Aristotelian Propositions

Every canonical Aristotelian proposition can be interpreted as expressing a judgment of material consequence or material incompatibility. This may seem surprising. First, a bit of background…

At the beginning of On Interpretation, Aristotle says that “falsity and truth have to do with combination and separation” (Ch. 1). On its face, the combination or separation at issue has to do not with propositions but with terms. But it is not quite so simple. The terms in question are canonically “universals” or types or higher-order terms, each of which is therefore convertible with a mentioned proposition that the higher-order term is or is not instantiated or does or does not apply. (We can read, e.g., “human” as the mentioned proposition “x human”.) Thus a canonical Aristotelian proposition is formed by “combining” or “separating” a pair of things that are each interpretable as an implicit proposition in the modern sense.

Propositions in the modern sense are treated as atomic. They are often associated with merely stipulated truth values, and in any case it makes no sense to ask for internal criteria that would help validate or invalidate a modern proposition. But we can always ask whether the combination or separation in a canonical Aristotelian proposition is reasonable for the arguments to which it is applied. Therefore, unlike a proposition in the modern sense, an Aristotelian proposition always implicitly carries with it a suggestion of criteria for its validation.

The only available criteria for critically assessing correctness of such elementary proposition-forming combination or separation are material in the sense that Sellars and Brandom have discussed. A judgment of “combination” in effect just is a judgment of material consequence; a judgment of “separation” in effect just is a judgment of material incompatibility. (This also helps clarify why it is essential to mention both combination and separation affirmatively, since, e.g., “human combines with mortal” canonically means not just that human and mortal are not incompatible, but that if one is said to be human, one is thereby also said to be mortal.)

This means that Aristotle’s concept of the elementary truth and falsity of propositions can be understood as grounded in criteria for goodness of material inference, not some kind of correspondence with naively conceived facts. It also means that every Aristotelian proposition can be understood as expressing a judgment of material consequence or incompatibility, and that truth for Aristotle can therefore be understood as primarily said of good judgments of material consequence or incompatibility. Aristotle thus would seem to anticipate Brandom on truth.

This is the deeper meaning of Aristotle’s statement that a proposition in his sense does not just “say something” but “says something about something”. Such aboutness is not just grammatical, but material-inferential. This is in accordance with Aristotle’s logical uses of “said of”, which would be well explained by giving that a material-inferential interpretation as well.

The principle behind Aristotelian syllogism is a form of composition, formally interpretable as an instance of the composition of mathematical functions, where composition operates on the combination or separation of pairs of terms in each proposition. Aristotelian logic thus combines a kind of material inference in proposition formation and its validation with a kind of formal inference by composition. This is what Kant and Hegel meant by “logic”, apart from their own innovations.

Abstraction

Abstraction in Aristotle is sometimes made out to be mysterious. I think it is just straightforward subtraction of features of a thing that have been previously recognized as “accidental” for the pertinent context of evaluation. Abstraction is neither a way of magically laying bare the true inner essence of a thing, as envisioned by some medieval realists, nor the mental creation of a universal ex nihilo, as envisioned by some nominalists. It is also does not have any necessary dependency on induction.

What counts as accidental may vary with the context of evaluation. While distinctions of essence and accident are fairly stable within a given context, they are ultimately relative and contextual. The pertinent context includes not only contingent facts about what is being evaluated, but also the purpose of the evaluation.

In other, non-Aristotelian contexts, Badiou has recently made it somewhat fashionable to speak literally about “subtraction” instead of “abstraction”. Though I have many issues with his thought, this is actually a useful clarification.

Ontology

Ontology as a supposed science of being acquired its basic shape in the middle ages, as a sort of reification of Aristotelian semantics. Duns Scotus was very proud of his ontological “improvement” of Aristotle. Aristotle himself preferred to shift clumsy, sterile discussions of sheer being onto more subtle and fruitful registers of form and meaning at the earliest opportunity.

Kant pointed out that existence is not a property, and Hegel pointed out the equivalence of Being to Nothing. When Hegel talks about “logic” as the form of future metaphysics, this means a return to the original meaning of “metaphysics” as Aristotelian dialectical semantics, not an ontologization of dialectic. Broadly Aristotelian dialectical semantics give us all the “ontology” we will ever need.

For the historical back story of how Scotus invented ontology as we know it today, if you read French, see Olivier Boulnois, Être et représentation: Une généalogie de la métaphysique moderne à l’époque de Duns Scot (XIIIe–XIVe siècle). As suggested by the title, this work also has extremely important things to say about the premodern history of strongly representationalist views. The famous univocal “being” invented by Scotus was defined in terms of representability. (See also Being, Existence; Aristotelian Dialectic; Objectivity of Objects; Form; Repraesentatio.)

Pluralism

One of the underappreciated aspects of Aristotle’s thought is his pluralism. A thing will typically have multiple causes. Important words are “said in many ways”. We should be careful not to make claims that are too strong.

There has been a tendency to read Aristotle as a systematizer — which he is, but only up to a point — that has interfered with recognition of the principled and not just incidental nature of Aristotelian pluralism. Aristotle’s pluralism is part of a deep and admirable commitment to what in a modern context would be called antireductionism. This is just part of his extraordinary, methodologically sophisticated intellectual honesty, which is stronger than his desire to systematize.

Historically, Aristotle’s immediate successors were the Stoics, who did aim at extremely strong systematicity, and claimed to have achieved it. Philosophy after that, including what was called Aristotelian philosophy, largely proceeded on the Stoic model. Strong systematic claims became de rigeur. (See also The Epistemic Modesty of Plato and Aristotle; Univocity; Mean; Aristotelian Dialectic; Free Will and Determinism.)

Efficient Cause

Each of Aristotle’s four “causes” or kinds of reasons why a thing is the way it is picks out a distinct kind of conceptual content. Actually, none of them — including the efficient cause — should be thought of in terms of anything like a mechanical impulse or force or the exertion of a force. An efficient cause is also not primarily a thing that exerts a force. Rather, an Aristotelian “efficient” cause exercises what in modern terms most closely resembles a sort of structural causality, associated with the form and materiality of the means by which a thing is realized as the sort of thing it is. It acts in an instrumental way that is more “logical” than physical.

In an example of the production of a statue, the efficient cause is not the sculptor, or the sculptor’s will, or the blows of the sculptor’s hammer and chisel. It is the art (objectively characterizable technique) by which the statue is produced. Many people have certainly made contrary assertions about this, but there is, e.g., a good discussion in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that supports the above interpretation. (In this simple example, the end is the finished work of the statue. The form and matter are the form and matter of the finished work.)

While the efficient cause is perhaps a little closer to a “cause” in the usual modern sense, it is still far from the same, even though it has a much closer connection to the less common notion of structural causality. Aristotle himself put either form or end first, but influential late scholastics such as Suarez elevated the efficient cause above the other three, perhaps on the ground that God was considered to be pre-eminently an efficient cause (whereas for Aristotle, the “First” cause is primarily an end). I seem to recall some reference to late scholastics treating creation ex nihilo as an example of efficient causality. In any event, Suarez is regarded as treating all four Aristotelian causes on the model of the efficient cause. This helped pave the way for early modern mechanism’s reduction of all causality to a single, univocal form.

Aristotle’s semantically oriented science aims not so much at prediction of what we would call physical events as at a retrospective understanding of why things have turned out the way they have, in a humanly relevant, pragmatic way. Aristotelian “causes” are pluralistic and nonunivocal. They are just reasons why something came out the way it did.

Ends

The nature of ends is addressed in book 1 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. “Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that the good is that at which all things aim.” (Sachs translation, p.1.) The Kantian primacy of practical reason and the primacy of normativity in Brandom express a similar insight.

“Good”, however, is meant in as many ways as “being” is, so there is no common good that is one and universal, no good-in-itself.

In the course of this discussion, Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes that one should not seek more precision in a given subject than is appropriate to it. One also should not try to derive conclusions that are more exact than what they are derived from. In areas like ethics and politics especially, one should be content to point out the truth roughly and in outline, and to say what is true for the most part.

Aristotle would object to the notion of “value free” science. Even his physics is a pragmatic, broadly semantic inquiry. His notion of cause (aitia) is much broader and more pluralistic than the modern one. An end is a kind of cause in Aristotle’s sense, but not in the modern sense. Aristotelian ends are orthogonal to modern causality. Not until Kant and Hegel did the modern world begin to recover a similar sophistication. (See also Univocity; Free Will and Determinism.)

There is nothing subjective about an Aristotelian end. Aristotelian teleology does not involve any mental intentions of spiritual beings (see God and the Soul). An end is just what Brandom would call the conceptual content of something sought or achieved. It is a pure form. (An aim on the other hand is an end that is taken up subjectively.)

An end may be sought on its own account, or for the sake of something else. The realization of an end may involve the realization of subordinate ends, which may involve the realization of further subordinate ends, and so on. Ends for the sake of which other ends are realized and ends sought on their own account are considered to be of greater value. An end may be a way of being at work, or a work produced. An end sought on its own account is typically a way of being at work. Aristotle suggests that the most comprehensive and therefore most valuable end for humans is politics as an activity, which is concerned with the good of all. In general, a good or end is better the more complete and self-sufficient it is.

In accordance with the emphasis on completeness, the end of an individual is to live a whole life that is good, which can only be judged retrospectively. The work of a human being is “a being-at-work of the soul in accordance with reason, or not without reason… and actions that go along with reason… [done] well and beautifully” (p.11). (See also Reasonableness; Reasons; Commitment; Happiness.)

People are good at making distinctions about the things they are acquainted with. “This is why one who is going to listen adequately to things that are beautiful and just, and generally about things that pertain to political matters, needs to have been beautifully brought up by means of habits.” (p.4.)

I read Aristotle as suggesting that immanent ends of natural beings are ultimately the most influential of the “causes” or reasons why things turn out as they do. Yet they are a kind of soft “cause” that only attracts. All of Aristotle’s causes are soft in one way or another. Each of the four interacts with the others in quasi-reciprocal fashion, and none of them results in the sort of hard determination classically attributed to early modern mechanical impulse. (See also Efficient Cause; Form; Aristotelian Matter.)

Nothing in this is incompatible with also incorporating modern mathematics into the account, but Aristotle’s main concern is with a pragmatic semantics of experience.

It is relatively easy for us to imagine how nonrational, sentient beings that still have desire are moved by internal ends. Nonsentient things do not literally have desire, and we have been taught not to think as if they did. It is only a metaphor to say, e.g., that heavy objects “want” to fall, but there is no inherent category mistake or personification in talking about an apparent material tendency as exhibiting a kind of apparent end, below the level of sentient desire.

In quasi-Brandomian terms, Aristotelian ends are an expressive metaconcept useful in the interpretation of experience, not a hypothesis about something beyond experience. (See also Natural Ends; Kant’s Recovery of Ends.)

The same could be said of Aristotle’s view that the “first” principle of all things is actually related to all things as an ultimate end that attracts them.

Practical Judgment

Practical judgment or practical wisdom (phronesis) is the main topic of book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics. This involves a broadly rational assessment of particulars that is subject to error. It is closely associated with deliberation and choice. Its outcome is neither knowledge nor opinion, but action or a specific kind or manner of action. Practical judgment concerns what should be done, with the expectation that it will be done.

Good practical judgment is astute in a calculating way as well as compassionate, forgiving, and considerate of others (Sachs translation, p.114). It achieves an Aristotelian mean that avoids one-sidedness. (See also Intellectual Virtue, Love.)

Choice, Deliberation

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics book 3 chapter 2 concerns choice. Choice is something willing, but not everything done willingly is done by choice. Things spontaneously done by children and animals and things done on the spur of the moment are done willingly and so are subject to praise or blame, but they are not done by choice.

Choice is not desire or spiritedness or wishing or opinion. It is involved with reason and thinking things through. It is the outcome of deliberation, the subject of chapter 3. It is the deliberate desire of things that are up to us (Sachs translation, p.43). It comes from desire combined with a rational understanding that is for the sake of something (p.103); it is “either intellect fused with desire, or desire fused with thinking, and such a source is a human being” (p.104). (The phrase “fused with” is actually an interpolation by the translator — the Greek actually just has “intellect and desire”, without specifying how they are related.)

We deliberate about things that are up to us and are matters of action. Deliberation is neither knowledge nor opinion. Inquiry about exact sciences or general truths or ends is not deliberation, but deliberation is a kind of inquiry. Deliberation applies to means for achieving ends, when outcomes can be predicted with some confidence, but are still uncertain. On big issues, we consult others. When there is more than one means to an end, deliberation seeks the one that is easier and more beautiful.

Deliberation may also examine how a thing will come about through a particular means, what other means are required for that means, and so on. Aristotle says that the analysis of dependencies of means and ends in particular works just like a mathematician’s analysis of a geometrical diagram.

Deliberating well overall belongs to people with good practical judgment (p.112). “What is deliberated and what is chosen are the same thing, except that the thing chosen is already determined, since the thing chosen is what is decided out of the deliberation.” (p.43.) Aristotelian choice is therefore anything but arbitrary. It is a normative and rational determination, emerging from an open, fallible, and pluralistic process. (See also Brandomian Choice.)

Willing, Unwilling

Book 3 chapter 1 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics deals with willing and unwilling actions. “Praise and blame come about for willing actions, but for unwilling actions there is forgiveness and sometimes even pity…” (Sachs translation, p. 36.)

Unwilling acts are those that are forced by someone else, or come about through ignorance. Those that come about through ignorance include cases when people are talking and something slips out unintentionally, as well as all sorts of mistakes. Things done on account of spiritedness or desire, as well as those done on account of reasoned deliberation, are considered willing.

There are mixed cases in which the act would normally be done only if it were forced, but in particular circumstances it is done willingly to avoid a greater evil or to realize a greater good. Tradeoffs of this sort generally deserve praise or blame based on the goodness or badness of the tradeoff, but in extreme cases, mixed actions may just deserve forgiveness or pity.

Aristotle says there are perhaps some things one should never do regardless of the tradeoff, but that these cases are difficult to distinguish. He notes that it is in general not easy to say whether or not the ends justify the means. (See also What We Really Want.)

Nicomachean

I am fond of repeating Hegel’s dictum that Plato and Aristotle are the great educators of the human race. Of all their works, if I had to pick one, it is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that stands out most for its combination of excellence and broad relevance to the human condition. This is the same one I would recommend to someone starting out reading Aristotle. It is exceptionally well balanced in considering many angles of the subject matter, and very accessible to the nonspecialist. All rational animals should read it.

That said, translations of Aristotle can also make a huge difference. I especially like the one by Joe Sachs, which goes straightforwardly from Greek to English without introducing traditional Latin-based terminology that often obscures Aristotle’s meaning for English readers. Sachs, who has done outstanding translations of many works by Aristotle and Plato, also preserves more of the original syntax, which yields additional insights into the way the philosophers thought. Like Sachs’ other translations, this one comes out very lively and engaging. It is supplemented with excellent notes, introduction, and glossary. (If you have enough Greek to use a lexicon, it is also good to consult the Loeb edition or the old W.D. Ross Oxford edition, both of which include the Greek text.)

Aristotle himself would caution that only people who are fortunate enough to have had upbringing and life experiences leading to the formation of a disposition to be emotionally reasonable will really benefit from this. (See also Reasonableness; Intellectual Virtue, Love; Ends; Willing, Unwilling; Choice, Deliberation; Practical Judgment; Mean; Happiness. )