In his study on those aspects which people usually connect with the notion of self, Galen Strawson lists two items that serve as a starting point for this chapter. Often, a common, non-theoretical understanding and usage of ‘self’ includes a non-explicit assumption that the self is a definite being in two senses. Firstly, that it is single, and not, for example, a group. It is a single thing in the same way that a block of marble is a single thing. And secondly, that it is a thing with a typical causal profile of things: something that can undergo and do things. Since Hume's claim that we can never experience any self separate from experiences, any suppositions about a self as a single entity-like thing have come into question: nevertheless, the above features appear to be persistent features of thinking about our own nature. We have an experience of ourselves as at least to some extent unified beings with persistence in time, and with a role to play in the causal processes of the universe. A question remains, however, as to what extent the kind of terminology we use to talk about ordinary things and their singleness, such as ‘entity’, ‘limit’, ‘definiteness’, etc., can be applied to selves. Since Plotinus distinguishes a notion of self from that of soul, and since, as we have seen, he operates with a flexible idea of selfhood that incorporates several aspects, it remains to be seen where he stands in relation to the self's nature, i.e., whether he assumes that the self is a single thing with limits and causal profile very much like that of material things, or whether it is something altogether different, and if the latter, how it differs from other entities in the universe.

I did most of the research for this book and wrote the first draft during my tenure of a British Academy Research Professorship in the Humanities in 2000–2003. It was a great privilege to be awarded this position, and I am deeply indebted to the Academy for its generous support of my work, which would otherwise have been done even more slowly or not at all. I am grateful also to the University of Birmingham for freeing me from my regular duties for an extended period. In that connection I should like to offer special thanks, coupled with sympathy, to Matthew Fox, for uncomplainingly taking over my role as Head of Department at a particularly difficult time, and to Elena Theodorakopoulos, Niall Livingstone and Diana Spencer for shouldering a sack-full of other tasks that would normally have come my way. Many others have been splendid sources of help, encouragement and advice. I cannot mention them all, but here is a Mighty Handful whose members have played essential parts, whether they know it or not: Geoffrey Lloyd, Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Ken Dowden, Carl Huffman, Alan Bowen, André Barbera, Franca Perusino, Eleonora Rocconi, Donatella Restani, Annie Bélis, Angelo Meriani, David Creese, Egert Pöhlmann, Panos Vlagopoulos, Charis Xanthoudakis. My sincere thanks to all these excellent friends.

We have already called on Plato's help from time to time, and that is as it should be, even if we set aside his gigantic stature in the Western philosophical tradition. Once due allowance has been made for the fact that the conversations in his dialogues are fictional (though most of the characters are not), and for his own attitudes, prejudices and philosophical aims, the dialogues are an unparalleled source of information about the cultural milieu inhabited by elite Athenians and intellectually eminent visitors to the city in the late fifth and early fourth centuries, about the beliefs they held and the issues they discussed, and about the ways in which their ideas were expressed and debated. It is only to be expected, too, that music should figure prominently as a topic in these conversations, in view of the central place it held in every Greek's cultural experience. In fact, however, Plato shows rather little interest in it in his earlier work. There are various passing allusions, and a small handful of passages which from other perspectives have real theoretical interest; but in the context of a study of harmonic science, none of them has much to offer.

MUSICAL ETHICS IN THE REPUBLIC AND THE LAWS

With the Republic the scene changes. Musical imagery becomes abundant, and sometimes does serious philosophical work; and there are two major set-pieces on musical topics.

In his personal life, for all we know, Aristoxenus may have been a charming companion, generous and open-hearted with his friends, modest among his intellectual peers, unfailingly gentle with animals and kind to children and old ladies; but this is not the persona he constructs for himself in the Elementa harmonica. He mentions earlier exponents of the science repeatedly, but always to criticise them and often to dismiss them with contempt. Their main function in his writings is to point up, by contrast, his own immeasurable superiority. His references to discussions he has had with his students or other contemporaries are invariably patronising or bad-tempered or both, and display nothing but their errors and confusions, from which, so his remarks suggest, only he is immune. He is the solitary master of the field of harmonic science, surrounded by ignorant incompetents whose existence he will acknowledge only to expose their follies. One may hope, without much confidence, that he was not really as arrogant as he seems. But a serious point emerges from his unattractive self-presentation. Very few of his withering outbursts are concerned with points of musicological detail.

Overview of Core-Related Homonymy

Homonymy in Aristotle's Topics plays a distinct role in detecting non-synonymy and clarifying terms that are used in making up propositions for use in dialectical arguments. As we have seen, the results that homonymy achieves in Top. Alpha 15 by asking “how many ways” (to posachōs) something is said are often negative, yet we may begin to understand how the definitions of related things stand to one another, as in the case of the healthy (cf. Top. 106b35–37, 107b7–12). While it is evident that the Topics is not primarily concerned with explaining how dialectical method is applicable to the philosophical sciences (cf. 101a27–28), Aristotle's suggestion is by its use in revealing the natures of things. But, in any case, the explanation of the connection between dialectical method and the philosophical sciences has to be made by looking to other texts. Following our study of the method of homonymy as operating through “how many ways” something is said in Top. Alpha 15, I propose to discuss the operation of homonymy in works devoted to central, philosophical investigations, such as that of being in Meta. Gamma and Zeta. This discussion calls for an examination of the other aspects of the method of homonymy, what I have called the positive and synthetic aspects. Following the exposition of systematic, core-related homonymy, we shall turn to examine its use in regard to some common notions such as being, friendship, and nature in subsequent chapters.

Aristotle's conception and implementation of the method of homonymy is complex in the sense that it has distinguishable aspects, or phases, that are put to different uses across his works. In Top. Alpha 15, Aristotle employs what I have considered a negative phase of homonymy, that based on the method of asking “how many ways” something is used (to posachōs) that is introduced in Top. Alpha 13 (105a23–24). Using this analytical tool in Top. Alpha 15, Aristotle proceeds to show us how to discern a lack of synonymy among the common terms, or predicates, that are typically used in dialectical argumentation. There is a second use, as well, one resulting in a positive, synthetic end that emerges from the philosophical discussions in Meta. Gamma 2 and Zeta 1 where Aristotle outlines the possibility of a science that investigates being qua being, a subject area that lacks the requisite kath' hen unity. Taken together, we may conceive of these two as different, but complementary, phases of a single procedure. As such, we may trace the line of development of the method of homonymy from that which marks off synonymous from non-synonymous instances (cf. Cat. 1) to a complex, multi-stepped procedure making its appearance in Meta. Gamma 2, where it signals a means for determining whether the apparently heterogeneous kind, being, may, after all, comprise a subject matter for scientific investigation.

In addition, I have presented a parallel discussion concerning the ancestry of Aristotle's theory of homonymy.

Introduction: Demonstration and Science

In the first book of Posterior Analytics (An. Po.), Aristotle develops the notion of a kind of deductive argument he terms ἀποδείξις (apodeixis), or “demonstration,” in conjunction with a theory about science and scientific knowledge. Aristotle defines apodeixis as “a deduction productive of scientific knowledge” (An. Po. 71b17–18), immediately explaining that such a deduction enables us to know something by grasping it (71b18–19). Later on in the book, he clarifies the nature of apodeixis in relation to its characteristic of giving “an explanation and the reason why” of a thing (85b23–24). This kind of deduction has the possibility of providing genuine scientific knowledge, or ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē), in part, because its premises ultimately refer to τὰ πράγματα (ta pragmata), or “things,” in the sense of extra-linguistic entities. For Aristotle, this is because when we possess scientific understanding, we grasp that which relates a pragma with its cause (cf. 71b10–12). We might add that scientific understanding (epistēmē) is knowledge that consists in knowing the causal explanation of a thing, and knowing it holds necessarily. On this version of scientific realism, what we grasp in scientific knowledge is that which holds true about extra-linguistic things, their natures, causes, and properties, where truth does not merely pertain to propositions or words and their meanings. In addition to defining the cognitive state, Aristotle maintains that the discipline of science (any special science) depends on three kinds of parts: the essential attributes of the genus being studied, the common axioms of demonstration, and the non-essential attributes of the genus (cf. 76b11–16).

Overview

Aristotle makes use of the concepts of homonymy and synonymy in various contexts, such as detecting ambiguity in dialectical arguments, formulating preliminary scientific definitions, and describing relations among existing things. But he comes to the point of giving definitions of the concepts only once, and this occurs in the first chapter of the Categories. It seems reasonable, then, to begin the examination of homonymy with the account Aristotle gives in Cat. 1. The chapter, running only fifteen lines in the Greek text, proposes a tripartite distinction among homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. Overall, the aim is to differentiate the ways in which a common term or a set of related terms can be said to signify something. Put briefly, homonymy refers to things having the same name and different definition; synonymy, to things having both the same name and the same definition; and paronymy, to terms related by their inflected ending. The bare bones of the three-way account may be set down easily. Yet certain interpretive issues concerning the precise lines of the account, as well as the overall scope and nature of Cat. itself, remain subjects of debate.

One long-standing problem arising from the Greek commentators concerns whether Categories is primarily a logical or metaphysical work. The question about the nature of the work as a whole bears on the interpretation of Cat. 1 in the sense that taking one position rather than another would incline us to a more (or less) expansive understanding of homonymy or synonymy.

This work examines homonymy, a topic that lies within Aristotle's theories of language and predication. In Aristotle's work, the idea of homonymy is paired with that of synonymy, and in fundamental ways, rests upon it. To English speakers, homonymy is known as a grammatical category referring to the case in which the same word has different meanings, and synonymy, the case in which different words have the same meaning. In contrast, Aristotle finds homonymy and synonymy to be concerned not merely with words, but also, and primarily, with things. As he explains in Cat. 1, synonymy refers to the situation in which two or more things have the same name, or term, and the same defining character (cf. Cat. 1a6–7). For example, we use “animal” synonymously of a human being and an ox in the sense that the term picks out the same characteristic feature in each thing; human and ox share what it is to be animal (cf. Cat. 1a7–8). In contrast, homonymy refers to the case in which two or more things have the same name, but not the same defining character (cf. Cat. 1a1–2). Re-iterating Aristotle's example, we use “animal” homonymously of a human being and a drawing of one in the sense that they are not animal in the same way, and so, the term “animal” picks out different properties in each (cf. Cat. 1a1–4).

Introduction

The previous chapter makes the case for the predicate being counting as demonstrably core-dependent. But as we have noted in previous chapters, Aristotle mentions a number of other homōnyma that he takes to possess features that are similar to being in respect of counting as examples of core-dependent homonymy. Apart from Aristotle's stock examples of the medical and the healthy, a more complete list of these related homōnyma would have to include things such as nature, friendship, cause, one, and good. As some of these instances of related homonymy have received attention elsewhere, the present chapter aims to focus on just two of those less commented, namely, nature and friendship. The first section of the present chapter is devoted to the examination of the case of physis as exhibiting core-related homonymy. In the case of physis, a strong case may be made that we find not only the relationship of overlapping meanings and definitions, but also a network of causal relations among its various instances. With regard to philia, the situation is somewhat different, as the textual evidence supports core-dependence in respect of related accounts concerning the objects of friendship, but the analysis concerned with finding causal connections among the three kinds is problematic, for reasons that will become clear subsequently. Briefly, what may be suggested at this point in relation to philia is that the instances or kinds of friendship do not exhibit a consistent core-dependent structure, and, so, core-dependence holds partially but not fully.

Introduction

The previous chapter shows that core-related homonymy presupposes a theoretical framework that is well established by the time of its appearance in Meta. Gamma 2. Two main examples of systematic homonymy, namely, the medical and the healthy, serve as bases in Gamma 2 for Aristotle's most philosophically challenging claim, that being itself is homonymous. The present chapter aims to elucidate this claim and, more broadly, to investigate the kind of analysis that homonymy implies. As I have developed the argument in chapter 3, systematic homonymy can function as a method of inquiry enabling us to move beyond the rudimentary stage of detecting multivocity to the stage of clarifying the causal relations holding among homonymous things. Considered as a formal procedure, the method consists in three sequential steps: first, we establish a lack of synonymy of the common predicate, then we demonstrate the association among its uses, and finally, we exhibit the interrelations between the primary, or core, instance and the secondary instances. At the last stage, the homonymous predicate must display the kinds of causal relationships between the primary and secondary instances that have been discussed in chapter 3.

It should be pointed out that whereas the method of core-dependent homonymy may be analyzed in abstraction as consisting in a three-step procedure, the exemplary cases of core-dependent attributes that Aristotle observes, such as the medical or the healthy, do not reflect this ordered sequence.

The Aims of Dialectic

The sustained use of homonymy in the first book of Topics reflects its function as a tool of dialectical practice. In Top. Alpha 15 specifically, Aristotle devotes one chapter to retailing various kinds of arguments for detecting ambiguity among terms for dialectical reasoning. In this chapter, homonymy has a primarily negative discriminative function, inasmuch as it is used to establish a lack of synonymy, or univocity, in the senses of terms (or among things). For example, in Top. Alpha 15, Aristotle uses homonymy to show how the term λευκός (leukos), “light” or “bright,” is ambiguous insofar as it refers to a quality of sound as well as of color (cf. Top. 106b6–8). As will become apparent more fully in subsequent chapters, Aristotle's method of homonymy in Top. Alpha 15 differs from the more complex form of homonymy in, say, the Physics or Metaphysics. In Top. Alpha 15, Aristotle employs homonymy as a binary sorting of synonymous from non-synonymous terms (or things), while in Meta., Phys., and EE he focuses on the similarities among things having common attributes or shared natures. Yet it would be misleading to conclude that the search for common attributes or natures is unknown to Top. Alpha 15. For, even here we find Aristotle interested in observing cases of homonyms with related definitions.