The 2018 meeting of the Southern Association for Ancient Philosophy took place at Newnham College, Cambridge on 10th and 11th September.

Confirmed speakers and topics:

Fiona Leigh: Plato and self-knowledge

Nicholas Denyer: The Logical Structure of Epicurean Theology

Tamer Nawar: Stoic Puzzles about Identity

Simon Shogry: Diseases of the Soul: Vicious Dispositions and Assent in Stoic Moral Psychology

Barbara Sattler: Space and Place in Plato and Presocratic thought

Graduate student papers:

George Medvedev: Aristotle’s argument against treating Being and One as genera (Met. B 3, 998b22-28)

Saloni de Souza: Running Before You Can Walk: Gymnastics in Plato's Parmenides

The programme begins at 2.30 on Monday 10 September and concludes at around 4pm on Tuesday 11 September.

Programme

SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION FOR ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 2018

NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

All meetings take place in the Jane Harrison Room

Monday 10 September

2:30 – 4:00 Nicholas Denyer: The Logical Structure of Epicurean Theology (Chair: Ursula Coope)

Break

4:30 – 6:00 Simon Shogry: Diseases of the Soul: Vicious Dispositions and Assent in Stoic Moral Psychology (Chair: Christopher Gill)

6:00 – 7:30 Barbara Sattler: Space and Place in Plato and Presocratic thought (Chair: Gábor Betegh)

Dinner directly at 8

Tuesday 11 September

9:30 – 10:15 George Medvedev: Aristotle’s argument against treating Being and One as genera (Met. B 3, 998b22-28)

10:15 – 11:00 Saloni de Souza: Parmenides, 146b2-5: Unbreakable Laws Broken? (Chair: Myrto Hatzimichali)

Break

11:30 – 1:00 Tamer Nawar: Stoic Puzzles about Identity (Chair: George Boys-Stones)

Lunch

2:00 – 3:30 Fiona Leigh: Knowing me, knowing you: Platonic self-knowledge and dialogue (Chair: James Warren)

3:30 Business meeting; close

WiFi access: Please use the Newnham College ‘Guests’ network. No password is needed. Eduroam access should also be available.

Abstracts:

Monday 10 September

Nicholas Denyer: The Logical Structure of Epicurean Theology

Are Epicurean gods really gods? Aren’t they only equivocally gods if they have so much less to do with us than gods as ordinarily understood? And how can Epicureans reject ordinary gods? Why doesn’t their method of multiple explanation require them to accept that maybe earthquakes are caused by someone who actually is as Poseidon is supposed to be? And why believe in the reality of gods who impinge on us only in our imaginings? How would such a god differ from something that was merely imaginary?

Simon Shogry: Diseases of the Soul: Vicious Dispositions and Assent in Stoic Moral Psychology

Unlike its Aristotelian counterpart, Stoic moral psychology explains all forms of moral error as rational failures, mistaken judgments as to the truth about what is to be done in the circumstances. Whereas the perfected human agent or Sage is entirely free of such failings, vicious agents vary considerably in the false practical views to which they give assent. Some mistakenly hold that fame is a good appropriate to possess at all costs, while others affirm this of money, wine, or another object the Stoics regard as merely preferred. Do the Stoics have an explanation for these patterns of variation in the mistaken assents of vicious agents? As recent work has shown, the rudiments of an account can be found in Stoic discussions of psychological disease (νόσημα). Among vicious agents, only those which suffer from the disease of avarice (φιλαργυρία), for instance, consistently assent to the proposition that money is a good thing worthy of elation. This paper aims to deepen our understanding of the Stoic account of psychological disease, by offering a more detailed reconstruction of the mechanisms through which these conditions influence the vicious agent’s acts of assent. To this end, I call attention to two hitherto neglected dimensions of psychological disease: its role in generating false impulsive impressions (φαντασίαι ὁρμητικαί) in the vicious agent, and in blocking her access to conflicting evidence stored in memory. One advantage of this interpretation is that it provides an explanation of why those suffering from psychological disease make a rational mistake.

Barbara Sattler: Space and Place in Plato and Presocratic thought

This paper will focus on the way in which the early Greeks up to Plato thought of location and the question of its ontological status. Starting with Hesiod and a brief account of the beginning of the Theogony that can be read as assuming that we need location for things to exist, I will then move to Zeno’s topos paradox and the way Zeno applies this assumption to place itself. Finally, I will look at those passages in Plato’s Parmenides in which he transforms Zeno’s paradox and uses it in order to show that something being in something requires a minimum of external and internal plurality.

Tuesday 11 September

George Medvedev: Aristotle’s argument against treating Being and One as genera (Met. B 3, 998b22-28)

This paper proposes a new reading of Met. B 3, 998b22-28, Aristotle’s argument to the conclusion that “there cannot be a single genus of beings, neither One nor Being”. I argue that the standard reading of the argument that goes back to Alexander involves a forced interpretation of one of the premisses (namely, the premiss “it is impossible for the genus to be predicated without its species”). Moreover, the standard reading is unable to account for another premiss, suggesting that Aristotle includes it for the sake of completeness (namely, the premiss “it is impossible for the species of a genus to be predicated of their proper differentiae”). As opposed to the standard reading, my reading of the logic of the argument is able to account for all the premisses as they stand in the text. On my reading, the two problematic premisses are based on the two principles of predication that were shared by Aristotle and the Academy: ‘the epi pleon-requirement’ for the predications of differentiae, and transitivity for the predications of genera. Both of these principles are considered fundamental in the Topics. My reading leads me to conclude that a similar argument found at Met. K 1, 1059b31-34 is a different argument, less sophisticated and less philosophically satisfying.

Saloni de Souza: Parmenides, 146b2-5: Unbreakable Laws Broken?

There are two laws of identity and non-identity that seem undeniable. Firstly, there is nothing that could be neither identical nor non-identical to something. Call this Exhaustivity. Secondly, ‘non-identical’ must entail ‘not identical’ and vice versa and ‘not non-identical’ must entail ‘identical’ and vice versa. Call this Exclusivity. Yet, at 146b2-5, Parmenides seems to break these laws. In this paper, I argue that this is not as worrying as it initially appears; we can explain it by noticing that Parmenides only suggests that Exhaustivity and Exclusivity may be false, not that they are and by looking to the first part of the dialogue. I begin by showing that by the time we arrive at 146b2-5, we are well aware of the Exhaustivity and Exclusivity laws. Thus, 146b2-5 itself is alarming, since Parmenides now uses a premise that seems to be incompatible with them. In addition, I argue that Plato invites us to pay particular attention to 146b2-5. This is puzzling; we are left asking why Plato would confront us so directly with something so outrageous.

I then explore a potential escape route in Harte’s interpretation of 146b2-5, on which Parmenides is not denying Exhaustivity and Exclusivity at all. However, I conclude that it is not compatible with the careful construction of the premise at 146b2-5. I provide an alternative interpretation that does respect the construction of the premise but also forces us to accept that although we are not confronted with an outright denial of Exhaustivity and Exclusivity, Plato does suggest that they may be wrong. I then turn to the first part of the dialogue and argue that reflection on this allows us to explain 146b2-5. Plato suggests that Exhaustivity and Exclusivity may be false because there are some things that are genuinely difficult to reconcile with them: a Form with respect to one of its instantiations and an instantiation with respect to its corresponding Form.

Tamer Nawar: Stoic Puzzles about Identity

In this paper, I examine how the Stoics addressed certain philosophical puzzles about identity and argue that several of the metaphysical and semantic views usually attributed to the Stoics require revision.

Fiona Leigh: Knowing me, knowing you: Platonic self-knowledge and dialogue

In this paper I will argue that in some of Plato’s early dialogues, we find evidence for a concern with knowledge of particular kinds of one’s own psychological states, namely, epistemic states, arrived at by way of the elenchus. In addition to isolating an interest in self-knowledge of epistemic states, I will also maintain that reason can be found in the Alcibiades to take Plato to have interpreted the Delphic injunction to ‘know yourself’ as constituted by epistemic self-knowledge: Platonic self-knowledge is epistemic self-knowledge. On the interpretation offered, Platonic self-knowledge is the discovery of what one really thinks, and is distinctively self-knowledge in virtue not only of clarifying the content of one’s own epistemic states but also by doing so oneself, by way of the active exercise of one’s own capacity for reason. I will also consider, and reject, some potential challenges to the proposal, one from the work of Myles Burnyeat, the other from that of Raphael Woolf. Following an observation from Woolf, however, I will suggest that, for Plato, none of us can authoritatively claim to possess this kind of self-knowledge as a result of our own solo reflection, at least not where the epistemic states subject to self-knowledge claims concern matters of moral and aesthetic significance. Instead, dialogue with others is presented as the primary method of attaining Platonic self-knowledge, by which the deliverances of solo self-examination ultimately must be tested. In closing I will suggest that it follows that Plato can be attributed with a conception of first personal plural authority as regards self-knowledge.

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