Aristotle on False Reasoning SUNY series in Ancient Greek Philosophy Anthony Preus, editor Aristotle on False Reasoning Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations Scott G. Schreiber State University of New York Press Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Michael Haggett Marketing by Fran Keneston Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schreiber, Scott G. (Scott Gregory), 1952– Aristotle on false reasoning : language and the world in the Sophistical refutations / Scott G. Schreiber p. cm. — (SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5659-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5660-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Aristotle. 2. Reasoning. 3. Fallacies (Logic) I. Title. II. Series. B491.R4 S37 2003 185—dc21 2002030968 10987654321 To Sophia ™tm¥V gºr ÷sti t›V to£ Qeo£ dunºmewV Contents List of Abbreviations xi Preface xiii Introduction: Reasoning and the Sophistical Refutations 1 Aristotle on the Kinds of Reasoning 1 The Sophistical Refutations 3 Outline of the Book 4 PART 1: FALLACIES DUE TO LANGUAGE Chapter 1: The Power of Names 11 Naming Is Not Like Counting 11 “Counters” 13 “Signifiers” 14 Conclusion 18 Chapter 2: Homonymy and Amphiboly 19 Introduction: Aristotle’s Use of l°xiV 19 The Six Sources of False Reasoning Due to Language 20 Homonymy 21 Homonymy in the Categories 21 Homonymy in S.E. 22 Amphiboly 25 Amphiboly in S.E. 26 Amphiboly Outside the Organon 28 Problems with Aristotle’s Distinction: The Argument of S.E. 17 31 Conclusion 34 Chapter 3: Form of the Expression 37 Introduction 37 vii viii CONTENTS Form of the Expression As a Category Mistake 38 Confusion of Substance with Quantity 39 Confusion of Substance with Relative 40 Confusion of Substance with Quality 42 Confusion of Substance with Time 42 Confusion of Activity with “Being-Affected” 43 Confusion of Activity with Quality 44 Form of the Expression Fallacies That Are Not Category Mistakes 44 Confusion of a Particular with a Universal 44 Confusion of One Particular Substance with Another 45 Confusions Based on Gender Terminations 45 Form of the Expression and Solecism: Aristotle and Protagoras 48 Form of the Expression As a Linguistic Fallacy of Double Meaning 51 Chapter 4: Composition, Division, and Accent 55 Difficulties and Procedure 55 Fallacies Due to Accent 58 Fallacies Due to Composition and Division (C/D) 60 C/D Fallacies Are Not Examples of Double Meaning 60 The Primacy of Oral Speech 64 Further Examples 65 Confusing Linguistic Parts and Wholes 68 C/D Fallacies in the Rhetoric 72 Conclusion 74 PART 2: RESOLUTIONS OF FALSE ARGUMENTS Chapter 5: Resolutions of False Arguments 79 Introduction 79 Principles of Aristotelian Analytical Method 80 Two Kinds of Resolution 82 The Principle of Parsimony 84 Proper Refutations and Their Defects: Ignoratio Elenchi 87 Resolutions of Fallacies Due to Language 88 How These Fallacies Violate the Definition of a Refutation 88 The Unity of Composition and Division: S.E. 23 90 The Extralinguistic Component of Resolutions to Linguistic Fallacies 92 Contents ix PART 3: FALLACIES OUTSIDE OF LANGUAGE Chapter 6: Begging the Question and Non-Cause As Cause 97 Introduction 97 The Fallacy of Begging the Question 98 Begging the Question in the Prior Analytics 98 Begging the Question in Dialectical Reasoning 100 Begging the Question and Immediate Inferences 104 Resolutions 106 The Fallacy of Treating a Non-Cause As Cause 107 Conclusion 112 Chapter 7: Accident and Consequent 113 Introduction 113 Fallacies Due to Accident and Their Resolutions 114 False Resolutions to Fallacies Due to Accident 117 False Resolutions by Appeal to Linguistic Equivocation 117 False Resolutions by Appeal to Oblique Context 121 False Resolutions by Citing Missing Qualifications 123 Final Remarks on Double Meaning and Fallacies Due to Accident 126 Historical Reasons for Treating Fallacies Due to Accident As Errors of Logical Form 128 Fallacies Due to Consequent 130 Introduction 130 Aristotle’s Examples 132 Conclusion 139 Chapter 8: Secundum Quid 141 Introduction 141 Two Types of Secundum Quid Fallacy 142 Resolutions of Secundum Quid Fallacies 144 Secundum Quid As a Fallacy outside of Language: Aristotle’s Position 145 Problems with Aristotle’s Position 148 Conclusion 150 Chapter 9: Many Questions 153 Introduction 153 xCONTENTS Disjunctive and Conjunctive Premises 155 Disjunctive Premises 155 Conjunctive Premises 156 Resolutions of Fallacies Due to Many Questions 159 Homonymy and Amphiboly As Cases of Many Questions 161 Unity of Predication versus Unity of Definition: The Problem of de Interpretatione 163 de Interpretatione 5 163 de Interpretatione 8 and 11 164 Conclusion 165 Conclusion and Summary 167 Appendix 1: Paralogisms in Aristotle 173 Appendix 2: Words and Counters—Platonic Antecedents 177 Appendix 3: Aristotle on k§rion Predication 179 Appendix 4: Platonic and Academic Background to Secundum Quid 187 Notes 191 Bibliography 233 Index of Names 241 Subject Index 245 Contents xi List of Abbreviations The following are used to refer to the works of Aristotle: Cael. On the Heavens Cat. Categories de Int. On Interpretation EN Nicomachean Ethics GA Generation of Animals G.C. Generation and Corruption HA History of Animals Meta. Metaphysics PA Parts of Animals Phy. Physics Poet. Poetics Pol. Politics Pr. An. Prior Analytics Pst. An. Posterior Analytics Rhet. Rhetoric S.E. Sophistical Refutations Top. Topics xi Preface My interest in Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations was prompted by one extraor- dinarily bold claim that he makes early in the treatise. He says that there are twelve ways and only twelve ways by which false arguments can appear to be persuasive. How could that be, I wondered. Does not the rich history of human gullibility suggest a nearly unlimited number of ways that people can be fooled into accepting poor arguments? But Aristotle rarely makes such claims lightly. So began my close analysis of this treatise that purports to argue for and illustrate exactly those twelve ways of producing false but per- suasive arguments. Aristotle constructs his twelvefold classification of fallacies from the perspective of the victim of the false reasoning. The question he asks is this: What would explain why some person finds some piece of false rea- soning persuasive? The victim of the sophism must hold some additional false belief, either about language or about the world, which makes the false rea- soning appear cogent to him. Aristotle’s twelvefold taxonomy of false argu- ments, then, is based upon twelve types of false belief that lend persuasiveness to bad arguments. And these false beliefs are not just about the mechanics of proper logical form. For Aristotle, logical acumen alone is not enough to safeguard one from sophistical arguments. One also must possess the right meta-logical and metaphysical beliefs, and Aristotle believes that he has un- covered the twelve false beliefs about language and the world whose correc- tion will protect one from being taken in by false argumentation. Aristotle’s classification of fallacies and his justification of that classification in the Sophistical Refutations have received little systematic study in the twen- tieth century. Such, however, was not always the case. From the early Greek commentators, through the Latin schoolmen of the medieval period, and into the nineteenth century, there had been a steady interest in the project of creating a complete taxonomy of reasoning errors. Why did this interest wane in the twentieth century? One factor is that the so-called linguistic turn in xiii xiv PREFACE the Anglo-American philosophic world could no longer seriously entertain Aristotle’s chief taxonomical distinction between errors based on language and errors based outside of language. The efforts of these philosophers, whether proponents of ordinary or ideal language, were to resolve philosophic prob- lems exclusively through linguistic clarification. The assumption that this could be done left little sympathy for Aristotle’s claim that certain kinds of false reasoning, themselves productive of philosophical perplexities needing resolution, could only be resolved through metaphysical clarification. This book returns, with considerable sympathy, to Aristotle’s project. My goal is to make clear the philosophical justification that Aristotle presents for his classification of fallacies. To do this, however, it is necessary to explore in some detail the numerous examples of fallacies that Aristotle uses for illus- tration. As happens so often in Aristotle, his examples can both clarify and confuse. Much of this book involves a close analysis of these often-elliptical illustrations of false reasoning. I recognize that there is a danger in treating so closely all of these examples. The reader might begin to lose sight of Aristotle’s big picture: his justification of the overall taxonomy. If one does occasionally find oneself losing sight of the forest for the trees, I hope that the trees themselves are sufficiently intriguing, providing peripheral insights into other areas of logical theory and wider Aristotelian thought. This need to concentrate on Aristotle’s examples explains two particular features of the study: the extensive Greek citations and the sparing use of non-English secondary sources. I have tried to keep the book as accessible as possible to the “Greekless” reader. Much of what Aristotle says is very impor- tant to readers interested primarily in the history of logic or in the growing modern literature on informal fallacies.