JAAKKO HINTIKKA

WHAT WAS ARISTOTLE DOING IN HIS EARLY LOGIC, ANYWAY?

A REPLY TO WOODS AND HANSEN

In their interesting and lucid paper Hintikka on Aristotles Fallacies,

John Woods and Hans Hansen (in the sequel, W & H, for brevity) raise
the question as to whether the different fallacies Aristotle discusses in
De Sophisticis Elenchis are mistakes in logical inference or mistakes in a
question-answer step of an argument. They criticize me by favoring the
second alternative in too many cases, in other words, as misclassifying most
of the central fallacies Aristotle distinguishes from each other as erotetic
rather than logical slips. Now the very question W & H are asking is based
on a presupposition which I do not accept without serious qualifications
and which I consider anachronistic, even though it is apparently accepted
by the majority of scholars. They assume that it makes historical sense to
ask whether for Aristotle a certain fallacious step of argument is a logical
inference or an interrogative (question-answer) step. It seems to me beyond
any reasonable doubt that for the Aristotle who wrote the Topics and De
Sophisticis Elenchis the distinction made only relative sense, and that for
him what we would now call logical inferences were merely a species of
question-answer steps.
The historical naturalness of this view can be seen from the background
of Aristotles early methodology. Its obvious ancestor was the questioning
method of Platos Socrates, in other words the Socratic elenchus. Scholars
have described how this method was regimented into questioning games
that were the main technique of philosophical training in Platos Academy.
(W & H put the word game in scarequotes, as if it were a technical term
of my interrogative model. In reality I simply took it over from such earlier
scholars as Gilbert Ryle and Richard Robinson.) What Aristotle did was
something no one had done before him, viz. to develop a genuine theory of
such questioning games. Or perhaps the term theory" is wrong here, for
Aristotles aims were in part quite down-to-earth. He did not even hesitate
to give practical advice how to confuse an opponent or keep him in the dark
as much as possible. Hence it is more accurate to refer to the Topics and De
Sophisticis Elenchis as handbooks of the Socratic questioning games rather
than mere theories thereof. At the same time Aristotle saw in elenchus-like
questioning procedures an important part of the scientific method.

Synthese 113: 241249, 1997.

c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Now in the Platonic dialogues featuring Socrates there is no distinction

between inferential and interrogative steps. All the steps, including conclusions that for us are archetypically deductive ones are put forward as
responses to Socratess questions. If you need an example, the slave-boy
episode of the Meno is as good as any. Only rarely does Socrates say at
the end of an argument something like, Lets now add our admissions
together, whereupon he draws (as we would say) some rudimentary conclusions from the answers of his interlocutor. But such explicitly indicated
inference steps are at best rare exceptions.
Now the fundamental fact as I see it that is missed by W & H is
that the same is true of the arguments studied in Aristotles Topics and
De Sophisticis Elenchis. Insofar as Aristotle has there in mind steps in
an argument which twentieth-century philosophers would consider logical
inferences, they, too, are considered as question-answer steps, perhaps of
a special kind, but still only one species of question-answer steps. For this
reason, the fundamental question W & H are asking does not make any
historical sense, unless some further explanations are offered. A fortiori,
I can respond only indirectly to the purported criticisms of W & H. In
the form they are put forward, they presuppose a distinction which for
Aristotle would have been without any difference.
This main point calls for explanations, evidence, and further development. As a preparation for them, I have to straighten out a couple of
misunderstandings on the part of W & H. (Undoubtedly these misunderstandings are due to inadequate explanations in my earlier expositions.) As
W & H recall, I have put forward a logical model of interrogative inquiry
and recommended it inter alia as a framework for analyzing Aristotles
logic and methodology. This does not mean, however, that there are not
differences between the interrogative model and the elenchus-like procedures Aristotle studies. The main prima facie discrepancy is precisely what
I am discussing, viz. the lack in Aristotles early logical works of any sharp
overall distinction between interrogative steps and logical inference steps
in an argument.
But if so, how come he later came to study garden-variety logical inferences in his Prior Analytics and draft them into the service of his philosophy
of science in the Posterior Analytics? The answer lies in the practical purpose of the Topics. Aristotle did not only want to study knowledge-seeking
interrogative games for abstract theoretical purposes. He wanted to show
how to win in such games. He was concerned with the strategies of questioning (and answering). Now every lawyer who has cross-examined a
witness knows what the most important strategic (and tactical) principle of
active questioning is. It is to be able to anticipate the respondents answers.

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Never ask a question [in a cross-examination in a court of law] if you

dont know what the answer will be, as lawyers old saw goes.
Now Aristotles great discovery was that there are yes-or-no questions
whose answer is completely predictable. They are the questions whose
answer is, as we would say, logically implied by the earlier answers.
Because of their strategic importance Aristotle began to study them, which
of course amounted to the study of logical inferences. He began to investigate what it is about the earlier answers that necessitate a new one, identify
different types of such necessitated question-answer steps, formulate rules
for them, and so on. This is the way in which Aristotle was led from the
study of questioning games to the study of formal logic.
Signs of this shift can be seen in De Sophisticis Elenchis. When the
characteristics of a question-answer step such as e.g. its fallaciousness
and the way that fallacy is explained, depend on the particular answerer,
including his cognitive state, those characteristics are ad hominem. When
they depend only on the earlier steps of the argument, they are ad argumentum. Logical inferences in our sense are answers that are necessary ad
argumentum.
What that means is that in such a necessitated answer the interlocutor
becomes irrelevant. From our latter-day perspective, we might as well
dispense with the original Socratic irony (pretended ignorance). We might
as well abstract away from the answerer completely and let the questioner
draw the conclusion himself. This move, if we carry it out, essentially
takes us from the Socratic and early Aristotelian questioning procedures
to my interrogative model. But this step is not unavoidable, even though it
is well motivated theoretically. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with
the questioning procedures envisaged in the Topics.
One remarkable fact here is that Aristotle never took this step. Even
though it has escaped the attention of philosophers and scholars, Aristotle
is still in the two Analytics thinking of logical inferences as steps in a
questioning process. I cannot here present the kind of evidence for this
thesis that it would deserve. One single example will have to suffice.
Right in the middle of explaining the nature of logically necessary
inferences (that is to say, question-answer steps where the answer is implied
by earlier answers) Aristotle suddenly catches himself and warns that such
inferences are not the only steps of interrogative inquiry.
Yet one might perhaps wonder what purpose there could be in asking these questions about
such items if it is not necessary for the conclusion to be the case you might as well
ask an arbitrary question and then state the conclusion. But we should ask questions not
on the grounds that the conclusion will be necessary because what makes the conclusion
necessary was asked [earlier] (dia ta erotemena), but rather because it is necessary for the
person who accepts the conclusion [i.e. answers the question in the proposed way] to state

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the conclusion and to state it truly if they hold truly. (An. Post. A 6, 75a 2227; I have
modified Barnes translation.)

Most recent translators and commentators have had no inkling of what is

going on in this passage. Out of desperation, some even try to insert a
completely unsupported restriction to merely dialectical reasoning. Yet as
soon as we realize that Aristotle is treating the entire inquiry, including
deductive steps, as an interrogative process, what he says becomes crystal
clear. What Aristotle is saying is that it is of course all right to ask a question
even when the answer is not made necessary by earlier answers. It is especially interesting to see what Aristotle says in the last sentence about the
necessity of the answers relative to the respondent. He might as well have
borrowed his earlier terminology and said that answers not necessitated by
earlier ones must be judged ad hominem, not ad argumentum.
This example illustrates vividly how futile it is to ask without qualifications whether some mistake in reasoning is a bad inference or an answer
to a badly chosen question. Whatever distinction one can draw here is a
distinction between different kinds of interrogative steps.
This general point is applicable to a number of more specific issues.
In a number of places, including De. Soph. El. 165 a3, W & H interpret
Aristotles word 165 a3, syllogismos as deduction or logical inference.
This is highly tendentious. Aristotles definition of syllogism (An. Pr. I,
1, 24b 19-21; Top. I, i, 100a 2527) is not only compatible with logically
necessitated answers in an interrogative game. The question can be raised
to what extent it was originally calculated to apply to every answer in an
interrogative game in that the necessity in question could also be of an ad
hominem variety. This is strongly suggested by the end of the quote from
An. Post. A 6, 75a 2227.
Be this as it may, it is far from clear that Aristotles syllogisms were
restricted to deductive inferences. In Top. I, i, 100 Aristotle identifies dialectical syllogisms as those that proceed from endoxa. But in Aristotles later
philosophy of science we are supposed to argue dialectically from endoxa
back to the first deductive premises of a science. Hence the dialectical
syllogisms of Top. I, i, 100a 31 can scarcely be deductive.
And what are the deductive syllogisms of the Topics supposed to
consist in? Propositions (protaseon)? But according to Topics I, iv such
propositions are in reality questions of a certain kind.
It is thus historically misleading to ask whether the fallacies Aristotle
studied were bad inferences or mistakes in questioning. There is a sense in
which inferences, too, were for Aristotle question-answer steps. Systematically, too, there are plenty of reasons to emphasize the close ties between
questions and inferences. It seems to me that I have done myself injustice

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by speaking of an interrogative model of inquiry, as if it were an ad hoc construction somehow imitating certain special kinds of knowledge-seeking
processes. There are plenty of reasons to think of the interrogative model
as the general theory of ampliative reasoning. In any case, even formally
questioning steps and logical inferences are very close to each other. For
instance, a propositional question can take us from its presupposition

A _ B)
to either A or B as its answer. This can be compared with the disjunction
(1)

rule in a tree method, where the construction is divided into two branches
according to which A or B is added to the construction. Likewise, a simple
wh-question can take us from its presupposition
(2)

x Ax

(9 ) [ ]

to an answer of the form

(3)

A[b]

while a rule of existential instantiation in logic takes us from the same

formula to a formula of the form
(4)

A[ ]

where  is not a real name but a new variable-like symbol (dummy

name). As the reader can see, (3) and (4) are identical except for the status
of the instantiating term (name).
This parallelism is not merely formal or architectonic. It shows that
in implementing a strategy we are facing the same choice in the case of
question selection and in the case of selecting a formula to apply deductive
rules to. W & H think that the rules of logic are seen [in the interrogative
model] as definitory of the game, determining what is and what is not
a permitted move. However, such rules do not tell us how to play the
game well. This is the job of the interrogative rules. More generally, the
interrogative rules fall under the heading of strategy. (W & H , Sec. 1).
This is a radical and pernicious misunderstanding of the nature of the logic
of questioning in general and of the role of strategies in it in particular. Of
course rules of logical inference and the rules of questioning are completely
on a par when it comes to the distinction between definitory and strategic
rules. Of course must there be definitory rules for both kinds of steps in
an argument. And of course an inquirer faces a strategic choice in both
kinds of moves. In a logical inference move, the problem is which of

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the so far established propositions to use as a premise of an inference.

In an interrogative move, the problem is which of the already reached
truths to use as the presupposition of a question. Thus there are strategic
choices about deduction quite as much as there are strategic choices about
questioning. Indeed, the most exciting results concerning strategy selection
in interrogative inquiry concern the relation of the two kinds of strategic
choices.
Admittedly, Aristotle came to recognize some difference between on the
one hand moves in an interrogative game which are necessitated by earlier
answers, that is, between what for us are logical inference steps, and on
the other hand moves that depend on the respondent and hence correspond
to question-answer moves. However, this distinction was never articulated
very sharply by Aristotle. And in any case it does not seem as if he ever
came to think that the two kinds of moves are associated with different
kinds of fallacies. For instance, fallacies of language can beset questions
and answers as well as inferences. Admittedly, Aristotle made a distinction
between dissolving fallacies by reference to the argument (ad argumentum)
and by reference to the respondent (ad hominem). This distinction is found
in Topics VIII, 11, 161a 1721; De Soph. El. 8, 170a 1219; 20, 177b
3334; 22, 178b 1517; 33, 183a 2123. But this distinction does not seem
to be correlated with the distinction between the two kinds of steps. Hence
it does not even seem to make much sense to ask in Aristotelian terms
whether some particular fallacy is a mistake in inference or in questioning.
Indeed, his null hypothesis seems to have been that the same mistakes can
happen in the two kinds of steps, just because they were after all both
question-answer steps. For instance, as was pointed out earlier by Richard
Robinson (1971), the fallacy of begging the question began its career as a
clear-cut mistake in questioning but was later pushed by Aristotle into the
format of a mistake in logical inference.
If we are operating in the contemporary framework of logical vs. interrogative steps of argument and definitory rules, we can correspondingly
classify fallacies as logical vs. interrogative, definitory vs. strategic. We
can even discuss which slot some particular Aristotelian fallacy fits best
when his views are rationally reconstructed. But there is no hope finding
hard-and-fast classifications of that sort in Aristotle. Hence it is not possible
to give categorical, historically correct answers to questions whether this
or that Aristotelian fallacy was really mistakes in inference or reasoning.
If my earlier papers have given the impression that I expect such answers
to be forthcoming, I want to correct them on this point.
This does not mean that one cannot usefully discuss the question
whether Aristotles fallacies should be rationally reconstructed this way

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or that way. The most constructive construal of what W & H are trying to
do is undoubtedly to read them in the spirit of such rational reconstruction.
But if so, one cannot expect to end up with an unequivocally true historical interpretation. What one can aim at is enhanced understanding of the
logico-linguistic phenomena Aristotle was concerned with.
If what one is trying to do is such a rational reconstruction, the case
for or against W & H depends crucially on how illuminating their analysis
is when it comes to the two hard core fallacies, as W & H rightly call
them, the fallacy of many questions and that of begging the question. In
both cases I am prepared to stand on my ground.
As far as the fallacy of many questions is concerned, I do not see many
insights ensuing from their rational reconstruction, at least in comparison
with mine. One criticism of what W & H say is that they do not give an
accurate account of the interrogative interpretation, according to which
the fallacy lies in asking a question whose presupposition has not been
established. For one thing, they do not realize the precise meaning of
presupposition in the interrogative model, as witnessed by their blithe
assertion that inferential premises have presuppositions, too. Sure, in some
pretheoretical sense, but that sense has nothing to do with presuppositions in my sense. Indeed, in the fascinating analogy sketched above it
is the premises of an inference that correspond to the presuppositions of
questions.
Likewise, W & H take the designation many questions in a naive
unanalyzed sense in which an ambiguous question is really many questions in one. On my account, Aristotles phrase has a specific meaning.
Asking a question without having established its presupposition can be
labeled a fallacy of many questions because whoever answers such a question gives an implicit affirmative answer to the tacit preliminary question
which would have been needed to establish the presupposition of the overt
one. Of course, in the light of hindsight, Aristotles term is not accurate
within the framework of the interrogative model, for the presupposition
could perhaps have been established by an inference rather than another
question.
The usefulness of this viewpoint is illustrated by the fact that there is
another kind of use of many questions which is not noted by Aristotle
or by most twentieth-century analysts of questions. Aristotles reason is
undoubtedly that this use of tacitly dual question is not fallacious. Here is
an example:
He turned back to his witness. Is there any explanation that you can think of for this
extraordinary bonding of slug and wadding? It could happen if there were some sort of
obstruction in the barrel or muzzle of Ferrys gun. (A. Lewis and H. MacDonell, 1984, p.
23.)

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Here a yes-or-no question is answered as if it were a wh-question. The

reason is obvious on my presuppositional analysis: The explicit question is
calculated to establish the presupposition of a certain wh-question (What
was an explanation?) that the answerer know the questioner wanted to ask.
Answering the latter the respondent tacitly answers the presuppositional
question affirmatively. Thus the asking of multiple questions can be
elliptical rather than fallacious.
There are plenty of insights of this kind, both systematic and historical
that ensue from my analysis. I do not see anything comparable being
yielded by the rational reconstruction of W & H.
As far as the fallacy of petitio principii is concerned my prescription was
in anticipation followed by Richard Robinson in his witty skit Begging
the Question 1971. I have little to add to Robinsons argument but a
historical reminder is perhaps still in order. We have to take seriously
the down-to-earth (or down-to-agora) character of Aristotles Topics. He
was trying to say something that was actually relevant to, and potentially
useful for the participants in, the actual questioning games played in the
Academy. Now you cannot seriously envisage a clever, ambitious young
student of Platos, Theaitetos or one of his rivals, as being tempted to
employ a circular deduction in his argument. There would not have been
any earthly reason for Aristotle to warn his friends about arguing the way
W & H think: P, Q, ergo P. In contrast, when the inquirer is trying to
answer a big or principal question by means of answers to a number of
small or operative questions, it is far from clear why the inquirer must
be satisfied with the latter and not raise the former immediately It is so far
from clear that Aristotle never tells us why it is that one must not petition
(i.e., ask) the principal question, in other words, why begging the question
is a fallacy.
As far as we are talking about the merits of different rational reconstructions of the fallacy of petitio principii is concerned, my interpretation
is connected with one of the most fundamental insights into the role of
questions and answers in rational inquiry, viz. their dual role. The aim
of the entire enterprise may be to answer a principal question by means
of answers to a number of small (operative) questions. This insight has
served as the basis of an explicit theory of why-questions (Hintikka and
Halonen 1995) plus a large number of other specific applications.
But why is begging the question a fallacy on this view? Aristotle never
tells us why. An explanation is nevertheless implicit in what has been said.
Not all questions can be answered by the inquirers source of answers. The
only case in which a question needs an inquiry for its solution is when it is
not answerable directly. And then it is futile to raise it.

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I do not see that the inferential construction W & H favor yields comparable insights. What W & H try to do is to seek to relate the begging the
question problematic to the rules of inference in certain recent systems
of nonclassical logic. I am thoroughly unconvinced both of the existence
of any real connections and also of the value of merely tinkering with the
rules of inference of a logical system.

REFERENCES

Hintikka, Jaakko: 1989, The Role of Logic in Argumentation, The Monist 72, 324.
Hintikka, Jaakko: 1987, The Fallacy of Fallacies, Argumentation 1, 211238.
Hintikka, Jaakko and Ilpo Halonen: 1995, Semantics and Pragmatics for Why-Questions,
Journal of Philosophy XCII, 636657.
Hintikka, Jaakko, Ilpo Halonen and Arto Mutanen: forthcoming, Interrogative Logic as a
General Theory of Reasoning,
Lewis, A. and H. MacDonell: 1984, The Evidence Never Lies, Hold, Rinehart & Winston,
New York.
Robinson, Richard: 1971, Begging the Question 1971, Analysis 31, 113117.
Ryle, Gilbert: 1971, Dialectic in the Academy, in Collected Papers, London, pp. 89125.
Dept of Philosophy,
Boston University,
Boston MA 02215,
USA