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CHAPTER THREE ON AND

Galen's De Captionibus may be seen as a legacy of Aristotelian into fallacy and ambiguity in language, and here I sketch Aristotle's contribution in these areas. Though Galen is writing nearly five centuries after Aristotle, he treats the topic of am­ biguity as if Aristotle were the only previous contributor worth taking seriously. This explains in part why De Captionibus is in form a kind of commentary on the Sophistici Elenchi but is in content a treatise on the correct use and abuse of language. In any case, by distinguishing the Aristotelian doctrine we may better appreciate Galen's own achievement-the formulation of a comprehensive theory of ambiguity. We find that Aristotle has no general systematic teaching on ambiguity outside the context of his theory of fallacy but that he does have a special doctrine of ambiguity, 'focal meaning,' 1 which has crucial implications with regard to the possibility of a of metaphysics. Although this latter doctrine seems to play no part in Galen's work on ambiguity, I adumbrate it here as part of the Aristotelian teaching on ambiguity to which Galen had access. One of the marks of the Aristotelian general doctrine of ambiguity is its lack of rigor, presumably the result of an absence of a theore­ tical foundation. This is clearly emphasized in contrast with Galen's teaching on ambiguity, which is imbued with a rigid theoretical framework. At any rate, Aristotle requests that the reader pardon the shortcomings of his treatment of reasoning 2 (including fallacy and ambiguity), claiming that his own work is the first to be written on the subject. I shall proceed first to discuss Aristotle's general teaching on fallacy and ambiguity, and afterward turn to his special theory. Aristotle's doctrine on fallacy and ambiguity is preserved in his treatise Sophistici Elenchi, which is considered an appendix

1 See inf,a pp. 29-31. • Soph. El. 34. I84bI-8.

2 18 INTRODUCTION to his Topica,3 a handbook on reasoning from dialectical .' According to Ryle this exercise in dialectic is a formal debate, in which one participant is questioner, the other, answerer. 5 In these eristic moots, The questioner can only ask questions; and the answerer can, with certain qualifications, answer only 'yes' or 'no' .... The questioner has to try to extract from the answer, by a series of questions, an answer or conjunction of answers inconsistent with the original thesis, i.e. drive him into an 'elenchus.' The questioner has won the duel if he succeeds in getting the answerer to contradict his original thesis, or else in forcing him to resign, or in reducing him to silence, to an infinite regress, to mere abusiveness, to pointless yammering or to outrageous . The answerer has won if he succeeds in keeping his wicket up.... The answerer is allowed to object to a question on the score that, for example it is two or more questions in one, like have you left off beating your father?, or that it is metaphorical or ambiguous.6 As Ryle suggests and Aristotle asserts, to drive an opponent into self-refutation (i.e., reasoning which contradicts a given conclusion) 7 is only one aim in such contests.8 Nevertheless, Aristotle's description and solution of the take up the bulk of the discussion in the Sophistici Elenchi. 9 Aristotle characterizes sophistical refutations as refutations which appear to be genuine, but which are not, or as refutations which though genuine with respect to refuting some thesis, only appear to refute the thesis at hand.lo For Aristotle, 11 (sophisms)

3 David Ross, Aristotle, University Paperbacks (London and New York: Methuen & Co., 1964), p. 59. In Organon, ed. by T. Waitz, Vo!. II (Leipzig: Hahn, 1846), the Sophistici Elenchi forms Book Iota (IX) of the Topica. See Waitz, pp. 528-29. 4 Aristotle Topica I. I. 100aI8-20. 6 Gilbert Ryle, 'Dialectic in the Academy,' in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle (ed. by R. Bambrough), p. 40. • Ibid. 7 Soph. El. I. 165a2-3. 8 Four other goals are specified by Aristotle-forcing an opponent into falsehood, paradox, solecism and babbling. See Soph. El. 3. 165bI3-22. 9 Chapters 4-11, 19-30. 10 Soph. El. 8. 169b20-23. 11 At Soph. El. 4. 166b21, 28, Aristotle calls them paralogisms. At Top. 8. 12. 162bl2 Aristotle includes with false premises in the class of false (fallacious) arguments. Such arguments are of minimal interest to Aristotle in Soph. El., where he focuses on invalid and spurious arguments, the premises of which may very well be true.