Aristotle on Practical Rationality: Deliberation, Preference-Ranking, and the Imperfect Decision-Making of Women
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Aristotle on Practical Rationality: Deliberation, Preference-Ranking, and the Imperfect Decision-Making of Women by Van Tu A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy) in The University of Michigan 2020 Doctoral Committee: Professor Victor Caston, Chair Professor Sara Ahbel-Rappe Professor James Joyce Professor Tad Schmaltz Van Tu [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3405-8257 © Van Tu 2020 Dedication To the memories of my great-grandparents, my first teachers. ii Acknowledgements In my birthplace half a planet away, most people, if they are like the ones I remember from childhood, would have a nebulous idea of philosophy and likely no recognition of the name “Plato” or “Aristotle”. The life events that have led me to philosophy and, now, to the completion of a dissertation on ancient Greek philosophy under the guidance of my tremendous advisor, Victor Caston, were nothing short of the work of good fortune. I probably do not deserve such good fortune. At any rate, I am unable to give a coherent explanation for my good luck or a narrative of how I arrived at this unlikely but profoundly rewarding path. What I propose to do, instead, is to offer my gratitude to all the individuals who have aided in making this journey possible, in making this dissertation better—and those without whom this dissertation would probably be better, but life would be so much worse. To my family near and far, my mother, Russell, Françoise; To my teachers and mentors, Victor Caston, Tad Schmaltz, James Joyce, Sara Ahbel- Rappe, Mitzi Lee, Jozef Müller, Sarah Buss, Peter Railton, and Ruth Scodel; To every interlocutor who has provided verbal or written comments at the numerous venues where portions of this dissertation were presented and discussed; To the University of Michigan for its generous support in the form of multiple dissertation fellowships and travel grants; To my allies in the philosophy department and the ancient philosophy community at the University of Michigan, especially Filipa Melo Lopes for supplying the impetus for the last chapter; To my friends, Angela, Stephen, Thank you. iii Table of Contents Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... vi Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 1. What is This Thing Called Reason? ........................................................................................ 3 2. An Aristotelian Subdivision of Reason ................................................................................... 6 3. Abstracts of the Chapters ...................................................................................................... 13 Chapter One: Aristotle on the Structure of Deliberation ....................................................... 21 1. On prohairesis and Competing Models of Deliberation ....................................................... 24 2. The aporia of Nicomachean Ethics III.3 .............................................................................. 27 3. Learning from Aristotle’s Examples ..................................................................................... 32 4. Two Ways of Being Practically Committed to a Goal ......................................................... 35 5. Deliberation: Complex and Simple ....................................................................................... 40 5.1 Causal Discovery ............................................................................................................ 40 5.2 Comparative Evaluation .................................................................................................. 42 5.3 The ‘Why’ Question ....................................................................................................... 47 6. Termination of Deliberation ................................................................................................. 50 6.1 Desisting as an Alternative ............................................................................................. 53 6.2. The Singlemindedness of Virtuous Agents .................................................................... 56 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 58 Chapter Two: Aristotle’s (for the Most Part) Theory of Preference: Topics III.1-5 ............ 60 1. Purpose and Subject Matter of Topics III ............................................................................ 63 2. Two Kinds of Consequences ................................................................................................ 67 3. As Old as the Port Royal Logic, but Not as Old as Aristotle ................................................ 70 4. Connecting Desirability with Probability ............................................................................. 72 iv 5. ProbabilityM and ProbabilityA ............................................................................................... 76 5.1 The Aristotelian Notion of Probability (to eikos) ........................................................... 79 5.2 The Aristotelian Notion of a Sign (to sēmeion) .............................................................. 85 6. Aristotle’s Apparent Failure ................................................................................................. 89 6.1. The Aristotelian topoi and Their Constituents ............................................................... 90 6.2 Topoi: A User’s Manual .................................................................................................. 93 7. Aristotle: The Father of the Logic of Preference? ................................................................ 98 7.1 Preference is Inherently Comparative ............................................................................. 98 7.2 Preference is Susceptible to Deliberative connections ................................................... 99 7.3 A Rationale for Preferential Choice .............................................................................. 102 8. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 104 Appendix: Catalog of the Preference Principles with Greek Text and Translation ........... 105 Chapter Three: Navigating the Landscape of Value: The Role of Reason in Aristotle’s Ethics .......................................................................................................................................... 122 1. Aristotelian-Humean Parallels? .......................................................................................... 124 1.1. The “Humean Passages” .............................................................................................. 126 2. Deliberation is of Ends: Flogging a Dead Horse? .............................................................. 128 2.1 How to Reason about Ends: Gathering, Purifying, and Proving endoxa ...................... 134 3. Virtue Makes the Goal Right ............................................................................................. 141 3.1 Two Modes of Correctness ........................................................................................... 143 3.2. The Helmsman of the Soul: on the Power of Practical Reason ................................... 149 4. “By the Rudders of Pleasure and Pain”: Virtue Makes the Goal Right, Again .................. 159 5. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 165 Chapter Four: Aristotle on Women’s Deliberation as Akuron: A Puzzle about Coming-to- Be ................................................................................................................................................ 167 1. Political Sense of ‘Akuron’ ................................................................................................. 171 1.2 The Argument for the Rule-Differentiating Thesis in Politics I.13 .............................. 175 2. The Psychological Reading ................................................................................................. 179 2.1. Biological-Psychological Reading ............................................................................... 183 3. The Social-Psychological Reading ..................................................................................... 195 4. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 206 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................ 208 References .................................................................................................................................. 216 v List of Abbreviations