Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations

Chapter 6 Begging the Question and Non-Cause As Cause

97 Chapter 6 Begging the Question and Non-Cause As Cause INTRODUCTION A proper refutation, I have shown, requires the following conditions: 1. premises that do not include the conclusion; 2. a conclusion that follows necessarily from the premises; and 3. a conclusion that denies one and the same predicate affirmed by the answerer. That predicate denied must be (3a) the thing signified, not just the name; (3b) the thing signified by the same name affirmed by the answerer; and (3c) the thing qualified in precisely the same way as it was affirmed by the answerer. Of the six fallacies outside of language, Begging the Question violates clause (1), Secundum Quid violates clause (3c), and the remaining four all violate clause (2) in various ways. I also have shown that a complete resolution of the confusion created by a false refutation requires more than identifying which clause of the definition of a refutation is being violated (i.e., why it is fallacious ). It also must explain why the false refutation appeared not to violate that clause (i.e., why it was persuasive). A complete resolution, then, involves explaining away two perplexities that arise in tandem. When first confronted by an apparent refutation of something that one has believed true, one experiences perplexity over that conclusion. Is it true or not? One has had reason to believe it so, but now here is an argument appearing to refute it. By identifying the definitional requirement that the intended refutation fails to satisfy, that perplexity is resolved. The challenge to the original belief is shown to have failed. But a second perplexity arises. Why did the failed refutation seem so convincing? If the first perplexity was logical, this second 98 FALLACIES DUE TO LANGUAGE aporia is epistemological: why was it that someone was (almost) persuaded by the false refutation? Resolving this perplexity involves, for Aristotle, the identification of certain underlying false presuppositions. When these presuppositions deal solely with ontological matters, Aristotle classifies such fallacy types as “outside of language.” The aim of this chapter is to isolate those facts about the world, facts independent of language, about which clarity is necessary to preserve one from being persuaded by fallacies of Begging the Question and Non-Cause As Cause. I treat these two fallacy types together, because both derive their persuasiveness from false presuppositions about the proper explanatory relations among (nonlinguistic) facts. THE FALLACY OF BEGGING THE QUESTION The fallacy of Begging the Question1 is one of the clearest examples of the importance of the nonlogical (and nonlinguistic) component required of some Aristotelian resolutions. To appreciate this, however, it is necessary to look at the treatment of this fallacy in the Prior Analytics and the Topics, for the fallacy is only briefly referred to in S.E. Presumably Aristotle believed that his detailed discussion at the end of the Topics (VIII, 13) required of him only a cursory discussion of this error in the immediately following treatment of fallacies in S.E. In each of his treatments, Aristotle establishes the error as epistemic rather than purely logical. And behind that epistemology lies a particular ontological order of nature. Begging the Question in the Prior Analytics Aristotle introduces Begging the Question in Pr. An. II, 16, as a failure of demonstration by distinguishing it from several other ways in which demonstration goes wrong. Demonstration (™pode√xiV) is a sub-class of reasoning (sullogism¬V). Although a failure in reasoning invalidates a demonstration, there are more requirements relating premises to a conclusion in a demonstration than those specified in the clauses of Aristotle’s S.E. definition of reasoning. These additional requirements are epistemic rather than logical. They guarantee an advance in someone’s understanding rather than just logical entailment.2 Two of the epistemic requirements placed upon premises in scientific demonstrations are that they must be better known (gnwrimwt°rwn) than the conclusion and prior (prot°rwn) to the conclusion.3 These relationships can be understood in two ways: better known (or prior) to us (pr¿V ≠møV or ≠mƒn), or better known (or prior) by nature (t› ˚ f§sei or ªplÍV). A proper demonstration must have premises better known and prior by na- Begging the Question and Non-Cause As Cause 99 ture, whether or not they also are better known and prior to us...