Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning: The Posterior Analytics (Oxford Aristotle Studies Series)

✍ Scribed by David Bronstein

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 287
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

'All teaching and all intellectual learning come to be from pre-existing knowledge.' So begins Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. David Bronstein sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning.

The Posterior Analytics, on Bronstein's reading, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epist?m? and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind's ascent from sense-perception of particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles.

Bronstein also highlights Plato's influence on Aristotle's text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, Bronstein uncovers an instance of Meno's Paradox (a puzzle from Plato's Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, he argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing's essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes.

Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, epistemology, or philosophy of science.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning: The Posterior Analytics
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations of Titles of Aristotle’s Works
Introduction
General Introduction
1. Meno’s Paradox
2. The Order of Inquiry
3. Nous
What nous is
How nous is acquired
1: Meno’s Paradox and the Prior Knowledge Requirement
1. Meno’s Three Questions
2. Socrates’s Dilemma
3. Meno’s and Socrates’s Prior Cognition Requirements
4. Aristotle on Learning: the Prior Knowledge Requirement
5. Aristotle on Knowledge
6. Prior Knowledge of What?
7. Prior Cognition and Prior Knowledge in Plato and Aristotle
8. Simultaneous Learning in APo 1.1
9. Meno’s Paradox in APo 1.1
Conclusion
PART I: Learning by Demonstration
2: Learning by Demonstration
1. The Prevailing View
2. Textual Evidence
3. Scientific Knowledge and Demonstration: APo 1.2
4. What is Learning by Demonstration?
First type
Objection
Second type
Conclusion
3: Belonging ‘In Itself’ and Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration
1. Belonging ‘In Itself ’ (Kath’ Hauto): APo 1.4
2. In Itself2: Demonstrable Attributes
3. In Itself Accidents: Demonstrable Attributes
4. Two Models of Demonstration
4: Scientific Knowledge and Demonstration
1. Non-Demonstrative Scientific Knowledge (Nous)
2. Scientific Knowledge and Explanation
3. Epistēmē, Nous, and Logos
4. The Objects of Scientific Knowledge
5. Scientific vs. Non-Scientific Knowledge
6. The Requirements for Principles of Demonstration
7. The Prior Knowledge Requirement for Learning by Demonstration
8. Learning by Demonstration, Revisited
Conclusion
PART II: Learning by Definition
5: Learning by Definition: Introduction
1. Some Preliminaries
2. Learning by Demonstration and by Definition
6: Inquiry in APo 2.1
1. The Four Questions of Inquiry
2. Inquiry and Scientific Knowledge
3. Knowledge in APo 2
4. From Non-Scientific to Scientific Knowledge
5. The Objects of Inquiry
6. The Stages of Inquiry
7. Meno’s Paradox
7: Inquiry in APo 2.2
1. Searching for the Middle Term
2. Attribute Questions
3. The Causal and Definitional Constraints
4. Meno’s Paradox
5. The Causal Constraint for Attributes
6. The Definitional Constraint: Introducing Causally Complex Essences
7. Attributes and Subjects
8. The A Term
9. A Missing A Term?
10. Definition and Explanation
11. Subject-Focused Inquiry
12. Essence and Middle Term
Conclusion
8: The Socratic Picture of the Order of Inquiry
1. The Intuitionist Picture
2. The Explanationist Picture
3. The Socratic Picture
4. Three Methodological Passages
5. Better Known By Nature and To Us: Explanation, Conviction, and Nous
6. An Objection
9: Cause, Essence, and Definition
1. Causes that are the Same vs. Causes that are Different
2. Cause and Essence
3. The Two Types of Cause in APo 2.9
4. How Essences are Discovered
5. APo 2.10: Definition
6. Nominal Accounts in APo 2.10
Conclusion
10: Discovering Causally Complex Essences: APo 2.8
1. The Puzzles of APo 2.3–7
2. The Argument of APo 2.8, 93a3–15
3. The Essence-Revealing Demonstration
4. Inquiry, Discovery, and Prior Knowledge
5. Knowing Part of the Essence
6. Knowing Part of x’s Essence without Knowingthat x Exists
7. First Route to Knowledge: Stages 3 to 4
8. First Solution to Meno’s Paradox
9. Inquiring without an A Term
10. Discovering the Essence-Revealing Demonstration: Stages 4 to 5
11. The Two Models of Demonstration in APo 2.8
12. Second Route to Knowledge, Second Solution to Meno’s Paradox
Conclusion
11: Subject-Kinds and their Existence
1. Primary vs. Subordinate Subject-Kinds
2. Subject-Kinds vs. Demonstrable Attributes
3. Subordinate Subject-Kinds vs. Demonstrable Attributes
4. Demonstrating Attributes: Teaching by Demonstration, Part 1
5. Teaching vs. Inquiring
6. Demonstrating Subordinate Subject-Kinds: Teaching by Demonstration, Part 2
7. Discovering the Existence of Subordinate Subject-Kinds
8. Discovering the Existence of Primary Subject-Kinds
12: Discovering Causally Simple Essences: APo 2.13
1. Division, Definition, and Explanation
A new type of subordinate subject-kind
Demonstrable attributes and definitions
The order of inquiry
2. Discovering the Essences of Subject-Kinds
3. Genus, Differentia, and Division: An Overview
4. Objections to Division: APo 2.5 and 6
5. The D Attribute Rule
6. Division Introduced
7. Exhaustive Division
8. Correctly Dividing a Genus
9. Preliminary Conclusions
10. Inquiry, Division, and Meno’s Paradox
11. Defining by Division: Conclusions
12. Discovering the Essences of Primary Subject-Kinds
PART III: Learning by Induction
13: The Origin and Aim of APo 2.19
1. Opening Moves and Overview
2. Motivation
3. The Origin and Aim of APo 2.19
4. Meno’s Paradox
5. Perception and Logos
6. Perception to Nous
7. Experience, Induction, and Inquiry
8. The Rout Simile
9. Perception and Induction: Preliminaries
10. Perception and Induction: Details
Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Ancient Works
Editions of Aristotle’s works
Editions of other ancient works
Modern Works
Index Locorum
ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS
ARISTOTLE
PHILOPONUS
PHILOPONUS(?)
PLATO
PLUTARCH
Index Nominum
General Index