ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS: KNOWLEDGE AND MORALITY
A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for ^ the Degree BG 0 \~\ Master of Arts
P\\\L In
by
Takuma Nishiike
San Francisco, California
May 2017 Copyright by Takuma Nishiike 2017 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read Aristotle’s Ethics: Knowledge and Morality by Takuma
Nishiike, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in
Philosophy at San Francisco State University.
Ml Mohammad Azadpur, Ph.D. Professor
Mary V. Rorty, Ph.D. Professor ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS: KNOWLEDGE AND MORALITY
Takuma Nishiike San Francisco, California 2017
There is much controversy over the interpretation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. One of the debates is over Aristotle’s view concerning the source of ethical knowledge. For a long time, it was the general consensus that he was an ethical intellectualist. Richard Sorabji is an exemplary case of a scholar who ascribes to this view and firmly defends the intellectualist understanding. However, in recent years, scholars like Jessica Moss, have argued that he has a non-rational cognitive view, according to which, ethical knowledge is grounded on empirical investigation. Roger Crisp points out numerous tensions in Aristotle’s text, which may be a result of a discrepancy that arises when implementing two conflicting ideas, virtue as intellectual and virtue as purely a practice. McDowell offers a view that resolves the dispute between the intellectualists and the empiricists.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.
Date TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction...... 1
Sorabji Overview of “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue”...... 3
Practical Syllogism...... 6
Moss Overview of “Virtue Makes the Goal Right”...... 13
Distinction between her reading and the Humean view...... 17
Crisp Overview of “Aristotle on Greatness of Soul”...... 21
McDowell Overview of “Virtue and Reason”...... 29
Posterior Analytics and Induction...... 34
Conclusion...... 40
References...... 42
v 1
Introduction: Aristotle’s Ethics: Knowledge and Morality______
There is much controversy over the interpretation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics. One of the debates is over Aristotle’s belief concerning the source of ethical knowledge. For a long time, it was the general consensus that he was an ethical intellectualist, like Plato. Even though it may appear that Aristotle’s emphasis on habituation sets him apart from Plato, those advocating the intellectualist interpretation maintain that at the end of habituation we reach a level of rationality from which we can grasp principles that allow us to deduce the correct action in any situation. They hold that
Aristotle’s use of the ‘practical syllogism’ is evidence for this interpretation. Richard
Sorabji is an exemplary case of a scholar who ascribes to this view and firmly defends the intellectualist understanding (Sorabji, 1973-1974, p. 201).
In recent years there have been opposing interpretations of Aristotle’s view. The opposition comes from two groups. The first are scholars like Julius Walter who argue that Aristotle has a Humean non-rational non-cognitive view (Dahl, 1984, p. 5). The second are scholars like Jessica Moss who argue that he has a non-rational cognitive view, according to which ethical knowledge is grounded on empirical investigation
(Moss, 2011, p. 1). The twentieth century meta-ethical framework provides useful insight into this debate. I believe the Humean interpretation can be eliminated as a possibility due to Aristotle’s use of practical syllogisms and his moral realism. However, there is solid textual evidence to support both the intellectualist view and the non-rational cognitive view. 2
Moss argues that Aristotle believes our ethical motivations involve “non-rational cognitions” (Moss, 2011, p. 1). She criticizes the intellectualist interpretations for their emphasis on rationality. Both the non-rational cognitivist and the intellectualist interpreters agree that Aristotle stresses the importance of habituation. The difference between the views is that, according to the intellectualist interpretation, at the end of habituation, a person reaches a level of rationality in which they can grasp knowledge of universal ethical principles. On the other hand, the non-rational cognitivist interpretation holds that through our experience and process of habituation we cognize the right course of action. At no point do we gain some universal knowledge that is over and beyond our experiences. Moss also wants to clarify that she is not endorsing Hume’s ethical theory.
Hume’s ethical theories led the way for the meta-ethical theory of emotivism. Emotivism holds that an ethical claim is merely an expression of sentiments thus non-cognitive.
Moss’s interpretation of Aristotle’s ethical theory differs from this because it is cognitive, while being non-rational.
In the article “the Greatness of Souls,” Roger Crisp points out numerous tensions in Aristotle’s text. These tensions may be a result of a discrepancy that arises when implementing the two conflicting ideas, virtue as intellectual and virtue as purely a practice. It is clear that Aristotle values both aspects of virtue. The question is how
Aristotle can settle the discrepancy in a philosophical capacity. 3
Having thought through the problems, I try to draw on some contemporary discussions that bridge the gulf between intellectualism and empiricism. McDowell has a view that is suitable for a number of reasons.
McDowell provides a solution that is both intellectualist and empiricist. He says that we are initiated into a logical space by our language, which is a storehouse of traditional knowledge. The concepts making up the logical space are drawn from our empirical encounter with the world and they are also actualized in our thoughts and beliefs. Experience has a richness of grain that exceeds our discursive codification and is the tribunal for our actions and beliefs.
The textual evidence and Aristotle’s concept of “particularized universals” corroborate McDowell’s view. McDowell’s reading of Aristotle incorporates both intellect and experience as playing a pivotal role in the acquisition of knowledge. He offers a view that resolves the contention between the intellectualists and the empiricists.
Sorabii: Overview of “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue”______
Against the recent wave of scholars who have argued that Aristotle is a non- intellectualist in his ethical theory, there have been scholars who firmly defend the old theory that the intellect plays a vital role in his ethics. Sorabji is one of these intellectualist defenders who are set on preserving the traditional view and believe that the recent efforts should be discredited. In the article “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in 4
Virtue,” Sorabji attacks the non-intellectualist view using three key concepts from
Aristotle’s ethics: prohairesis (7ipoaip£oi<;), phronesis ((ppovr|oi<;), and habituation.
“How large a role does Aristotle give to the intellect in his account of virtue? Commentators have minimalized its role in three interrelated ways. They have de rationalized the prohairesis (choice) involved in virtue, they have reduced the part played by phronesis (practical wisdom), and they have treated habituation as a mindless process sufficient for making men good” (Sorabji, 1973-1974, p. 201).
There are two levels of choosing when it comes to executing an ethical act. There is your ethical character that chooses to initiate the process of doing a good deed; choosing the ‘ends.’ On the other hand, once you have decided to do something good, there is a strictly practical aspect of the process. This is the portion of the procedure that chooses which specific method you will utilize to complete the deed, choosing the
‘means.’ This entails figuring out the most effective and efficient way to get the job done.
This second part is a matter of using your straightforward reason, and does not necessarily denote good character. Prohairesis refers to the first type of choosing, having to have to do with character. “What is prohairesis? The chapter of the Nicomachean ethics devoted to it (3.2.3) makes it out to be a very intellectual thing... But many modern commentators talk in terms of choosing the means to one’s goal” (Sorabji, 1973-
1974, p. 201).
The debate between the intellectualists and the non-rational theorists, is not over the second type of choosing. It is over the first type of choosing, whether the choosing done by your character is intellectual or not. Sorabji claims that the non-rational theorists 5
are confused about the meaning of prohairesis. He says that though prohairesis is
intended to refer strictly to the first type of choice, the choice of ethical character, that they are misconstruing its meaning to refer to the second type of choice, choice of practical means. This might be the case with some non-rational scholar’s arguments.
However, in Moss’s article, it is perfectly clear that she is talking about the choosing of the ethical character. So, Moss’s arguments are immune to this specific attack.
In the second section, Sorabji focuses in on the idea of knowledge. After all, the debate between the intellectualists and the non-rational scholars ultimately comes down to Aristotle’s view on our capacity to access ethical knowledge. Hence, as Sorabji mentions, Plato’s idea of distinguishing ‘right opinion’ from ‘true knowledge’ becomes relevant in this discussion. According to Plato, in order for a conception to be considered true knowledge, it must be universal, objective, and have necessary certainty. Thus, it must be grounded on a solid source of evidence above and beyond our experience. The intellectualists hold that Aristotle’s ethical theory allows for a human capacity for this type of a priori knowledge.
“The doctrine is unexpected if right opinion is to be contrasted with knowledge, as it is in the somewhat comparable passage in Plato’s Republic (429c-430b). For habit-virtue will then exist in us as the preserver of right opinion before we have acquired knowledge of our goals” (Sorabji, 1973-1974, p. 213).
The intellectualists believe that habituation is merely a placeholder until the magical click happens, at which point you all of a sudden have unquestionable knowledge that is universal and necessary. Conversely, the non-rational interpretation 6
infers that Aristotle’s view does not account for some special access to transcendent knowledge outside of our experiences. They credit practical wisdom solely to the vast array of rich experiences that the wise man has complied over a lifetime. They do not think of habituation as a starting point. The habituation is, in fact, the source of the wisdom. Therefore, it is induction from the empirical data that gives the virtuous man practical wisdom to make the correct ethical choice.
“Though practical wisdom involves the perception of what to do in particular cases, it also involves much more... practical wisdom is contrasted in 6.7. 1141 b 16-21 with experience, because it involves perceiving what to do in particular cases in the light of knowledge of something more universal” (Sorabji, 1973-1974, p. 207).
This quote demonstrates Sorabji’s intellectualist position. He makes a clear distinction between experience and practical wisdom. He views experience as an unreliable culmination of accidental particular instances because, with induction, we can never move from the particulars to the universal with logical certainty. He views practical wisdom as something that has a quality of universality and necessity. Intellectualists, just like the rationalists, believe that true knowledge must be grounded on something outside of experience because of the nature of induction.
Sorabii: Practical Syllogism______
One of the strongest arguments that the intellectualist have, rests on their claim regarding Aristotle’s practical syllogism. They assert that if Aristotle believed people with phronesis can use a logically deductive inference to decide upon right action, then 7
Aristotle must have believed they have a necessary sort of grasp of this knowledge.
However, I believe this is a fallacy, and I will explain why. Secondly, the intellectualists believe that a non-rational theorist cannot possibly account for the practical syllogism.
This is also inaccurate. There are two misconceptions here that the intellectualists make:
(1) you need universal necessary knowledge to account for the syllogism, and (2) non rationalists cannot account for the syllogism.
First, I will explain why this second claim is wrong. Non-rational theorists can, in fact, account for the practical syllogism. Intellectualists assume that since the non- rational theorists are non-intellectual, that they must hold a meta-ethical theory like
Hume or the emotivists.
“Some writers have tried to play down the role of intellect. The best known case is that of Walter, who insisted that our goals are decided by virtue and that virtue, so far from being a rational thing, is a state of the faculty of desire, which simply approves certain goals. Thus, Aristotle is assimilated to Hume and the emotivists” (Sorabji, 1973-1974, p. 209).
This is not the case for all non-rational theorists. In Moss’s article, she makes it clear that she does not believe that Aristotle is a Humean. An emotivist believes that ethical claims are an expression of desire. Therefore, ethical statements are non- cognitive. Also, emotivists are not moral realists; they do not believe that morality is mind independent or that morality is objective.
Aristotle is a moral realist. He believes that there is a real mind independent objective account of morality. Moss is well aware of this and agrees with the 8
intellectualists on this point. The difference is that Moss believes Aristotle grounds his ethical knowledge on empirical data, and that, this true feature of morality is found in the natural world. The cognitive non-rational theorists believe he is a naturalist. The intellectualists believe that Aristotle ground ethical knowledge on a priori knowledge.
Call him an intellectualist, rationalist, or non-naturalist; either way, all these theories ground human conception of knowledge on something that is non-empirical, like rationality, reason, pre-birth recollection, innate ideas, or intuition. Therefore, a cognitive non-rational position is drastically different from emotivism in that it is a moral realist position. And in this certain respect it is closer to the intellectualist’s view.
Another difference between emotivists and Moss’ non-rational interpretation of
Aristotle is that emotivists believe ethical statements are non-cognitive, while Moss believes Aristotle understood such statements to be cognitive. With this cognitive account, Moss can rescue Aristotle’s theory from criticism that it is susceptible to the
Frege-Geach problem. In her interpretation, an ethical statement can be expressed in a syllogism with no problem. This goes into my point about practical syllogisms. The
Achilles heel of emotivism was the Frege-Geach problem. Since, according to emotivists, ethical statements were merely an expression of emotional desire, it did not make sense that we can make logical inferences out of ethical statements.
This leads to my first objection against the intellectualist idea that the practical syllogism proves their position. I will show why the claim ‘you need a priori universal necessary knowledge, in order to account for the practical syllogism’ is wrong. “The 9
prejudice is the idea that acting in the light of a specific conception of rationality must be explicable in terms of being guided by a formulatable universal principle” (McDowell,
1998, p.58).
The intellectualist’s argument is one that uses modus tollens, denying the consequent. Their argument goes as follows: If you believe in the practical syllogism, you must believe in a priori knowledge. Aristotle did not believe in a priori knowledge, according to the non-rational view. Therefore, Aristotle must have not believed in the practical syllogism, according to non-rational views. However, since Aristotle did believe in the practical syllogism, they can use negation introduction on the assumption that
Aristotle did not believe in a priori knowledge. And by double negation, they can conclude that Aristotle did believe in a priori knowledge. In this way they can prove their intellectualist position.
However, I would like to discredit the premise ‘belief in practical syllogism implies belief in a priori knowledge,’ or in other words ‘you need a priori knowledge to account for the syllogism.’ This premise is what their whole argument hinges on, and I believe it to be a false statement.
To make my point, I would like to make taxonomy of the meta-ethical theories that are relevant to this discussion. In the first category, there are the intellectualists or non-naturalists, who believe that humans are capable of universal and necessary ethical knowledge. They ground this knowledge on something outside of experience like 10
rationality, reason, pre-birth recollection or intuition. Second, there are the moral realist
naturalists, which is what the cognitive non-rational theorists claim Aristotle to be. This
view grounds ethical knowledge on empirical data. Third, there are the moral
subjectivists or the moral relativists. They do not believe that there is an objectively real,
mind independent, account of morality. They believe that morality is relative to the
individual. According to them, when people make a moral claim, the person is merely
describing their own preference. Thus, the assertion has a truth value and it is considered
to be propositional and cognitive. Finally, there is emotivism. This is also a theory that
does not believe in an objectively real mind independent account of ethical facts.
However, unlike subjectivism, moral statements according to this theory are non-
propositional and non-cognitive. It is a conative expression of desire.
Now, let us parallel this taxonomy about ‘our access to ethical knowledge’ with
the taxonomy about ‘our access to knowledge of the physical world.’ The intellectualists
would parallel with rationalists, who believes that humans are capable of universal and
necessary knowledge about the physical world. They ground this a priori knowledge on
rationality, reason, pre-birth recollection or intuition.
The moral realist naturalist or the non-rational cognitive account of Aristotle parallels the empiricists, but not just any empiricist. In addition to attributing the source of knowledge to empirical data, they must believe in the physical world’s existence. They must be realists about the physical world in order to be sufficiently parallel with the naturalists who are moral realists. So, the advocate of this position cannot be an 11
empiricist like Berkeley, who was an anti-realist and anti-materialist idealist (Berkeley,
1710, pp. 121-130). Also, Hume would not be an accurate parallel either, since he was
extremely skeptical about whether we could actually gain universal knowledge of the
world based on particular empirical observations (Hume, 1748, pp. 131-139). Even
Locke who was known to be a realist, making the reality-appearance distinction, was
very skeptical about whether we can actually know the true features of the world (Locke,
1690, pp. 114-121).
To make a sufficient parallel to the naturalist who believes that empirical data gives us knowledge of morality, I would have to describe a scientist who performs experiments and believes that his findings accurately describe how the world really is.
Now, I will prove my point about the practical syllogism. When conceptualizing a cognitive non-rational Aristotle, we need to imagine how one of these scientists would think about knowledge of physical facts in the world because this is the same way
Aristotle would think about knowledge of ethical facts in the world. They both use empirical data to derive their beliefs and they believe their findings to constitute knowledge of the true way things are. So imagine a syllogism like ‘Gravity exists,
Gravity is acting on this apple. Therefore, the apple will fall.’ If you accept this syllogism to be adequate, then you should have no problem with the ethical naturalists or with
Moss’s account of how Aristotle uses syllogisms either.
It is true that the premise, ‘gravity exists,’ is an assumption theorized using empirical data of particular instances. It is true that this premise is not a necessary truth 12
because of the problem of induction. It is true that, how we currently view science is that any scientific theory is up for revision because any scientific theory is just an inductive guess. However, we make syllogisms with beliefs as a major premise all the time and we do not think of it as a problem. As long as the premises are a cognitive statement and it is a belief that we ascribe to, we can use it in a syllogism. Even the subjectivist can use their ethical statements in a syllogism. The only one out of the four meta-ethical theories that cannot is emotivism, because they view ethical statements as non-cognitive.
Let us now go back to the parallels of the two taxonomies. Moral subjectivism and emotivism would parallel with idealism. Subjectivists and emotivists are not moral realists. They do not believe that a mind independent account of morality exists. Idealism is anti-realist belief. They believe that there is no mind-independent world. Some commentators may assert that if you are an empiricist you should also be an idealist.
Since empiricists believe that all we have access to as humans is our sense data, the argument is that if that is all we have, there is no reason to believe that there is more.
However, just because we do not know if it truly exists or not, to make a judgment to say that it definitely does not exist is absurd. Furthermore, the common sense belief of today is that all we have are our experiences but that the world does in fact exist. If the commentator’s held to their claim, then they would have a problem with how most
Americans think. In conclusion, to bunch together the cognitive non-rational view with emotivism would be the same degree of error as thinking that a scientist and an idealist 13
have the same view. One is a realist and the other is a not. The two views cannot be more far apart.
Moss: Overview of “Virtue Makes the Goal Right”______
Richard Sorabji credits Julius Walter as one of the main scholars taking the position that Aristotle is a non-intellectualist. Walter publishes his argument in 1874.
However, Walter and the other scholars to whom Sorabji is responding have a different position than Jessica Moss. Walter sees Aristotle’s ethical theory of ends as having close resemblance to Hume’s. This is why Sorabji, in his article published 1973-1974,
“Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue,” is primarily arguing against a Humean interpretation of Aristotle’s ethical view.
“Julius Walter (1874) argued that according to Aristotle reason has nothing to do with the ends of action, and largely through his influence on Burnet (1904) it is the view that for most part was accepted by English scholars... Those who are unaffected by classical scholarship also have seemed unable to appreciate Aristotle’s view on reason and action. The reason for this, I think, is that having read Hume or others who share Hume’s view on reason and action, they come prepared to read such a view into Aristotle” (Dahl, 1984, p. 5).
Moss’s article, “Virtue Makes the Goal Right: Virtue and Phronesis in Aristotle’s
Ethics” came out in 2011. She argues a non-intellectualist position, but distinguishes her position from the Humean view. While Hume’s meta-ethical theory is that ethical action is non-rational and non-cognitive, Moss argues that Aristotle’s view is non-rational and cognitive. It is non-rational because the source of ethical knowledge on empirical data gathered by experience, instead of a priori reason. It is cognitive because ethical 14
statements are propositional and refer to real, objective, mind-independent features of the natural world. According to Hume and emotivism, ethical statements are merely an expression of desire with no propositional truth value. They do not refer to or describe something that exists.
Moss begins her abstract by saying, “Aristotle repeatedly claims that character- virtue ‘makes the goal right,’ while phronesis is responsible for working out how to achieve the goal. Many argue that these claims are misleading: it must be intellect that tells us what ends to pursue” (Moss, 2011, p. 1). Here, I would like to make a clarification. When the intellectualists say that ‘it must be intellect that tells us what ends to pursue,’ they are not saying that phronesis chooses the ends. It is true that phronesis, or practical wisdom, is regarded as having an intellectual quality. But what the intellectualists are saying is that the character-virtue, the one that chooses the ends, is intellectual. After all, the intellectualist argument is that character-virtue is intellectual and rational (Sorabji, 1973-1974, p. 201). This can be confusing and be misunderstood to mean that Moss is accusing the intellectualist of saying that phronesis chooses the ends, but she is not. The terms of the debate are clear. Both sides agree that phronesis determines the means and character determines the ends.
The debate is over whether virtue of character is intellectual or not. And Moss says that it is not, and that any straightforward reading of Aristotle would imply it.
“I argue that Aristotle means just what he seems to say: despite putative textual evidence to the contrary, virtue is (a) A wholly non-intellectual state, and (b) 15
Responsible for literally supplying the contents of our goals. Furthermore, there are no good textual or philosophical reasons to reject this straightforward interpretation” (Moss, 2011, p. 1).
Then she discusses Hume’s ethical theory, and the fact that some scholars regard
Aristotle’s and Hume’s ethical views to be very close. She says that, on the surface, this may seem so, but that they are making an error. They are equating non-rational with non- cognitive.
“Hume: if reason plays no role in setting our ends, the job must fall to desire. And indeed, most of the claim’s few defenders have attributed to Aristotle just this view. But the inference from the face-value reading of ‘virtue makes the goal right’ to Humeanism turns, I will argue, on an anachronistic conflation: the equation of the non-rational with the non-cognitive. Character has the power to set our ends, on Aristotle’s view, because it is more than a purely conative force: it involves something that he thinks must precede and underlie all rational cognition - non-rational cognition...” (Moss, 2011, p. 3).
She explains that, according to Aristotle’s view, we are motivated towards moral actions because ‘we find them good,’ not only because we blindly desire them. Insisting that there is a cognitive role of picking out something real in the world, is pivotal for
Moss. Now, even if she says that Aristotle believes character virtue is non-rational, she can avoid cornering herself into accepting a Humean view.
“Because ethical character involves non-rational cognition of ends, Aristotle can restrict practical intellect to reasoning about ‘things toward the end’ without embracing a Humean view of motivation or moral judgment - that is, without abandoning his view that we desire our ends because we find them good (section V)” (Moss, 2011, p. 3). 16
In a later section, she speculates on the true motivations behind the
intellectualist’s efforts to hold on to their belief, even when the textual evidence is against them. She says that it is because they are afraid that if they accept the non-intellectualist
interpretation of character-virtue, then they would have to accept a Humean view. And consequently, that they would have to accept that Aristotle believed morality is reducible to desire. But, that this seems wrong to them because Aristotle seems to have the idea of objectively correct moral action. Moss is implying here that her proposal would set these worries to rest, since her view can preserve the moral realism of Aristotle, while rendering his view as non-rational.
“The major motivation for the Intellectualist interpretation of the Goal passages, as the Intellectualists themselves make very clear, is the worry that taking these passages at face value turns Aristotle, in effect, into Hume (or rather, into a crude Humean of the kind that Hume himself may not have been). If practical reason cannot provide goals, the thought goes; our goals are set by mere desire” (Moss, 2011, p. 25).
Moss recognizes the intellectualist’s idea that ‘we desire our ends because we find them good’ and fully endorses it. She goes on to clarify that this idea aligns perfectly well with her view.
“But what is so bad about interpreting Aristotle as a Humean? The Intellectualists make two sorts of objections. First, they think that Aristotle holds the very un- Humean view that we desire our ends because we find them good. This, I will argue in section V, is absolutely correct, but does not in fact support the Intellectualist reading over the non-Intellectualist reading at all” (Moss, 2011, p. 26). 17
Moss states that both the intellectualists and the Humean interpretations of
Aristotle make a mistake by assuming that non-rational equals non-cognitive. She
indicates the consequence of this equivalency, and shows that Aristotle’s understanding
of our psychology is not consistent with this picture.
“Aristotle cannot hold that non-rational passions and desires set our ends, the Intellectualists say, for he thinks that we want our ends because we find them good. It is certainly true that Aristotle thinks our ends are ends in virtue of being found good... But does that mean that wish is for what we rationally judge good? In assuming that it does, the Intellectualist is assuming an equation- one also assumed by influential non-Intellectualists like Walter and Zeller- between the non-rational and the non-cognitive” (Moss, 2011, p. 48).
She concludes that “a straightforward reading of the Goal passages is compatible
with a solidly non-Humean interpretation of Aristotle” (Moss, 2011, p. 56).
Moss: Distinction between her reading of Aristotle and the Humean meta-ethical view
I maintain that there is a significantly notable variance between Hume’s ethical theory and his epistemological theory, for which he better known. In his ethical theory he asserts that ‘is’ cannot lead to ‘ought.’ He says that moral action is a mere expression of our passions. Morality is not something that is a feature of the external world. He is not a moral realist. There is no real objective mind-independent account of morality. And there are no ethical facts. Hume’s theory led the way for the twentieth century meta-ethical theory of emotivism. These theories argue that ethical claims are non-cognitive, non- propositional, and purely conative. 18
His epistemological view is very different. Concerning the human capacity for knowledge of the physical world, he believes that all we humans have are our sense experiences. He is an empiricist. But among the various types of empiricists, he is known for articulating the problem of induction. He argued that, since particulars can never move to universals, our particular instances of empirical observation can never culminate to concluding a necessary universal law of nature. Therefore, humans are not capable of universal necessary objective knowledge. Unless you know all of the facts of the world, down to the very last atom, we can never predict with certainly what will happen next in any instance.
Unlike some other empiricists around his time, he does not take a metaphysical position. Berkeley asserted that, if all we have are sense experience, there is no reason to believe there is anything more. So, he adopted the metaphysical view that the physical world does not exist. Berkeley is an idealist. Locke made the reality-appearance distinction. His metaphysical claim was that the physical world does exist but that it is distinctly different from our experience of it. Locke is a realist. Hume, on the other hand, does not make a metaphysical claim. His argument is purely epistemological. He does not argue that the physical world doesn’t exist. He is not an anti-realist.
So, let us contrast this epistemological view with his ethical view. He does not argue that physical facts do not exist, but he argues that ethical facts do not exist. With his epistemological view, he does not argue that objective physical facts do not exist; he is just saying that we can’t know them. However, with his ethical view, there are no 19
objective ethical facts to be known in the first place. According to emotivism, ethical
statements are non-cognitive because they are merely an expression of emotion and these
statements were never meant to refer or describe something real. In Hume’s epistemological view, when someone makes a statement about the physical world, it is cognitive because they are at least attempting to refer and describe something that they believe to be real.
In Hume’s theory of cognition, he lays out the process of ‘sensation to impression to idea to language.’ Even if a specific cognition is a false cognition of a subject mislabeling constant conjunctions as causation, it is, nonetheless, cognition. It is intended to describe something real. He did not believe in innate ideas that give us necessary a priori knowledge, so he may not have considered statements about the physical world to be rational or based on reason. None the less, it is cognitive, it is cognition. This is the main distinction between Hume’s meta-ethical view and his epistemological view about the physical world. His meta-ethics is non-cognitive. And his epistemology is cognitive.
Moss makes it very clear that her view is completely different from Hume’s ethical view. Her position is non-rational cognitive while Hume’s ethical view is non- rational non-cognitive. One could make the argument that her position is closer to resembling Hume’s epistemological view of the physical world. They both view assertions of knowledge as non-rational cognitive. It is non-rational because a priori reason is not the source of knowledge; all we have are empirical data from experience.
But it is cognitive because it is propositional. It is meant to be referring to something that 20
is real, a feature of the real natural world. It is not just an expression of emotive desire.
Aristotle is a realist and believes ethical facts are objective.
Although both Hume’s epistemological theory and Aristotle’s ethical theory limit
human capacity to empirical data in their separate fields, there are still a couple of slight
variances. First, Hume’s epistemological view is extremely skeptical about our capacity
for knowledge; he stresses the problem of induction. In contrast, according to the
cognitive non-rational theorists, Aristotle believed induction from empirical data was a
sufficient source for discovering relevant information of the natural world.
Another difference is that, Hume is ambiguous about whether he himself is a realist about the physical world. Even though it is clear that he viewed assertions about the physical world as cognitive and descriptive, he does not make a metaphysical claim.
On the contrary, Aristotle is a moral realist. This is clear. The question that is relevant to the debate between the intellectualists and the non-rational theorists is how we come to know these objective ethical facts. The intellectualists say that we access ethical knowledge through reason and rationality. The non-rational interpreters say that it is solely through experience and empirical data. We can say that the intellectualist position could correspond to the meta-ethical theory of non-naturalists and Moss’s view could correspond to a naturalist interpretation of Aristotle’s ethical theory.
Aristotle’s brand of naturalism is a moral realist view. This is distinct from other theories that believe there are no objective moral facts. Error theory holds that we attempt 21
to make claims about an objective moral fact but all those assertions are false since there are no objective moral facts. Subjectivism holds that there are moral facts but they are relative or different for each individual, so there are no objective moral facts.
Error theory and Subjectivism are both cognitivist theories, even though they are not moral realist theories. This implies that ethical statements are cognitive and propositional. However, emotivism is a non-cognitive theory. An ethical statement is merely an expression of desire and not propositional. Nevertheless, Aristotle believes there are objectively correct moral actions. This is shown by that fact that he believes ten people with phronesis would all arrive at the same moral judgment in the same situation.
Therefore, these three non-moral realist views do not apply to him, even the two cognitive theories.
Crisp: Overview of “Aristotle on Greatness of Soul”______
In the article “Aristotle on Greatness of Soul,” Roger Crisp indicates various tensions in Aristotle’s description of the great souled man. “There are problems that arise when he fails to select a single, neutrally describable core for the sphere he is discussing”
(Crisp, 2006, pp. 160-161).
First, Crisp discusses the virtues concerning honor. He says that Aristotle presents two standards for honor that sometimes conflict with each other. The first he calls ‘great honor,’ this category gives credit to the sheer performance of honorable deeds. It measures the actual actions and its positive influence that the action has on the world. 22
The second he calls ‘proper ambition or less-then-great honor,’ this category has to do with the intention or disposition to perform an honorable deed. It measures the voluntary intention of wanting and trying to have positive influences on the world. “Aristotle himself realizes that the standard doctrine of the mean cannot work (NE V.5.1133b32-
3)... So it is perhaps not so surprising that we find a problem in the case of greatness of soul” (Crisp, 2006, pp. 161).
Susan Sauve Meyer also discusses this topic in her article “Aristotle on the
Voluntary.” She says that voluntariness is essential when examining virtues of character in respect to action and intention. We already know that action is important for Aristotle because “Aristotle thinks character is praiseworthy in the virtue of the actions it causes, not because of anything about the process by which it comes into being” (Meyer, 2006, pp. 139). However, Meyer also says,
“A person’s prohairesis (intention) is a better indication of his character than his actions because the same action can result from very different prohaireseis. For example, George might give money to needy Sam in order to gain a reputation for largesse, while Sandra might do so in order to make sure that Sam does not go hungry” (Meyer, 2006, p 140).
Aristotle determines that both are important. This is where the concept of voluntariness comes in. “A person’s actions, in addition to her motivations, express her character. This is why an account of actions expressing character will not be restricted to action done on prohairesis, but will concern the wider category of voluntary action”
(Meyer, 2006, p. 140). Voluntary action includes both the intention and the act itself. 23
Both components are necessary in showing a person’s character of virtue. Crisp sees this
as a problem. He says if we strictly go by one, it would imply one thing, and if we go
strictly by the other, it would imply something else. It is unclear which one Aristotle
deems as more essential.
This same tension also comes up in the problem of ‘passing up opportunities.’ “Is wealth necessary for virtue?” (Crisp, 2006, p. 165) If the ‘intention to do good deeds’ is what makes you great souled, then wealth would not be necessary; you are virtuous by being the person that you are. But if the ‘actual deeds that you perform’ is what make you great souled, then you would need wealth to be able to perform a large scale deed to receive great honor. Aristotle sometimes describes the great souled as one who performs great deeds and claims great honor. But, sometimes the great souled is describes as relatively indifferent about being credited for performing a great deed; If the opportunity does not come, it is all right as long as one character is one that is honorable.
From an intellectualist point of view, virtue is something that is intellectual. It is something that is within the internal state of a person. No matter what this mental state makes a person do externally, it is merely a symptom or manifestation of what is going on internally in the virtuous person. So, the virtuous actions that they perform are just a secondary footnote to the fact that they have a virtuous mind. This is what defines them as virtuous. Their mind, not their action, defines a person as virtuous. 24
On the other hand, from a non-rational cognitive point of view, virtue is an on
going process of constantly being in the habituated routine of doing virtuous deeds. All that we can verify is action, so actions, and actions alone, are what define a person to be virtuous. Being virtuous is a lifestyle, not a mind state. Therefore, you cannot just have intention; you must have a great positive influence on the world to call yourself virtuous.
So, what does this lifestyle of being a virtuous person look like? It means, having money helps to influence the world in a positive way. It means that a person is in the lifestyle of making grand gestures of good deeds that he will most likely be personally invested in, making sure they are not passing up opportunities and grateful to receive the acclaim for the great deeds.
Nonetheless, from an intellectual view, being virtuous is a mind state. It is the state of ‘possessing the knowledge of right and wrong’ that makes them a virtuous person. A person does not have to be in the lifestyle of constantly making political moves of great scales to be considered virtuous. Therefore, a person with the intention to do a good deed would be considered virtuous before a person that accidentally has done a good deed. Wealth does not increase how virtuous a person is. From an intellectualist view, you are either virtuous or not. Because it is knowledge; you either know something or not. It is not a sliding scale of ‘some people being more virtuous’ and ‘some people being less virtuous.’ While someone who views being virtuous as a lifestyle may think of being virtuous as a sliding scale. 25
Crisp also points out that there are several conflicting interpretations of the great
souled person. He mentions four contemporary interpretations. In the interpretation that he labels as ‘contemplation,’ “the great souled man is in fact the philosopher” (Crisp,
2006, p. 174). In the ‘idealization’ version, the portrayal suggests that “we should not aim to be like the great-souled person, but seek to instantiate the ideal he represents into a more rounded life of practical virtue” (Crisp, 2006, p. 174). In the interpretation of the account as a ‘description’ the great souled is “a mere description of the ideal of the average Athenian of Aristotle’s day” (Crisp, 2006, p. 175). And finally in ‘aspiration,’ the great souled is just “an attitude of aspiration to virtue” (Crisp, 2006, p. 175).
Crisp says the inconsistencies become blatantly obvious in the context of
‘reciprocity of virtue,’ “according to which, one can possess any one virtue of character only if one possesses them all... The scope of this capacity, Aristotle believes, is universal, so that it will involve seeing practical reasons correctly in the sphere of every virtue” (Crisp, 2006, p. 168). However, on other parts of the text Aristotle says that you can employ a single virtue without having mastered the others.
Considering all of these tensions and inconsistencies, there are two possibilities of what might be going on. The first is that Aristotle is talking about two different people.
Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of virtue: virtue of thought and virtue of character. 26
Virtue of thought, or intellectual virtue, is something that grows by receiving
straightforward pedagogical instruction, like knowing ‘A=A’ or 41+1—2.’ In contrast, virtue of character is not something that you achieve solely by rationality. It is processed through the appetitive and spirited parts of the soul. As a result of the cultivation of habit, one can align the various parts of the soul to achieve virtue of character. We learn to play an instrument by playing the instrument, not by studying it in a book. Virtue of character is much like the skill of a craft. You learn to be brave by actually doing courageous actions.
By the ‘virtue of character’ understanding of greatness of soul, the great souled man would be more concerned with ‘actual deeds’ than the ‘intention to do good deeds.’
The virtue of ‘proper ambition’ would be marginal, compared to the virtue of ‘great honor.’ He would believe that you do need wealth to be virtuous because you need to actually preform great deeds to receive great honor. He would ‘claim the honor’ and never be ‘indifferent’ about it. This is that person described in the contemporary interpretations o f‘description’ and ‘aspiration.’
On the other hand, intellectual virtue is more abstract and theoretical. Therefore, the ‘intention or proper ambition’ is credited and wealth is not essential. Since it would come from a place of logic and an objective outlook, the great souled man of intellectual virtue would be indifferent to receiving honor. 27
This is the ‘virtuous man’ with the greatness of soul that Aristotle refers to when he presents the thesis of reciprocity of virtue. “In NE VI. 13, Aristotle links this thesis to the intellectual virtue” (Crisp, 2006, p. 168). Seeing the world in an objective way implies that you are free of bias and can understand every perspective. From the standards of intellectual virtue, the great souled must know each and every perspective of
‘the experienced.’ Since ‘the experienced’ is the man with virtue of character, “doing this would require possessing the virtue of character within each relevant sphere” (Crisp,
2006, p. 168). If someone was able to acquire every single infinite perspective, they would have a sense of neutrality about the world, in which everything is trivial in comparison to the grand scheme of things. If you see the world from this eternal perspective, any particular deed or instance would become trivial. There would be a sense of detachment from the world.
This, nearly impossible, depiction of the great souled is the picture referred to in the ‘idealization’ interpretation, in which it is just an ‘aim.’ And the one who takes this intellectual approach of aiming to achieving this state is described in the ‘contemplation’ interpretation as the philosopher. The great souled man with ‘intellectual virtue’ is the product of Aristotle’s rationalistic approach of deduction and arguments ‘from first principles’. The great souled man with the ‘virtue of character’ is the product of
Aristotle’s empiricist approach of induction and ‘to first principles’ view. 28
Though it is possible that Aristotle is describing two different people, there is another possibility: Aristotle did not mean to introduce two different people. The conflicting depictions are a result of two notions that are incompatible with each other.
The question is whether knowledge is gained empirically by experience or rationally by a priori means. When you start with the intellectual approach, it is purely academic and not yet applicable to actual life situations. You academically learn math, logic, the periodic table... just abstract theoretical formulas that are necessarily true analytic a priori. A=A is an objective and necessary truth. And then, you attempt to apply the same approach to understanding the world. Alternatively, in terms of learning things through experience, like learning to play the violin, you learn through trial and error.
Through repeated experimentation, you slowly start to go in the direction of figuring out the reality of how things actually work.
The intellectual approach starts at a completely objective place. You learn facts, and then you slowly try to apply it to actual, subjective, real-life situations. The experiential approach starts with no true knowledge. The starting point is completely subjective, and then through experiments of trial and error, we would try to drift towards an objective truth. Either way we are trying to find an objective truth that we can apply to actual life.
But they both have problems. As Hume pointed out, no amount of experiments can add up to a necessary truth. This is the problem with the empirical approach. On the 29
other hand, to justify a priori knowledge that applies to the actual world, you must posit
some sort of supernatural entity: Plato’s forms, Socrates’ recollection, and Descartes’ good god. You must take a leap in logic and insert a belief.
It is possible that Aristotle, in attempt to escape the problems of the two approaches, includes both rationality and experience as the ultimate source of knowledge.
But as we have seen, the great souled man of ‘intellectual virtue’ and the great souled man of ‘character virtue’ look very different. His theory has many tensions because he has this fundamental problem.
However, McDowell has a solution. His reading of Aristotle satisfies both approaches and provides a metaphysical explanation to justify, both intellect and experience, as the source of legitimate knowledge.
McDowell: Overview of “Virtue and Reason”______
McDowell draws from his reading of Wittgenstein to present a theory of language acquisition. He then applies this theory to his theory on the conception of moral law.
McDowell’s reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations diverge from that of some other scholars, for example, in “Virtue and Reason,” he describes Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein, and says that Cavell’s interpretation is wrong. He then presents his more sophisticated reading of Wittgenstein, suggesting that Wittgenstein embraced a view that steered between Cavell’s view that meaning is a matter of congruence of subjectivities 30
and the Platonism, that meanings are hard rails that we have to grasp hold of, through
some kind of introspection.
McDowell starts with Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein. Cavell is trying to make sense of Wittgenstein’s rule following arguments. Cavell says, Wittgenstein is claiming that there is no objective meaning to which we are accountable. We just learn a language and we learn how to go on by learning how to merely use a language. But, there is no check on it. This is what Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life.’ There is no assurance. There is no way to make sure that we understood it correctly.
“The terror of which Cavell speaks at the end of this marvelous passage is a sort of vertigo... In this mood, it seems to us that what Cavell describes cannot be a shared conceptual framework within which something is, given the circumstances, objectively the correct move; it looks, rather, like a congruence of subjectivities, with the congruence not grounded as it would need to be to amount to objectivity” (McDowell, 1998, p. 61).
McDowell says Cavell’s understanding is not how we know how to go on (not what rule-following is), and it is not what Wittgenstein meant. Cavell’s reading is non- cognitivist; there is no cognition in how we learn language. Language is not just a blind verbal game with arbitrary rules that are meaningless. McDowell argues that our dissatisfaction with Cavell’s view prompts us to embrace a form of Platonism, according to which rules are super-hard rules that we need to grasp and such a grasp guides us. This view, according to McDowell, is mythological and involves a problematic sideways point of view. 31
“We recoil from this vertigo into the idea that we are kept on the rail by our grasp of rules... What we engage our mental wheels with when we come to grasp the rules- are objectively there, in a way that transcends the ‘mere’ sharing of forms of life (hence, for instance, Platonism about numbers.) This composite idea is not the perception of a truth, but a consoling myth, elicited from us by our inability to endure vertigo” (McDowell, 1998, p. 61).
McDowell argues that there is a middle ground that we pass over in oscillating between Cavell and Platonism. For McDowell, initiation into a language puts us in a space of concepts (proprieties for the use of words) that are operative both at the level of experience (they get drawn into operation involuntarily) and at the level of our thoughts and beliefs.
“It is an analogue to this [mathematical] intermediate position that seems to me to be the most satisfying in the case of ethics. The analogue involves insisting that moral values are there in the world, and make demands on our reason. This is not a Platonism about values ... the world in which moral values are said to be is not the externally characterize-able world that a moral Platonism would envisage” (“Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following,” in Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, p. 156).
According to McDowell, when we learn to use a word properly, and we have a full grasp of the concept, we don’t just have that one concept but we have a holistic network of them (“Mind and World,” McDowell, 1994). So when this happens, these concepts are shaping the way we see things. If we say ‘this is yellow,’ the yellow is now in my experience. In addition to the epistemological achievement of ‘knowing,’ language acquisition is about ‘being.’ It is about my experiences and being connected to how things just are. The concept that is acquired in learning an expression, or a word, is not only for the sake of using it for verbal utterance. It is also about ‘being drawn in.’ We 32
look around, and without verbalizing, we see things, they have conceptual shape. We are not verbalizing it, but it is happening. Our experiences are drawing on our conceptual network. Those very concepts that we learned in learning the language, are now active involuntarily.
“All that happens is that the pupil is told, or shown, what to do in few instances... Yet the pupils do acquire a capacity to go on, without further advice, to novel instances. Impressed by the sparseness of the teaching, we find this remarkable. But the assimilation to the deductive paradigm leaves it no less remarkable” (McDowell, 1998, p. 64).
When you learn a language, you do not just pick up how to utilize utterances.
Language is acquisitioned concepts. When you learn a language, you are inserted into a public space that is both inter-subjective and also objective space.
“How is it that the pupil, given the sparse instruction, divines from it a universal formula with the right deductive powers? ... Against a background of common human nature and shared forms of life, one’s sensitivities to kinds of similarities between situations can be altered and enriched by just this sort of instruction. This attributes no guesswork to the learner...” (McDowell, 1998, p. 64).
McDowell has a similar theory about our acquisition of moral values. Once we get initiated into this cultural public space, moral values come alive. Value concepts are also part of the conceptual network into which we are initiated when we learn a language.
These concepts are also drawn upon by our experience. Just as we need training to refine our grasp of phenomenal concepts as they are operative in experience (e.g., how we learn to recognize a specific shade of blue), ethical training allows us to refine our grasp of values as they show themselves in our experience. Such a grasp then refines our ability to 33
respond appropriately to the concepts (as they are not inert, but will-involving, drawing
us into action). This idea of how we come to access objective moral concepts through
practice works well with Aristotle’s idea of habituation. Aristotle emphasized the
importance of aligning your soul and correctly habituating yourself, in order to be
virtuous and possesses objective moral conception.
The combination of the ideas that “moral concepts originate from experience” and
“those concepts are objective, universal, and necessary” is challenging to explain. This is the project. The rationalists’ solution is to reject the former idea. Plato and Socrates do not base our knowledge on just experience. They say it exists from pre-birth and can be accessed through experience. The non-cognitivists reject that idea and concede that moral concepts are not objective, universal, or necessary. Aristotle does not endorse the idea of recollection and forms, but he also does not want to reject the later idea. McDowell’s idea of assimilation into the logical space of reasons aims to balance this combination of seemingly incompatible criteria. According to McDowell it justifies objectivity in concepts without introducing anything mysterious. This is McDowell’s interpretation of
Aristotle.
Aristotle is not disagreeing with Plato and Socrates that virtue is knowledge. They all agree that virtue is knowledge. However, Aristotle says that there could be a case where my cognition is functioning and I see the good, but I still fail to act for the sake of it. To this question, Socrates’ position is to say, “You have forgotten, so you need to 34
recollect the good.” Weakness of the will is an intellectual matter of recollecting. This is how he can justify ethical knowledge.
McDowell interprets Aristotle’s response to be that experience already involves value concepts. What you need to do is heed experience, by training yourself to heed the good and not the prompting of your appetites and emotions (i.e., anger, etc.). Just align your thoughts and understanding with the way experience manifests the good. Therefore, the emphasis is on experience, whereas, in Plato’s Meno, the emphasis is on recollection.
McDowell: Posterior Analytics and Induction______
In Book I section 1 of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle says “all teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge” (71a 1-2). After he has finishes his explanation of deduction and demonstration, in Book II section 19, he discusses induction and his view concerning first principles. Here, he clearly states that he does not believe we have innate ideas, and that the implication of such an idea would lead to bizarre consequences. If we have innate ideas, we would “have pieces of knowledge more precise than demonstration and yet this escapes notice” (99b 27-28).
Still, there remains a problem of accounting for how we come to know first principles without having pre-existing knowledge. He eventually concludes that first principles are neither completely innate nor completely known without pre-existing knowledge (100b 30-34). First principles come from perception (100a 10-11). We come to know first principles through induction. 35
“When one of a number of logically in-discriminable particulars has made a stand, the earliest universal is present in the soul: for though the act of sense- perception is of the particular, its content is universal... A fresh stand is made among these rudimentary universals, and the process does not cease until the indivisible concepts, the true universals, are established” (100a 15-100b 4, Mure translation).
From sense perceptions of the particulars, we eventually get to universals of first principles. Gaining knowledge begins with induction. This he calls “comprehension of the principles” (100b 12), or universalizing the particulars. In this section of the Posterior
Analytics, Aristotle presents his solution to the problem of Plato’s Meno. And, while
Plato’s solution is to present the idea of recollection and innate knowledge, Aristotle assigns great value to sense experience. This philosophical distinction in how we come to gain knowledge will directly play into their ethical theories.
Earlier, I expressed my concerns about problem of induction. However, according to McDowell, his theory does not involve induction. Induction is ampliative; it amplifies a claim from particular to some universal that is not of the particulars. But, what
McDowell is saying is that the universal already present within particular experiences.
Induction goes from particulars to universals, but in his view, when we access knowledge, we are just going from universals to universals. Experiences are
‘particularized universals,’ so universals are concretely embodied in experience.
Later Aristotelian scholars also emphasized this idea of the particularized universals. Avicenna argues that our sensory perceptions have forms; our experiences embody universals (i.e. forms and intentions- as apprehended by inner sense). The active 36
intellect gives universality to experience, so sensory perceptions, like colors, already contain forms. He also says that active intellect is external to the human intellect. This gives grounds to show that our sense data contains the element of objectivity.
Induction is only a problem if we think of experience as only being of particulars.
Aristotle says in the posterior analytics that universals reside in experience, as so far as human experience is concerned. Scholars who understand experience as only being particulars, are led to the idea that there are only two options. They want to make
Aristotle into either an extreme empiricist, like Hume and Locke, or into an extreme intellectualist, like Leibniz and Descartes. However, these are not the only two options.
Aristotelian scholar, Michael Ferejohn, says:
“Of course, this would pose a problem if one also had an ‘ultra-empiricist’ theory of perception such as that presupposed by objection (ii) above (and propounded by the modem empiricists) according to which both the object and the content of a perception must be ‘perfectly particular.’ But this is precisely the kind of theory that Aristotle does not hold” (Ferejohn, 1988, p. 105).
One could argue that when you think of sense impressions, there is clearly contact with the particular, but with that contact, concepts are drawn in; intellect is active. And these concepts are not just our own perspectives. They are logically interconnected. They are universal and necessary, so they cannot be in conflict with each other. This reading of
Aristotle is not something that is unique to McDowell. There is a history of Peripatetic tradition where they endorse the theory of particularized universals. 37
Aristotle distinguishes between potential knowledge and developed knowledge.
An example of developed knowledge is a claim like: penicillin cures syphilis. How did we discover this? We did some experiments, something happened, we experienced it, maybe some of it was accidental, but at the end, we saw it. We discovered a true fact of what penicillin does. It is a universal piece of knowledge that we have obtained through experience. The question is how we get to know this. Two centuries ago, people didn’t know that penicillin cured syphilis. How did you get the known from the unknown?
Aristotle’s view is that the knowledge is already in experience as potential knowledge. The universality of the facts is already within the experience. When we discovered that penicillin cured syphilis, it was no longer just theory. We discovered it.
Experience contains the insight we obtain through regular exposure. So, it is just up to us to recognize these truths and to discover it within experience.
On the other hand, Platonists would say that we always already knew these truths.
Plato proposes that, before birth, humans come from a world of universals, the world of forms. They use this to justify the universality of knowledge; the knowledge that we can recollect from the world of forms are universal and objective. However, in the physical world that we live in now, all we can observe are particular instances of impermanent objects from a subjective perspective. No matter how many of these faulty observations we compile, we will never yield universal and objective knowledge. 38
So, how does Aristotle’s solution answer the problem of how we gain necessary knowledge exclusively from experience? He says that ‘penicillin cures syphilis’ is not an induction. Induction amplifies the evidence; it takes a theory and amplifies the scope of its truth value to say that it is universal. But here, we are just going from universals to another universal because there are universals in experience. So, it is not ampilative to end up with a necessary and universal conclusion. It is no longer a theory.
“All animals possess innate congenital discrimination, senses perception. In some animals this discrimination comes to persist. Some of these develop the power of systematizing the persistent sense-perception. They developed a memory. Some of the latter, human beings, have experience, which is the universal, stabilized in its entirety within the soul” (Posterior Analytics, Aristotle, I I 19, 99b35-100al0).
Aristotle says that, as rational beings, the universals are already available in experience. These universals are a part of a network of reason that is logically interconnected. We have the ability to see the universals in experience. We see instances, and then we make the connection to necessary knowledge. Experience contains principles of demonstration.
McDowell argues, in the context of accessing moral knowledge, there is an involvement with moral concepts that we have been initiated to in learning a language, learning habits of good conduct, and having good upbringing. These concepts are actualized in experience. So, when we acquire them through our training, we are able to see the good in things. We see the universal good, in the same way that we can see and carve out the universality in medical instances of experience. 39
McDowell’s reading of Aristotle is a rationalist view. However, it is completely different from the extreme rationalist view, like Descartes’, that the empiricists make him out to be. The empiricists say that, if we were to endorse the idea of necessary knowledge, it has to be trafficking with the world; corresponding to the true features of the real world. It cannot be just some frictionless truth spinning in some abstract place.
So, they say that, if the rationalists’ account of knowledge is just a rational logical deduction, that in no place makes contact with the world, then it does not align with
Aristotle’s views at all.
Aristotle is a rationalist in that he believes in necessary knowledge. But for
Aristotle, there is empirical knowledge. It is just like Kant’s view that we have to begin with knowledge and then ask for the conditions of the possibilities. For a physician who treats people for illness, they have knowledge of certain diseases and how to cure them.
You could say, lets guard, and make it into a probability thing. But ultimately, you could say “penicillin does cure syphilis.” For astronomical observations, they say that there are certain things we know about certain movements of the heavenly bodies; it perfectly aligns with the mathematical analysis. Clearly both the astronomical and the medical involve some kind of experience, but we also come to know something about them with certainty. 40
Conclusion______
In the interpretation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, there is an on-going debate over what Aristotle regards as the fundamental source of ethical knowledge. It has been widely believed that he is an ethical intellectualist; that virtue is knowledge and that we access this knowledge through intellect. Richard Sorabji is an example of a scholar that reads Aristotle in this way.
However, in recent years, scholars like Jessica Moss have argued that Aristotle has a non-rational cognitivist ethical view; a sort of empiricist concerning morality. This view holds that virtue is knowledge but that we access it purely through experience.
There is no question that Aristotle valued habituation and experience. The disagreement hinges upon the discrepancy that: the intellectualists believe, at some point in experience, we access knowledge of objectivity through our intellect, while the non- rational cognitivist believe that it is a perpetual process of seeking ethical knowledge through experience solely.
It is clear that Aristotle values both aspects of virtue: “virtue as intellectual” and
“virtue as a practice.” But, these conflicting ideas may be the cause of the tensions that
Roger Crisp points out in the analysis of Aristotle’s description of “the Greatness of
Souls.” It is unclear which side Aristotle ultimately endorses.
McDowell offers a solution that resolves this issue. He provides a fully sufficient explanation of how Aristotle incorporates both intellect and experience as the source of 41
knowledge. The idea of ‘particularized universals’ and Aristotle’s textual evidence corroborate McDowell’s explanation and resolve the contention between the intellectualists and the empiricists. 42
References______Sorabji, Richard. “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue.” Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Edited by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley and Los Angeles California USA: University of California Press, 1980. pp. 201-219
Crisp, Roger. “Aristotle on Greatness of Soul.” The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by Richard Kraut. Malden Massachusetts USA, Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. pp. 158-178
Meyer, Susan Sauve. “Aristotle on the Voluntary.” The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by Richard Kraut. Malden Massachusetts USA, Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. pp. 137-157
Locke, John. “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).” Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Edited by Steven M. Cahn. Fifth edition. New York USA and Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. pp. 114-121
Berkeley, George. “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).” Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Edited by Steven M. Cahn. Fifth edition. New York USA and Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. pp. 121-130
Hume, David. “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).” Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Edited by Steven M. Cahn. Fifth edition. New York USA and Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. pp. 131-139 43
Dahl, Norman O. “Practical Reason, Aristotle, and the Weakness of the Will.” Minneapolis USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 McDowell, John. “Mind, Value, Reality.” Cambridge Massachusetts: The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1998
McDowell, John. “Mind and World.” Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994
Moss, Jessica. “Virtue Makes the Goal Right: Virtue and Phronesis in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Phronesis, Vol. 56, No. 2, 2011
Ferehjohn, Michael. “Meno’s Paradox and De Re Knowledge in Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration” History o f Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (April, 1988) University of Illinois Press, 1988. pp. 99-117