Workshop in Ancient Philosophy (Thursday - Week 1, TT25)

Abstract: Aristotle recommends in De Partibus Animalium I that we explain living things in terms of activities. I examine two consequences of this view here, one methodological and one metaphysical. The methodological consequence is that this leads Aristotle to prioritize definitions of kinds such as fish and bird-and ultimately, even higher taxa such as animal and plant-over definitions of individual species. The metaphysical consequence concerns the way in which explanations in terms of activities qualify as causal explanations. I suggest that Aristotle embraced activity-based definitions in part because they capture a feature of living things' natures that alternative views do not and therefore qualify as more causally complete. I end with a brief discussion of why this sort of view might be attractive from a contemporary perspective.