ARISTOTLE

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Induction, Experience, Reason

About reason, Aristotle corrects what he takes to be a mistake in Plato. Reason is not in born, as Plato thought. It develops in a natural process Aristotle calls induction.

• Posterior Analytics II.19.99b

⊕ "Thus the other animals live by impressions and memories, and have but a small share of experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasoning. It is from memory that men acquire experience, because the numerous memories of the same thing eventually produce the effect of a single experience. Experience seems very similar to knowledge and art, but actually it is through experience that men acquire science and art; for as Polus rightly says, 'experience produces art, but inexperience chance.' Art is produced when from many notions of experience a single universal judgement is formed with regard to like objects. To have a judgement that when Callias was suffering from this or that disease this or that benefited him, and similarly with Socrates and various other individuals, is a matter of experience; but to judge that it benefits all persons of a certain type, considered as a class, who suffer from this or that disease (e.g. the phlegmatic or bilious when suffering from burning fever) is a matter of art" (Metaphysics I.1.980b).

"It would seem that for practical purposes experience is in no way inferior to art; indeed we see men of experience succeeding more than those who have theory without experience. The reason of this is a that experience is knowledge of particulars, but art of universals; and actions and the effects produced are all concerned with the particular. For it is not man that the physician cures, except incidentally, but Callias or Socrates or some other person similarly named, who is incidentally a man as well. So if a man has theory without experience, and knows the universal, but does not know the particular contained in it, he will often fail in his treatment; for it is the particular that must be treated. Nevertheless we consider that knowledge and proficiency belong to art rather than to experience, and we assume that artists are wiser than men of mere experience (which implies that in all cases wisdom depends rather upon knowledge); and this is because the former know the cause, whereas the latter do not. For the experienced know the fact, but not the why; but the artists know the why and the cause. For the same reason we consider that the master craftsmen in every profession are more estimable and know more and are wiser than the practitioners, because they know the causes of the things which are done. We think that the practitioners, like certain inanimate objects, do things, but without knowing what they are doing (as, for instance, fire burns); only whereas inanimate objects do each of these things through a certain nature, practitioners do theirs through habit. Thus the master craftsmen are superior in wisdom, not because they can do things, but because they possess a theory and know the causes" (Metaphysics I.1.981a). All animals have an inborn discriminatory capacity, called perception. If perception is present, in some retention of the percept comes about, but in others not. ... When many such things come about, a difference comes about, so that some come to have reason (λόγον) from the retention of such things, and others not. From perception comes memory, and from memory (when it occurs often in connection with the same thing), experience (ἐμπειρία); for memories that are many in number from a single experience. From experience, or from the whole universal that has come to rest in the soul (the one apart from the many, whatever is one and the same in all those things), there comes a starting point of art (τέχνης) and of knowledge (ἐπιστήμης), of art if it deals with coming to be, of knowledge if it deals with being. Thus the states [that grasp the starting points for demonstration] neither belong in us in a determinate form, nor come about from other states that are more cognitive; but they come about from perception—as in a battle when a rout occurs, if one man makes a stand another does and then another, until a position of strength is reached. The soul has the potential to undergo this.

Notes on the Text

Not all knowledge is demonstrative.

This leaves the problem of explaining nondemonstrative knowledge.

Aristotle explains this kind of knowledge in terms of a causal process that begins with perception and continues through memory and experience to reason.

Aristotle thinks the process is something that natural happens as human beings mature from children into adults. Human beings naturally acquire reason as they become adults.

How this process works is not completely clear.

In this process, what Aristotle calls "experience" is a kind of thinking or cognition.

• Posterior Analtyics II.19.100b

⊕ It is clear that it is necessary to cognize the primary things by induction (τὰ πρῶτα ἐπαγωγῇ γνωρίζειν). For perception implants the universal (καθόλου).

Notes on the Text

Reason consists in a grasp of the relations of consequence and incompatibility for certain universals. This grasp happens by "induction," which begins in perception.

The battle metaphor is pretty obscure, but it suggest that we do not grasp universals one at a time. Someone we grasp several together so that we have some basic knowledge.

"[The grasp] come[s] about from perception—as in a battle when a rout occurs, if one man makes a stand another does and then another, until a position of strength is reached."

• Posterior Analtyics II.19.100b

⊕ Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are always true, others admit of error. Belief and reasoning admit error, whereas knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and intellect (νοῦς) are always true. No kind other than intellect is more accurate than knowledge. The starting-points of demonstrations are more cognizable (γνωριμώτεραι), and all knowledge involves reason. It follows that here will not be knowledge of the starting points, and since except intellect nothing can be truer than knowledge, it will be intellect that apprehends the starting points.

Notes on the Text

Some beliefs are true and others are false. This is not the case for knowledge.

What is "intellect"?

Intellect, it seems, is the part of the soul that grasps the universals and thus has the knowledge expressed in the indemonstrable premises in demonstrations.

Intellect does not have demonstrative knowledge, but it does have knowledge.

• On the Soul III.3.427a

⊕ Two things that most define the soul: [(i)] movement in respect of place and [(ii)] thinking, judging, and perceiving. Thinking and judging are regarded as a kind of perception (for in both the soul discriminates and grasps something). Indeed the ancients go so far as to say that being sensible and perceiving are the same. ... But it is apparent that being sensible and perceiving is not the same, for perception is present in all the animals but only some are sensible. Further, perceiving is distinct from thinking. In thinking we find right and wrong. We find right in being sensible, knowledge, true belief, and we find wrong in their opposites. But perception of the special objects of the senses is always true, and is found in all animals, and while it is possible to think falsely, thinking is found only where there is reason.

Notes on the Text

There are four things in play: what he calls "thinking" (νοεῖν), "judging" (κρίνειν), "perceiving" (αἰσθάνεσθαι), "being sensible" (φρονεῖν).

Aristotle takes "thinking" to entail the presence of reason.

It follows, for Aristotle, that only human beings can "think." Animals cannot. Animals have some cognitive abilities, but these abilities are not forms of "thinking."

• Metaphysics I.1.980a

⊕ All men naturally desire knowledge (πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει).

Notes on the Text

This is the first sentence in the Metaphysics.

What does it mean?

Given the nature of human beings, they develop in such a way that they come to have knowledge. This happens first in the acquisition of reason. As they mature from children into adults, human beings acquire reason and its knowledge.