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C O N C L U S I O N The Unevenly Even Consistency of Truth 1. ARISTOTLE AND PLATO In his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle argues that knowledge is of universals, and therefore cannot be gained through sense perception: ‘‘Nor can one know [a thing] through sensation. . . . [S]ince demonstrations are universal, and since these [i.e. universals . . . ] cannot be sensed, it is evident that we cannot know individuals through sensation.’’1 Of course, since universals are not sensed, we cannot know them through sensation either. But Aristotle also argues that knowledge begins with a kind of induction from sensation:2 a demonstration proceeds from universals, whereas an induction proceeds from particulars. But universals cannot be investigated except through induction . . . and it is impossible to learn by induction without having the power of sensation. For of individuals [there can be only] sensation, and no knowledge of them can be acquired; and neither can we demonstrate conclusions from universals without induction, nor can we acquire universals through induction without sensation.3 He notes that ‘‘from many observations of a fact we might, after the search for the universal, possess a demonstration; for from many individual cases the universal [might be made] clear.’’4 Although he qualifies this point—it is ‘‘not that we would have understood [universally the fact] by observation, but that from observation we would have gained possession of the universal’’5 —sense perception is nonetheless necessary. The process of gaining knowledge ‘‘is impossible . . . without having the power of sensation.’’ As Aristotle explains, ‘‘the immediate primary principles’’ we need for knowledge6 arise ‘‘from sensation, like a reversal in battle brought about when one man makes a stand, then another, then a third, till a principle [or (military) formation, or ruling order: arche] is attained.’’7 ‘‘Clearly, then, we must come to know the primary [universals] by induction; for it is in this way that [the power of] sensation, too, produces in us the universal.’’8 Aris-  The Unevenly Even Consistency of Truth  totle calls this capacity for apprehending universals through particulars, ‘‘intuition ’’ (nous): ‘‘Accordingly, . . . intuition would be the principle [or starting point] of scientific knowledge.’’9 For Aristotle, then, knowledge by its nature depends on something that its nature equally excludes from being something known.10 On the other hand, we know sensed particulars only through universals, which in turn we know only through sensed particulars. Knowledge, then, also occurs in a circle.11 In Aristotle’s simile, the difference between knowledge to and from first principles (the principles we know through intuition) is like the ‘‘difference . . . in a race-course between the course from the judges to the turning point and the way back.’’12 I suggest that the view of knowledge I am proposing explains how these two incompatible sides of Aristotle’s account can make sense together.13 As I interpreted Socrates’ discussion of knowledge in the Phaedo, knowledge occurs in two steps (see Idea ..). The first circularly repeats the meaning of the thing being considered, and the second relates it to different, nonsensically external meanings. And both steps are necessary, since they cancel each other, and in that process their combination both gets to the (selfexternal ) truth of the thing and eliminates the consequent interference of knowledge with that truth. Expressing this more generally, knowledge is a combination of external and internal relations between the knower and the known, and between the foundations of truth and what rests on the foundations . (And here the two kinds of relations themselves are both simply distinct [external to each other] and also confused [internal to each other]). As a result, knowledge is both external and internal (that is, tangential) to what it knows. It cancels itself at the circular point at which it becomes complete and so precipitates, independently of or externally to its interfering self, the truth of the knower, the known, and the process of knowledge itself. As I argued above, this kind of self-canceling circle more specifically explains how universals and knowledge-founding principles, whose universal character ultimately forms a closed circle that excludes the meanings of being particular, can also include those meanings, and not simply despite the circle but also as and through it. And it consequently explains how knowledge , by both including and excluding the meanings of being particular, can both connect with or capture the truths of the particulars given to sensation and not interfere with them.14 Both dimensions of Aristotle’s account, then, the circularity...

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