Analyses of Aristotle

243 Pages·2004·1.27 MB·English

by  Jaakko Hintikka

ANALYSES OF ARISTOTLE
JAAKKO HINTIKKA SELECTED PAPERS
VOLUME6
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths.
1996 ISBN 0-7923-4091-4
2. Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator.An Ultimate
Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. 1996
ISBN 0-7923-4246-1
3. Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics. 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4766-8
4. Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays. 1997
ISBN0-7923-4780-3
5. Inquiry as Inquiry. A Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1999
ISBN 0-7923-5477-X
6. Analyses of Aristotle. 2004
ISBN 1-4020-2040-6
JAAKKO HINTIKKA
Boston University, U.S.A.
ANALYSES OF ARISTOTLE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Origin of the essays vii
Introduction ix
1. On Aristotle’s notion of existence 1
2. Semantical games, the alleged ambiguity of ‘is’, and Aristotelian
categories 23
3. Aristotle’s theory of thinking and its consequences for his
methodology 45
4. On the role of modality in Aristotle’s metaphysics 77
5. On the ingredients of an Aristotelian science 87
6. Aristotelian axiomatics and geometrical axiomatics 101
7. Aristotelian induction 111
8. (with Ilpo Halonen) Aristotelian explanations 127
9. Aristotle’s incontinent logician 139
10. On the development of Aristotle’s ideas of scientific method and
the structure of science 153
11. What was Aristotle doing in his early logic, anyway?: A reply to
Woods and Hansen 175
12. Concepts of scientific method from Aristotle to Newton 183
13. The fallacy of fallacies 193
14. Socratic questioning, logic, and rhetoric 219
v
ORIGIN OF THE ESSAYS
All permissions granted for the previously published essays by their respective
copyright holders are most gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to
the editors of the volumes in which these articles appeared previously and to
the co-author of one of the articles.
1. ‘‘On Aristotle’s notion of existence’’, The Review of Metaphysics vol.52
(June, 1999), pp.779–805. Reprinted with permission.
2. ‘‘Semantical games, the alleged ambiguity of ‘is’ and Aristotelian cate-
gories’’, Synthese vol.54 (1983), pp.443–468 (D. Reidel Publishing Co.,
Dordrecht).
3. ‘‘Aristotle’stheoryofthinkinganditsconsequencesforhismethodology’’,
previously unpublished.
4. ‘‘On the role of modality in Aristotle’s metaphysics’’, in Of Scholars,
Savants and Their Texts, ed. by Ruth Link-Salinger, Peter Lang
Publishing, New York (1989), pp.123–134. Reprinted with permission.
5. ‘‘On the ingredients of an Aristotelian science’’, Nouˆs vol.6 (1972),
pp.55–69.Reprintedwithpermissionfrom BlackwellPublishing,Oxford.
6. ‘‘Aristotelian axiomatics and geometrical axiomatics’’, in Theory Change,
Ancient Axiomatics and Galilean Methodology, ed. by Jaakko Hintikka
et al., D. Reidel Publishing, Dordrecht (1980), pp.133–144.
7. ‘‘Aristotelianinduction’’,RevuelnternationaledePhilosophievol.34(1980),
pp.422–439. Reprinted with permission.
8. (with Ilpo Halonen) ‘‘Aristotelian explanations’’, Studies in the History of
the Philosophy of Science vol.31, no.1 (2000), pp.125–136. Reprinted
with permission from Elsevier.
9. ‘‘Aristotle’s incontinent logician’’, Ajatus vol.37 (1978), pp.48–63.
Reprinted with permission.
10. ‘‘On the development of Aristotle’s ideas of scientific method and the
structure of science’’, Aristotle’s Philosophical Development: Problems and
Prospects, ed. by William Wians, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman &
Littlefield (1996), pp.83–104. Reprinted with permission.
vii
viii ORIGINOFTHEESSAYS
11. ‘‘What was Aristotle doing in his early logic, anyway?: A reply to Woods
and Hanson’’, Synthese vol.113 (1997), pp.241–249 (Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Dordrecht).
12. ‘‘Concepts of scientific method from Aristotle to Newton’’, in Knowledge
and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, Vol.I, ed. by Monica Asztalos,
John E. Murdoch and Ilkka Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Acta Philosophica
Fennica, vol.48 (1990), pp.72–84. Reprinted with permission.
13. ‘‘The fallacy of fallacies’’, Argumentation vol.1 (1987), pp.211–238
(D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht).
14. ‘‘Socratic questioning, logic, and rhetoric’’, Revue Internationale de
Philosophie vol.47, no. 184 (1993), pp.5–30. Reprinted with permission.
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of the introduction to a book should be the same as that of the
label on a medicine bottle. It should tell the reader how to use the text of the
book. The present volume needs such instructions more than most books,
including the earlier volumes of my selected papers. The main warning that
the label on this product should proclaim is not to read the papers printed or
reprinted here in the same way as fully polished contributions to scholarly
journals on ancient philosophy. I have been, and I continue to be, fascinated
byAristotle’sphilosophicalideas.Ihavethoughtaboutthem,andIhavecome
up with a number of interpretations of them. The essays published or repub-
lishedherearepresentationsoftheseinterpretations.Alas,theyareallsketches
rather than fully argued and documented papers. The reason is obvious. My
main lines of work in philosophy run elsewhere and have the first claim to my
working time and energy. I fully admit this orientation of my philosophical
interests does not excuse the sketchiness of my papers. Since I was aware of
the situation for a long time, I hoped to rewrite some of the papers published
hereandreplacesomeothersbynewonesinsuchawaythattheinterpretational
argumentation and scholarly documentation would be on the same level as in
specializedpublicationsonancientphilosophy.Reluctantly,Ihavereachedthe
conclusion that I will never have a chance of doing so. Hence my only chance
of bringing my interpretational ideas to the attention of a wider philosophical
audience is to reprint the original papers as they are, with an explanation of
their status.
My main reason for doing so is a strong belief in the potential importance
of the interpretations I outline in these papers. The first and foremost aspect
of this importance is the giving of new general perspectives on Aristotle’s
philosophy. It might seem overoptimistic, not to say pretentious, to think that
after more than two millennia there could be unused clues to Aristotle’s
thinking. The fact nevertheless is, I believe, that in some cases the progress of
systematic conceptual analysis (and synthesis) puts what Aristotle is doing –
or, rather, thinking – in a new light. Even the most central concept of all,
ontology, the concept of being, bears witness to these opportunities. For a
century and a half, the consensus of philosophers is that this concept is
irreducibly ambiguous between being in the sense of identity, predication,
existence and subsumption. This assumption may be called the Frege-Russell
ambiguity thesis. But is the thesis true? Everybody admits that there are
different uses of words for being, but the Frege-Russell thesis tries to explain
ix
x INTRODUCTION
these differences by declaring a single verb to be ambiguous. This ambiguity
thesisis evenbuilt intothestandard logicalnotation. Itistherefore littleshort
of a shock to realize that nobody before the nineteenth century accepted the
ambiguity thesis. Aristotle is a case in point, and this fact at once puts much
of his thinking in a new light. Some of the consequences of this insight are
explored in the essays below devoted to Aristotle’s treatment of the notions of
existence and of category. For instance, when it is realized that the notion of
being can be handled without assuming the Frege-Russell ambiguity, as it is
handledinordinarylanguage,Aristotle’stheoryofcategoriessuddenlybecomes
eminently easy to understand. At the same time, Aristotle’s treatment of exis-
tenceinthecontextofasyllogisticscienceexplainssomeofthemostcharacteris-
tic features of his doctrines about the structure of science and scientific
explanation. For instance, the structure of an Aristotelian science becomes
understandable in the light of these insights. This structure was first explored
in the essay ‘On the ingredients of an Aristotelian science’’.
Another important distinction between different kinds of being, orthogonal
tothedistinctionbetweendifferentcategories,isthedistinctionbetweenpoten-
tial being and actual being. The problem as to how this dimension of being is
related to the rest of Aristotle’s metaphysics is briefly discussed in the essay
‘‘The role of modality in Aristotle’s metaphysics’’.
Again, Aristotle’s logic is usually considered as a system on a par with our
deductive systems. There is not necessarily anything wrong in doing so, but it
does not help to understand how Aristotle came to develop his ideas about
logic. An enhanced topical interest in question-answer dialogues and in their
logic has led to the idea of considering the Socratic elenchus, his method of
questioning, as Aristotle’s starting-point in his work in logic. Plato had been
soimpressedbytheSocraticmethodthathehadsystematizedandinstitutional-
ized it into questioning games which served as the method of philosophical
argumentation and philosophical training in his Academy. Aristotle was the
first to develop a systematic theory of such dialectical games, as he himself
confidently states at the end of De Sophisticis Elenchis. But it is important to
realizethatthenewtheoryhehaddevelopedisnotalogicaltheoryofdeductive
reasoning in our sense, but a theory of the Socratic questioning games. But
Aristotle did not stop here. He was as competitive as the next Greek. He
wanted to know how to play these games so as to win in them. Now any trial
lawyer can tell you what is crucial in successful cross-examination: predicting
the interlocutor’s answers. Now Aristotle realized that some answers can be
predictedwithcompletecertainty.Theyweretheanswerswhichinourterminol-
ogy are logically implied by the interlocutor’s earlier answers. Aristotle began
to study and to systematize them and – presto! – deductive logic was born.
Thisideaanditsconsequencesarestudiedinseveraloftheessays,including
the essay on the development of his methodology and the note on his early
logic.ItisaconsequenceofthisinsightthatAristotle’sentirelogicandmethod-
ology were thought of by him as being conducted within an interrogative
framework. This puts into a new light also Aristotle’s theory of fallacies, some
INTRODUCTION xi
aspects of his rhetoric and the subsequent history of his methodological ideas.
An explanation why Aristotle’s logic turned out to be syllogistic is proposed
in my joint paper with Ilpo Halonen entitled ‘‘Aristotelian explanations’’.
YetanotherperspectiveisobtainedbyunderstandingAristotleliterallywhen
he says that thinking of anything – say X – means realizing the form of X in
one’ssoul.FromthisitfollowsthatwhatnecessarilyaccompaniesXmustalso
be present in one’s mind. To put it bluntly, all logical consequences present
themselves to one’s mind necessarily, and all necessary connections between
forms–allnaturallaws–canbediscoveredbymeansofthought-experiments.
This line of thought is presented in the essay on Aristotle’s theory of thinking.
It follows that Aristotelian methodology did not consist in collecting evidence
and then drawing inferences from it. Scientific method consisted for Aristotle
in building the relevant forms in one’s mind. It was concept formation, not
unlike searching for a definition. This puts into a new light Aristotle’s entire
methodology, including his notion of induction, to which an early essay is
devoted. It also provides a new perspective on Aristotle’s views on both
theoretical and practical syllogisms, and thereby on both Aristotle’s syllogistic
theory and on his strange views on the weakness of will. The parallelism
betweenthesetwosubjectsishighlightedbythetitleofthepaperon‘‘Aristotle’s
incontinent logician’’.
Since part of the interest of a volume like the present one is that of a
historical record, I have not revised them so as to bring them to a complete
conformity with each other or to with my present views. Likewise, I have not
tried to eliminate overlap between the different essays. This reappearance of
thesamethemesindifferentessaysisonlypartlyexplainablebytheinterrelated-
ness of Aristotle’s different ideas with each other. For technical reasons, it has
beenimpossibletomakethemodesofsourcereferencesuniformfromessayto
essay. I realized the magnitude of this problem too late, and as a result I can
only hope that it bothers my readers less than it bothers me.
In spiteof theseimperfections, Ihope thatthese essayswill inspireothers to
explore further the possibilities that they open of understanding better
Aristotle’s thought. I also have to hope that others will also marshal more
evidence and perhaps even better evidence for the interpretations in the essays
printed or reprinted in this volume.
MysinceregratitudeisduetoalltheSocraticandnon-Socraticinterlocutors
with whom I have discussed the themes of these essays over a period of forty-
some years. I am afraid that I cannot even recall all of them nor therefore
individuatemythanks.PerhapsthankingRussDancywillsymbolizemythank-
ing of all of these colleagues.
Likewise, I owe thanks to all of the secretaries and assistants who have on
differentoccasionshelpedmewiththeessaysprintedorrepresentedhere.They
are the ones who literally write one’s papers, as we all know. Perhaps warm
thanks to my present secretary, Lynne Sullivan, will serve as an expression of
my appreciation of what they all have done.