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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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