Placement Practice Job Talk—Doug Campbell

Doug Campbell is a recent graduate from our PhD program and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy. Please join us for his practice job talk, which will begin at 3:00 PM sharp.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86575796716?pwd=c0NkZThMSmdDSE1RRW1uczAxOW4zUT09

Talk Title

Plato’s Theory of Psychic Motion

Talk Abstract

I argue that Plato thinks that the soul has location, surface, depth, and extension, and is capable of contact and resistance. The soul’s motions happen in space, such that it can initiate motion in bodies by being in contact with them. I begin by arguing that the Timaeus’ composition of the soul out of eight circles is intended literally and contributes to theories of both reason (nous) and the cosmos. An important, novel contribution is the development of an account of corporeality that, against recent commentators, denies the entailment that the soul is a body. The mark of corporeality is visibility, not extension of divisibility, and the soul occupies an intermediate ontological status described by the Timaeus. I conclude by considering Aristotle’s objection in De Anima against the Timaeus’ psychology and, generally, the intellectual history of this account of Plato’s psychology.