Richard L. W.

Clarke LITS2306 Notes 03B

ARISTOTLE ANALYTICA HYSTERA / POSTERIOR ANALYTICS [C.330 BCE] (DEMONSTRATIVE KNOWLEDGE AND ITS STARTING-POINTS) Here, Aristotles focus is on epistemology, that is, how we can know or understand anything. Where Plato drew a distinction between knowledge and opinion, contending that the latter is the product of the senses while the former is the product of critical reasoning, Aristotle emphasises the inevitable role played by the senses in the production of knowledge. He begins by clearly alluding to Platos claim in Meno that learning is tantamount to recollecting knowledge possessed by the immortal soul: [a]ll teaching and intellectual learning arises from pre-existing knowledge (20). He adds in a similar vein that both syllogistic and inductive arguments produce instruction by means of what we are already aware of (20). As we shall see, however, Aristotle will come to a strikingly different understanding of the concept of pre-existing knowledge. Aristotle agrees with Plato that the object of knowledge must be stable, immune to change and fluctuation: there can be no demonstration with respect to perishable things, nor any scientific knowledge of them strictly speaking . . . for in such cases the attribute does not belong to the subject universally, but only at a particular time and in some respect (20). In other words, the object of scientific knowledge is those enduring primary and secondary substances and not those accidental qualities which may change: this is why he equates scientific knowledge (20) with concern for what is (21). He argues that scientific knowledge or understanding of something (20) is the result of knowing the cause of the item in question (20) and certitude that it is not possible for it to be otherwise (20). Scientific knowledge is produced deductively through demonstration (20) or scientific syllogism (20) (e.g. all As are Bs, all Bs are Cs, therefore all As are Cs) which necessarily derives from premises which are true, primary, immediate, and better known than, and prior to and causes of, the conclusion (20). Aristotle argues that if the premises of a syllogism are universal, then the conclusion of such a demonstration . . . must also be an eternal truth (20). A demonstration is therefore a syllogistic deduction from necessary premises (20). In other words, such knowledge (or conclusions) derives logically (can be deduced) from self-evident premises or starting-points. It is for this reason that Aristotle argues that scientific knowledge cannot be achieved unless we know the premises that are primary and immediate (20). Aristotle refutes Platos equation of learning with recollection by contending that it would be strange if we possessed them all along, since then we would possess knowledge superior to demonstration without being aware of it (20). By the same token, if we acquire knowledge of the premises purely by deductive means, how could we come to know and learn them in the absence of any pre-existing knowledge (20) or, more accurately, if we are ignorant and have no predisposition for knowledge (21)? Aristotle equates this predisposition with an inherent capacity [that] evidently belongs to all animals (21), that of sense-perception (21). For less sophisticated animals, there is no knowledge outside the act of perceiving (21) (i.e. such animals immediately forget what they perceived through their senses) whereas other more sophisticated animals can retain something in the mind after perceiving it (21) (i.e. one can remember what one has perceived). When this happens frequently, we get a difference arising as a result of the retention (21), the memory being in someway different from the actual sense-perception, the result being the production of a mental concept (logos). Aristotle asserts that induction is the foundation of scientific knowledge. In humans, sense perception produces memory (21) which, when repeated, becomes experience (21) which in turn establishes the whole universal . . . in the mind (21), the

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS2306 Notes 03B

one distinct from the many, whatever is one and the same in all the many instances (21). Aristotle has in mind here the grasping of the relationships which link particular instances, for example, the fact that particular objects (particular men) viewed are manifestations of the same underlying substance (mankind as opposed to lions). What groups particulars into universals is not abstract ideal forms, as Plato would have it. Rather, the human mind is able to assimilate particulars to universals on the basis of observing and remembering resemblances between particulars and constants where only change seems to exist. These dispositions (21) to grasp resemblances between seemingly peculiar instances are not innate (21) but come about from sense-perception (21) (the capacity for which is innate) and are the starting-point of scientific knowledge (21). In short, although what one perceives is the particular thing, the conception is of a universalfor example, of a man, not of Callias, the particular individual (21). It is clearly not by deduction but by induction that we have to get to know the starting-points (21). Intuition is the mental faculty or disposition inherent in all animals which inductively grasps starting-points (the certitude that, for example, one is viewing a man and not a fish). These starting-points are primary in the quest for knowledge as a result of which scientific knowledge of the starting-points is not possible. Scientific knowledge (e.g. conclusions about the nature of men) is a secondary form of knowledge and derives, rather, from processes of deduction that are themselves based on the primary inductive starting-points which become the premises of the syllogism in question. In all this, Aristotle turns the tables on Plato, stressing that while both opinion and reasoning admit of falsehood (21), scientific knowledge and intuition [nous] are always true. No other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, and the starting-points are more knowable than the demonstrations which proceed from them (21). Induction is primary while logical deduction is secondary. Aristotles argument is that deductive forms of argumentation can be misused if the premises themselves are erroneous. A good example of erroneous reasoning is the following: all planets are stars, all stars are squares, therefore all planets are squares is self-evidently wrong because at least one of the premises or starting-points are manifestly wrong. Aristotle insists that for deductive reasoning to be used correctly, the starting points themselves must be self-evidently true. For Plato, the mind has innate knowledge of certain self-evident truths. However, Aristotle signals his desire to go in a different direction, contending that sense perception, the capacity for which is innate in humans, plays the crucial role in acquiring the raw materials of knowledge. From this point of view, knowledge is not innate and not merely recollected but acquired through the senses.