Energeia in Aristotle's Metaphysics

By Peter Godfrey - Smith Theories and Models in Metaphysics METAPHYSICS

METAPHYSICS Peter Godfrey-Smith is professor of philosophy at Harvard University. He works primarily in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He also has a more general interest in the philosophy of science, and makes excursions into metaphysics and epistemology. He has published two books so far: Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (1996) and Theory and Reality (2003)...

Some Remarks on Dewey’s Metaphysics and Theory of Education1

In a famous and much misunderstood passage in Democracy and Education, Dewey (1916/1980) proclaims: ”If we are willing to conceive education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow-men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education (338; emphasis in original). My article examines some of what he means by this s...

Metaphysics of science between metaphysics and science

The paper argues that metaphysics depends upon science when it comes to claims about the constitution of the real world. That thesis is illustrated by considering the examples of global supervenience, the tenseless vs. the tensed theory of time and existence, events vs. substances, and relations vs. intrinsic properties. An argument is sketched out for a metaphysics of a fourdimensional block u...

The Problem of Universals in Analytic and Avicenna's Metaphysics

Metaphysics and medical ethics.

I take issue with Frank Leavitt's sketch of a pragmatic criterion for the relevance of metaphysics to medical ethics. I argue that appeal to the potential for confusion generated by metaphysical subtlety establishes a need for better communication rather than shows philosophical insight beside the point. I demonstrate that the proposed Criterion of Relevance has absurd consequences, and I claim...