ANALYSES OF ARISTOTLE JAAKKO HINTIKKA SELECTED PAPERS VOLUME 6 1. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4091-4 2. Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator. An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4246-1 3. Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4766-8 4. Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4780-3 5. Inquiry as Inquiry. A Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5477-X 6. Analyses of Aristotle. 2004 ISBN 1-4020-2040-6 JAAKKO HINTIKKA Boston University, U.S.A. ANALYSES OF ARISTOTLE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS NEW YORK, BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW eBook ISBN: 1-4020-2041-4 Print ISBN: 1-4020-2040-6 ©2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow Print ©2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht All rights reserved No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written consent from the Publisher Created in the United States of America Visit Kluwer Online at: http://kluweronline.com and Kluwer's eBookstore at: http://ebooks.kluweronline.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Origin of the essays vii Introduction ix 1. On Aristotle’s notion of existence 1 2. Semantical games, the alleged ambiguity of ‘is’, and Aristotelian categories 23 3. Aristotle’s theory of thinking and its consequences for his methodology 45 4. On the role of modality in Aristotle’s metaphysics 77 5. On the ingredients of an Aristotelian science 87 6. Aristotelian axiomatics and geometrical axiomatics 101 7. Aristotelian induction 111 8. (with Ilpo Halonen) Aristotelian explanations 127 9. Aristotle’s incontinent logician 139 10. On the development of Aristotle’s ideas of scientific method and the structure of science 153 11. What was Aristotle doing in his early logic, anyway?: A reply to Woods and Hansen 175 12. Concepts of scientific method from Aristotle to Newton 183 13. The fallacy of fallacies 193 14. Socratic questioning, logic, and rhetoric 219 v This page intentionally left blank ORIGIN OF THE ESSAYS All permissions granted for the previously published essays by their respective copyright holders are most gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to the editors of the volumes in which these articles appeared previously and to the co-author of one of the articles. 1. ‘‘On Aristotle’s notion of existence’’, T he Review of Metaphysics vol. 52 (June, 1999), pp. 779–805. Reprinted with permission. 2. ‘‘Semantical games, the alleged ambiguity of ‘is’ and Aristotelian cate- gories’’, Synthese vol. 54 (1983), pp. 443–468 (D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht). 3. ‘‘Aristotle’s theory of thinking and its consequences for his methodology’’, previously unpublished. 4. ‘‘On the role of modality in Aristotle’s metaphysics’’, in Of Scholars, Savants and T heir T exts, ed. by Ruth Link-Salinger, Peter Lang Publishing, New York (1989), pp. 123–134. Reprinted with permission. 5. ‘‘On the ingredients of an Aristotelian science’’, Nouˆs vol. 6 (1972), pp. 55–69. Reprinted with permission from Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. 6. ‘‘Aristotelian axiomatics and geometrical axiomatics’’, in T heory Change, Ancient Axiomatics and Galilean Methodology, ed. by Jaakko Hintikka et al., D. Reidel Publishing, Dordrecht (1980), pp. 133–144. 7. ‘‘Aristotelian induction’’, Revue lnternationale de Philosophie vol. 34 (1980), pp. 422–439. Reprinted with permission. 8. (with Ilpo Halonen) ‘‘Aristotelian explanations’’, Studies in the History of the Philosophy of Science vol. 31, no. 1 (2000), pp. 125–136. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier. 9. ‘‘Aristotle’s incontinent logician’’, Ajatus vol. 37 (1978), pp. 48–63. Reprinted with permission. 10. ‘‘On the development of Aristotle’s ideas of scientific method and the structure of science’’, Aristotle’s Philosophical Development: Problems and Prospects, ed. by William Wians, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield (1996), pp. 83–104. Reprinted with permission. vii viii ORIGIN OF THE ESSAYS 11. ‘‘What was Aristotle doing in his early logic, anyway?: A reply to Woods and Hanson’’, Synthese vol. 113 (1997), pp. 241–249 (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht). 12. ‘‘Concepts of scientific method from Aristotle to Newton’’, in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, Vol. I, ed. by Monica Asztalos, John E. Murdoch and Ilkka Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 48 (1990), pp. 72–84. Reprinted with permission. 13. ‘‘The fallacy of fallacies’’, Argumentation vol. 1 (1987), pp. 211–238 (D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht). 14. ‘‘Socratic questioning, logic, and rhetoric’’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie vol. 47, no. 184 (1993), pp. 5–30. Reprinted with permission. INTRODUCTION The purpose of the introduction to a book should be the same as that of the label on a medicine bottle. It should tell the reader how to use the text of the book. The present volume needs such instructions more than most books, including the earlier volumes of my selected papers. The main warning that the label on this product should proclaim is not to read the papers printed or reprinted here in the same way as fully polished contributions to scholarly journals on ancient philosophy. I have been, and I continue to be, fascinated by Aristotle’s philosophical ideas. I have thought about them, and I have come up with a number of interpretations of them. The essays published or repub- lished here are presentations of these interpretations. Alas, they are all sketches rather than fully argued and documented papers. The reason is obvious. My main lines of work in philosophy run elsewhere and have the first claim to my working time and energy. I fully admit this orientation of my philosophical interests does not excuse the sketchiness of my papers. Since I was aware of the situation for a long time, I hoped to rewrite some of the papers published here and replace some others by new ones in such a way that the interpretational argumentation and scholarly documentation would be on the same level as in specialized publications on ancient philosophy. Reluctantly, I have reached the conclusion that I will never have a chance of doing so. Hence my only chance of bringing my interpretational ideas to the attention of a wider philosophical audience is to reprint the original papers as they are, with an explanation of their status. My main reason for doing so is a strong belief in the potential importance of the interpretations I outline in these papers. The first and foremost aspect of this importance is the giving of new general perspectives on Aristotle’s philosophy. It might seem overoptimistic, not to say pretentious, to think that after more than two millennia there could be unused clues to Aristotle’s thinking. The fact nevertheless is, I believe, that in some cases the progress of systematic conceptual analysis (and synthesis) puts what Aristotle is doing – or, rather, thinking – in a new light. Even the most central concept of all, ontology, the concept of being, bears witness to these opportunities. For a century and a half, the consensus of philosophers is that this concept is irreducibly ambiguous between being in the sense of identity, predication, existence and subsumption. This assumption may be called the Frege-Russell ambiguity thesis. But is the thesis true? Everybody admits that there are different uses of words for being, but the Frege-Russell thesis tries to explain ix