Great Ideas of Philosophy

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Lecture TwelveAristotle on the KnowableScope: One of the greatest minds the world would host, Aristotle laid the foundations for most of the subjects towhich science and scholarship have been devoted ever since. He was the greatest biologist, logician,political theorist, and ethicist of his age, and no one in any age could lay claim to so wide a range oforiginal contributions.Thus, he records his confidence in empirical approaches to the problem of knowledge. The son of aphysician and himself keenly interested in the facts of the natural world, Aristotle was a tireless observerand classifier, his research covering all the sciences and especially the biological. A student in Plato’sAcademy for nearly 20 years, Aristotle was always deeply respectful of Platonic thought, but his ownapproach would depart in significant ways. Aristotle was the first to develop systematic definitions andmethodologies applicable to the study of nature, of ethics and politics, and of psychology. Knowledgebegins with the desire to know and with the exercise of our powers of observation, but developedknowledge goes beyond observation and arrives at universal laws.OutlineI. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) begins the Metaphysics with the observation: “All men by nature desire to know. Anexample is the delight we take in our senses. For even quite apart from their usefulness, they are loved for theirown sake, and none more than the sense of sight.”A. There is an essentially instinctive desire for knowledge common to all creatures, which is necessary if theyare to survive. Aristotle is too much the natural scientist to dismiss the information gleaned by the senses.B. Nature does nothing by chance, and we have obviously been fitted out with senses in order to be guided bythem.C. As an opening statement, the first sentences of the Metaphysics are a vindication of knowledge gleaned byperception. That this is incomplete there is to be no doubt, but if we are to engage the problem ofknowledge, perception—a sensory awareness of the world around us—must be our starting point.1. In his naturalistic works on animals, Aristotle assigns to perception many powers and functions we areinclined to subsume under such headings as “intelligence” or “cognition.”2. In doing so, he grants to the animal kingdom rich perceptual powers that go well beyond elementarysensory functions, but he will then deny the animal kingdom that culminating and defining rationalpower reserved to the human psyche.D. This leads us to Aristotle’s understanding of the various powers that the animal kingdom comes equippedwith and a scheme of classification that will distinguish between and among animal types in terms of thesepowers or faculties.1. Aristotle begins with the kind of question a scientist would ask when seeking a reasonable basis onwhich to divide the living from the inanimate realms. What is the fundamental power (dynamis) invirtue of which a living thing has life? What is it that the soul (psyche) of an entity must posses by wayof animation such that life itself becomes possible?2. The basic powers are nutritive, reproductive, and locomotor (even some plants have the latter).3. Animals are differentiated by having the power of sensation: the power of perception, of actingconsciously in response to events in the external world.4. These basic functions of nutrition, reproduction, locomotion, and sensation are all powers of the soul(psyche). As used by Aristotle, this word is a generic term for those processes that are life-giving andlife-sustaining.5. With more complex animal forms, to these powers of the soul is added some kind of intellectual orintelligent power: the power of problem solving. Aristotle grants this to much of the animal kingdom;they have that in common with us.E. Aristotle reserves to human beings, however, a psychic power or faculty of a special kind. It is usuallyrendered in English as “reason,” but the word he uses in his treatise On the Soul is epistemonikon, meaningthe cognitive ability by which we comprehend universal propositions.30©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
1. Epistemonikon is a special feature of rationality, fitting us uniquely for, among other things, the rule oflaw itself. After all, what is the rule of law except the ability to apply some universal precept to anindefinitely large number of individual instances, each qualifying as, for example, “theft”?2. It is in virtue of this rationality that we become fit for a mode of political, social, and civic life that isunavailable to other “types” within the kingdom of life.II. Given that we have these faculties and powers, how will Aristotle understand and approach the problem ofknowledge? For Aristotle, to know something is essentially to know the cause of it; that is, to have asystematic, scientific understanding of things (episteme) is to know the causes by which things are broughtabout.A. In effect, Aristotle says that a claim that someone knows that a right-angle triangle has 180 degrees can beunderstood in one of two ways.1. A person may know that a triangle has 180 degrees because she has measured the angles and sees thattheir sum is 180 degrees, or she may know that by definition a triangle has 180 degrees and, thus,knows this of all triangles without measuring any of them.2. What is the difference between the knowledge of one sort and the other? In one case, what is known isknown by experience and does not rise to the level of episteme. In contrast, developed knowledge,such as could be gained by studying geometry, is a knowledge of the regulative principles and lawsthat govern the affairs of things, not simply factual knowledge of this or that.B. Of course, to say that knowledge requires an understanding of the causes of things is to raise a questionabout just what a cause is. “Causation” can be understood in several senses.1. Every identifiable thing that exists is made of some particular material and could not exist except as aresult of that material. The marble of which a statue is made is, thus, the material cause.2. Every such thing is recognizable as a given type or form of thing. This “form,” then, must be presentfor the thing to be what it is. In this respect, the shape of the statue and its resemblance to an original isits formal cause.3. But form is imparted to matter by strokes and blows and other forms of mechanical influence. Theshape of the statue is carved out of the stone by chisel and hammer; these are the efficient cause of thestatue.4. The ultimate understanding of the object stems from the intelligent design that the object itselfrealizes. Aristotle refers to this as the final cause—that is, the final thing realized in time, although it isfirst in conception.C. Truly developed knowledge embraces not only the material, efficient, and formal causes, but the that forthe sake of which these causes were recruited. To understand x is to know what x is for, what its purpose orend, its telos, is. Thus does Aristotle seek teleological explanations as ultimate.D. Questions of what things are for are also central to Aristotle’s ethical and political thought. We havepurposes and ends as the kinds of beings we are; how are those to be reached? How does the polis aid orhinder those ends?1. Our knowledge of ourselves must be grounded in a respect for just what our defining abilities achievebecause these very abilities reveal the that for the sake of which….2. The developed knowledge that we have leads us to an understanding that the things of the universe,including living things, instantiate a plan; they fit in. Nature does not do things without a purpose. Theultimate question for understanding, then, is: “How does this fit into things? What is it for? Whatpurpose does it serve?”3. We know at the outset that nothing with pattern and design comes about accidentally. As Aristotlesays, “If the art of shipbuilding were in the wood, we would have ships by nature.” Wood, however, isthe material cause of the ship, and the workers who build the ship are its efficient cause.4. The art of shipbuilding is finally in the ship’s designer. It is the designer who knows what ships are forand how that purpose is served by the right materials, rightly assembled. To “know” in this sense is tocomprehend far more than anything conveyed by the mere material composition of an object.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 31
Page 3 and 4: Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
Page 6 and 7: Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
Page 8 and 9: E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
Page 10 and 11: 2. Despite their oracles, priests,
Page 12 and 13: 4. Looking at geometry, we are told
Page 15 and 16: E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
Page 17 and 18: of the mystery of earth itself impe
Page 19 and 20: Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
Page 21 and 22: Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
Page 23 and 24: Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
Page 25 and 26: II. A philosopher is engaged in the
Page 27 and 28: Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
Page 29 and 30: Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Page 37 and 38: Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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Page 43 and 44: Functionalism: The view that consci
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Page 49 and 50: John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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Page 54 and 55: Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
Page 56 and 57: Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
Page 58 and 59: C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
Page 60 and 61: III. The problem of conduct is then
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Page 64 and 65: Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
Page 66 and 67: Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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Page 70 and 71: Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
Page 72 and 73: B. Augustine approaches the problem
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Page 76 and 77: Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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Page 82 and 83: Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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historical volumes tell Florentines
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Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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1. First, the courts required a doc
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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B. This expansion, however, does no
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1. This standard essentially rules
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Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
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Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Levi
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B. Other things can be known to be
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Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
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Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
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Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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efore him were not always faithful
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2. His Letters on the English makes
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Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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VI. The Federalist Papers and the g
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III. Kant argues that there is some
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Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Questions to Consider:1. A hypothet
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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C. Though his system would be mocke
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1. There is nothing in the physics
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F. To include Hegel within the trad
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Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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insisted that our very character is
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III. Nietzsche was an admirer and o
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B. In the final state, we’re all
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Lecture Forty-ThreeDarwin and Natur
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2. There is room for altruism but o
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1. He is a Hegelian who stands Hege
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Lecture Forty-FiveThe Freudian Worl
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B. How can repressed elements be un
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III. What figures in the human imag
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Lecture Forty-SevenWilliam James’
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Questions to Consider:1. Conclude w
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III. As long as we subscribe to a
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture Forty-NineAlan Turing in th
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C. Searle thinks that the missing i
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3. Even activities could be simulat
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B. The inclination to classify is a
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Lecture Fifty-TwoPhilosophy of Scie
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V. These debates illustrate a far l
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1. The two had in common the idea t
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Questions to Consider:1. What does
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C. Locke and others emphasized that
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Lecture Fifty-FiveWhat Makes a Prob
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B. Kant suggests that the moral law
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1. Proponents have argued that so m
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Lecture Fifty-SevenOn the Nature of
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2. So far as it can coexist with th
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3. Slavery is commonplace in all of
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3. Does the just-war theorist have
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B. The quadrivium comprised arithme
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2. He argues that the former is pre
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1. The objects of the knowable worl
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etween a world of beauty and one of
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⎯⎯⎯. On Free choice of Will.
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Herodotus. The Persian Wars. G. Raw
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———. Toward a Science of Huma
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