Plotinus’ Ontology of Artifacts
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| Publicado en: | ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (2025) |
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| Acceso en línea: | Citation/Abstract Full Text - PDF |
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| Resumen: | Artificial objects were a source of puzzlement for many philosophers in antiquity. On one hand, they seem to exhibit many features similar to that of living beings, such as having distinct parts that all work toward a shared purpose. On the other hand, they are also quite different from living beings. Artifacts are the product of intentional human design and craftmanship, so they get their nature and various structural features from something external to themselves. Artifacts, lacking a soul, have no internal principle of motion and must be set into motion by another agent. These considerations have generally led philosophers to consider artifacts to be something similar to substances—the paradigm case of substantiality in nature being that of living beings—but nevertheless falling short of the necessary features required for something to be a substance.This dissertation examines the status of ontological artifacts in the work of the philosopher Plotinus. I argue that Plotinus, unlike many philosophers in antiquity and the middle ages, holds the view that artifacts are substances. Plotinus is committed to the view that incorporeal causes are the source of all the features of bodies, such as their unity, organization, and motion. Unlike some philosophers who consider the soul to be dependent in some way upon the body, Plotinus stresses the soul’s independence and transcendence. In doing so, Plotinus diminishes many key differences between artificial and natural objects, as neither will truly possess an immanent principle of unity or motion, strictly speaking. Rather, all kinds of bodies depend on something incorporeal for their existence and various properties. Nevertheless, Plotinus is still able to maintain a distinction between artificial and natural objects, as well as maintaining a sufficiently exclusive inclusive definition of substance such that problematic edge-cases will be excluded.Chapter 1 examines the sources of Plotinus’ views on artifacts, focusing primarily on the works of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Chapters 2 and 3 examine his theory of craft (technê) to explain how artifacts are generated via craft activity and what distinguishes artifacts from beings generated by nature. Chapter 4 is focused on Plotinus’ theory of substance (ousia) as it is described in both his early and later writings. Here I challenge a common interpretation of Plotinus’ ontology of the sensible world that understands bodies as being reducible to the set of qualities that constitute them, instead arguing for an interpretation that maintains a substance–accident distinction. Chapters 5 and 6 contain my arguments for my thesis that Plotinus considers artifacts to be substances. Chapter 5 focuses on his metaphysical commitments, arguing that the artifact’s unity and irreducibility of the whole to its parts is sufficient to consider artifacts to be substances. Chapter 6 deals with the topic of change, arguing that Plotinus distinguishes between cases of accidental and substantial change. In his writings on the topic, Plotinus clearly indicates that the generation of an artifact is an instance of a new substance being created, rather than the rearrangement of the preexisting material into a different configuration. Finally, chapter 7 looks at the relationship between artifacts and social groups in the context of Plotinus’ social ontology. |
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| ISBN: | 9798315708018 |
| Fuente: | ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global |