46548350 epistemology of aristole

8/4/2019 46548350 Epistemology of Aristole

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EPISTEMOLOGY OFARISTOLE (384322 BC)

All men in nature desire to

know...


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Like Plato, Aristotle believes that knowledge

is a form of recollection. He believes that

there are universal causes and particularcauses, however, contrary to Plato, he

believes that particulars carry an essence of

the form. The four causes, or what makes an

object what it is, are its formal, material,efficient, and final causes.


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Using the example of a chair, the formal cause isthe blueprint, the material is the wood used,efficient is the act of putting the chair together,

and the final cause is using the chair as a chair.Everything has these four causes, butsubstantially changing any of them will cause thechair to lose its chairness. If you know all of a

particular's causes, you know its essence.Aristotle justifies this by saying that everythingmust have a cause. Causes give rise to essence,but do not mistake cause for essence.


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Knowledge

are derived from existence, wherein it is

identical with its object.

Knowledge is gained either directly, by

abstracting the defining traits of the species,

or indirectly, by deducing new facts fromthose already known, In accordance with the

rules of logic.


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Knowledge originates in sense perception andtaking logic as the intellectual procedure forarriving at a reliable knowledge of nature.

The starting points are the natures or essencesof the objects being studiedsay, the essence ofa cow; these natures or essences explain why theobjects have certain features, which in turnexplain why they have certain other features,and so on. Aristotle's remarks on how we cometo know the starting points are somewhatbaffling.


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Posterior Analytics

In the Posterior Analytics

, Aristotle claims

that each science consists of a set offirstprinciples, which are necessarily true andknowable directly, and a set of truths, which

are both logically derivable from and causally

explained by the first principles.


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The demonstration of a scientific truth is

accomplished by means of a series

ofsyllogismsa form of argument inventedby Aristotlein which the premises of each

syllogism in the series are justified as the

conclusions of earlier syllogisms


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. In each syllogism, the premises not only

logically necessitate the conclusion (i.e., the

truth of the premises makes it logicallyimpossible for the conclusion to be false) but

causally explain it as well.


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Aristotle also believed in the difference of

essential properties and accidental

properties. Accidental properties areproperties that an object has that aren't

needed to make that object what it is


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. For example, how much a dog weights has

nothing to do with the dog's dogness, but is

nonetheless a property that the dogpossesses. The dog's essential properties are

the things that make it a dog instead of a cat

or other fuzzy creature.


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In order to know something's causes, you

can't simply contemplate the object, you

must go out and experience it. If you want toknow about oak trees, don't think about

them, go out and look, grow, smell, eat, and

do everything you can involving oak trees.

That is how you will grasp an oak tree'sessence.


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Knowledge can only be gained in two ways:

by this Aristotilian induction, as described

above, or by deductive syllogism.

These two methods of gaining knowledge are

the justification in 'justified true belief.'Aristotle said that you can only know what is

necessarily true.


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This sequence is first of all, the existence of

things and their processes; secondly, our

thinking about things and their behaviour;and finally, the transformation of our thought

about things into words.


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In DeAnima, Aristotle makes extensive use of

technical terminology introduced and

explained elsewhere in his writings. alike.


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He claims, for example, using vocabulary derivedfrom his physical and metaphysical theories, thatthe soul is a first actuality of a natural organicbody (DeAnima ii 1, 412b56), that it is asubstance as form of a natural body which haslife in potentiality (DeAnima ii 1, 412a201) and,

similarly, that it is a first actuality of a naturalbody which has life in potentiality (DeAnima ii 1,412a278), all claims which apply to plants,animals and humans


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Hylomorphism

is simply a compound word composed of theGreek terms for matter (hul) and form or shape(morph); thus one could equally describe

Aristotle's view of body and soul as an instanceof his matter-formism. That is, when heintroduces the soul as theform of the body,which in turn is said to be the matterof the soul,

Aristotle treats soul-body relations as a specialcase of a more general relationship whichobtains between the components of allgenerated compounds, natural or artifactual.


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According to this theory, when we wish toexplain what there is to know, for example,about a bronze statue, a complete accountnecessarily alludes to at least the followingfour factors: the statue's matter, its form orstructure, the agent responsible for thatmatter manifesting its form or structure, and

the purpose for which the matter was madeto realize that form or structure. These fourfactors he terms the fo


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The Four Causes

A cause for Aristotle is a factor that partly

determines a result.

Aristotle identified four causes as the

explanation for anything (or event) that is.

How and why something came to be is

understood by examining its four causes.


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The causes are:

The Material Cause basically the stuff out of

which anything is made.

The Formal Cause the form, size, and shapeof the thing.

The Efficient Cause what put the material

intothe form it is in.

The Final Cause the purpose of the thing.


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Much of what Aristotle says about

knowledge is part of his doctrine

about the nature of the soul, and inparticular the human soul.


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As he uses the term, the soul (psyche) of a

thing is what makes it alive; thus, every living

thing, including plant life, has a soul. Themind or intellect (nous) can be described

variously as a power, faculty, part, or aspect

of the human soul. It should be noted that for

Aristotle soul and intellect are scientificterms.


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Much of what Aristotle says about knowledge

is part of his doctrine about the nature of

the soul, and in particular the human soul


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. As he uses the term, the soul (psyche) of a

thing is what makes it alive; thus, every living

thing, including plant life, has a soul. Themind or intellect (nous) can be described

variously as a power, faculty, part, or aspect

of the human soul. It should be noted that for

Aristotle soul and intellect are scientificterms.


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De Anima

On the Soul (Greek (Per

Pschs), Latin DeAnima) is a major treatise

by Aristotle on the nature of living things.

His discussion centres on the kinds

ofsouls possessed by different kinds of livingthings, distinguished by their different

operations.


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Thus plants have the capacity for

nourishment and reproduction, the minimum

that must be possessed by any kind of livingorganism.

Lower animals have, in addition, the powersof sense-perception and self-motion(action).

Humans have all these as well as intellect.


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The notion ofsoulused by Aristotle is onlydistantly related to the usual modernconception. He holds that the soul is theform,or essence of any living thing; that it is not adistinct substance from the body that it is in;that it is the possession of soul (of a specifickind) that makes an organism an organism at

all, and thus that the notion of a body withouta soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body,is simply unintelligible.


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In his sketchy account of the process of

thinking in De anima (On the Soul), Aristotle

says that the intellect, like everything else,must have two parts: something analogous to

matter and something analogous to form.


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activeintellect

The first of these is the passive intellect; the

second is active intellect, of which Aristotle

speaks tersely. Intellect in this sense isseparable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in

its essential nature activity. When intellect

is set free from its present conditions it

appears as just what it is and nothing more: italone is immortal and eternaland without it

nothing thinks.


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This part of Aristotles views about

knowledge is an extension of what he says

about sensation. According to him, sensationoccurs when the sense organ is stimulated by

the sense object, typically through some

medium, such as light for vision and air for

hearing


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. This stimulation causes a sensible species

to be generated in the sense organ itself. This

species is some sort of representation ofthe object sensed. As Aristotle describes the

process, the sense organ receives the form

of sensible objects without the matter, just as

the wax receives the impression of the signet-ring without the iron or the gold.


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46548350 epistemology of aristole

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