History of philosophy

Cecilia Wee & Michael Pelczar (2008) Descartes’ dualism and contemporary dualism, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 46(1), 145-160.

In this paper, we argue that Descartes is not, actually, a dualist, as dualism is usually understood these days. In fact, Descartes appears to hold that the mental logically supervenes on the physical, which would make him a physicalist, by 21st century standards.

Pelczar, Michael (2004) Focal complexity in Aristotle and Wittgenstein, History of Philosophy Quarterly 21(2), 131-150.

I draw out some connections between Aristotle’s notion of focal complexity, and Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. This paper has some problems, but I still think that the idea of relating focal complexity to family resemblance is a good one.