Aristotle: Principles

This is a translation, made by myself, of the paper to be published in Portuguese in the journal Discurso, 2020, in honour of the late professor Oswaldo Porchat. I discuss what Aristotle was trying to encode when he said that the object of scientific knowledge is necessary, or that what we know (scientifically) cannot be otherwise etc. The paper is meant as a continuation of previous papers—orientated towards a book on the Posterior Analytics—and thus does not discuss in much detail (...) key passages, as the very definition of scientific knowledge in APo I.2, or passages from APo I.4 and I.6 (for these, I refer to my previous papers). This paper is mainly focused on Aristotle’s references to his notion of scientific knowledge both in other passages from the APo and in other treatises. I intend to show that there is a progressive, intrinsic relation between the two requirements by which scientific knowledge is defined. It is not true that each of these requirements stems from a different source. The Causal-Explanatory requirements gives Aristotle the general heading. Then, the Necessity Requirement ranges over the explanatory relation between explanans and explanandum and thereby specifies what sort of cause is sctricly required for having scientific knowledge of a given explanandum. Now, Aristotle was also concerned with the necessary truth of the elemental predications that constitute a demonstration. My claim that the Necessity Requirement ranges over the explanatory relation does not ignore that concern, and does not deny it. My claim is that Aristotle’s main focus, and main concern, consists in stressing that the explanatory factor to be captured in scientific knowledge of a given explanandum is such that cannot be otherwise. (shrink)

I discuss the argument Aristotle ascribes to Parmenides at Physics 186a23-32. I discuss (i) the reasons why Aristotle considers it as eristic and inconclusive and (i) the solution (lusis) Aristotle proposes against it.

I discuss the exact meaning of the thesis according to which the object of scientific knowledge is necessary. The thesis is expressed by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, in his definition of scientific knowledge. The traditional interpretation understands this definition as depending on two parallel and independent requirements, the causality requirement and the necessity requirement. Against this interpretation, I try to show, through the examination of several passages that refer to the definition of scientific knowledge, that the necessity requirement specifies (...) more exactly the causality requirement: what cannot be otherwise is the explanatory relation between the explanandum and the cause by which it is what it is. (shrink)

Aristotle presents four causes in Posterior Analytics 2.11, but where we expect matter we find instead the confusing formula, ‘what things being the case, necessarily this is the case’, and an equally confusing example. Some commentators infer that Aristotle is not referring to matter, others that he is but in a non-standard way. I argue that APo. 94a20-34 presents not matter, but determination by general features or facts, including facts about something’s genus. The closest connection to matter is Aristotle’s view (...) that the relation between genus and species is analogous to that between matter and a hylomorphic compound. (shrink)

according to aristotle's posterior analytics, scientific expertise is composed of two different cognitive dispositions. Some propositions in the domain can be scientifically explained, which means that they are known by "demonstration", a deductive argument in which the premises are explanatory of the conclusion. Thus, the kind of cognition that apprehends those propositions is called "demonstrative knowledge".1 However, not all propositions in a scientific domain are demonstrable. Demonstrations are ultimately based on indemonstrable principles, whose knowledge is called "comprehension".2 If the knowledge (...) of all scientific propositions were... (shrink)

In Prior Analytics I.30, Aristotle seems too much optmistic about finding out the principles of sciences. For he seems to say that, if our empirical collection of facts in a given domain is exhaustive or sufficient, it will be easy for us to find out the explanatory principles in the domain. However, there is a distance between collecting facts and finding out the explanatory principles in a given domain. In this paper, I discuss how the key expression in the sentence (...) at 46a25 should be interpreted: “the true characteristics of things” (“τῶν ἀληθῶς ὑπαρχόντων τοῖς πράγμασιν”). I argue that, on a more accurate interpretation of the expression, Aristotle’s point would cease to look like a piece of naïve or even silly optimism. (shrink)

Some of Aristotle’s statements about the indemonstrability of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in Metaphysics Γ 4 merit more attention. The consensus seems to be that Aristotle provides two arguments against the demonstrability of the PNC, with one located in Γ 3 and the other found in the first paragraph of Γ 4. In this article, I argue that Aristotle also relies upon a third argument for the same conclusion: the argument from truth. Although Aristotle does not explicitly state this (...) argument, it is the best argument that he could use to defend some of his statements in the second paragraph of Γ 4. Since the argument relies on only a few of Aristotle’s core views about truth, I propose that it is faithful to his considered position throughout his corpus, and it may be the strongest argument he could offer for the indemonstrability of the PNC. (shrink)

This article sketches, and works to motivate, a controversial approach to Posterior Analytics II.19. But its primary goal is to recommend a novel solution to one particular interpretive aporia that’s especially vexed recent scholars working on Post. An. II.19. The aporia concerns how to understand the enigmatic "ē ek pantos" ( “or from all...”) in the genealogical account of foundational knowledge at II.19 100a3-9. Our proposed solution to the aporia is discussed in connection with a number of larger philosophical issues (...) concerning Aristotle’s theory of epistēmē. (shrink)

In his Metaphysics Γ.4, Aristotle defends the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). The PNC says that all contradictions are false. So if some contradictions are true, then PNC is false. Even if PNC’s contrary is false, PNC’s contradictory might still be true. But it’s been noted in the literature for over a century that Aristotle seems to be exclusively interested in attacking PNC’s contrary (‘All contradictions are true’) rather than PNC’s contradictory (‘Some contradictions are true’). So his defense of PNC seems (...) to fail. This would be a surprising error from the inventor of formal logic. It is especially puzzling because we have plenty of evidence showing that Aristotle is keenly aware of the distinction between contraries and contradictories, and because Aristotle distinguishes between PNC’s contradictory and PNC’s contrary in Γ.4. I defend Aristotle against these charges: (1) I explain that one important reason for Aristotle’s focus on PNC’s contrary is that he took it to be deeply connected to views held by thinkers such as Anaxagoras, Cratylus, Democritus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Protagoras, and Xenophanes; (2) Aristotle’s defense of PNC must be a particular kind of indirect defense rather than a direct demonstration; (3) I argue that if Aristotle’s defense of PNC is read as centering around his argument for what counts as a thing that is determinate, Aristotle demonstrates the reliance of coherent communication on non-contradiction. Read this way, he gives a fairly compelling case to reject not just PNC’s contrary but also PNC’s contradictory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This is a review of David Bronstein's book "Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning: The Posterior Analytics".

David Bronstein sheds new light on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics--one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy--by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. He argues that the Posterior Analytics is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge, an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind's ascent from sense-perception of particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. Bronstein goes on to highlight Plato's influence on Aristotle's (...) text, and argues against current orthodoxy that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing's essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes. (shrink)

Aristotle's cognitive ideal is a form of understanding that requires a sophisticated grasp of scientific first principles. At the end of the Analytics, Aristotle tells us that we learn these principles by induction. But on the whole, commentators have found this an implausible claim: induction seems far too basic a process to yield the sort of knowledge Aristotle's account requires. In this paper I argue that this criticism is misguided. I defend a broader reading of Aristotelian induction, on which there's (...) good sense to be made of the claim that we come to grasp first principles inductively, and show that this reading is a natural one given Aristotle's broader views on scientific learning. (shrink)

This work attempts to respond to Tomas Aquinas' Cosmological Argument in a way that combines Set Theory with the idea of the ‘Book of Change’. The study defines the ith Cause Set on which to operate on, which leads to the ontological commitment of austerity that the ‘First Cause's Compromise with emergence’ cannot be avoided. It is argued in the present paper that the concept that ‘emergence only consists of Synchronic Emergence and Diachronic Emergence’ should be extended to a broader (...) notion of emergence, which is made up of the two discussed elements and a third one ‘No-Boundary Emergence’ (beyond the time dimension). The article defines the concept of No-Boundary Emergence, proves why it is a type of emergence that differs from the traditional two types, and asserts that it underlies the bottom layer of the cosmos. This study describes the common feature of all emergence as communication protocols between layers. The assemblage of all emergences behaves similar to a distributed system that cannot be restricted by Gödel's theorem. The paper provides evidence (in Big Bang Cosmology, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, Superstring Theory, Quantum Gravity) for this point of view, and notes that emergence (in the context of No-Boundary Emergence) is not only a simple scientific theory but also a progressive scientific research programme that can spontaneously grow from scientific theory based on Platonism at the expense of a degenerating shift to the ontological commitment of austerity. This paper proposes an improved model of Schrödinger Cat that provides a new explanation for quantum measurement and argues that there must be a forbidden zone of thought experiments. The study also introduces the implications of ancient Chinese thoughts (namely, the ‘Book of Change’ and Confucius). The paper comes to the conclusion that emergence (crossing the gap between ‘being’ and ‘nothing’, while ignoring the forbidden zone of thought experiments) relieves ‘cosmological insufficiency’ in the sense of Neo-Aristotelism. (shrink)

Aristotle uses two kinds of material cause in his analysis of biological organisms: compositional matter, which persists through their birth and death;and functional matter, which consists of the organs and functional parts out of which biological organisms are made while they are alive. These two kinds of material cause, it has been argued, have quite different explanatory roles: functional matter is required by biological organisms to perform their essential functions,but compositional matter contributes nothing necessary to them and is only responsible (...) for their accidental properties. Against this view, I argue that biological organisms are systematically dependent upon their compositional matter and the latter is responsible for many of their necessary attributes. (shrink)

This article is intended to examine the structure and scope of the argumentation drawn in Metaphysics Γ 4, 1006a18-b34. As we shall see, though this passage does not bring a complete proof of the Principle of Non-Contradiction, it corresponds to its first step, which consists in determining the conditions of meaning necessary for discourse. That passage encloses in nuce the reasons which underlie Aristotelian conviction con- cerning the conventional nature of names and also brings to light the way this conven- (...) tional nature of names must be understood according to Aristotle. (shrink)

According to a long interpretative tradition, Aristotle holds that the formal cause is the ultimate object of induction when investigating perceptible substances. For, the job of induction is to find the essential nature common to a set of individuals, and that nature is captured solely by their shared formal cause. Against this view, I argue that Aristotle understands perceptible individuals as irreducibly composite objects whose nature is constituted by both their formal and their material cause. As a result, when investigating (...) perceptible objects, the job of induction is to discover their composite, formal and material nature. The process by which universal claims about this composite nature are justified, I argue, is similar to what we now know as mathematical induction. In particular, such claims are grounded in a non-enumerative, but replicable process in which things are resolved into their simplest components. As a result, the observation of past uniformities has, at most, a heuristic function in scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Aristotle’s epistemology has sometimes been associated with foundationalism, the theory according to which a small set of premise-beliefs that are deductively valid or inductively strong provide justification for many other truths. In contemporary terms, Aristotle’s foundationalism could be compared with what is sometimes called “classical foundationalism”. However, as I will show, the equivalent to basic beliefs in Aristotle’s epistemology are the so-called first principles or “axiómata”. These principles are self-evident, but not self-justificatory. They are not justified by their act of (...) understanding, but by the arguments that satisfactorily prove them. In addition, these principles are intellectual, rather than perceptual, so that no basic belief that is about our immediate experience or sensory data is apt to provide the required foundation of knowledge. In spite of this, I argue that Aristotle’s foundationalism has no givens, and that his epistemology resists the objections usually leveled against givens. (shrink)

Exploring what two foundational figures, Plato and Aristotle, have to say about the nature of human awareness and understanding, Aryeh Kosman concludes that ultimately the virtues of thought are to be found in the joys and satisfactions that come from thinking philosophically, whether we engage in it ourselves or witness others' participation.

A discussão nos livros dos Tópicos giram em torno dos debates dialéticos e seus elementos. Aristóteles discorre sobre os gêneros, as propriedades e os chamados acidentes e suas relações predicativas em categorias. Interessa-nos, sobretudo, compreender o papel desempenhado pela Definição e qual sua relação com os demais instrumentos para a dialética.

I discuss in this paper the six requirements Aristotle advances at Posterior Analytics A-2, 71b20-33, for the premisses of a scientific demonstration. I argue that the six requirements give no support for an intepretation in terms of “axiomatization”. Quite on the contrary, the six requirements can be consistently understood in a very different picture, according to which the most basic feature of a scientific demonstration is to explain a given proposition by its appropriate cause.

Essa dissertação de mestrado cuida do problema do conhecimento dos primeiros princípios em Aristóteles, mais precisamente, das vias de acesso adequadas a provê-lo. Dada a primordialidade de um tal conhecimento, erige-se a questão de método: por qual via estaria garantido o acesso àquilo que constitui todo o fundamento e “razão para” do edifício do conhecimento filosófico e científico? Aristóteles, nos Segundos Analíticos, atribui à indução (epagoge) e à inteligência (nous) este papel, mas nos Tópicos o filósofo menciona que a dialética (...) é util aos primeiros princípios. O propósito maior desta pesquisa está não tanto no conciliar estes métodos, procurando atribuir alguma significação tanto aos Segundos Analíticos quanto aos Tópicos, mas no procurar viabilizar alguma fala da dialética no que concerne ao conhecimento dos primeiros princípios, sem, contudo, extrapolar o que parece estar autorizado a partir da leitura dos textos aristotélicos. Neste intento, propõe-se a análise da diaporemática de que cuida Aristóteles em Metafísica Β, visando investigar se esta de algum modo excede a dialética nos limites com as quais esta se debate. (shrink)

Pretendemos averiguar como Aristóteles concebe a passagem do nosso conhecimento prévio do mundo ao conhecimento científico, avaliando os pressupostos e consequências de sua resposta ao paradoxo de Mênon e atentando para a metodologia científica defendida nos Segundos Analíticos. Quanto ao conhecimento preliminar necessário à edificação da ciência, procuraremos caracterizar seus tipos e também os meios pelos quais ele pode vir a ser adquirido por nós. Buscaremos estabelecer também as propriedades que o conhecimento científico deve possuir em relação à sua necessidade, (...) universalidade e caráter explanatório. Buscaremos marcar, com precisão, a natureza da conclusão científica segundo a teoria científica aristotélica, argumentando que, nas conclusões, o atributo demonstrado, em relação com seu substrato, representa uma propriedade por si concomitante. Pretendemos averiguar como os diferentes tipos de demonstração e definição respondem a diferentes estágios de organização do saber prévio e a diferentes estágios na estruturação das demonstrações propriamente científicas, e, por conseguinte, como esses se organizam de modo a responder as quatro perguntas que toda investigação científica deve abarcar em seus dois estágios. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics I-III into Portuguese, with a few notes and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2007, is preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

I examine Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge in Posterior Analytics 71b 9-12 and try to understand how it relates to the sophistical way of knowing and to "kata sumbebekos knowledge". I claim that scientific knowledge of p requires knowing p by its appropriate cause, and that this appropriate cause is a universal (katholou) in the restricted sense Aristotle proposes in 73b 26-27 ff., i.e., an attribute coextensive with the subject (an extensional feature) and predicated of the subject in itself (an (...) intensional feature). Kata sumbebekos knowledge, on the other hand, can occur even when the predicate of a conclusion is coextensive with its subject and is proved by a convertible meson which is not the most appropriate from an explanatory standpoint. (shrink)

Our purpose is to study Aristotle?s solution, in the second book of the Posterior Analytics, for the problem of the apprehension of the principles of science. We attend to the relations between the concepts of induction (epagoge) and intelligence (nous) found in the chapter 19, which seems to confirm that the acquisition of the principles is reached by a process of empirical observation. We examine the method, proposed in chapters 13 to 17, for the right formulation of definitions, which seems (...) to attribute to dialectics the task of finding the principles. Aristotle seems to indicate two different methods ? on one hand, the empirical observation followed by intelligence, on other, the dialectics ? for the apprehension of the principles. Our purpose is to study possible solutions for the problem of the concurrence between these two methods in order to refute as much a strictly empiricist interpretation as a strictly dialectical one. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX and X (Theta & Iota) into Portuguese, with a few notes, experimental glossary and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2004, is preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

I discuss the issue whether Aristotle's philosophy of science allows the use of mathematical premises or mathematical tools in general for explanaing phenomena in the natural sciences. I thereby discuss the concept of "metabasis eis allo genos" as it appears in Posterior Analytics I.7.

In Aristotle's cosmology, the nature of the elements is defined by their place in the Totality. Their cosmic motions keep the whole in motion, and this is their nature. Thus, the cosmos is an organized whole, a single substance directed to the good; this body constitutes together with its Prime Mover a composite substance that can be regarded as a self-mover.

Argues that Aristotle regarded the universe, or Totality, as a single substance with form and matter, and that he regarded this substance together with the Prime Mover as a self-mover.

Este livro é um 'ancestral' em pré-print do meu livro de 2006, Introdução à Teoria da Predicação em Aristóteles (ISBN 978-85-268-0716-1), publicado pela Editora da Unicamp (ver https://www.academia.edu/6912408/Introdu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%C3%A0_teoria_da_predica%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Arist %C3%B3teles). O ancestral foi felizmente muito citado, mesmo depois da aparição do livro definitivo em 2006. -/- This is an ancestor (in pré-print) of my 2006 Book, 'Introdução à Teoria da Predicação em Aristóteles' (ISBN 978-85-268-0716-1), published by Editora da Unicamp (see https://www.academia.edu/6912408/Introdu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%C3%A0_teoria_da_predica%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Arist %C3%B3teles). The ancestor was cited by many, even after the definitive book (...) appeared in 2006. (shrink)