This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology.

This volume is a collection of papers that advance our understanding of the metaphysics of powers - properties such as fragility and electric charge. The metaphysics of powers is a fast developing research field with fundamental questions at the forefront of current research, such as Can there be a world of only powers? What is the manifestation of a power? Are powers and their manifestations related by necessity? What are the prospects for dispositional accounts of causation? The papers focus on questions concerning the metaphysics of powers that cut across any particular subject-specific ontological domain -- whether philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology - investigating the metaphysical structure of powers, the nature of the manifestation of powers, the necessity or contingency of a power's relation to its manifestations, and powers and causation. A number of authors also engage in discussion with Humean and neo-Humean treatments of causation, thereby making contributions to a larger metaphysical debate beyond powers. Additionally, the authors engage critically with the latest contributions to the debate on powers in the literature, thereby bringing together in a wholesome and analytical way the most recent and noteworthy theoretical developments in this research field.

Authored by an interdisciplinary team of experts, including historians, classicists, philosophers and theologians, this original collection of essays offers the first authoritative analysis of the multifaceted reception of Greek ethics in late antiquity and Byzantium (ca. 3rd-14th c.), opening up a hitherto under-explored topic in the history of Greek philosophy. The essays discuss the sophisticated ways in which moral themes and controversies from antiquity were reinvigorated and transformed by later authors to align with their philosophical and religious outlook in each period. Topics examined range from ethics and politics in Neoplatonism and ethos in the context of rhetorical theory and performance to textual exegesis on Aristotelian ethics. The volume will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy, classics, patristic theology, and those working on the history of education and the development of Greek ethics.

The mind-body relation was at the forefront of philosophy and theology in late antiquity, a time of great intellectual innovation. This volume, the first integrated history of this important topic, explores ideas about mind and body during this period, considering both pagan and Christian thought about issues such as resurrection, incarnation and asceticism. A series of chapters presents cutting-edge research from multiple perspectives, including history, philosophy, classics and theology. Several chapters survey wider themes which provide context for detailed studies of the work of individual philosophers including Numenius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Damascius and Augustine. Wide-ranging and accessible, with translations given for all texts in the original language, this book will be essential for students and scholars of late antique thought, the history of religion and theology, and the philosophy of mind.

Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from something pre-existing? How was it caused to come into existence? Is it material or immaterial? The second part looks at questions concerning human agency and responsibility, including the problem of evil and the nature of will, considering thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Augustine. Highlighting some of the most important and interesting aspects of these philosophical debates, the volume will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of philosophy, classics, theology and ancient history.

Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from something pre-existing? How was it caused to come into existence? Is it material or immaterial? The second part looks at questions concerning human agency and responsibility, including the problem of evil and the nature of will, considering thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Augustine. Highlighting some of the most important and interesting aspects of these philosophical debates, the volume will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of philosophy, classics, theology and ancient history.

We inhabit a world not only full of natural dispositions independent of human design, but also artificial dispositions created by our technological prowess. How do these dispositions, found in automation, computation, and artificial intelligence applications, differ metaphysically from their natural counterparts? This collection investigates artificial dispositions: what they are, the roles they play in artificial systems, and how they impact our understanding of the nature of reality, the structure of minds, and the ethics of emerging technologies. It is divided into four parts covering the following interconnected themes: (i) Metaphysics and Artificial Dispositions, (ii) Artificial Systems and Artificial Dispositions, (iii) Agency, Mind, and Artificial Dispositions, and (iv) Artificial Moral Dispositions. This is a groundbreaking and thought-provoking resource for any student or scholar of philosophy of science, contemporary metaphysics, applied ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of technology.

First published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The mind-body relation was at the forefront of philosophy and theology in late antiquity, a time of great intellectual innovation. This volume, the first integrated history of this important topic, explores ideas about mind and body during this period, considering both pagan and Christian thought about issues such as resurrection, incarnation and asceticism. A series of chapters presents cutting-edge research from multiple perspectives, including history, philosophy, classics and theology. Several chapters survey wider themes which provide context for detailed studies of the work of individual philosophers including Numenius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Damascius and Augustine. Wide-ranging and accessible, with translations given for all texts in the original language, this book will be essential for students and scholars of late antique thought, the history of religion and theology, and the philosophy of mind.

This book brings together twelve original contributions by leading scholars on the much-debated issues of what is free will and how can we exercise it in a world governed by laws of nature. Which conception of laws of nature best fits with how we conceive of free will? And which constraints does our conception of the laws of nature place on how we think of free will? The metaphysics of causation and the metaphysics of dispositions are also explored in this edited volume, in relation to whether they may or may not be game-changers in how we think about both free will and the laws of nature. The volume presents the views of a range of international experts on these issues, and aims at providing the reader with novel approaches to a core problem in philosophy. The target audience is composed by academics and scholars who are interested in an original and contemporary approach to these long-debated issues. Chapters [2] and [4] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book brings together twelve original contributions by leading scholars on the much-debated issues of what is free will and how can we exercise it in a world governed by laws of nature. Which conception of laws of nature best fits with how we conceive of free will? And which constraints does our conception of the laws of nature place on how we think of free will? The metaphysics of causation and the metaphysics of dispositions are also explored in this edited volume, in relation to whether they may or may not be game-changers in how we think about both free will and the laws of nature. The volume presents the views of a range of international experts on these issues, and aims at providing the reader with novel approaches to a core problem in philosophy. The target audience is composed by academics and scholars who are interested in an original and contemporary approach to these long-debated issues. Chapters [2] and [4] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Are space and time fundamental features of our world or might they emerge from something else? The Foundation of Reality brings together metaphysicians and philosophers of physics working on space, time, and fundamentality to address this timely question. Recent developments in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the understanding of certain approaches to quantum gravity have led philosophers of physics to propose that space and time might be emergent rather than fundamental. But such discussions are often conducted without engagement with those working on fundamentality and related issues in contemporary metaphysics. This book aims to correct this oversight. The diverse contributions to this volume address topics including the nature of fundamentality, the relation of space and time to quantum entanglement, and space and time in theories of quantum gravity. Only through consideration of a range of different approaches to the topic can we hope to get clear on the status of space and time in our contemporary understanding of physical reality.

This book investigates the thought of two of the most influential philosophers of antiquity, Plato and his predecessor Anaxagoras, with respect to their metaphysical accounts of objects and their properties. The book introduces a fresh perspective on these two thinkers' ideas, displaying the debt of Plato's theory on Anaxagoras's, and principally arguing that their core metaphysical concept is overlap; overlap between properties and things in the world. Initially Plato endorses Anaxagoras's model of constitutional overlap, and subsequently develops qualitative overlap. Overlap is the crux to our understanding of objects participating in Forms in Plato's metaphysics; of Plato's account of relata without relations; of the role of Forms as causes; of the metaphysics of necessity; and of the role of the Great Kinds and of the paradeigma in the development of Plato's thought. Anna Marmodoro argues that Plato is ground-breaking in the history of metaphysics, in different ways from those acknowledged so far, and with respect to more metaphysical questions than had been hitherto appreciated; e.g. Plato's treatment of structure as property; of complexity; and his introduction of the first ever account of metaphysical emergence. In addition to these results, Marmodoro makes Anaxagoras's and Plato's systems philosophically accessible to us, today's philosophers, by applying conceptual tools from analytic metaphysics to the study of ancient metaphysics. In this way, the book brings Anaxagoras's and Plato's ideas to bear on todays' philosophical discussions and opens up new venues of research for current philosophical discussions.

How can we explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? Are our five senses sufficient for the perception of objects? Aristotle investigated these questions by means of the metaphysical modeling of the unity of the perceptual faculty and the unity of experiential content. His account remains fruitful-but also challenging-even for contemporary philosophy. This book offers a reconstruction of the six metaphysical models Aristotle offered to address these and related questions, focusing on their metaphysical underpinning in his theory of causal powers. By doing so, the book brings out what is especially valuable and even surprising about the topic: the core principles of Aristotle's metaphysics of perception are fundamentally different from those of his metaphysics of substance. Yet, for precisely this reason, his models of perceptual content are unexplored territory. This book breaks new ground in offering an understanding of Aristotle's metaphysics of the content of perceptual experience and of the composition of the perceptual faculty.

The growth of both philosophy of mind and cognitive science has developed our understanding of the human mind in ways that just a few decades ago were unthinkable. As ideas from philosophy of mind begin to cross over into philosophy of religion, there is renewed interest in questions about the divine mind, about how it might relate to a human body, and about whether incarnation itself might be articulated with the conceptual tools offered by the current research developments in the philosophy of mind. This book offers original essays by leading philosophers of religion representing these new approaches to theological problems such as incarnation. The doctrine of incarnation - that Jesus Christ was God become human - has always been one of the most central and distinctive features of Christianity. Similar doctrines about divine humans can be found in other religions, from the claims to divinity made by ancient kings and emperors to the concept of avatars in Hinduism. But many people regard the notion that a human being could also be divine as unjustifiable or incoherent, and none of the many attempts to articulate it philosophically has earned general acceptance. The authors explore, from a variety of different viewpoints, whether any metaphysically rigorous and coherent model of incarnation can be defended today. Their aim is to give readers a clearer sense not only of the problems and possible new solutions associated with incarnation itself, but of how the notion of incarnation may be fitted in to wider current debates in philosophy.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (Vth century BCE) is best known in the history of philosophy for his stance that there is a share of everything in everything. He puts forward this theory of extreme mixture as a solution to the problem of change that he and his contemporaries inherited from Parmenides - that what is cannot come from what is not (and vice versa). Yet, for ancient and modern scholars alike, the metaphysical significance of Anaxagoras's position has proven challenging to understand. In Everything in Everything, Anna Marmodoro offers a fresh interpretation of Anaxagoras's theory of mixture, arguing for its soundness and also relevance to contemporary debates in metaphysics. For Anaxagoras the fundamental elements of reality are the opposites (hot, cold, wet, dry, etc.), which Marmodoro argues are instances of physical causal powers. The unchanging opposites compose mereologically, forming (phenomenologically) emergent wholes. Everything in the universe (except nous) derives from the opposites. Marmodoro shows that this is made possible in Anaxagoras system by the omni-presence and hence com-presence of the opposites in the universe, which is in turn facilitated by the fact that for Anaxagoras the opposites exist as unlimitedly divided. She argues that Anaxagoras is the first ante litteram 'gunk lover' in the history of metaphysics. He also has a unique conception of (non-material) gunk and a unique power ontology, which Marmodoro refers to as 'power gunk'. Marmodoro investigates the nature of power gunk and the explanatory utility of the concept for Anaxagoras, for his theory of extreme mixture; and finally contrasts it with the only other metaphysical system in antiquity positing (material) gunk, that of the Stoics.