Aristotle: Logic 2/10/00 4:28 PM

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Aristotle: Logical Methods

The greatest and most influential of Plato's students was
Aristotle, who established his own school at Athens. Although his
writing career probably began with the production of quasi-Platonic
dialogues, none of them have survived. Instead, our knowledge of
Aristotle's doctrines must be derived from highly-condensed, elliptical
works that may have been lecture notes from his teaching at the
Lyceum. Although not intended for publication, these texts reveal a
brilliant mind at work on many diverse topics.

A New Approach to Philosophy

Philosophically, the works of Aristotle reflect his gradual

departure from the teachings of Plato and his adoption of a new
approach. Unlike Plato, who delighted in abstract thought about a
supra-sensible realm of forms, Aristotle was intensely concrete and
practical, relying heavily upon sensory observation as a starting-point
for philosophical reflection. Interested in every area of human
knowledge about the world, Aristotle aimed to unify all of them in a
coherent system of thought by developing a common methodology
that would serve equally well as the procedure for learning about any
discipline.

For Aristotle, then, logic is the instrument (the "organon") by

means of which we come to know anything. He proposed as formal
rules for correct reasoning the basic principles of the categorical logic
that was universally accepted by Western philosophers until the
nineteenth century. This system of thought regards assertions of the
subject-predicate form as the primary expressions of truth, in which
features or properties are shown to inhere in individual substances. In
every discipline of human knowledge,then, we seek to establish the
things of some sort have features of a certain kind.

Aristotle further supposed that this logical scheme accurately

represents the true nature of reality. Thought, language, and reality are
all isomorphic, so careful consideration of what we say can help us to
understand the way things really are. Beginning with simple
descriptions of particular things, we can eventually assemble our
information in order to achieve a comprehensive view of the world.

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Applying the Categories

The initial book in Aristotle's collected logical works is the

Categories, an analysis of predication generally. It begins with a
distinction among three ways in which the meaning of different uses
of a predicate may be related to each other: homonymy, synonymy,
and paronymy (in some translations, "equivocal," "univocal," and
"derivative"). Homonymous uses of a predicate have entirely different
explanations, as in "With all that money, she's really loaded," and
"After all she had to drink, she's really loaded." Synonymous uses
have exactly the same account, as in "Cows are mammals," and
"Dolphins are mammals." Paronymous attributions have distinct but
related senses, as in "He is healthy," and "His complexion is healthy." (
Categories 1) It is important in every case to understand how this use
of a predicate compares with its other uses.

So long as we are clear about the sort of use we are making in

each instance, Aristotle proposed that we develop descriptions of
individual things that attribute to each predicates (or categories) of ten
different sorts. Substance is the most crucial among these ten, since it
describes the thing in terms of what it most truly is. For Aristotle,
primary substance is just the individual thing itself, which cannot be
predicated of anything else. But secondary substances are predicable,
since they include the species and genera to which the individual thing
belongs. Thus, the attribution of substance in this secondary sense
establishes the essence of each particular thing.

The other nine categories—quantity, quality, relative, where,

when, being in a position, having, acting on, and being affected
by—describe the features which distinguish this individual substance
from others of the same kind; they admit of degrees and their
contraries may belong to the same thing. (Categories 4) Used in
combination, the ten kinds of predicate can provide a comprehensive
account of what any individual thing is. Thus, for example: Chloë is a
dog who weighs forty pounds, is reddish-brown, and was one of a
litter of seven. She is in my apartment at 7:44 a.m. on June 3, 1997,
lying on the sofa, wearing her blue collar, barking at a squirrel, and
being petted. Aristotle supposed that anything that is true of any
individual substance could, in principle, be said about it in one of
these ten ways.

The Nature of Truth

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Another of Aristotle's logical works, On Interpretation, considers

the use of predicates in combination with subjects to form propositions
or assertions, each of which is either true or false. We usually
determine the truth of a proposition by reference to our experience of
the reality it conveys, but Aristotle recognized that special difficulties
arise in certain circumstances.

Although we grant (and can often even discover) the truth or

falsity of propositions about past and present events, propositions
about the future seem problematic. If a proposition about tomorrow is
true (or false) today, then the future event it describes will happen (or
not happen) necessarily; but if such a proposition is neither true nor
false, then there is no future at all. Aristotle's solution was to maintain
that the disjunction is necessarily true today even though neither of its
disjuncts is. Thus, it is necessary that either tomorrow's event will
occur or it will not, but it is neither necessary that it will occur nor
necessary that it will not occur. (On Interpretation 9)

Aristotle's treatment of this specific problem, like his more

general attempt to sort out the nature of the relationship between
necessity and contingency in On Interpretation 12-13, is complicated
by the assumption that the structure of logic models the nature of
reality. He must try to explain not just the way we speak, but the way
the world therefore must be.

Demonstrative Science

Finally, in the Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics, Aristotle

offered a detailed account of the demonstrative reasoning required to
substantiate theoretical knowledge. Using mathematics as a model,
Aristotle presumed that all such knowledge must be derived from what
is already known. Thus, the process of reasoning by syllogism
employs a formal definition of validity that permits the deduction of
new truths from established principles. The goal is to provide an
account of why things happen the way they do, based solely upon what
we already know.

In order to achieve genuine necessity, this demonstrative science

must be focussed on the essences rather than the accidents of things, on
what is "true of any case as such," rather than on what happens to be
"true of each case in fact." It's not enough to know that it rained
today; we must be able to figure out the general meteorological
conditions under which rain is inevitable. When we reason from
necessary universal and affirmative propositions about the essential
features of things while assuming as little as possible, the resulting
body of knowledge will truly deserve the name of science.

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The Four Causes

Applying the principles developed in his logical treatises,

Aristotle offered a general account of the operation of individual
substances in the natural world. He drew a significant distinction
between things of two sorts: those that move only when moved by
something else and those that are capable of moving themselves. In
separate treatises, Aristotle not only proposed a proper description of
things of each sort but also attempted to explain why they function as
they do.

Aristotle considered bodies and their externally-produced

movement in the Physics. Three crucial distinctions determine the
shape of this discussion of physical science. First, he granted from the
outset that, because of the difference in their origins, we may need to
offer different accounts for the functions of natural things and those of
artifacts. Second, he insisted that we clearly distinguish between the
basic material and the form which jointly constitute the nature of any
individual thing. Finally, Aristotle emphasized the difference between
things as they are and things considered in light of their ends or
purposes.

Armed with these distinctions, Aristotle proposed in Physics II, 3

that we employ four very different kinds of explanatory principle
{Gk. αιτιον [aition]} to the question of why a thing is, the four
causes:

The material cause is the basic stuff out of which the thing is
made. The material cause of a house, for example, would include the
wood, metal, glass, and other building materials used in its
construction. All of these things belong in an explanation of the house
because it could not exist unless they were present in its composition.

The formal cause {Gk. ειδοσ [eidos]} is the pattern or essence

in conformity with which these materials are assembled. Thus, the
formal cause of our exemplary house would be the sort of thing that is
represented on a blueprint of its design. This, too, is part of the
explanation of the house, since its materials would be only a pile of
rubble (or a different house) if they were not put together in this way.

The efficient cause is the agent or force immediately responsible

for bringing this matter and that form together in the production of the
thing. Thus, the efficient cause of the house would include the
carpenters, masons, plumbers, and other workers who used these
materials to build the house in accordance with the blueprint for its
construction. Clearly the house would not be what it is without their
contribution.

Lastly, the final cause {Gk. τελος [télos]} is the end or purpose
for which a thing exists, so the final cause of our house would be to

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provide shelter for human beings. This is part of the explanation of the
house's existence because it would never have been built unless
someone needed it as a place to live.

Causes of all four sorts are necessary elements in any adequate

account of the existence and nature of the thing, Aristotle believed,
since the absence or modification of any one of them would result it
the existence of a thing of some different sort. Moreover, an
explanation that includes all four causes completely captures the
significance and reality of the thing itself.

The Appearance of Chance

Notice that the four causes apply more appropriately to artifacts

than to natural objects. The rise of modern science resulted directly
from a rejection of the Aristotelean notion of final causes in particular.
Still, the scheme works so well for artifacts that we often find
ourselves attributing some purpose even to the apparently pointless
events of the natural world.

In many applications the formal, efficient, and final causes tend

to be combined in a single being that designs and builds the thing for
some specific purpose. Thus, the fundamental differentiation in the
Aristotelean world turns out to be between inert matter on the one
hand and intelligent agency on the other. As we shall soon see, this
provides a natural explanation for the functions of animate natural
organisms.

As for things that appear to arise by pure chance, Aristotle argued

that since the purposeful origination described by the four causes is the
normal order of the world, these instances must either be things that
should have had some cause but happen to lack it or (more likely)
things that actually do have causes of which we are simply unaware.
The craft evident in the manufacture of artifacts, he believed, is
evidence for the purposive character of nature, and it shares the same
necessity, even though we are sometimes ignorant of its internal
operations. (Physics II, 8)

Although I would be hard-pressed to come up with a final cause

for the existence of the mosquito that is now biting me, for example,
Aristotle supposed that there must ultimately be some explanation for
its present existence and activity. Many generations of Western
philosophers, especially those concerned with reconciling Christian
doctrine with philosophy, would explicitly defend a similar view.

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History of Philosophy
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©1997, 1998, 1999 Garth Kemerling.

Questions, comments, and suggestions may be sent to:
gkemerling@delphi.com

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