The doctrine of analogy of being; being is said in many ways, but there is still a fundamental type of being which is Being-as-substance.
In §4 Aristotle reflects on how it is possible to argue against the PNC. ”A phenomenology of fault”. Gorgias and Protagoras argue in a paralell.
The impact of refuting the PNC, is that they take assumptions that are gratuitous.
A ”bad philosophy” brings you astray.
You have arguments that are not toally clear, but when you reflect, there is a gray zone between true and false.
So the reason why someone commits a mistake probably depends on the kind of assumptions they have.
To analyse this criticism; maybe the relativisitic position is a sort of short-cut to solve the problem of what is real.
You have to argue with them, but what they are saying isn’t what they really mean, so you have to find their real reason for arguing.
However, there are those that argue for the sake of arguing, the ”bad” sophist.
Plato presents a distinction between Gorgias and his pupils, Gorgias is alright, while his pupils are just annoying.
The general argument against relativism is the PNC, then there is also the fundamental evidence given to us by perception.
In order to argue with relativists, we have to distinguish what they say and what they think.
Here Aristotle accepts Gorgias’ point that to say and to think are not the same thing.
Then there are those who argue for the sake of arguement, and they can be cured only by refuting the argument as expressed in speech and words; we have to remain on the level of language, because they do not actually have a genuine thought beyond what they say. Thus we have to show that what they say is total nonsense.
Those who are really moved by difficulties, those who have taken up relativism, they must completely deny their perception. But this is different from having just an altered perception which might lead to having faulty understanding.
Here you have a series of distinctions, like Being and Essence.
Being as being that, being of determination. ”Watch” can be a determination of Being, or Being as presence.
Aristotle also quotes Homer as a source to understand earlier Greek thought.
He also refers to the Heracliteans, eg. Cratylus: constant movement makes it imposible for some sort of permanence and therefore everything is true and everything is false. Cratylus denies that it is impossible to bathe in the same river even once.
So, Heracliteanism can lead to a sort of relativism.
So he tries to define what the object of Perception is.
We see that sometimes, we say that we have perceived something, but we have not really perceived it. We can say that perception gives fully reliable evidence, but we have to apply the PNC to our experience as well. So we have to focus on something’s appearance, so I have to really analyse what appears to me, and then I can perhaps make judgements.
eg. I have to distinguish between a foreign object and an appropriate object.
Each sense has its own sensibility. Touch is concernced with shape etc.
First I have to analyse the proper sense in which something is being perceived, without going beyond what is given to me. (Notice similarity to Husserl)
The perception as such is entirely reliable, but the perception can lead to faulty opinions.
If I focus on what I perceive in the condition of my perception, this is taken as it is given to me, and this is totally valuable information.
Aristotle makes the claim that there are perceptual illusions, that there are plenty of mistakes, is not enough to say that our perception leaves open the door for any kind of relativism.
If we analyse our perception, there is an absolute kind of knowledge to be had, there is no belief involved.
This position has been challenged by eg. David Hume, or the idea that knowledge is defined in terms of belief, eg. that knowledge is justified belief. (Completely stupid).
Knowledge shouldn’t be defined in terms of belief, they are completely different forms of access to reality.
Aristotle says we have an access to truth, that gives us evidence, and it is a question of how things are, but has nothing to do with belief.
The clear image, is objective, but since our perception always goes beyond the pure object, we are always inegrating data of a proper sensible in an object.
There are limit cases where this integration where you can see two things that are entirely correct, in that they are perceiving the same in different ways.
So he says that we have to be very careful when describing our experience.
If we say that raw perception is the basis of our thought, we don’t really get a lot out of that.
To the senses that which something appears, the thing exists.
There is some kind of evidence in perception, some kind of contact with reality, and from there you have to argue and construct the more reliable kind of information concerning reality.
The second category of opponents, have no real conviction and so are not philosophers. They don’t understand that they seek a reason for something which cannot be given, the starting point of demonstration is not demonstration.
Anything is either true or false, or in a more general sense, either it is or it is not. This is called the ambivalence principle, or the principle of the excluded middle, there cannot be some position between true or false.
In the beginning of the 20:th century there was revolution in how conceptualise the physical world, ie. From Max Planch onwards.
Heisenberg, among the physicists, was better prepared for a philosophical point of view regarding quantum physics and so on.
One of his physical principles, the principle of indetermination,
Dx * Dp =(or larger) h/4pi
Under this size, the normal laws of physics as we know them do not apply.
It is impossible to determine at the same time, the position and the momentum of a particle.
This proposes there is a state of reality that is either/and so or not so.
In Aristotle’s philosophy, there cannot be cases that are neither true nor false, so this makes absolutely no sense in his logic.
Lukasievic and Reichenbach, wrote important essays on PNC, they developed a three value logic.
Logic cannot be dealing entirely with only truth and falsity, because there can be situations there are neither true nor false, or are half-of-either.
George Boule, a logician who wrote on the laws of thought wanted to reduce everything into a binary calculus, which they did not agree with.
This reflection is the end of a process that began already in the middle ages.
This is why we now a days split the PNC and the PEM, we do not have to take them both to be true.
PNC is true in all possible worlds, whilst the PEM is not necessarily true. When we speak of the reality of the quanta we do not apply this principle.
PNC -(p a -p)
-
-p =? p
PEM pv-p
Is a double negation equal to an affirmation?
eg. Popper thinks that the double negation says less.
Furthermore, there is the dialectical logic in Hegel’s system, who think double negation is more than a normal negation.
In Hegel, when a position is denied, you are not going back to the initial position, but there is now a more baggage from the fact that it used to be a simple negation. There is a historical venue of information that remains.
The notion of the PNC has not always been considered seriously. Eg. Protagoras’ sophism (Eutydemus 286) in which Protagoras says it makes no sense to speak of the PNC, because when something is, it doesn’t make sense to speak of it not being. (It is impossible that pv-p but you have to think pv-p). This sophism comes back in the 5.th chapter of the Tractatus of Wittgenstein, 5, 5302.
To say of two things, that they are identical, is nosense. To say that one thing is identical with itself is to say nothing at all.
Protagoras: Two thinks, if they are identical they are not really two. And I cannot say that something is identical with itself. This trivially means nothing.
This position makes the PNC superfluous.
There is a treatise written in 4.th century bc. The identity of all things By Chungtzu claims a similar thing: To say that something cannot be and be under the same respect, it makes no sense, because if something is what it already is, it cannot not be.
For Aristotle, The principle of Identity is a consequence of the PNC, and not the other way around.
The fact that there is a law between being and thought, makes it impossible for something to be other than itself, as it is.
A=A, is not the same as saying A is A, because I have to deny that A and A are the same thing when I physically put them there on the paper. I am implictly intending this.
In the principle of identity, there is no contradiction. But, if you actually want identity, you need both affirmation and negation. In this sense it is logically dependent as a principle.
Aristotle, in a sense, defends Parmenides sense of Being and Logos, but denies many other parts of Parmenides. (According to Heidegger he would be on the good side of Being).
Categories are the general concepts through which we classify the genera of the world, it is anything that is not individual. As long as we have something that goes beyond individuals, we have categories.
Aristotle speaks of 10 categories: Substance, the first. And the other 9 categories which are different forms of the substance, eg. Accident, potentiality, place, time etc.
These are the supreme concepts through which we can speak of reality.
However in the Aristotelian tradition, there is a push to look for super categories, categories that are superior to the 10, and which are coextensive with Being (Being is above the 10 categories).
The evolution of this theory takes a lot of time, like Ibn Sina, is the theory of the Transcendentals: Being, Thing, Unity, Good, Difference.
One is one of the terms that in Aristotle is introduced as an equivalent of Being, as it is. So anything that is, is one. It is a sort of super-category, the unity.
There is a radical difference in Aristotle, and the neo-platonic thinkers, for Plotinus Being is a hypostasis whilst the absolute principle is One. In Aristotle they are on the same level.
However, Aristotles himself did not develop a theory of the transcendentals, but later aristotelians like Aquinas or Albert de Cologne, there is a theory of the transcendentals.
There is a difference between intellectual history and history of philosophy!
The history of philosophy, is an history that reconstructs what people thought, elaborated and understood. So in a sense, we must resist anticipation and anachronism. Being teleological is a mark of a bad historian.
However, there is a development in the history of philosophy which is special; the fact that any history when it is understood as philosophy is contemporary; there is an intentional anachronism and teleology in the history of philosophy.
In other words, it doesn’t recognises anachronism, but as soon as you do, it opens the door to anachronism.
Aristotle writes an early history of philosophy, where he writes and defines about what sort of thought previous philosophers had. Ie. Were they materialist? Were they this and that or this and that?
The task of philosophy is not just to know things, but to know why they are as they are.
The philosophical knowledge is a knowledge of the causes of things. They are of many sorts, and Aristotle makes a theory of causality that includes 4 families of causes.
You have to know the material, the efficient, the formal and the final cause of things in order to really know anything about them.
What creates the difference between philosophical knowledge and normal knowledge, you could know that it is raining outside, but if you know it philosophically you know why these sorts of things happen.
Once Aristotle defines first philosophy he takes a look at the early thinkers and check who can be counted as philosophers in the same tradition, ie. On the basis of principles and caueses.
What is the principle of all reality and what are its causings and causes?
But Aristotle doesn’t say ”I don’t know what philosophy is”, but rather asks ”what is the conception of philosophy in eg. Thales”, but judges them entirely from his own position.
This in a sense is the result of a given history,
In this sense, there is an element of teleology, and an element of anachronism by asking questions that were beyond the scope of these sort of thinkers.
Focus on the kind of order Aristotle applies to the thinkers
There is a sense that there is a gradual increase in understanding what kind of causes that existed, at least according to Aristotles.
Aristotle is uneasy with Parmenides, and doesn’t know how to place him in the canon.
Aristotle doesn’t seem entirely fair towards Plato, is this the case?
Aristotle is actually reading Plato philosophically, and so also uses debates that came after Plato in the academy. Plato might have actually also had oral teachings that were unwritten doctrines (according to people in tübingen)
Read Harold Cherniss.
An American historian of philosophy.
Did not write very much, but it is all of good quality.
The academy of Plato after Plato is the work that the professor recommends. The book is short.
Cherniss was also a witness in the process against Robert Oppenheimer, and had him cleaned of his accusations.
Cherniss studied Aristotle, and tried to understand what the agenda of Aristotle was, and trying to correct Aristotle’s views of the early philosophers.