Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

AVOIDING INFINITE REGRESS: POSTERIOR ANALYTICS I 22* * This paper is a substantially modified version of Chapter 3 of my PhD dissertation (see Zuppolini 2017). I am deeply thankful to my supervisor, Lucas Angioni, and the examiners, Raphael Zillig, Michail Peramatzis, David Bronstein and Manuel Berrón, for their objections and remarks. I presented a draft of this article at the Workshop on Aristotelian Substances and their Substantiality, at UFRGS. I am grateful to the organisers, Raphael Zillig and Wolfgang Sattler, and the other participants, Mary Louise Gill, Marco Zingano, Wellington de Almeida, Jorge Mittelmann, Fabian Mié, and Paulo Ferreira. I also benefited from comments by David Bronstein and Lucas Angioni on the final draft of this article.

Abstract

This article offers a reconstruction of an argument against infinite regress formulated by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics I 22. I argue against the traditional interpretation of the chapter, according to which singular terms and summa genera, in virtue of having restrict logical roles, provide limits for predicative chains, preventing them from proceeding ad infinitum. As I intend to show, this traditional reading is at odds with some important aspects of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration. More importantly, it fails to explain how his proof is connected to a defence of the existence of ultimate explanations, a connection that must be the case if I 19-22 is advancing a foundationalist way-out to a sceptical challenge raised in I 3.

Keywords:
Aristotle; Predication; Infinite Regress; Essence

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