Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts by Gregory Salmieri BA, The College of New Jersey, 2001 ...

287 Pages·2008·1.64 MB·English

Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts

by
Gregory Salmieri
B.A., The College of New Jersey, 2001

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
The College of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh

2008
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
College of Arts and Sciences
This dissertation was presented

by Gregory Salmieri

It was defended on
June 3, 2008
and approved by
James Allen, Professor, Philosophy
Allan Gotthelf, Visiting Professor, History and Philosophy of Science
Jessica Moss, Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Dissertation Advisor: James Lennox, Professor, History and Philosophy of Science
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Aristotle and The Problem of Concepts
Gregory Salmieri, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2008

Copyright © by Gregory Salmieri
2008
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Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts

Gregory Salmieri, PhD

University of Pittsburgh, 2008

Abstract

By a “concept” , I mean a unitary thought (of the sort normally represented by a word) that
applies to a plurality of differing objects, and by “The Problem of Concepts” I mean the
pervasive philosophical questions of how such thoughts are to be explained and by what
standards they are to be evaluated. Aristotle is generally held to have been a Moderate Realist,
who held that a concept is a putative grasp of a mind-independent universal object that exist
somehow in or derivatively on the many particular objects to which the concept applies. I argue
that Aristotle rejected the posit of such universal objects and instead understood universality as a
feature of thought, which has a basis in reality and a function in cognition. With some notable
exceptions, concepts are based on relations of difference in “the more and the less” between their
instances and on the causal relations between the various parts and characteristics of each
instance. A concept’s function is to serve as a term in deductions which enable us to represent
the necessity of causal connections. I go on, then, to explore the manner in which, on Aristotle’s
view, concepts compose propositions and bodies of knowledge and the way in which they are
formed.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................................ VII 
1.0  THE PROBLEM...................................................................................................................................... 1 
1.1  INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF CONCEPTS ....................................................... 3 
1.1.1  Concepts as unitary cognitions of indefinitely many differing objects ................................ 3 
1.1.2  The Problem of Concepts: How can pluralities be unitarily cognized? ............................... 4 
1.1.3  The normative import of the Problem .................................................................................... 7 
1.2  SOCRATES, PLATO AND THE PROBLEM OF CONCEPTS ............................................. 12 
1.2.1  Socrates’ “What is F?” question ............................................................................................ 14 
1.2.2  The Socratic View of Concepts .............................................................................................. 23 
1.2.3  Plato’s Theory of Forms as a theory of concepts ................................................................. 29 
1.2.4  Aristotle on Platonic Forms and the need for universals .................................................... 35 
1.3  THE PROBLEM OF CONCEPTS AS THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS ....................... 38 
1.3.1  Competing construals of the Problem of Universals ............................................................ 40 
1.3.2  Why speak of the Problem of Concepts rather than a Problem of Universals? ................ 43 
1.3.3  Realism as a theory of concepts ............................................................................................. 44 
1.3.4  Moderate Realism as a theory of concepts............................................................................ 48 
1.3.5  Classifying theories of concepts ............................................................................................. 52 
2.0  WAS ARISTOTLE A MODERATE REALIST? ............................................................................... 56 
2.1  REFORMULATING OUR QUESTION IN ARISTOTELIAN TERMS ............................... 58 
2.1.1  Concepts as simple thoughts of non-numerical unities ........................................................ 58 
2.1.2  Five varieties of non-numerical unity recognized by Aristotle ........................................... 62 
2.1.3  Moderate Realism and the five varieties ............................................................................... 67 
2.1.4  Aristotle’s generic sense of “universal” ................................................................................ 68 
2.2  ARISTOTLE’S REJECTION OF MODERATE REALISM ABOUT KINDS ..................... 71 
2.2.1  Zoological kinds ...................................................................................................................... 71 
2.2.2  Kinds as determinables .......................................................................................................... 76 
2.2.3  The kind-form relationship as allowing for the unity of definition .................................... 82 
2.3  ARISTOTLE’S ASSIMILATION OF KINDS TO MATTER ................................................ 86 
2.3.1  Is something’s kind its physical matter? ............................................................................... 87 
2.3.2  Kinds as intelligible matter .................................................................................................... 93 
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2.3.3  The ontological status of intelligible matter ......................................................................... 96 
2.4  ARE ARISTOTELIAN FORMS PARTICULARS? ................................................................ 98 
2.4.1  Balme’s embryological argument for particular forms ..................................................... 103 
2.4.2  Balme and Lennox on the uncuttability of the uncuttable forms ..................................... 106 
2.4.3  Sameness in kind revisited ................................................................................................... 108 
2.4.4  An objection to the embryological argument ..................................................................... 109 
2.4.5  Can any particular forms interpretation be maintained? ................................................. 112 
2.5  UNIVERSALS AS INTELIGIBLE MATTER ....................................................................... 118 
3.0  ARISTOTLE ON CONCEPTUAL COGNITION ........................................................................... 123 
3.1  CONCEPTS AS UNITS OF THOUGHT ................................................................................ 125 
3.1.1  Concepts as undivided thoughts .......................................................................................... 129 
3.1.2  The Composition of thoughts and their objects ................................................................. 135 
3.1.3  Indivisible thoughts .............................................................................................................. 139 
3.2  ΓΝΩΣΙΣ AND INDIVISIBLE THOUGHTS .......................................................................... 145 
3.2.1  Γνῶσις .................................................................................................................................... 145 
3.2.2  Truth and error without division or combination ............................................................. 149 
3.2.3  Indivisible thoughts as principles of ἐπιστήμη ................................................................... 158 
3.3  CONCEPTS AS ΓΝΩΣΕΙΣ ...................................................................................................... 162 
3.3.1  Discerning essence ................................................................................................................ 162 
3.3.2  The universality of thought .................................................................................................. 170 
3.3.3  Νοῦς and ἐπιστήμη as the highest degrees of γνῶσις ......................................................... 183 
4.0  ARISTOTLE ON CONCEPTUALIZATION ................................................................................... 194 
4.1  THE PROGRESSION TO ΝΟΥΣ IN POSTERIOR ANALYTICS II.19 ............................... 197 
4.1.1  The meaning of “perception” in II.19 ................................................................................. 201 
4.1.2  The nature of ἐμπειρία ......................................................................................................... 207 
4.1.3  The advent of universals ...................................................................................................... 215 
4.2  SEEKING AND PROVING WHAT SOMETHING IS ......................................................... 218 
4.2.1  Varieties of εἴδησις that or what something is .................................................................... 222 
4.2.2  Proving what it is by demonstrating that it is ...................................................................... 229 
4.2.3  The primaries and how they are known ............................................................................. 233 
4.3  FORMING NEW CONCEPTS ................................................................................................ 238 
4.3.1  Making up names .................................................................................................................. 238 
4.3.2  Concepts as components of a filing system aimed at explanation ..................................... 246 
4.3.3  Concepts and causal roles .................................................................................................... 254 
4.3.4  Ordinary concept-formation and imprecise causal γνῶσις ............................................... 261 
4.4  ARISTOTLE AND THE PROBLEM: CONCLUSIONS ...................................................... 266 
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................................... 268
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PREFACE
This project has taken four years to complete; during that period and the years leading up to it, I
have benefitted from the input and support of a number of people. I’d like to begin by thanking
my advisor, Jim Lennox, first, for all the guidance he has given me on every aspect of this
project and for always making himself available to discuss it, second, for his consistently
insightful and prompt feedback on my material, and, third, for his patience. I’d like to thank my
committee as a whole for their input, especially in connection with the first two chapters, which
strongly reflect the influence of conversations with each member. I owe Allan Gotthelf a special
debt of gratitude, and not only for his role on the committee. Ten years ago, as one my first
philosophy professors, he introduced me both to Aristotle and to the philosophical study of
concepts. He continues to be invaluable as teacher, a mentor, and one of my closest friends.
Many other friends deserve acknowledgement as well. My thinking on some of the topics
of this dissertation has been spurred by conversations over the years with Jason Rheins and
Harry Binswanger, and with Ben Bayer, who also read and commented on portions of the text.
Many of my friends have been important sources of encouragement; in addition to those already
mentioned, I’d like to single out Robert Mayhew, Tara Smith, John McCaskey, and Onkar and
Debi Ghate. My girlfriend, Karen Shoebotham, has also been a source of such encouragement,
and I’d like to thank her for this and for the many other contributions she’s made to my life over
the past for years. I would also like thank my parents for their unfailing support, over the years,
which has taken too many forms to enumerate here.
Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the support of several institutions. The University of
Pittsburgh and the Andrew Mellon Foundation provided fellowships which supported me during
the second and third years of this project. The Ayn Rand Institute has been supportive of my
career in a number of ways, and I’d like to thank them especially for grants which freed me from
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teaching during the summer of 2004, when I began work on this project, and also during my final
year of work on it.
I turn now to the more mundane task of announcing some conventions regarding texts,
translations, and citations. Except where otherwise indicated, translations from Greek are my
own, and are from the texts included in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG). Square and
angle brackets, which I sometimes reproduce in the translations, represent material so bracketed
in these texts (though, for these purposes I don’t distinguish between things that appear in square
brackets and daggers in the text). Interpolations of my own in quoted material (whether
translated or otherwise) are enclosed in braces. Citations to 20th Century and most 19th Century
works are in the “name, date” format. Earlier texts are cited by their titles, with portions referred
to by section, paragraph, or line number depending on the scholarly convention associated with
the relevant text. I have often found it necessary to use (rather than merely mention) Greek
words in my exposition. Because of this, I have dispensed with the tradition of omitting
quotation marks around mentions of Greek words.
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1.0 THE PROBLEM
My aim in this dissertation is to determine Aristotle’s position on what I take to be one of
philosophy’s fundamental and most persistent problems. I call this problem the “Problem of
Concepts”, though it is more commonly known as the “Problem of Universals”. A fundamental
problem cannot be defined without controversy. It forces itself upon philosophers from different
traditions in different periods, who address it in their differing vocabularies and in the context of
their differing assumptions. The Problem of Concepts is no exception. I will offer my own
account of it shortly; for the moment, it will be sufficient to give the problem’s resumé—to list
some of the debates and doctrines that have been forms or consequences of it.
The problem arose in Socrates’ search for definitions and motivated Plato’s Theory of
Forms. In the Medieval period, it became a debate about the metaphysical status and location of
“universals”. In the early Modern period, it was the debate over the existence and nature of
“general ideas”. For Kant and his successors, the conviction that concepts spring from the mind
prompted a radical reconceptualization of the relationship between mind and world. The Problem
remains current in the growing literature on concepts, in theories of reference, in continued
debates about the ontological status of universals, in questions about the proper methods of
scientific classification and about what makes these methods proper, and in debates about
whether perception has the kind of “content” that can serve as a justification for propositional
(i.e., conceptual) knowledge.
Many of the positions in these contemporary and historical debates claim Greek
pedigrees, and, in every period, the scholarship of Greek philosophy has been motivated and
colored by then-contemporary ideas. Recent philosophers have increasingly looked to Aristotle
for inspiration and have inspired a renewed scholarly interest in him. Most notable in this
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connection is the literature on natural kinds originating in the works of Putnam and Kripke.1 It
self-consciously looks back to Aristotle and it has informed and motivated the work of scholars
such as Bolton and Charles.2 A similar pattern is evident in Nussbaum’s attribution to Aristotle
of a Kantian/Putnamite “internal realism,” and Irwin’s contrary attribution to him of an anti-
Kantian “metaphysical realism”.3 Both advocate the position they attribute to Aristotle and do so
for what they take to be Aristotelian reasons. Michael Esfeld (2000) argues that a study of
Aristotle’s “direct realism” about cognition shows us how, in general, the “price” of direct
realism is a McDowell-like “ontology on which the world has a somewhat conceptual structure,”
and McDowell himself has compared his conceptually structured world with Aristotle’s
conception of the structure provided by form.4 These controversies show Aristotle’s relevance to
contemporary thought, but they also show a lack of consensus about Aristotle’s position on the
nature of concepts and their relationship to the world that we know by means of them. My aim in
this dissertation is to address this question directly—to determine Aristotle’s position on The
Problem of Concepts.
In order to proceed, I must first define the Problem in terms that capture the fundamental
philosophical issue, are true to concerns that moved Aristotle himself, and are accessible to a
philosophical readership that is increasingly diverse in its methods, assumptions, and technical
vocabulary. In the first part of this chapter, I lay out the Problem as I understand it, making little
reference to any of the controversies that I listed in the Problem’s resumé above. In the second
part, I discuss how this problem arose in Plato’s dialogues, where Aristotle identified it as the
motivation for Plato’s Theory of Forms. In the third, and final part, of the chapter, I will discuss
the relation between the Problem of Concepts and the Problem of Universals as it is traditionally
understood.
No way of posing a fundamental philosophical problem will be intuitive to all readers,
but I hope that my way will not be idiosyncratic. Whether or not readers are convinced that the
Problem as I lay it out is the fundamental problem responsible for all the controversies that I
listed in the resumé above, I hope they will recognize it as a problem of importance.

1 See Kripke 1980 and Putnam 1977.
2 See Bolton 1976 and Charles 2000.
3 See Nussbaum 1986 and Irwin 1988a.
4 Personal conversation, October 2004.
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