Abstract
In the first book of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle distinguishes two types of preliminary knowledge that can be involved in scientific understanding: knowing that something is and knowing what something is, which he treats as equivalent to knowing what something signifies. What do these two types of preliminary knowledge amount to? How are they reciprocally related? On what grounds may they be regarded as trustworthy? It turns out that knowing that something is probably covers three types of knowledge: knowing that something is the case, knowing that something exists, and knowing that something is so-and-so. Given this wide spectrum covered by knowing that something is, the problem arises of understanding what logical space is left for knowing what something is. Unless knowing what something is a particular case of knowing that something is, the most plausible guess is that knowledge of what something is, is knowledge whose linguistic formulation involves the ‘definitional’ reading of sentences, namely the reading of a sentence whereby its predicate-expression is taken to offer a complete description of the nature of the kind signified by its subject-expression. The trustworthiness of our grasp of definitions is due to a special faculty postulated by Aristotle, namely the intellect, which has the power to ‘look into’ the nature of the kinds it is concerned with.
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Notes
- 1.
Discursive learning could be the acquisition of knowledge based on reasoning and argument (opposed to the acquisition of knowledge based on perception) or the acquisition of knowledge of facts (opposed to the acquisition of knowledge of things).
- 2.
I am grateful to Marko Malink for pressing me on the interpretation of T6 and T7.
- 3.
The main MSS report ‘ἀποφάνσεως’, but such a reading is hard to make sense of because shortly later (at 72a11‒12) an ἀπόφανσις is defined as a part of a contradictory pair, so that on the reading of the MSS Aristotle would be saying that a proposition is a part of a part of a contradictory pair. This motivates the emendation of ‘ἀποφάνσεως’ into ‘ἀντιφάσεως’ (note that Aristotle often speaks of the parts of an ἀντίφασις: cf. Int. 9, 19a37; 11, 20b23; APr. 1.1, 24a23‒4; APo. 1.2, 72a11‒12; Metaph. Γ8, 1012b13). A similar emendation is called for at 72a19: even if the reading of the MSS here does not generate an absurdity, the suggestion that a posit assumes ‘any part whatsoever of an ἀπόφανσις’ sounds wrong (one can imagine that the earlier corruption at 72a7‒8 fostered this one).
- 4.
- 5.
One might translate ‘τὸ εἶναί τι ἢ τὸ μὴ εἶναί τι’ also by ‘either it is something or it is not something’. The alternative translation would not make an important difference (because ‘to be something’ could cover both predication and existence), but I find the omission of the predicate (presupposed by my preferred translation) linguistically less harsh than the omission of the subject (presupposed by the alternative translation).
- 6.
Cf. B. Landor, Definitions and Hypotheses in Posterior Analytics 72a19‒25 and 76b35‒77a4, Phronesis, 26 (1981) 308‒18, at 311.
- 7.
Cf. J. Barnes (trans. and comm.), Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2nd ed., Oxford 1993, 100.
- 8.
Cf. R. Robinson, Plato’s Earlier Dialectic, Ithaca and New York 1941, 105.
- 9.
I argued for an interpretation of the Sophist that credits Plato with a distinction between the ordinary and the definitional reading of predicative sentences in my Plato’s Account of Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist, Cambridge 2012, 122‒36.
- 10.
Cf. M. Mignucci (trans. and comm.), Aristotele, Analitici secondi, Rome and Bari 2007, 157.
References
Barnes J (trans. and comm.) (1993) Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 2nd edn. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Bonitz H (1870) Index Aristotelicus. Reimer, Berlin
Crivelli P (2012) Plato’s Account of Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Landor B (1981) Definitions and Hypotheses in Posterior Analytics 72a19–25 and 76b35–77a4. Phronesis 26(1981):308–318
Mignucci M, (trans. and comm.), (2007) Aristotele. Analitici secondi, Laterza, Rome and Bari
Robinson R (1941) Plato’s Earlier Dialectic. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and New York
Waitz T (ed. and comm.) (1844‒1846) Aristotelis Organon Graece. Hahn, Leipzig
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Crivelli, P. (2020). Aristotle on Scientific Principles (Posterior Analytics 1. 1‒2). In: Fabris, A. (eds) Trust. Trust 2020. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 54. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44018-3_1
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