Great Philosopher Aristotle - Essay Example

Perhaps the most influential of all philosophers, Aristotle was born in Stagira in 384 B.C. Son of the scientist and surgeon Nicomachos, he was interested in science right from the start, an interest he pursued as an adult scholar. As a teenager, he arrived in Athens to study with Plato in his Academy defying his father’s wish that he study medicine. As the Biography of Aristotle from BiographyShelf.com points out, “He and Plato found a liking in each other’s philosophical abilities that had previously been unmatched. For twenty years, the two remained together, content to debate, theorize, and research deeper into the outer limits of human abstract thinking. They would talk, debate, and discuss about politics, science, the natural world, and about God.” Later, following Plato’s death and his travels in Assos and Lesbos, where he studied and thought of God, the world about him, and his fellow humans, Aristotle established the Lyceum, his own school. Here, he focussed on teaching abstract principles formalising them into logical treatises of philosophy, politics and scientific reasoning. Before his death in Chalcis, Aristotle was accused of impiety and fled Athens, fearing a death such as that which had befallen Socrates before him. Much of Aristotle’s work has been lost though as Michael W. Wedin points out in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (45) “What remains is an enormous body of writing on virtually every topic of philosophical significance. Much of it consists of detailed lecture notes, working drafts, and accounts of his lectures written by others.” Aristotle had been very influenced by Plato although he did not agree with all his thinking, such as his theory of forms. As Michael V. Wedin claims in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy “Aristotle early on developed a keenly independent voice that expressed puzzlement over such Platonic doctrines as the separate existence of Ideas and the construction of physical reality from two-dimensional triangles.” (44) Aristotle replaced this with his own theory of substance and further elaborated this into his theory of knowledge via his thinking on sensation and reason and the way in which he linked these properties of “man”. He also formalised abstract thought when he developed his universal method of reasoning. Not only does Aristotle’s philosophy underpin much of today’s Western thought and politics, but it also lays the foundations to modern Scientific Method. His system of inferential logic, or syllogistic reasoning, or categorical logic, has remained the major logical system of the Western world for many centuries. As the online Stanford Encyclopaedia says, “Although today we recognize many forms of logic beyond Aristotle's, it remains true that he not only developed a theory of deduction, now called syllogistic, but added to it a modal syllogistic and went a long way towards proving some meta-theorems pertinent to these systems.” (2) Aristotle’s other achievements include the fact that he taught and influenced Alexander the Great. Although Aristotle is given credit for developing, again according to the online Stanford Encyclopaedia, “a systematic treatment of the principles governing correct inference” (2) the idea of sound argumentation existed before him. What he did that was so unusual was to “codify the formal and syntactic principles at play in ... inference”. (online Stanford Encyclopaedia 2) In his Prior Analytics Aristotle says that a syllogism is “a discourse in which, a certain thing being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from being so” (Aristotle 24b 18). Three kinds of syllogism have emerged: the categorical syllogism, the hypothetical, and the disjunctive syllogism. The study of Prior Analytics and of what constitutes a syllogism is necessary for an understanding of Aristotle’s foundations to scientific knowledge. As David Ross points out in the online excerpt from his book Aristotle, “Whatever other conditions it must satisfy besides, science must at least [Aristotle] seemed to have argued, be sure of the validity of each step he seems to have argued, be sure of the validity of each step it takes, and this is what observance of the rules of syllogism secures.” (19) A categorical syllogism is at base an argument which consists of two premises and one conclusion. A subject-predicate relation needs to exist between two initial terms in the predicate, and then a second subject-predicate relationship can be formed between the initial two terms and a third in the conclusion. Ross claims that the rationale for this lies in the fact that “the subject-predicate relation is the common form of all judgment and all reasoning, and therefore the primary subject of logical study; and while the varieties of syllogism can be explored completely and the rules for them definitely laid down, any attempt to enumerate all the possible varieties of relational inference must fail.” (19) If the proposition or argument is to hold as true and valid, then each premise must be true in its own right, and the related conclusion must follow as necessarily true. Only three terms can be used in a valid categorical syllogism. An example of a valid categorical syllogism might consist of the following: All cats are animals. Sooty is a cat. Sooty is an animal. (Note that only three terms are used here: ‘cats’, ‘animals’, ‘Sooty’.) An example of an invalid categorical syllogism is: All cats have four paws Dingo has four paws. Dingo is a cat. This is not a valid argument as Dingo is, in fact, a dog. (Note that four terms rather than three were used in this argument: ‘cats’, ‘four’, ‘paws’, ‘Dingo’.) The problem with undistributed middle terms arises in similar instances. The perfect deduction (all As are Bs; all Bs Cs; and so, all As are Cs so long as all As really are all Bs and all Bs Cs) “is an instance of universal affirmation”. (online Stanford Encyclopedia 3).It is perfect “because its validity needs no proof, and perhaps because it admits of no proof either: any proof would seem to rely ultimately upon the intuitive validity of this sort of argument.” (online Stanford Encyclopedia 3) The sets of meta theorems devised by Aristotle “some of which he proves and others of which he merely reports (though it turns out that they do all indeed admit of proofs)” (online Stanford Encyclopedia 3) underpin the intuitive validity of the categorical syllogism. “They include such theorems as: (1) no deduction contains two negative premises; (2) a deduction with a negative conclusion must have a negative premise; (3) a deduction with a universal conclusion requires two universal premises; and (4) a deduction with a negative conclusion requires exactly one negative premise.” (online Stanford Encyclopedia 3) In the hypothetical syllogism, the premises of the argument and the conclusion are all hypothetical. The argument still follows the basic structure of the categorical syllogism but the use of “if” distinguishes it as in the following example from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy: “If the sun is shining, it is warm; If it is warm, the plants will grow; Therefore, if the sun is shining, the plants will grow.” (895) The third major syllogism is the disjunctive one that follows the pattern of all disjunctives via its use of “or”. It can often be confusing as Ian Boh points out in his section of the The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy in his example: “It is raining or I will go for a walk; But it is not raining; The Therefore I will go for a walk.” (896) And where he further points out that “It is not always clear whether the ‘or’ of the disjunctive premise is inclusive or exclusive.” (896) Although there are other variations on the syllogism, the ones discussed above are the main ones and form the basis of modern logical practice. Aristotle was a man for all ages in the influence he has exerted on all generations from his own till now. His achievements were enormous. Works Cited Adler, Mortimer J. Aristotle for Everybody. New York, New York: Simon &      Schuster, 1978. Print. Audi, R. (ed.) The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print. Barnes, J. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Rist, John M. The Mind of Aristotle a Study in Philosophical Growth. Canada:      University of Toronto Press, 1989. Print. Ross, David. Aristotle. London: Jarrad & Sons Ltd, Norwich, 1964. Print www.Bibliography Shelf.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 July 2010. Read More