36 - A Principled Stand: Aristotle's Epistemology

Aristotle's idea of persistent generalization seems to explain why he believed there was a static order in the animal kingdom. It could be said that his epistemics directly relate to his classification of the species according to type and binomial definition, right?

So, where was it that he wrote about what they coined "The Great Chain"? I'm interested to read that work.

How interesting it is that Aristotle himself seems to be the root for our idea of an axiom.

Hi Peter thanks for your great podcasts! I am just wondering about the 'middle term'. In medicine, doctors are always trying to isolate and identify the causes of various diseases. So after experiment and trial and error they might find that the cause of disease X is Y, and so for example they found that the cause of TB was a particular kind of bacteria that spreads through the air (and not something in the water or something in the food etc). So could this be expressed as an Aristotelian or other kind of syllogism or is this just a different and non-syllogistic kind of cause?

Thank you

Thank you Professor, again for this nice Episode! to keep it short here just my question: 

As you have linked the word "Science" from Latin sciencia from Knwoledge directly coming from the influence of Epistēmē, I wanted to ask if there is a possibility that we can also talk of an direct influence on this manner from Al Farbis Book: Ihsa' al-'Ulum (The Listing of the Sciences). Which is righfully tranlated as  "De scientiis" in Latin by Dominic Gundissalinus at around 1140. Where as in contrast, Boehtius and Hugh of St. Victor in his Book: "Didascalicon" (On the Studying of Reading) in the 1120's have a more Art like definition than Scientific Categories of these Principles. 

As always Thank you in advance!

Yunus Hueck 

Oh boy, I have so enjoyed this series, until now. Aristotle exempflies the problem of privilege in western culture. From philosopher to consumer we are prone to generating the greatest of pollutions. Go out and plant some corn, Aristotle, catch some fish, spend time with loved ones, your poesis stagnates with your non-oxygenating blood. The lonely male in his garret has done so much harm in the world. You need to walk further than around your Lyceum, go out, get out, away with you.

Once again, I'm really enjoying this podcast!  Unfortunately, I haven't actually read Aristotle's works, so I'm going solely based on the content of the podcast here, but since the historical development of both logic and scientific methodology are both interests of mine, I'd love to understand one aspect of his philosophical perspective a little bit better.  I gathered that one of Aristotle's criteria for a syllogism to be demonstrative is that it be "genuinely explanatory," and I'm wondering if you might be able to provide a quick summary (to whatever extent a "quick" one is possible) of how Aristotle understands or deals with correlation/causality distinctions in the statements that he considers to be "explanatory" when they occur in the "middle terms," as you put it, of syllogisms.  For example, when dealing with a syllogism like "Giraffes are land animals that eat leaves off tall trees.  All land animals that eat leaves off tall trees have long necks.  Therefore, giraffes have long necks," does Aristotle take care to address the kind of distinction between cause and (perfect) correlation that we would keep in mind when interpreting a syllogism like this one as not only logically true but demonstrative?  Is causality even really part of what Aristotle cares about when he deems a syllogism "explanatory?"  For example, would it matter to him if, say, giraffes originally evolved long necks due to sexual selection (i.e., because proto-giraffes deemed a long neck to be an attractive trait in a potential mate) and only came to eat leaves off of tall trees in the process, because it was easier than stooping down?  I could imagine him saying that this is irrelevant, because after all, however it came to be the case and whether the reason is the same of all land animals or not, the fact remains that land animals that eat leaves off trees have long necks, and thus this "middle term" is still "explanatory" as far as it concerns giraffes.  I could imagine him saying that what I'm really looking for is a statement which explains why land animals that eat leaves off trees have long necks.  Nevertheless, while this may not be the most apt of examples, it at least illustrates in a fumbling way what I'm interested in learning: what is Aristotle's perspective on what makes a "middle term" truly "explanatory?"  In other words, wherein does the "why" arise in a demonstrative syllogism?  Since Aristotle had a deep influence on European thought for a very long time, I'm sort of interested in what the limitations are in terms of how he thinks of the relationship between things like explanations and causes, and to what extent that might have influenced scientific methodology, for better or worse.

Could it be said that for Plato and Aristotle, to understand (to structure, relate, and unify knowledge) is the ability to construct an axiomatic system? And could it be said that their disagreement lies in the source of the axioms? Taking Raphael's famous painting "The School of Athens," for Plato the axioms come from up above (they transcend the physical world), whereas for Aristotle, the axioms come from down below (they are immanent in the physical world).

Maybe to be more precise, one should say for Plato, there is ultimately only one axiomatic system, and it is based on the Form of the Good. For Plato, the Form of the Good is the most fundamental axiom from which all else derives. In contrast, for Aristotle, there are many axiomatic systems, each one corresponding to a different branch of knowledge. 

Plato had a unified vision of knowledge, whereas for Aristotle, there is no unity in knowledge, only a plurality, a plurality of branches.

I think it is in Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid that we see the origins of the West's obsession with deduction, certainty, and axiomatic systems. An axiomatic system becomes the West's ideal of what it means to understand; I understand and am an expert if I can construct an axiomatic system. This remains so into the 20th century, when Gödel shows the limitations of axiomatic systems in his incompleteness theorems, coupled with Heidegger and Gadamer proposing a different ideal, the hermeneutic circle.