Ton Deuteron Ploun

Burnyeat, “Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge” in Berti

I.
The PA does two things:
1) provides a theory of the structure of science; the conditions for a proposition to belong to a body of systematic knowledge;
2) gives an account of the cognitive state of an individual who has mastered a body of systematic knowledge.

Aristotle first gives an account of the cognitive state of epistasthai (knowing the cause and necessity) and then draws the second conclusion about the objects of episteme.

“Because episteme involves grasping the demonstration of necessary conclusions, it is grounded epistemologically on the premises of that demonstration” (99).

Aristotle is concerned with one’s cognitive state with regard to particular propositions (rather than who branches) because he distinguishes between unqualified episteme with respect to a theorem of science from various qualified versions of episteme in relation to the same theorem. (100)

What should we make of the distinction between qualified and unqualified episteme?
* qualified is still episteme, just not the favored kind.
**How should we make sense of this? Demonstration from archai is only one form of proper justification; something can have justification without deductive demonstration. (See A2, A5, and A13 for places where Aristotle recognizes this distinction.)

“In other words, Aristotle both knows and emphasizes that his requirement that demonstration proceed from first principles is not a requirement of justification but of scientific explanation.” (101)

(NOTE: missing pp 102&3)

“In the PA, episteme is coordinate with epistasthai and denotes either a cognitive state or the body of knowledge he has mastered” (105).

In A2, Aristotle says that epistasthai is ordinarily conceived that: “x epistatai y iff (a) x gignoskei the explanation of y is and (b) x gignoskei that y cannot be otherwise than it is.”

This fits our conception of UNDERSTANDING much better than it fits the concept of knowledge. This isn’t to say that we can’t use the term ‘knowledge’, but we have in mind the sense of the word when we say ‘he has knowledge of mononucleosis’ rather than ‘he has knowledge of where is car keys are’.

“Aristotle is analyzing a cognitive state which is achieved by knowing explanations, and whether he is currently calling it episteasthai or gignoskein the corresponding term for that philosohical state in philosophical English is ‘understand’” (107).

II.
Episteme is of what cannot be otherwise.

“If Aristotle is making a claim about understanding, hiw point will be that understanding depends on explanation and what gets explained in the sciences…which general regularities and connections: lawlike regularities in the modern jargon, necessary connections in Aristotle’s” (109).

Doesn’t Aristotle also talk of things that happen “for the most part” and wouldn’t this be the law-like regularities?

Burnyeat references the EN here. The quote from the EN is as follows: “Clearly then practical wisdom is a virtue and not a skill. And sicne there are two parts of the soul that possess reason, it will be in virtue of one of them, namely, that which forms beliefs, both beliefs and practical wisdom being concerned with what cannot be otherwise. (EN 6.5, 1140b).”

One can apply the explanation of a recurring type of phenomenon to a particular instance of it; but this results in accidental episteme, not episteme haplos.

Scientific explanation is at first an explanation of laws rather than an explanation of particular events.

When Aristotle says that knowledge is of what cannot be otherwise, he’s commenting that understanding is constituted by knowing the explanation of necessary conditions in nature.

The considerations make more sense as considerations about explanation than considerations about knowledge or certainty.
1) because epistasthai involves explanation that Aristotle insists on the characteristics of the principles (true, primitive, etc)
2) necessary premises is a requirement of explanatoriness.

Burnyeat points to A6 for this. I don’t see it here, though. What A says is that if he apodeiktihe episteme comes about, you need necessary principles. Does Burnyeat want to say that apodeixis = explanation?

Aristotle’s most substantial claim (at a.6, 74b26ff) is that “to explain the holding of a conclusion that is necessary one must demonstrate it through a necessary middle term” (110).

To understand a theorem you must understand
1) that it is necessary
2) WHY it is necessary (it is necessary because it id demonstrable from prior principles which are necessary, and those prior principles are necessary because they are per se predications expressing a definitional connection)

It sounds weird to say one understands THAT something unless the sort of understanding you’re talking about is semantic understanding.

In B.6, although the details aren’t clear, “it seems fair to say that he is trying to give substance to the idea that the fundamental predications of a science ought to be self-explanatory. (ie they’re not merely immediate (no explanation via a middle term) but actually explain themselves).

Aristotle is looking for substantive knowledge of a thing’s essence in a scientific definition.

The man who achieves unqualified episteme is a man for whom every “why?” question in a given domain has been given an appropriate answer. His grasp is:
1) systematic and
2) synoptic
In that everything in the domain is explained in light of first principles which explain themselves.

Aristotle has a vision of complete understanding which supports his claim that one can only have episteme of what is universal, necessary, and everlasting.

Aristotle is not saying that we can’t KNOW that accidental states of affairs obtain; it’s just that accidental knowledge falls outside the reach of systematic explanation and understanding.

There is no episteme through perception of particular things because explanation requires generality and this is beyond the scope of explanation. Perception DOES yield knowledge, though. (gnosis, not episteme)

If we understand episteme as justified true belief, then Aristotle presents a very skeptical view. If we take it as understanding, then the restrictions he places upon it are intelligible.

III.

Aristotle doesn’t appeal to concepts like evidence, certainty, and justification.

“This is reason, of course, for disavowing the once prevalent idea that the PA advocates demonstration as a method of scientific discovery”. Rather, demonstration is a method of teaching facts already won. It is not how you discover facts but how you should present and impart them.

But it is bad pedagogy to lead a pupil straight to archai and then launch into a remorseless chain of syllogisms.

How do we make sense of the PA as good pedagogy, then?

Consider again the distinction between knowledge and understanding.
* When you teach by imparting KNOWLEDGE, you will include evidence and justification in your teaching.
* When you teach via imparting UNDERSTANDING of knowledge that pupils already have or understanding of a science with which they are already acquainted in an unsystematic way, one does this by unifying things, putting them into a systematic framework.

Think of this education (put forward in the PA) as an advanced graduate level course, not an introductory course.

IV.

Does this account of Aristotle’s pedegogical philosophy improve the claims of demonstration?
*it depends on whether we agree on certain philosophical questions regarding understanding.

The key to understanding (for Aristotle) is demonstration and the sort of demonstration that Aristotle has in mind is demonstrations of the form Barbara (AAA. AaB, BaC, therefore AaC)

Even if we grant that understanding can be gained from relating and organzing bits of knowledge, it doesn’t follow that understanding is to be sought from putting knowledge into ARISTOTLE’S mould (ie syllogisms and demonstrations).

The extent to which we doubt understanding is the fruit of axiomitization is the extent to which we doubt that demonstration is the method in which to impart understanding.

“A teacher can sensibly aspire to conduct Aristotelian demonstrations if it is right to claim that, where we can achieve full axiomitization will provide us with a completed structure of explanation which should be the idea fulfillment of a common conception of understanding” (126).

“For Aristotle, an axiomatic system isn’t just a preferred ordering of humanly constructed knowledge, but a mapping of the structure of the real” (126).

V.

In A2, A. says that it is a requirement of episteme that one know and be convinced of the first principles. Can’t this be so I can know and be convinced of the demonstrated conclusions?

Explanation, being prior to what it explains, is more knowable and familiar in the order of nature, and is thereby more believable and convincing.

The relationship between the knowable (familiar) and the convincing is important.

Aristotle makes a distinction between what is more knowable in the order of nature nad what is more knowable to us.

Demonstration produces gnonai…but this gignoskein is knowledge as a grasp of what is knowable by nature.

So we can constrast knowledge with and knowledge without full understanding.

You can have knowledge and even have put things together in an orderly way and STILL not have mastered them because you lack intellectual practice and familiarity. (in EN VI and VII, ee B. pp 129-30).

Aristotle didn’t see a problem transforming inductive belief into knowledge (gnosis) but he thought that this isn’t yet understanding. To get understanding we need more familiarity, more dialectical practice, intellectual habituation.

The archai are knowable in themselves, etc; when one has propositions we knows on inductive grounds which are convincing and knowable in themselves, one need just become fully familiar with them and convinced. This conviction and understanding is nous. (132)