School
Expertise
Biography
Jonathan Buttaci is a native of Pittsburgh, PA where, after growing up in North Carolina, he later returned to complete a Ph.D. in philosophy. His research concerns theories of knowledge, learning, and the soul in ancient Greek philosophy. He is particularly interested in Aristotle’s account of scientific knowledge, inquiry, and discovery as shown in his (often neglected) scientific works. A key question driving Dr. Buttaci's research is the relationship between perception, habituation, and other strictly non-intellectual forms of cognition (on the one hand), and properly intellectual activities and achievements (on the other).
In his research, he looks not only to Aristotle’s scientific works to understand the interplay between intellectual and non-intellectual human activities, but also to the Rhetoric and Poetics. Man is, after all, the most mimetic of animals, accomplishing his first steps toward learning by mimēsis. Dr. Buttaci is also interested in more recent philosophical debates on similar topics in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of knowledge, and philosophy of science. He has research projects at various stages engaging with the work of Newman, Geach, Sellars, and McDowell from the perspective of his work on Aristotle.
He enjoys hiking the forests of Appalachia while puzzling over the paradox of the Meno, the battle rout of Posterior Analytics B.19, the intellect(s) of de Anima III.5, and the ascent to wisdom in Metaphysics A.1.