Desiderata – something desired as essential
He does say how we must conduct our search: is it to issue proof?
He says that this is how we ought to try to conduct it. Consistent with this is that an adequate proof may fail to achieve some of these desiderata. He does not say that this is how we may prove, or how we must prove, but rather that this is how we should try to conduct an inquiry.
If indeed we can not only solve the puzzles and leave standing what is thought to be true, also explain what causes the difficulties in the first place and why people have problems with them, then we will have the finest proof imaginable.
Neither does Aristotle imply that they are necessary conditions for an inquiry, or even that they are attainable in every case.
Aristotle also includes a third requirement that we should try to make evident ‘the cause of the resistance and puzzles about it.’ (Eudemian Ethics)
We must try, by argument, to reach a convincing conclusion on all these questions, using, as testimony and by way of example, what appears to be the case. For it would be best if everyone should turn out to agree with what we are going to say; if not that, that they should all agree in a way and will agree after a change of mind; for each man has something of his own to contribute to the finding of the truth; and it is from such starting-points that we must demonstrate: beginning with things that are correctly said, but not clearly, as we proceed we shall come to express them clearly, with what is more perspicuous at each stage superseding what is customarily expressed in a confused fashion. (1216b26-35)
He also says that we should try to achieve a certain result, not that we must achieve it. Which may indicate different degrees of success at which we may aim:
“Everyone has something of his own in relation to the truth and it is from this that demonstrations must start.
So, it seems Aristotle holds that everyone has a certain built-in grasp of a little of the truth, and we should therefore treat the opinions of the many, as well as those of the wise, with respect, in need of correction and clarification rather than refutation and rejection. He is not simply advocating a dialectical method in philosophy but giving us a reason for doing so.
However, appearances cannot always be trusted. in Topics VIII, he is discussing the use of false as well as true premises in arguing dialectically. For Aristotle, one thing which distinguishes dialectical arguments from ‘contentious’ or ‘sophistical’ ones in that they must be valid. However, their premises may sometimes be only apparently true. Indeed, in some cases they must be false: if the task at hand is to argue for a false conclusion, then false premises must be used (otherwise the argument would be invalid and therefore not dialectical). Aristotle goes on to note that it can also be dialectically appropriate to use false premises in establishing a truth or refuting a falsehood:
Sometimes, even if a falsehood has been supposed, it should be refuted by means of falsehoods. For nothing prevents things which are not so seeming more so to some individual than what is true, so that if the argument arises from what seems so to that person, he will be more effectively persuaded or benefited. And whoever changes minds well must change them dialectically, not contentiously (just as the geometer must do so geometrically), no matter whether the conclusion drawn is false or true.7(161a30-36)
Dialectical arguments are always directed at someone and rely on that person’s opinions. If my goal is to persuade you, it will do me no good to use true premises which you do not believe; I would be better off, in fact, using false ones you did believe, so long as they led to the result I wanted. To ‘change minds’ is to lead people to have different beliefs, and that can only be accomplished rationally by beginning with beliefs they actually do have.
Topics:
[Our dialectical method is useful] in connection with encounters, because if we have reckoned up the opinions of the many, we will speak to them not from foreign opinions but from their own, changing their minds about anything they do not seem to us to have said well.8 (101a30-34)
The point is: we can only change people’s minds argumentatively from opinions they actually accept. Getting everyone to agree with our view after a ‘change of mind’ means leading each person, from premises he accepts, to accept our view. This is intrinsic to the persuasive function of argument. In each of our individual collections of opinions there is bound to be something true-‘something of our own’, with some relation to the truth-and this is the starting-point from which others can persuade us to believe the truth.
A general methodology for establishing first principles: As in the other cases we must set out the appearances, and first of all go through the puzzles. In this way we must prove the common beliefs about these ways of being affected-ideally, all the common beliefs, but if not all, then most of them, and the most important. For if the objections are solved, and the common beliefs are left, it will be an adequate proof.10 (1145b3-8)
Starting-Points of Dialectic: ‘Not Everyone’s Opinions Count Equally’
It is not at the beginning of a treatise but rather prefaces a section devoted to an unusual topic: the possibility of weakness of will. One unusual element is that the conclusion Aristotle will ultimately defend in this case includes a rejection of a commonly held belief: like Socrates, Aristotle holds that strictly speaking no one can possibly act incontinently.
It is implausible that there is no such thing as weakness of will; if we are ever to persuade others of this, we must begin from their own views. However, if we can eliminate the difficulties that stand in the way of their accepting it, then we will have shown them adequately that it is so.
Aristotle regularly makes use of the puzzles inherent in the views of his predecessors and of people in general. He uses these as a guide to the development of his own position: the puzzles set questions to be answered, and good answers are those which account for all the puzzles. What is wanted, however, is some evidence that this type of resolution of puzzles constitutes a proof.
The dialectical method of proof in Aristotle is a conception of what dialectic is generally accepted as an emphasis on the compilation of opinions – the views of ‘the many or the wise’.
On Sophistical Refutations: the common beliefs of dialectic must be apparent, not to just anyone, but to people of a certain sort; for it is an indefinitely long task to examine the things that make something apparent to just anyone.17 (170b6-8)
An explicit declaration that ‘not everyone’s opinions count equally: Eudemian Ethics 1214b28-1215a2, where Aristotle says that we should not waste our time examining the opinions of children, the ill, and the mad about happiness, nor indeed should we give any special weight to the opinions of ‘the many,’ since ‘they speak haphazardly about practically everything, and especially about happiness.’
But, as each inquiry has its own problems, so, evidently, does that concerning the best and highest life. It is these opinions, then, that it is right18(kalôs echei) for us to investigate (exetazein); for the refutation of those who dispute a certain position is a demonstration of the opposing view.19 (1215a3-7, Woods’s translation)
Aristotle gives a use of the dialectic method by establishing a connection with scientific principles whether in arts or sciences. We seem to find an allusion to the doctrine of the Posterior Analytics: that no demonstrative science can demonstrate its own principles. So construed, the same point can be made by stating that a paradox is generated by attempting to demystify an enigma by revealing it mysteries.
Argument serves to change the opinions of others by taking their own opinions as its starting point and showing them that these opinions entail other views; if those further views are repugnant to them, they are thereby motivated to change their opinions. Those whose opinions are subject to rational modification in this light are candidates for argumentative persuasion, and to that end it is useful to study their opinions and the arguments that can be constructed from them. However, children, the insane, and the wicked lack the opinions from which rational persuasion might begin; it is pointless to consider how to refute their views, since what causes people of these classes to have their opinions is not argument but some form of pathology.
Aristotle takes part of this to be obvious: we cannot make a child an adult by argument, nor can we heal the sick (or convert the wicked, for that matter). The rhetorical strategy of the passage is a comparison of these cases with ‘the many’: we cannot change their views by argument because they do not hold their views for reasons in the first place but only ‘speak haphazardly’ about pretty much everything. Therefore, there is no more point in trying to argue with them than with children or the insane, and we may forgo discussion of their views.20
Establishing First Principles
However, Aristotle does not say that dialectic establishes the principles: he says that since an art or science cannot ‘say anything about’ its own principles, we must ‘discuss’ them by means such as the examination of that which makes up the opinions of the many. Considerable distinction between ‘discussing’ first principles and ‘establishing’ them.
Distinctions (Rhetoric and Topics) between arguments that fall under the purview of dialectic and arguments proper to the sciences.
Refutations are arguments; therefore, if we know what kinds of things arguments arise from – that is, what sort of premises – then we will know what refutations arise from.
But arguments are classified according to their premises: some are ‘in accordance with a particular art’, that is, they rest on premises peculiar to that art or science, whereas others are general and less defined.
It is the latter which falls under dialectic. As a result, to undertake a completely general study of how all refutations come about would require having an art or science of everything, which is not the task of any single established art or science. To do so would result in names such as The Science or Art of Everything becoming foils of themselves.
For the sciences are likely infinite in number, and consequently so are demonstrations.
But these are refutations, and true ones: for whenever something can be demonstrated, it is also possible to refute one who accepts the denial of this truth.
For instance, if someone accepts that the diameter is commensurate, someone could refute him with a demonstration that it is incommensurable. Thus, we will have to be scientists about everything.21
Aristotle continues:
Clearly, then, it is not the topic of all refutations that are to be grasped, only of those that arise from dialectic: for these are common to every art and faculty.
Moreover, the study of a refutation in accordance with a specific science is for the person who possesses that science, both as to whether it appears to be one but is not and, if it is one, why it is.
But a refutation from common premises, which fall under no science, is for the dialectical to study. For if we have what topics are then the accepted deductions about something are from: we also have what the refutations are from: for a refutation is a deduction of the contradictory.23
The point Aristotle makes here is crucial to his understanding of dialectical argument. In the logical works and the Rhetoric, (1358a2-35) he differentiates the arguments, premises, and refutations proper to the individual sciences from the ‘common’ ones applicable to all sciences. The latter, precisely because they are common, cannot serve as the basis of any kind of scientific proof: each science is autonomous with respect to demonstrations about its subject matter, and there is no single overarching science embracing them all. Here, Aristotle draws from this the corollary that, since a refutation is just a kind of deduction, the theory of refutations that concern any subject falls under the science of that subject, not a general science of refutations.
Having made all these distinctions, Aristotle then reaches the conclusion he wants: the general study of refutations applicable to all subject matters is part of the dialectician’s art. In the course of stating this conclusion, he restricts the starting points of dialectics:
Thus, we possess the kinds of premises which such refutations are from. And if we have that, then we also have their solutions: for the objections to these are solutions.
And we also have what apparent refutations are from (but apparent not to just anyone, but to people of a certain sort: for they would be indefinite if someone were to inquire from how many kinds they appear to refute to just anyone).
Thus, it is evident that it is for the dialectician to be able to grasp from what sorts of premises either a real or an apparent refutation arises through the common topics,…24
Aristotle is not talking about apparent propositions but about apparent deductions. His overall goal is to argue that there is a class of refutations (real and apparent) which fall under the scope of dialectic rather than any special science.
At the very least, it is a distortion of emphasis to wrest this qualification out of its context and see in it a defining characteristic of dialectical argument itself.
So, just how do we arrive at first principles?
Aristotle’s view:
First principles of the sciences are truths which have a certain objective priority to the conclusions that can be demonstrated from them.
For Aristotle, it is by transforming ourselves, so that the objective first principles seem to to be primary to us, that we come to have scientific understanding. There are, consequently, two components to reaching the first principles: finding out what they are, and coming to see them as the principles.
He thought that he had discovered a theory of inference which covered all valid arguments whatsoever, and thus all demonstrations. He also thought that there are some true propositions with the unusual property that they cannot be deduced from any other true propositions, though they may serve as premises from which to derive others.
He appears to have held the belief that if we collect together all the truths about any subject, we will find that there are certain truths among then which cannot be deduced from any combination of the others from which all the others can be deduced.
These propositions must be the principles: for the simple reason that they cannot be anything else. They cannot be demonstrated.
On the other hand, if they are included among the principles, then we need no other principles, for all others follow from them. The upshot is that Aristotle believed there was a way to specify the principles without appealing to epistemic status.26
And, from here on in he submerges himself in mind-bending syllogistics.
According to the Analytics, then, dialectic is not the means of accomplishing anything other than another tool in the handling of refutations.
The property of dialectic which Aristotle appeals to here is that it ‘examines’ (exetastikê gar ousa). The word used here for ‘examine’ is closely connected with refutation, in particular refuting someone else’s views by showing that they lead to contradictions (Socrates used it of his customary style of questioning people about their opinions). A process of refutation is not a very likely candidate for establishing the first principles
The process of exploring the contradictions implicit in our naïve opinions eliminates the air of certainty that attaches to them and puts us in that unpleasant state of ‘wonder’ which, according to Aristotle, is the beginning of philosophy. A continual process of exploring what follows from what could plausibly be essential to the kind of epistemic conversion required if we are to become scientific.
Aristotle tells us in Met. Z that scientific education resembles moral education: we strive in each case to change our untutored reactions, making what is in itself good (or familiar) come to seem good (or familiar) to us. In ethics, the agent of this transformation is habit, born of repeated action. Repeated examinations of opinions and their consequences, and of the principles and their consequences, could be the agent of a similar epistemic transformation.
Ever wondered why the scientific view of the world can never be reconciled with the spiritual or religious or atheistic or agnostic, etc views of that very same world or perspective? All diametrically opposed; and perpetually dialectic in design and execution.
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