We know of course that, like the ideas of Plato about whom the philosopher A. N. Whitehead once famously said, the Western Philosophic Tradition is but a series of footnotes, Aristotle’s work has been massively influential and endlessly interpreted over the centuries since his death. I add a comment to this wealth of knowledge with some diffidence.
Awareness of aporia
The response by Aristotle to an awareness of aporia, is seen more easily than his awareness of aporia itself, but both features are there to be uncovered. For example, Jonathan Barnes suggests that Aristotle’s account of truth is an accumulative one ie. that it builds…one account upon another and that ‘no one can attain it in a wholly satisfactory way’ (1996:17).
Aristotle himself provides evidence for this view. At the outset of his explanation of knowledge, in Book 2 of his Metaphysics. (The translation by W.D. Ross in 1924, Amazon 2008) he said that…
no one is ever able to attain the truth adequately, while on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but everyone says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
…the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it.
It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.
Aristotle’s response to aporia – empiricism
He is generally – popularly – thought to have been the champion of empirical knowledge, as distinct from the uncertainties of sophism and the mysterious nature of Plato’s forms, yet there in the above quote, in his own words (translated admittedly) he showed that not only is he aware of aporia, his response to it had a distinctively sophist tone. Like them, he is able to tell us, dogmatically, that we cannot reach truth – only a measure of it, and also like them, we can improve on it by collective effort. However this similarity is more apparent than real, for it is here that Aristotle can be seen to have parted company with the sophists. The need for a collective entity in the making of knowledge (and therefore a desire for democracy in public affairs) seems to have been the end point in sophistic thought. For Aristotle, it was the start.
He talked of ways that we might produce practical knowledge of the world. He argued firstly, that it was through the senses – through our ordinary everyday observance of what we see, hear and smell and touch, and what we can figure out from our senses, that we can understand the world. So he differed not only from the sophists but also from Plato. Where Plato thought that true knowledge lay in the mind or in the realm of ideas, Aristotle saw it as residing in the process of looking around us. To know about horses, for Aristotle, we needed to find examples of different kind of them, not seek after a perfect form.
This response to aporia is the one Aristotle is perhaps best known for – as the originator of empirical science. We shall shortly see that there is evidence that he must share this position with another form of empiricism, and that our modern knowledge-making rests on a merger of these two approaches to knowledge. Nevertheless, he is credited with being the first philosopher in the Western tradition to see the importance of human experience. Aristotle did definitely argue for the centrality of the senses in how we can know the world and he laid out the process through which we might achieve this – that is, through what we have come to regard as empirical knowledge.
…and logic – the syllogism
His second means of producing knowledge was through the operation of logic and especially the syllogism [G]. This basic form of logic, along with the empirical method, might be said to have been his …magnificent contribution to philosophy – cetrtainlu he is credited with its introductio, It enabled a piece of information, once gained from the empirical process, to be manipulated, handled and deployed in different settings, thus enabling it to transition from mere data to useful knowledge. We use it still; it forms the base of pretty well every essay, article or argument we currently produce. Indeed; academia, and life in general, would look very different today had the syllogism never been invented.
Briefly, for again like so much of Greek philosophy, a proper treatment of this concept could occupy the rest of this book, the syllogism involves placing two statements that have a certain relationship with each other, alongside a third, concluding statement. A very simple example might be …
- I am in the county of Devon, (statement 1).
- The county of Devon is in England (statement 2).
- Therefore I am in England (conclusion).
I think it is fair to say that this argument (syllogism) is valid in that it holds together as a piece of logic. It does so because the first statement is encompassed within the second. Of course the first two statements may not be true, in which case the argument (or as Aristotle called it ‘the demonstration’) will simply not work, but for simplicity, lets assume they are true. We could if we wanted, ask how I could be sure that I knew where I was. Thus a further syllogism could be given, eg.
- I am a thinking conscious being.
- Thinking, conscious beings generally know where they are, and I’ve lived here for many years.
- Therefore, I can reasonably say that I am in Devon.
Thus, again assuming that the first two statements are true or reasonably true, we can see how we have moved from a statement about my essential psychology as a human being, to geographical knowledge about England.
But the questioning may not be over. We could perhaps now ask how I could be sure that I am a thinking conscious being. What are my beliefs concerning my psychology and where do they come from? Aristotle’s answer to this question is interesting…and revealing, but it must wait a while, as there is more to say before this.
Aristotle introduced the syllogism in Prior Analytics and discussed it in some detail in Posterior Analytics. He explained in his opening statement of the latter book, or A Po, as it is often abbreviated, that knowledge of the world is always based on previous knowledge. The exact text (in translation) is the following.
All instruction given or received by way of argument proceeds from previous knowledge. This becomes evident upon a survey of all the species of such instruction. The mathematical sciences and all other speculative disciplines are acquired in this way, and so are the two forms of dialectical [G] reasoning, syllogistic [G] and inductive [G]; for each of these latter make use of old knowledge to impart new, the syllogism assuming an audience that accepts its premises, induction exhibiting the universal as implicit in the clearly known particular.
Again, the persuasion exerted by rhetorical argument is in principle the same, since they use either example, a kind of induction, orenthymeme [G], a form of syllogism. (Mure: 1928)
So, it rather looks as though Aristotle had embraced an epistemological constructivism, since a degree of certainty in knowledge has, for him, to be made by groups of people working together, either at one time or over a period. However, this too would seem not to be the last word by Aristotle on his epistemology, for it is reasonable to ask how this process of events, leading to a measure of truth, might operate?
The devine
The answer to these questions lies in his third contribution to western philosophy – that of causation. It is one that became eclipsed by the competitor empiricist we shall shortly be examining, and whose alternative epistemology has given rise to the sceptical approach to causation that we currently employ. This is typified by David Hume’s comment in the mid 18th century, that we never actually see a cause – only the situation before and after. We surmise that in the intervening time, a cause has taken place. However, we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves here. Aristotle’s theory of change was different from that of Hume. It involved a combination of four causes – or rather four different aspects of change.
Aristotle summarised his four parts in Book Alpha 3 of The Metaphysics (trans. by Hugh Lawson-Tancred:2004) but for clarity and simplicity I am quoting here from Andrea Falcon’s explanation (2019). The causes are …The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
• The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
• The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
• The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical too.
He believed that the chain of causation must come to an end at some point by something that causes, but which is not itself caused by anything – sometimes expressed as the ‘unmoved mover’. He explained in The Metaphysics, that sciences have an end to their chains of causation, and at that end – or at the beginning, depending on which way they were considered – a set of first principles can be found, which have to be true and knowable directly. It is from this essential truth Aristotle believed, that science progresses through syllogisms and induction, based on the evidence of the senses – the empirical evidence.
What is really interesting, was a surprising emergence of religion, in his account of knowledge. Were we to press Aristotle more directly about the nature of this first principle in a chain of causation – we would find him asserting
…God is thought to be among the causes for all things, and to be a kind of principle, and also God would have such knowledge either exclusively or mainly.(Metaphysics Alpha Two: Lawson-Tancred: 2004:10)
When I first read those words, I thought I must be misunderstanding the text, for it seemed to be contrary to the generally held understanding of Aristotle as a practical empiricist, but Tancred confirms the reading, in his introduction to that part of Metaphysics. Aristotle’s position, he says, is that philosophy …
has a special relationship with the divine’, such that ‘divinity’ is clearly a primary principle of the world and so itself falls in the domain of philosophy. Indeed, there are points in the work in which Aristotle seems to come close to equating philosophy with theology. (Metaphysics: Lawson-Tancred:2004:7)
So there we have it. for all his awareness of aporia and the empirical reliance on our senses, in the end Aristotle thinks that our response to aporia must involve Gods and divine entities in some way.
And it is here that Aristotle’s epistemology – his theory of science – really does start to differ from the mainstream of what we currently think of as our own account of science. it is a commonplace nowadays to consider that science is a method of enquiry and something that could, in theory at least, go on forever, there being no need for a first cause. We shall be looking at our present assumptions and beliefs about science later in this book. For now though, we may just want to note several points that seem to follow from Aristotle’s account of knowledge and which illustrate how it connects with our present thinking.
Aristotle and democracy
The first point I want to draw out is that we may think all this talk of first causes is pretty arcane and has little relevance to us in the 21st century. Well, that may be so, but there is an aspect of Aristotle’s thought that is certainly relevant to us. This that it is now possible to see, or to add to, existing suspicions, that like Plato, he is not particular enthusiastic about democracy – about that is, each person having an equal say in how their community should managed.
Still in Alpha 2 of Metaphysics (Tancred: 2004:8) Aristotle said that people who have studied philosophy – causes and especially first causes) – are in a different category from others.
For the wise man (sic) should not be instructed but should instruct, and it is not he who should obey another, but rather the less wise should obey him’.
With apologies for the gender exclusivity of Aristotle’s times, it is clear what he thinks about equality between people. Moreover he clearly believes there is a hierarchy of knowledges – that the…
man (sic) who chooses to know for its own sake [meaning, for no particular practical benefit] will especially choose the most extreme form of knowledge, and this is …primary things and causes. For it is through them and from them that the other things are known, and not the latter through the underlying things. (Tancred:8)
The point for us is that we do not think today through hierarchies of knowledge. In this sense at least, as well as in the matter of religion’s vouchsafing of human knowledge, it does not seem entirely obvious that Aristotle is the originator – not wholly anyway – of our present thought.
Noncontradiction, religion and science
The second point is that Aristotle did not just ignore the arguments of the sophists; he confronted them. He took the view that their denial of any possibility of humans ever knowing truth about the world, and their response to aporia being an acceptance of that, meant that they really, in effect, had nothing to say on any subject. However in Metaphysics he went further than this to argue, that ‘the same thing cannot at the same time both be and not be’ and this he held was ‘the securest of all principles’ (Tancred: 89). This is Aristotle’s famous principle of non-contradiction, which he considered was a first principle i.e. not reliant upon any others for its veracity. In short it is just not possible, Aristotle insisted, that people can argue that we cannot know truth, but expect to be believed when they argue this. It is of course not only the sophists who are targeted here, but also any epistemology using the same blanket argument that there can be no argument. Clearly this could apply to the similar position of modern day postmodernists.
The third and somewhat speculative point I want to make is that the inclusion of a God, vouchsafing Aristotle’s chain of causation, is perhaps the reason why some present day scientists – secular scientists – are religious, that is to say scientists who accept the existence of a secular empirically knowable world can also, at the same time, be comfortable with the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful God existing alongside this world view. This is because Aristotle provides an example of exactly that kind of dual epistemology.
However, we shall also, shortly, be able to explain why another group of present day pro-empirical science people – humanists – are largely hostile to any idea of religion. To reach this position though, we must move the narrative on, from the famous Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who until relatively recently, would have been the last word in ancient philosophy, until, as Annas & Barnes insisted, ‘a perspective both wider and more just’ gained recognition (1994: ix)
For now, it just remains for us to review what we have gathered so far from this brief look at ancient Greek thought. Readers will recall what we set out to do on this quest into the origins of the western tradition. We left the debates of historians behind for the time being, to try to establish how thinkers who had gone before, had handled the scepticism – the dramatic response to aporia – that the postmodernists were offering.
The first thing I noticed when I first started to explore sceptical issues in the ancient world is that there was a lot of it. The postmodernists in the present day often seem to suggest…although they never fully argue it, that they themselves have discovered scepticism. Beverley Southgate refreshingly helped us realise that this is not so, that scepticism was widespread in the philosophy and literature of Modern Europe, between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. However one doesn’t need to study the ancient world long to find that this same kind of scepticism, especially if we see it through the prism of the concept of ‘aporia and response’, was everywhere in the philosophy of ancient Greece.
Not only was scepticism ubiquitous in the ancient world, but so was the dogmatist version of it – the one espoused by postmodernism – that is to say, the argument that there can be no argument. We saw this, first in the work of the sophists, then in the aporetic awareness of Socrates and Plato. However we also saw that Aristotle decried such dogmatism on the grounds that it made no sense – that it contradicted his basic principle of non-contradiction. but we saw also that Aristotle was able to challenge dogmatism by employing a religious epistemological back-stop, a divine being …a so called ‘unmoved mover’.
I found this to be quite depressing; my quest to find how to make sense of the world, looked at an end as soon as it had started. It seemed then obvious that we humans had a simple three-way choice (i) either to believe in a mysterious realm of ‘other world’ certainty as Socrates an Plato seemed to suggest, (ii) to thoroughly embrace an Aristotelian religious belief as the guarantor of our empirical knowledge or (iii) to stick with an essentially non-sensical idea of scepticism favoured by sophism and the present day postmodernists. There appeared to be no other option.
Not all scepticism is the same.
I carried on reading nevertheless, albeit somewhat dejectedly and then, gradually, it started to become clear. I should like to claim this as a personal win – the result of dogged persistence in the face of difficulty, but in truth it was nothing like that. Rather it had been the result of a friendly action by a fellow postgrad at the University of Chichester, Paul Norcross. When browsing the shelves of a small Brighton bookshop, he had come across the then relatively little known work on the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus by Julia Annas & Jonathan Barnes (1994). He recalled that I was particularly interested in scepticism and very kindly bought the book for me. This ‘discovery’ put a different perspective on ancient scepticism, although I didn’t realise at the time quite how different and how significant for our modern world, that perspective would be. So, it is with thanks to Paul, and to the ideas of Anna and Barnes, that we must now turn.
