Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

162 PHENOMENALISM AND RELATIVISMthemselves. That is to say, he may think that this distinction is not so sharpas to allow one to argue that although it may not be possible to think andspeak of the things themselves, and although PNC may not be true of thethings themselves, still we can think and speak about things as they appearto us and as we conceive them, and PNC may be true of them. So he may,ultimately, think that the distinction between the things themselves, orthings without qualification, and things as they appear to us and as weconceive them, is such that if we can think and speak about things as theyappear to us and as we conceive them, then we can also think and speak ofthe things themselves; i.e. we can think and speak about things withoutqualification.2The characterization of phenomenalism and relativism<strong>Aristotle</strong> distinguishes carefully between phenomenalism and relativism. Hecharacterizes phenomenalism as the claim that:(PHEN) Anything that appears thus and so to someone, andanything that someone believes to be thus and so, is thus and so (i.e.all appearances and all beliefs are true).At the opening of IV. 5 he refers to ‘the view of Protagoras’ (1009 a 6) as theview that ‘all things believed [ta dokounta panta] and [all] appearances [taphainomena] are true’ (1009 a 8). Later, when he distinguishes relativismfrom phenomenalism and considers how they are related (IV. 6,1011 a 17ff.), he refers to phenomenalism simply as the view that ‘allappearances are true’ (pan to phainomenon alēthes and hapanta taphainomena alēthē, see 1011 a 18 and a 19–20).Relativism, on the other hand, he characterizes as the view that:(REL) Anything that appears thus and so to someone, and anythingthat someone believes to be thus and so, is thus and so for him (i.e.all appearances and all beliefs are true relative to the one who has them).It is important to distinguish, as <strong>Aristotle</strong> does here, between the claimthat ‘All appearances and all beliefs are true’ (phenomenalism) and t heclaim that ‘All appearances and all beliefs are true relative to the person whohas them’ (relativism). This is important especially since his aim here (in IV.5–6) is above all to consider how phenomenalism and relativism are relatedto the denial of PNC and especially PNC-M (i.e. PNC conceived as a