Aristotle on the Rationality of Recollection: Reasoning, Inquiry, and Telic Sensitivity,
Published in Phronesis (2026) - pre-proof version available here (with a different title)
In On Memory and Recollection, Aristotle makes the curious remark that recollection is “a sort of reasoning” (sullogismos tis) (453a10). The remark is especially puzzling in light of the automatic and associative character of what he takes to be typical recollective processes, since these features can create the impression that recollection is due merely to a triggering mechanism. In this paper, I propose a reading that resolves this apparent tension. On the proposed reading, the remark points to a basic form of rationality that I call 'telic sensitivity', one that familiar pictures of reasoning, such as the syllogistic model or the weighing of reasons, simply presuppose rather than articulate.
Name Redacted
Under review - draft available upon request
In Nicomachean Ethics 6.5, Aristotle remarks that forgetting does not belong to practical wisdom without explaining why. One notable interpretation suggests that since practical wisdom essentially involves affective and motivational components, its loss is properly described not as forgetting but as corruption. I argue that this interpretation fails to address the apparent forgettability of its cognitive components. I therefore propose an alternative reading on which the non-forgetting claim highlights a neglected but fundamental feature of practical wisdom: its self-care.
Becoming Virtuous and Becoming Wise
In progress - draft available upon request
Aristotle’s remark that excellence of character and intellectual excellence result from habituation and from teaching respectively and the unity of virtues thesis cause an apparent tension: the unity thesis seems to require that correct habituation lead not only to excellence of character but also to practical wisdom; but the latter, qua a species of intellectual excellence, is supposed to come about through teaching, not habituation. One natural strategy to address the tension is to interpret Aristotelian habituation as necessarily going hand in hand with teaching. In this paper, I develop such an interpretation.
Reasoning to Values
In progress
We are valuing creatures: we respond to persons and things around us with love, respect, admiration, awe, and the like. While such attitudes have a rational dimension insofar as an agent can often cite her reasons for them, it is less clear whether one can come to value something through reasoning. Indeed, it is a familiar fact that we typically do not—and perhaps cannot—come to value something merely by rehearsing an argument for it. Despite this phenomenology of value-learning, I argue that there is a robust sense in which we reason to values. What inclines us to think otherwise, I diagnose, is not the affective dimension of valuing, as one might initially suppose, but the kind of understanding it requires.
Self-Creation?: an Aristotelian Perspective
In progress
In the contemporary “transformative experience” literature, Agnes Callard defends an account on which value-learning is rational and thus active. I argue that her account nevertheless remains unnecessarily constrained by an intention-centered conception of practical rationality. With this diagnosis in place, I suggest an alternative account that draws on Aristotelian resources, in particular, Aristotle’s conceptions of the voluntary (to hekousion) and choice (prohairesis).