Sense and Contradiction (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 345 Sense and Contradiction. By R. M. Dancy. Synthese Historical Library, vol. 14. (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1975. Pp. xii + 184. $28.00) In Book 4 of the Metaphysics, chapters l and 2, Aristotle posits and describes a "science of being qua being"--First Philosophy, as it is sometimes called. Chapters 3-6 of this book deal with a principle, or perhaps several principles, of noncontradiction. We should expect Aristotle to take very seriously the justification, direct or indirect, of this principle: it is advanced as the "most secure of principles"; moreover, the context makes it clear that it is fundamental to the newly postulated branch of knowledge. This expectation is borne out by the complex, striving character of the argument of these chapters. Given all this, it is somewhat surprising that Aristotle 's defense of noncontradiction has received so little attention, and it is gratifying to receive from Russell Dancy a serious and interesting study of chapters 3 and 4. Unfortunately, Dancy's ideas are not easily accessible. The fault lies partly with his subject. Discussions of Aristotle's more labyrinthine passages, with interpretational alternatives further ramifying the complexities already present, are apt to lose all but the specialist. But Dancy does little to help. His writing is far from being compelling. It is too conversational, occasionally to the point of being gushy ("There is one terribly architectonic argument for this," he writes on page 1, "and I shall pretty much pass it by"). It is full of pointless digressions (see the discussion on page 15 of whether argumentum ad hominem translates elenchus), some of which seem designed only to guard the author against charges of scholarly shallowness. Most annoying of all, the presentation of the argument has the formlessness of an extempore seminar presentation. For all this, Dancy's style has its virtues: having struggled through the book one feels for him the kinship of shared adversity and, what is more, has the sensation of having progressed. The book divides roughly into three parts. The first (chap. 1, "Aristotle's Program") deals with more or less peripheral matters--Aristotle's various characterizations of the status of noncontradiction . The second part (chap. 2) is concerned in a relatively direct way with the argument in 4. 4. 1006628-34 (Dancy calls this argument "the clincher"). The last and longest section (chaps. 3-6) deals with this and other arguments in the context of the views of those attacked by Aristotle's elenchus. I shall discuss the three parts in this order. Aristotle claims that the principle of noncontradictionis (a) cognitivelynecessary (one cannot, according to him, believe a contradiction) and (b) unprovable and consequentlyjustifiable only by arguing against somebody who denies it. Dancy's treatment of these features seems hasty, and this is a pity because if we would let any understanding that we gain of noncontradiction reflect upon the science of being qua being it should be at least partly through these features. That Dancy does not even try to see noncontradictionas a part of First Philosophy is clear from his treatment of the "logical priority" of noncontradiction, which he takes to lie in its being basic to demonstration. Aristotle thought that the Analytics, the studies of demonstration, were prior to any study of reality. First Philosophy is a study of reality, the most general kind. If, as the discussion in 4. 3 seems to show, noncontradiction is not only basic to but part of First Philosophy, what needs to be shown is how it is basic to reality, and not merely indirectly, via demonstration. Dancy does not even try to solve this problem. The discussion of cognitive priority is careless. Aristotle has a curious argument to the effect that since "believes that p" is a predicate contrary to "believes that -p," it follows from noncontradiction that nobody could believe a contradiction: to believep and believe -p would be impossible. Dancy has a novel and ingenious conjecture about the origin of the view that beliefs in contradictories are contraries. He supposes Aristotle in De Interpretatione 14 to have argued as follows: (1) Suppose p. Then if a believes that p (aBp), a is right; and if aB-p...