Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How Do We Know Essences? Aristotle’s Answer with Christopher Hauser
55 Plays11 days ago
In this episode, philosopher Christopher Hauser of the University of Scranton joins Dr. Sam Bennett to discuss Aristotle’s epistemology, specifically his theory of essence and how we come to know essences. We begin by clarifying what Aristotle means by essence, including the distinction between individuals and kinds, and between essential features and merely necessary properties. The conversation then turns to a central question in Aristotle’s philosophy: how do we grasp the fundamental definitions that capture something's essence? Hauser outlines three major interpretations of Aristotle’s view, intuitionism, explanationism, and a Socratic approach, and explains why he favors an explanationist account. Explanationism holds that we come to know essences not by immediate intellectual insight, but by developing and testing definitions in light of what they explain about a kind.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Aristotle's Epistemology
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Dynasties Circle podcast. This episode is with philosopher Christopher Hauser of the University of Scranton. We discuss Aristotle's epistemology, focusing on essences and how we come to know essences. So the first question for Chris was um about what Aristotle means by the essence of a thing and why Aristotle thinks that, you know, the essences of things are important for philosophy in science. So hope you enjoy.
Essences and Their Role in Science
00:00:27
Speaker
I think the place to begin here really is to draw a distinction between individuals and kinds. So think Socrates, an individual human being and the kind human being, or this oak tree and the kind oak tree, or this triangle on the board and the kind triangle.
00:00:44
Speaker
And so the first thing i think we need to clarify is that when Aristotle talks about the essences of things, he tends to have in mind the essences of kinds. So like the kind oak tree, the kind human being, triangle, and so forth.
00:00:56
Speaker
Now, many people, myself included, think that he also thinks individuals have essences. But his primary focus is kinds because he thinks kinds are the primary subject matter of the various sciences. They're what the sciences are really about.
Defining Essences: Necessary Features vs. Necessary Accidents
00:01:12
Speaker
Now, as for what in essence is, a good first pass would be to say that for any given individual or kind, there are certain characteristics or features that something must have to be that individual or to be an instance of that kind.
00:01:28
Speaker
these necessary features, whether they're characteristics or parts or properties, are things that something must have to be that individual or to be that kind. That's what constitutes the essence of that individual or that kind. So for example, whatever it is that something must have to be a triangle, say three sides, would comprise the essence of a triangle.
00:01:51
Speaker
Now that's just a first pass. If you ended there, you'd be offering what contemporary philosophers call a modal account of essences. The essence of a thing is just the necessary features of that thing.
00:02:03
Speaker
But Aristotle doesn't end here. He doesn't think that any necessary feature of an individual or kind is part of its essence, but instead he seeks to draw a distinction between the necessary features that comprise what a thing is from necessary accidents of that thing, or what he sometimes calls per se, or in itself accidents of that thing, which don't define what it is to be that thing. They aren't part of its essence, even though something must have those features to be it.
00:02:34
Speaker
So to go back to the triangle example, Aristotle points out that while it's a necessary characteristic of triangles, that their interior angles add up to 180 degrees, he could geometrically derive that, from what a triangle is. He thinks that's not part of the essence or the definition or what it is to be a triangle.
00:02:53
Speaker
um So that's what he has in mind when he talks about essences. As for why he thinks they matter, I think we're going to get into that as we we talk more, but for now we can say this.
The Importance of Essences in Scientific Understanding
00:03:04
Speaker
if it's true that things in our world have essences, you might think that knowing those essences is important and that sort of knowledge will be at least part of what we're aiming at when we seek a deeper scientific or theoretical understanding of various things in our world. So again, to give an example, if if you think there is an essence for the kind human being,
00:03:26
Speaker
then presumably at least part of what we're after when we're seeking a deeper scientific or philosophical understanding about a human being is going to involve trying to discern and come to know what that essence is. What is it that defines a human being? And not just know a bunch of truths or a list of facts about human beings.
00:03:46
Speaker
and so on for all the other sorts of kinds. If you think there are essences, it's gonna be at least part of what a deeper scientific or theoretical understanding involves to grasp the essences of those things, to know what they are.
Essences as Explanatory Tools
00:03:59
Speaker
that's Aristotle's kind of starting point for it.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, let me just try to echo a couple things. So you're drawing the distinction between individuals and kinds. And really, when we're thinking about essences in Aristotle, we're thinking about the essences of kinds. So like the kind of thing that is a triangle or the triangle as a kind. And then and then the essence of a kind is going to be kind of like those features that something must have in order to be that kind of thing.
00:04:30
Speaker
um And then it's really interesting that whole point about the modal account. So um I guess, yeah, so you're saying like some people might think the essence is just any necessary feature of a kind. So um if something's going to be a triangle, its interior angles need to add up to 180.
00:04:54
Speaker
So that's necessary to be a triangle. But for Aristotle, that doesn't automatically mean it's part of the essence because because it's like – is the key issue that the part of the essence, it needs to be explanant. It needs to be like the the the simple – is it more like it needs to be like the simple single source of all of the – Yeah, yeah, i mean, I think you you're you're you're getting at it. mean, as a first pass, you might say, like, it doesn't seem like a good answer to the question, what is it to be a triangle? To say, well, it's to have interior angles that editdh add up to 180 degrees. That might, in fact, be something that every triangle has. Every triangle has that characteristic.
00:05:41
Speaker
And yet it's not defining the kind. It's not specifying what Aristotle would its essence. And yeah, so that's a kind of first pass. And then you're right, as we get into this, Mark, we're going to see that part of the role that he thinks essences are going to play in a theory, and these defining characteristics of an individual or a kind, are that they are explanatory.
00:06:05
Speaker
They help us understand why that kind or has certain other characteristics. So for example, in the triangle case, He thinks that part of what's going to distinguish a defining feature, an essential feature of a triangle from a merely necessary feature is that the essential feature is going to be in some way explanatory of why triangles have those other features. like that The true derivation would run from essence to this necessary property rather than vice versa.
00:06:36
Speaker
Good. Yeah. And then with the the the human example, it's like, you know, we might find that, I don't know, what would be the word, like a disposition to use language, something like that. You know, that seems to be a necessary feature of humans.
00:06:53
Speaker
ah But if you think about rationality, that that also might be a necessary feature. And you might be inclined to think that the rationality feature is sort of more fundamental. It's the one that's going to let us explain the language feature.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. now of course, the things we're going to get into is sort of how do we try and identify the more fundamental, but that's exactly right. This idea that the essence is going to be sort of getting at the more basic, the more fundamental defining features of the kind or the individual.
00:07:33
Speaker
And while there might be other things that anything of that kind must have, they aren't fundamental, they
The Fundamental Definition of Kinds in Science
00:07:40
Speaker
aren't basic. um To riff on your human example, the medieval philosophers who were influenced by Aristotle, they love this example of risibility or the ability to laugh. And they think that might be a necessary feature of human beings.
00:07:55
Speaker
And yet it's not basic. you know Presumably that's sort of a manifestation of a more basic capacity. They think a more basic capacity for a certain kind of thinking that they call rationality. ah So yeah, just like your speech kind of example.
00:08:11
Speaker
Good, good. Okay. Yeah. And so that kind of touches on a term that you use in your work, um, on Aristotle's epistemology, which is a fundamental definition.
00:08:23
Speaker
um you you want to define that the terminology for us? Sure, definitely. Yeah. So yeah we've begun with the first pass and now we're moving a bit into... distinctions. Every good philosopher loves a good distinction. And Aristotle would say, well, um there are kind of more or less ah strict notions of definition or essence. ah In one sense, he wants to say, you've specified the essence of something whenever you've given an answer to the question, what is it? So what is a triangle? And an answer to that is a definition. It's an attempt to specify the essence of the thing. ah
00:09:03
Speaker
But he wants to say, look, not every definition, not every account of the essence of the thing is as good as another. ah And what we're really aiming at when we're doing science or philosophy, for for Aristotle philosophy is a kind of science. It's a kind of theoretical ah discipline or inquiry into the world. He thinks what we're really aiming at is a certain kind of definition, a certain kind of a kind of the essence of something. One that, as we were just saying, picks out the basic or fundamental features of that kind, the necessary features that define fundamentally what it is to be a triangle or a human being from which a fully fleshed out scientific theory or philosophical theory would explain why instances of that kind have the other characteristic or necessary features of that kind. So in, say, the science of geometry, what you want when you when you want a scientific definition of a triangle, not just sort of an everyday definition of a triangle, is
Common Sense and Categorization
00:10:11
Speaker
you want to pick out the kind of fundamental geometrical features that define a triangle from which you could derive and explain why this geometric figure has certain other properties or characteristics.
00:10:23
Speaker
And likewise, for other sciences, like a science of human beings or a science of ah the stars, what you want to get is a grasp, a fundamental definition of the kind you're you're studying that specifies kind of the basic or the unexplained necessary features of that kind, from which you could then work out your theory as to why, say, human beings have these other necessary features and um cows don't have these other features. And it's going to be in terms of this more fundamental or basic account of the essence of the thing. And that's how I use that term. It's not a term Aristotle himself uses. Instead, Aristotle draws a distinction between definitions or accounts of essences of things that are suitable to be scientific principles.
00:11:11
Speaker
from ones that he describes as kind of our starting point, a kind of ordinary language definition of a human being or an oak tree or a triangle. um So he uses that term principles and says that some principles are definitions. To put it in a more contemporary idiom, I use this term fundamental definition. Does that answer the question well? Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. um You know, ah maybe one kind of... um step back question that, you know, might be useful to talk about is like, why think there are essences in the first place? You know, I think there's might be some people who, i don't know if they're listeners to this podcast, but at least there's some people for sure who are going to be kind of skeptical of the idea that, um, there are any essences. Uh, do you have any yeah any thoughts about that?
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. And you particularly, I think the word itself lends it lends it to like, oh, this sounds very kind of metaphysical and deep. there are s There's the essence of water. yeah I think of like the LaCroix and it's essenced from, essence has this very like, whoa, what is that sort of thing? So I want to kind of bring it down to earth and suggest that you To believe in essences on Aristotle's view and and frankly on my own view is pretty commonsensical.
00:12:32
Speaker
ah We're just kind of putting ah ah a word, a vocabulary for something that i think most of us naturally start thinking about the world. So to talk a little bit about Aristotle himself, he doesn't say a lot about this.
00:12:46
Speaker
But I think it's because he rightly recognized that it's our kind of natural commonsensical starting point for thinking about the world, that that natural commonsensical starting point is going to commit us to something that he's now putting a vocabulary on when he talks about essences. So to see what I mean by that, like, let's take an example. So consider like a familiar kind of kind, like an oak tree ah or a maple tree. On Aristotle's view, we naturally, given our cognitive capacities, we perceive lots of individuals in the environments that we exist in. So we perceive lots of individual oak trees.
00:13:26
Speaker
And we naturally, given our cognitive capacities, don't just sort of remember that individual or that individual, this next individual, but we naturally form a certain impression that these individuals are of a certain kind that we can then give a name to and formulate an idea of, like say, oak tree. I see that object, see that object, that object. there's something they all have in common. I can form a concept or an idea or word for it, give a name to an oak tree. Now, it also seems evident to Aristotle from our ordinary experience that not every individual is of that kind. here We draw distinctions when we encounter the world. Some things are not oak trees and some things are oak trees. Why not?
00:14:11
Speaker
Well, there's presumably some set of features or characteristics that the former group, the oak trees, have that the other things, the non-oak trees, don't have.
00:14:22
Speaker
And what I wanna suggest to you is that's all we need to start believing in essences, ah at least the essences of kinds. There's just some set of features that are gonna define the kind oak tree, that define what it is to be of that kind.
00:14:39
Speaker
And the, you know, our ordinary experience, we naturally separate the objects in our environment, the things in our environment into these kinds. And the ones that belong to one kind, like oak tree, are going to have certain features that are defining of the kind that the things that don't belong to that kind, they don't have.
00:14:56
Speaker
um If there weren't any such set of features that define what it is to be an oak tree or a maple tree, then it's not clear on what ground we would be making these natural judgments that these things are oak trees
Essences and Individual Change
00:15:11
Speaker
and those aren't. We need some kind of specification of what it is. um And now we're going to quickly see that Aristotle thinks that's a kind of gradual process. We sort of start with a rough and ready kind of, this is what an oak tree is. It has leaves that kind of look like this. it kind of grows this big. eye And one of the things that we do when we seek a more scientific account of the essences of things is to push for something a little bit more precise, something a little bit more careful, a little bit more fundamental.
00:15:41
Speaker
um So I can stop there. can say a little bit more about essences of individuals. Let me sort of pause there and see if that makes sense. Yeah, no, it does. I mean, I, yeah, that's a great, I really liked that point. So it's like, we're, you know,
00:15:54
Speaker
we're we're perceiving individuals in our environment, and we're but we're also spontaneously kind of grouping them into kinds. So, you know, we're not just perceiving
00:16:07
Speaker
that which we call an oak tree we're also grouping them into kind into a kind saying you know that is a oak tree and we're also saying some things are not oak trees and so and that so that's going to push us to think look there must be some kind of shared features that the that those that we group under oak tree have which the non-oak trees don't have um so look yeah So it looks like we need some set of features that are going to define the kind. And that seems like right there, we already have enough to motivate the thought that there are essences. Because the essence is going to be,
00:16:49
Speaker
yeah the set of feet yeah Yeah, no, exactly right. Now, ah you we might get into a little bit later. there are There are some potential off-roads here where you could say, wait a second, maybe this this isn't as straightforward as Aristotle's making it sound. But I think that's the kind of commonsensical way into it. And we're really just putting this theoretical terminology on, oh, ah there's got to be something that defines the kind.
00:17:16
Speaker
ah we We clearly sort things this way. And let's give a name to that, the defining features for any given kind that's going to be the essence of that kind. um And then we're off to the races and we can start thinking, well, maybe there's a better or worse grasp of the essence of thing, a better worse specification. And that's exactly the way Aristotle is gonna go. Now, let me just say something briefly about individuals. Again, Aristotle's focus is on kinds, but you could say something similar about individuals. that this It's very commonsensical.
00:17:49
Speaker
I would suggest a kind of natural starting point to think individuals have essences, even though there are some skeptical philosophers who say maybe they don't. But here's the the starting point. It seems evident that there are some kinds of changes. Aristotle will say that individuals can survive and persist through.
00:18:07
Speaker
So for example, you know, think Beulah the cow can grow up and get larger and heavier, lose a hoof and still be Beulah.
00:18:19
Speaker
But there are other kinds of changes that would destroy the individual, would end it. It would no longer be that individual given that change. So, you know, a falling boulder tragically falls on Beulah. What's left over there i'll is a corpse that isn't Beulah anymore. It's not that Beulah became a corpse, it's Beulah's no longer with us and we've got a corpse now.
00:18:43
Speaker
um Now, if there weren't a set of features that Beulah had to have to be Beulah, there were nothing essential to Beulah, then it's not clear why that corpse that's left over would not be Beulah.
00:18:59
Speaker
a In short, you know to explain our ordinary thinking about change, we need to think there are certain characteristics or features or parts of individuals that are essential to them.
00:19:12
Speaker
you know If they were to lose those things, that would no longer be the same individual. Whereas there are other features or characteristic or parts that are not essential. The individual could lose or change with respect to those characteristics, those parts.
00:19:26
Speaker
Beulah could lose a hoof and still be Beulah. And again, that seems very commonsensical. Again, there are some off-rants here that later philosophers could take, but that's the kind of commonsensical way into thinking individuals have certain essential defining features without which they would cease. And they can change their other features, but they can't change those ones.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's helpful. um In a moment, I want to kind of get into more epistemological things. Basically, you know, um lot of your work has been on, you know, Aristotle's ideas on like how we actually come to know an essence, how we come to grasp a fundamental definition. um I guess one quick question, I don't know how interesting this will be, but I'm sort of wondering like how many fundamental definitions might a thing have? Because, okay, so so me, Sam Bennett, okay, so I'm an individual. And so based on what you just said,
00:20:26
Speaker
there's going to maybe be whether we can know it or not, but there's going to maybe be a fundamental definition of what makes me specifically Sam. And, and, but then I guess there's also going to be a fundamental definition for, what makes me a human. Um, but so that's like, maybe that seems like we have two for me there.
00:20:50
Speaker
Um, and, You might think it stops there because it would be – I mean because I'm also like – I don't know, a baseball fan.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess you could say there's going to be essence – What makes a baseball fan. What makes a baseball fan. anyway, I'm just kind of – do you have thoughts about like how many – is it like it could be tons or is it like fundamentally just two because it's like – Yeah. Principally, I'm a human and – Yeah. Principally, I'm an individuals. All right. Anyway. Yeah.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to get into this. I mean, roughly here, Aristotle, I think, wants to say that every natural kind has a unique fundamental definition. And we might talk later a bit about sort of some anti-essentialist ideas. And one might be as you maybe you think there isn't a unique sort of objective.
00:21:41
Speaker
correct fundamental definition of human being. Maybe there are lots and and there's no way to kind of adjudicate which one is unique.
Approaches to Knowing Essences in Aristotle's Philosophy
00:21:49
Speaker
ah So I think he he tends to think at least natural, each natural kind does kind of artifactual human made objects like a table, whether there's a correct fundamental definition of table or more than one possible, there are still sort of notoriously a little bit cagey about artifacts or about human made objects. um In terms of the way I would think about the example you gave, and don't think Aristotle would say, look, you've got one thing there with multiple fundamental definitions. It's rather, ah there's a fundamental definition of the kind human being, and it might be essential to you, Sam, to be a human being.
00:22:28
Speaker
I think that is Aristotle's view. You are essentially individuals, natural individuals, he thinks are essentially members of certain kinds. like You're essentially a human being. Yeah. But you know there might be other features about you, like you're a baseball fan, where that too could have its own definition and own kind of fundamental account of what it is to be a baseball fan. But that's not going to be a definition or an essence of the very same kind. Does that make sense?
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's also not going to be a definition of of you. Yeah. Yeah. it's It's a definition of the kind baseball fan, not a definition of me anyway. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:07
Speaker
Good. All right. So let's kind of shift to the epistemology stuff. So it's like, it seems like um there are a few major ways that scholars will interpret Aristotle on the question of like how we come to know essences and yeah, your work, um,
00:23:23
Speaker
So, you know, we're kind of, this conversation is a little bit based on a recent paper you published called Aristotle's Epistemology of Definitional Principles, which is coming out with ah with ah Oxford Studies and Ancient Philosophy, that journal. um And in that work, you kind of distinguish three different views, three different major ways scholars interpret Aristotle and how we can know essences. And, um,
00:23:50
Speaker
maybe I'll just mention the name names of them. So the first is kind of intuitionism about how we come to know essences. The second is a sort of explanationist view. And the third, um,
00:24:02
Speaker
is I think you call it a Socratic view. Right. Now your preferred view to spoil things here, you know, is the explanation is view and it is the superior view. No, I'm just kidding. But we'll get into that, but it is. Yeah. yeah But anyway, yeah. so we have these three views and um so maybe we could just start with like the intuition is view. That's where you, that's where you start.
00:24:24
Speaker
So yeah. Can you just tell us a little bit about the intuition is view of how, we can know essences, yeah. Yeah, good, yeah. So maybe the the place to begin here is to say that the article you mentioned, you it's primarily ah a kind of historical or interpretive piece. The goal is to try and ah use the texts that we have from Aristotle, things that he wrote, to come to a better understanding of what his position is. And it it turns out that Aristotle says different things in different places, and that's what gives rise to different interpretations.
00:25:01
Speaker
The three you mentioned, intuitionist interpretations, explanationist interpretations, and then Recently, a very prominent author, David Bronstein, offers this what he calls Socratic interpretation because it has some resemblance to what ah Aristotle's pre predecessor Socrates wanted to say about definitions and how we know them.
00:25:22
Speaker
um So ah we can approach this both as a kind of interpretive question, what did Aristotle think, but also just just kind of feeling out the space, whether you it's Aristotle's view or not.
00:25:34
Speaker
ah If you think there are essences, it's a worthy question to wonder, like, how do human beings know these things? How do we come to grasp these things? Presumably not just by, like,
00:25:46
Speaker
ah seeing or using our senses, it's going to be something a bit more involved. And the listeners who know something about the history of philosophy will know um there's a long tradition of thinking about human knowledge and essences show up importantly as sort of one important kind of human knowledge to know the essences of things. um Okay. But so let me dig into the three views then. ah So maybe i'll I'll give like kind of a two sentence sketch of each of them and then we can go further from there. So the basic idea of the intuitionist approach, sometimes called a rationalist approach, is that human beings have a kind of cognitive capacity.
00:26:32
Speaker
sometimes called nous, that's Aristotle's term for a reason or intellect, that given the right kind of antecedent experiences, say with um the kind human being, you go out, you learn enough about human beings through experience, eventually you form a certain kind of intuition or thought.
00:26:54
Speaker
This is what a a human being is. And ah while the intuitionist thinks you might need to accumulate the right kinds of experiences to have that intuition, ay ultimately the intuition is kind of not justified, not something that you support.
00:27:17
Speaker
based on your experience. Instead, it's kind of, oh, like intellectually, I i finally see what a human being is. And then the intuitionist thinks once you've grasped that,
00:27:29
Speaker
ah by that intuition, once you have that intuition, then you can start to do the explanatory work that we alluded to before, where I might start to say, okay, if that's what the essence is of a human being is, let me now start trying to construct a theory about why human beings have these other characteristics.
00:27:46
Speaker
Or if that's what the essence of a triangle is, let me start. aye seeing what other necessary features I can show triangles have, given this definition. i think the intuitionist view looks best for kind of mathematical or geometric kinds of kinds.
00:28:01
Speaker
You might think, yeah, like the right way I sort of know what a triangle is, it's not by sort of studying and learning more about triangles through experience. i mean, I need a little bit of experience to get the concept, but once I get it, I sort of just sort of into it. Yeah.
00:28:18
Speaker
That's the starting point for a triangle is this sort of figure. And now I can start kind of doing some geometry, drive other necessary properties of triangles, given that definition.
00:28:31
Speaker
ah It maybe looks less good for biological kinds. And we'll, we'll turn to that in a bit, kinds like human being or. ah The explanationist view i is helpfully contrast with the intuitionist view.
00:28:43
Speaker
And as you said, Sam, that's my preferred view. I think that's the right interpretation of Aristotle. I also think it's the most satisfying philosophically account of all we know essences of the of this three.
00:28:54
Speaker
On the explanationist view, the thought is, yeah, we we begin by accumulating um through experience, knowledge of kinds, including even the knowledge that there is such a kind.
00:29:04
Speaker
So again, to go back to the oak tree example, Aristotle is not a proponent of this doctrine of recollection that gets associated with Aristotle. He doesn't think it's innate to us to know the kind human being or know the kind oak tree. And that just sort of, we just have to recollect Aristotle thinks we learn it from experience. I see a bunch of individuals and I come to formulate a certain concept of an oak tree, a knowledge that there is such a kind, uh,
00:29:32
Speaker
And I know that there is such a kind from my experience. And then on the explanations view, what we do to grasp the essence of that kind, and particularly the fundamental essence, is we start to accumulate more and more information about the kind. and And once we accumulate that, we can start to hypothesize, theorize about what might be fundamental to that kind that would explain why Individuals of this kind have these other necessary characteristics, while individuals of a different kind have other necessary characteristics. Why oak trees have these characteristics and maple trees have these other characteristics. And ultimately, this is where the key contrast with the intuitionist view is going to come is that it's not just that we intuit that.
00:30:23
Speaker
We have to you justify or support it. by reference to that empirical experience-based knowledge we have. So ultimately what's going to be the test, the way we judge what is a good definition, a good fundamental account of what a human being is, is we're gonna look at, well, given what we know about human beings, can this definition help us explain why human beings have these features necessarily and they don't have these other features necessarily.
00:30:53
Speaker
Does it illuminate that? um And so that explanatory role for the essence is going to be the the criterion by which we both arrive at it and by which we judge it, we justify it. We say this account, this definition is better than this other ah kind of the essence. Again, there's more to say about that, but that's a first pass.
00:31:15
Speaker
Finally, the Socratic view is very um it's complicated. um David Bronstein is a philosopher. he worked at Georgetown for a while. Now he's based in Australia.
00:31:26
Speaker
um Wrote ah an excellent book, Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning, where he develops this interpretation of Aristotle. And so I and want to give you the short version of it. But the short version of it is, well, Aristotle actually thinks there are different kinds of essences ah for different kinds of objects.
00:31:49
Speaker
There are gonna be sort of very general kinds, roughly a genus, and then there are more specific kinds, roughly species. So think like animal genus, species, human being.
00:32:00
Speaker
There are also gonna be differences between like things or substances and properties, characteristics. So like on the one hand, there's the the kind thunder, which is a certain kind of event or property.
00:32:12
Speaker
And then there's the kind clouds, or there's the kind human being, and then there's the the kind, as you say, baseball fan. And actually Aristotle wants to give a different account of how we know these different essences.
00:32:25
Speaker
um But for now, the thing to say is for the Socratic view, division, this sort of idea that's associated with the later dialogues of Plato and you find discussed in Aristotle and some later Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophers is gonna be huge in this view. The thought is kind of the right way to go about defining or specifying the essence of a kind is gonna be, i need to identify the genus, the general sort of sort of thing that it is. And then I need to start identifying differentiating features of the different sub kinds or species within that genus.
00:33:06
Speaker
And if I follow that kind of division procedure well, I'll arrive at a very good definition, the sort of definition around which to build my science, to build my explanatory theory.
Observation and Empirical Inquiry in Understanding Essences
00:33:19
Speaker
ah So that's what I want to say for now. We could obviously go a lot deeper than that. Is that okay for now? Yeah, that's great. Yeah, no, it's, I'm just thinking, it's interesting to think about the role of observation in the context of, you
00:33:33
Speaker
the intuitionist picture versus the explanation is picture. And it kind of, the role of observation and the intuition is picture. kind of reminds me of the, like the Wittgenstein quote where it's like, you know, you kind of throw away the ladder once you get there. So it's like, you know, you need observation for the intuition is to get into a position where you can grasp the essence. But once you get that grasp, it seems like,
00:34:02
Speaker
the observational route is no longer really doing ah justification type work. um So it's in that sense, it's kind of like something you throw away. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Insight is achieved. um Whereas, yeah, like, like you already said, you know, on the explanation of view observation, it's not a ladder that you kind of discard, but it's something that kind of continues to ground the,
00:34:29
Speaker
and justify your, your fundamental definition. um Yeah. yeah one Yeah. Maybe if I could jump in there, one thing that talk about in the, the article that might sort of help listeners sort of get a feel for this a little bit more you if you have the intuitionist view, it's a bit unclear how like further observation, further inquiry into the kind might help you sort of ah know whether your definition is correct or not, because you're supposed to just sort of know it by intuitively seeing it. You're not sort of testing it against your empirical knowledge.
00:35:08
Speaker
Whereas Aristotle actually thinks, and you'll find various places in his works where he says this sort of thing, that people went wrong in defining this kind. They went wrong with their theorizing because they didn't do enough observation first.
00:35:24
Speaker
And he's sensitive to the fact that there are certain kinds that it's harder to observe. So he says some of the kind of astronomical stuff, stars and planets, it's hard for us to get a good science or theory of what those things are because we're not very well positioned to study them empirically.
00:35:40
Speaker
ah Whereas other things that are more on earth and in our environment, we can study them up close. We can investigate them ah in different ways. And that makes a lot of sense on the explanationist view. If you think kind of, yeah, ultimately what's going to test whether my account of the essence or my fundamental definition is correct, is gonna be like, can it fit with and help me understand and explain all the other facts that I know about the kind?
00:36:09
Speaker
I can see why the kind has these other characteristics given what it fundamentally is. ah then it makes sense that yeah, further inquiry, further observation, further investigation might reveal to me certain things that don't sit well with a certain way of thinking about what a kind is. um Maybe to give a kind an anachronistic example of that, what might be helpful is like, as we sort of get ay um scientific tools or instruments that help us sort of investigate what water is,
00:36:42
Speaker
at its kind of more molecular level. ah I might learn things that help me understand, oh, like actually i could explain various features of water as compared to other substances.
00:36:56
Speaker
based on this kind of molecular structure that it has that other substances don't have. But absent those kinds of observations, ah I might not have information, empirical information that helps me adjudicate one definition of water versus another. What is sort of a better account of what water really is? And I think while that's anachronistic, Aristotle didn't have a kind of molecular theory of substances like water.
00:37:23
Speaker
ay I think is very much consistent with the kind of ah explanationist approach that I see him adopting, that empirical inquiry observation is going to really play an important role, actually, in what's something that might have sound very abstract and metaphysical, which is understanding what something fundamentally is. And that's exactly what the explanationist view wants to affirm. Yeah.
00:37:51
Speaker
Would you want to, I mean, would you want to comment on, just thinking, you know, the, the, the idea of inference to the best explanation, you know, um it seems like, correct me if I'm wrong, but in an explanationist view, inference to the best explanation is, is really doing like, that's the method of discovering an essence really yeah discovering and grasping the fundamental definition of something. Cause it's like you start with a bunch of observed features, you know, features that belong to all, or maybe, you know, most instances of a kind. And you, you treat those observed features as the data to be explained. And then, you know, maybe you consider different candidate definitions and the one which,
00:38:43
Speaker
The candidate definition, which kind of um best explains those features, that kind of wins the competition. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you could you could use that that term. In fact, in the article, a few places I described his view as as having that kind of. you could describe as an inference to the best explanations view of how we know what something's correct definition or fundamental definition is. Sometimes some philosophers like this term abducted as opposed to inducted, where again, it's the same kind of idea. um So yeah, you could certainly think that way. I don't love the term inference to the best explanation just because i think that the word inference here can be
00:39:25
Speaker
misleading. you There is something ampliative here, but you are sort of going beyond the data that you start with. But whether you can sort of, um whether whether it's best construed as a certain kind of inference or not, I think so turns on what you understand inference to be as opposed to non-inference And that's why I'm somewhat hesitant about that term. But yeah, certainly it's a helpful kind of, yes, is roughly at least what Aristotle has. And then maybe whether or not wheels we ultimately want to call that depends a bit on what we mean by that phrase inference to the best explanation.
00:40:03
Speaker
Great. And before we move forward a little bit, I was just thinking, would it be helpful at all to bring in like um the, you know, Aristotle's famous, you know, four causes, formal, material, efficient, final. Because you might think those are like um different forms of explanation. Yeah, good. Yeah. so um So this is a bit of um my work that I'm still working on. i've I've published a bit about it, less so in the article you you mentioned, but there's a different article, Aristotle's Explanationist Epistemology of Essence.
00:40:39
Speaker
which is published in a free open access journal, Metaphysics, that gets a little bit more into how does the four cause framework interact with Aristotle's epistemology of essence here. And I think what you you gestured at is is roughly right.
00:40:55
Speaker
ah If you're going to start thinking that essences are supposed to do explanatory work, and that one of the aims of science is to grasp these explanatory essences. And that seems to clearly be Aristotle's view when he remarks in his posterior Linux and other works on kind of what is the structure of a science? What is it that we're trying to do?
00:41:16
Speaker
when we do this kind of theorizing about the world, ah that seems to be his view. a natural first question is going to start to ask, well, sort of what makes for a good explanation and what kinds of causal or explanatory relationships, connections are out there?
00:41:34
Speaker
in the world that we can use. And that's how I think um we should understand the four causal framework is it's a kind of general meta scientific, it's not particular to any particular science like biology or geometry or any other science. But is Aristotle offering a kind of general approach for thinking about what are the kinds of causal connections or explanatory connections one might want to look for as one investigates this or that kind and this or that science? And roughly he thinks, yeah, like one sort of explanation is going to take this teleological or final causal explanation.
00:42:19
Speaker
One sort of explanation is by reference to the matter or the material composition of a thing. We can explain various features of thing based on kind of what it's made out of. on Another kind of explanation, a bit idiosyncratic to Aristotle, less familiar to us in kind of the post-science typhic revolution modern, is the thought of a formal explanation that there might be certain kinds of...
00:42:44
Speaker
um forms that things have that are not simply identified with the stuff they're made out of. And these forms too might have an explanatory role to play in accounting for why the kind has certain features. I think this famously, this could be a ah whole separate podcast episode, but this is sort crucial to Aristotle's philosophy of mind or his understanding of living creatures that he thinks the kinds of capacities that living creatures have, abilities to sense, perceive, remember, are not well explained simply in terms of the matter that they're made out of.
00:43:23
Speaker
you Even a high level sophisticated kind of, here's your brain and your brain has these parts and these parts are composed of these cells and these cells are composed of these molecules. Aristotle think that kind of explanation isn't going fully account for the characteristic features of human beings. And so he thinks you need a form there too, beyond the matter.
00:43:45
Speaker
um So yeah, yeah, that's how I would see this linking up to the four causal framework, because that's a kind of general, not specific to any science, way of thinking about the sorts of causal relationships or explanatory relationships that are out there in the world.
00:44:01
Speaker
um but I think it's helpful to see that the the explanationist approach to essences could in principle be detached from that. If you go with some later modern philosophers or scientists who think, yeah, no, there really aren't these formal causes. If there's no teleological explanation, you could still have a kind of explanationist way of thinking about essences without adopting that four causal framework.
Recognizing Kinds Without Prior Essence Knowledge
00:44:25
Speaker
So they're they're somewhat detachable yeah from each other. Yeah, I see.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's helpful. um So at this point, I just want to bring up one kind of, don't know, i maybe like a worry someone might have. So like I would be i was thinking about the Fado quote, like the famous thing about the equal, you know, it's like you have to have knowledge of the equal itself before you can see that things are equal. So the the way I'm thinking about this is that like,
00:44:57
Speaker
to recognize instances of equality, you have to already um grasp the form. And so basically what I was thinking was something like, you know, in the explanations picture, you know,
00:45:12
Speaker
we We start by assuming we can tell which things are instances of a kind. So it's like, I can tell that um this particular thing is an instance of the kind oak tree. And then we observe all these instances and we start gathering features and then we start looking for um Yeah, a definition that um explains those features. So, yeah. So what would you say to someone who says like, but look, you know, to tell that this is an instance of an oak tree, I already need to know the essence of an oak tree. Maybe it's like a sort of like vague grass, but like maybe in some sense already need to know it.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah. um So, yeah. What do you think about that kind of? Yeah, no, it's a that's a great question. A great kind of point of contact here between Aristotle and his his teacher Plato here. of um So you the way I would ah approach it a bit here is to say, well, it's going to depend a bit on what you mean by identify something as an instance of a kind.
00:46:26
Speaker
ah In one sense, I think Aristotle is going to think Plato is right, but not in a very deep or substantive sense. In the deeper substantive sense, he's to think Plato's wrong here. um So in the kind of simple sense, aye yeah, if I'm going to kind of look for an oak tree, then I need to already have some concept of an oak tree. ah or if I'm going to sort of mentally identify that as an oak tree, I need to already have the concept or the idea of an oak tree.
00:46:59
Speaker
ay But do I need to sort of implicitly, innately have the idea ah go out and notice, oh, that thing is like that thing in certain respects?
00:47:16
Speaker
And I'm going to sort of give a label to that, a mental label to that. And then I could also give a linguistic label to that oak tree to sort of label what it is that these things seem to have in common, that these other things don't have.
00:47:32
Speaker
That Aristotle thinks I don't need to sort of already have the label, already have the mental idea implicitly. in order to note the similarity.
00:47:42
Speaker
He does think, and there are certain places where he discusses this, like post-traumatic 219 or metaphysics 1.1, he does think there are certain capacities I gotta have.
00:47:54
Speaker
Maybe like a rudimentary creature, like an ant can't do it. And maybe certain sort of quote unquote higher animals can do it. ah But certainly the human being, we've got certain capacities that in the presence of oak trees, I see a bunch of them.
00:48:11
Speaker
But that's like there's a real similarity out there. There's a real commonality that these objects have that is not ah present in other objects, other, say maple trees, they don't have features that
Aristotle's Methodology of Refinement
00:48:22
Speaker
oak trees. Aristotle thinks it's enough that I have certain capacities to notice what's in common between these things.
00:48:29
Speaker
and what's not in common between you know these other things. and And then I have a capacity to formulate those ideas, which sometimes calls logoi or logos sort of an account of it, or it can also mean words. So it's it's kind of like roughly like what we mean by a concept, I think when he talks about that.
00:48:49
Speaker
ah He says like in Post-Terminetics 219, given enough experience with a certain real kind in the world, a real commonality in the world, I don't just retain like there was that one and there was that one, there was that one. I also formulate this universal or this logos, this concept of you know a kind here. And these individuals have that kind.
00:49:13
Speaker
And ah he, of course, thinks our kind of initial knowledge is going to be kind of imperfect. ah I kind of have a rough and ready, i like yeah, oak trees have these sorts of leaves.
00:49:26
Speaker
Here's a little bit how they look different, but it might not be a very deep or fundamental account of the kind. ah There's presumably some deeper... story about what different differentiates oak trees from maples or what differentiates this kind of thing from that kind of thing.
00:49:44
Speaker
But I don't need to have the deeper story to get started. All I needed to be able to do is notice there's a commonality here and then I can start looking for the deeper story. Is that helpful? and happy to say more about that if you want to push more ask more. Well, no, I just need just maybe just to echo. So it's like your response is is, you know, we don't really need to already have the essence or even like a fully formed concept in order to get started with this observation.
00:50:13
Speaker
ah we get started with these observations. Instead, um you know, we have this capacity to notice, you know, not everything has that capacity. Ants maybe don't. But we have this capacity to notice like real similarities among and individuals.
00:50:29
Speaker
And, you know, from there through experience, um we we begin to to form a kind of rough universal, rough concept, which I guess Aristotle would call like a logos. And then, yeah, so it's like that initial grasp, it's it's imperfect.
00:50:49
Speaker
It's more like a rough and ready kind of sense of the kind. And then we refine that over time to get a kind of deeper more fun. Yeah. Yeah. It made me helpful give an example. So in the middle part of book two of Aristotle's Post-Journaletics, which for listeners who aren't as familiar with, that's sort of a, many scholars think a kind of early treatise of Aristotle. Why? Well, because there are some references to it in other works of Aristotle, references to his analytics.
00:51:19
Speaker
And it's sort of his account, his general account of what sort of the structure of a science or a theoretical inquiry is and how we do it a bit. um And in Post-Journalytics book two, kind of the middle parts of that, he gives an example. He sort of suggests, you know, we start off through experience learning that there's a certain kind of noise that the clouds, he says, or the sky creates.
00:51:48
Speaker
and we can give a name to it. And in Greek and in English, we can. It's thunder, there's this sort of noise. And like it's not like a gunshot would be a different sort of noise. ah We have some rough and ready, like, oh, there's that kind of noise again happening in the sky.
00:52:04
Speaker
ay And our initial grasp of it, our initial logos, or he'll even say definition of thunder, might be pretty kind of thin. It might be something like it's it's a certain sort of noise that happens in the clouds or in the sky, comes from the clouds or the sky.
00:52:21
Speaker
aye and But over time, if we want to now do like a science of thunder, we want to kind of theoretically understand, well, what really is thunder? What is the essence of that kind of noise? We're going to look for something deeper.
00:52:35
Speaker
And so we might say, well, ah one way to do that to try and investigate what is the cause of this noise? And you might think it's one sort of thing, when it's another thing he sort of suggests is kind of a toy example.
00:52:49
Speaker
ah Maybe it's sort of a noise due to the quenching of fire in the clouds. And that's sort of fundamentally what defines this kind of noise. It's it's a noise that has a certain cause to it.
00:53:03
Speaker
And that's what makes something thunder versus a different kind of noise. ah Again, that's a kind of toy example. ay but it it gives you a flavor of how he thinks this works. I don't need to start with an innate concept of thunder.
00:53:17
Speaker
i kind of learn about it through experience. I learned that there is this kind and I can create a mental word for it, a ah concept of logos for it. ah I can create a verbal, a linguistic representation of that kind with the English word thunder.
00:53:35
Speaker
And then I can start to, from that starting point, seek a deeper scientific account, more fundamental account of what defines that that noise ultimately.
Critique of Intuitionism and Preference for Explanationism
00:53:47
Speaker
ah And that's where these different interpretations are going to come apart. of Like how do we reach that deeper scientific account? The intuitionist says, well, you know eventually i kind of intuit it ah The explanationist says, I have to do some testing of different candidates based on how well they can do the explanatory work that fundamental account should do. The Socratic view is going to say, I need to use this process of division. I sort of start, there's a general kind noise and I can differentiate this sort of noise has these features, this sort of noise has those feature. And if I follow that procedure in the right way, I'll arrive at ah a good definition, a good scientific definition of the kind.
00:54:31
Speaker
Great. So at this point, I you know want to be sensitive to our time and and maybe we can, I feel like maybe turning to you know some high level descriptions of like you know roughly why you find, maybe we could focus on like the intuitionist yeah picture, you know? Yeah.
00:54:54
Speaker
yeah Like, I guess, yeah, maybe we just go into what, roughly speaking, you know, what do you find dissatisfying about the intuitionist picture? Why do you prefer, An explanation is for you. I mean, i yeah I guess like you can take that either in terms of like, as an account of Aristotle, why do you prefer the explanation is account preferable or if you want to take it just more philosophically, because you also mentioned that you do find it more satisfying philosophical. Yeah, yeah. just Yeah. Yeah. And for listeners who are interested in the paper, I do a little bit of both. Like, so kind of on the interpretive question, one reason to be dissatisfied by it is I think there, know, while Aristotle's
00:55:35
Speaker
He's a kind of notoriously piecemeal kind of thinker. He's got different treatises and he says different things in different places. I think there's a lot of evidence when you actually look at his text.
00:55:46
Speaker
He does pause at various places to reflect on kind of his methodology. like How does he think we arrive at a definition of a soul or how does he think we arrive at a definition of place?
00:55:57
Speaker
And when he reflects on his methodology, I think you find him saying things that sit very poorly with an intuitionist understanding. He says things like I alluded to earlier, like that some people went wrong with their definitions because they didn't spend enough time studying their kind. ay And had they spent them more enough time, they would have realized that doesn't work. And that looks like, oh, well then...
00:56:21
Speaker
it's gotta be that we're sort of testing and judging definitions based on whether they fit the empirical knowledge that we have of the kind. That's that's what he seems to be saying there. And that's what the explanationist view is saying. It's like, we we don't really grasp a definition in this intuitive way without checking and justifying it ultimately by reference to can it fit with and explain the empirical knowledge of the kind that that we begin with. um ah So I think that's sort of the exegetical kind of answer, why prefer it as an interpretation of Aristotle.
00:56:59
Speaker
Philosophically, what's dissatisfying about the intuitionist view is, well, one thing we alluded to is it it becomes a bit unclear, especially given that there's disagreement.
00:57:14
Speaker
about the essences of these things. And Aristotle is aware of that. I mean, a lot of his treatises start with a kind of rundown of here's what other people have said about this this kind, and here's what I want to say.
00:57:26
Speaker
It's kind of dissatisfying to end up saying, well, i I can't justify, I can't support why my definition is better. You just kind of you know spend some more time thinking about it and you'll see you'll see that I'm right. You'll see that, yes, this is that's not very satisfying. No, maybe it works, like I said, the mathematical or geometric kinds, I think, look best in the intuition's view. It can feel hard, like yeah how in the end does the does Euclid sort of get to his definition of a triangle?
00:57:56
Speaker
Why is it better than the other ones? It might feel hard to think that there's any kind of empirical testing, like this one better fits the empirical knowledge we have of triangles. ah and ah And interesting, you you could think maybe for certain kind of metaphysical concepts, like the definition of time or place, maybe you'd want to say something similar.
00:58:19
Speaker
i ah But certainly for biological kinds like oak tree or human being or other kinds of empirical kinds like thunder, it just seems really unsatisfying that that's like the answer, given that there's different accounts of it, ah different competing definitions, competing accounts of the essence to think, well, it really comes down to intuition rather than some kind of explanatory test where we could find or discover more that would help us decide between these definitions. Um, so, know, that's one thing worth saying ah about it. Um, yeah, that, it so basically it's like a big motivation for the explanations view is that, um,
00:59:04
Speaker
it it gives us a way to justify and evaluate our definitions. Um, on an intuitionist picture, it can feel like once you have a definition, there's no weird, no clear way to support it or compare it to rivals.
00:59:17
Speaker
Um, which makes, yeah, that process of, justification sort of unsatisfying. Whereas in the explanation, in explanationism that lets you say why one count is better than another, because yeah, you show how it explains the the features better. the the Yeah. Yeah. may I mean, should mention one thing that like textually that has led some people to the intuitionist view, but I think you'll see quickly how this, this can cut.
00:59:50
Speaker
philosophically why it might seem wrong, is there are certain places where Aristotle seems to suggest that our knowledge of essences or fundamental definitions it's kind of infallible that it's sort of yeah somehow like if you've really got it, it can't be wrong about it. You can't change your mind.
01:00:11
Speaker
and And if you thought that, then you might think, oh yeah, well then there's gotta be some kind of like mental seeing, like just like you see like two plus two has gotta equal four. No empirical discovery is gonna make me change my mind about that.
01:00:26
Speaker
ah If you thought that our grasp of sort of what the definition of a triangle is, what the definition or assess essence of a human being is worth was like that, that might lead you to think that ultimately there's got to be some kind of self-certifying, self-warranty intuition here. Right.
01:00:43
Speaker
But now there's the philosophical point that cuts against that is, um well, let me just say exegetically, I think there's a way to deal with those texts where Aristotle seems to suggest that. And that's what I do in the article.
01:00:55
Speaker
um But philosophically, that just doesn't seem to fit our experience. Like ah going back to oak trees and other things, it seems to be kind of piecemeal. We start with a kind of rough and ready notion of what an oak tree is or what a triangle is. We learn the concepts through experience. Yeah.
01:01:13
Speaker
And then we're kind of gradually reaching for a better and more precise definition.
Pluralism in Understanding Essences
01:01:20
Speaker
ay And I think part of Aristotle's insight there is what is it that we're looking for when we're looking for a better, a more precise account? Well, we're looking for something a little bit more fundamental. We're not just looking to see like, are there counter examples?
01:01:35
Speaker
where the thing doesn't really have to have that feature, but we're also looking like, does this really get at the more basic account of what the thing is, or is this kind of a superficial, again, going back to our opening example, while it might happen be true that triangles have angles that measure up to 180 degrees, that's not sort of getting to like what,
01:01:58
Speaker
defines this geometrical figure versus another one. It's an interesting necessary accident of these features, this this ah geometrical figure. But I haven't had a kind of illuminating account of the core, the basic features of a triangle from which may be something like interior your angles adding up to 180 degrees, we could derive. can see, oh yeah, that's that's why a triangle's got to have that property.
01:02:24
Speaker
um Likewise, to go back to your example, like it might seem like, yeah, this is a kind of nice rough and roughy way to pick out a human being. It's a thing that can talk.
01:02:34
Speaker
ah It's got language. Or it's got two legs, like human beings have two legs. thiss This a famous kind of example that human beings are featherless biped. In a certain sense, that's a rough and ready expression.
01:02:46
Speaker
um definition of a human being. But even if it turned out that all and only human beings have those characteristics, I haven't sort of hit the deeper, more fundamental or basic notion of what a human being is.
01:03:01
Speaker
And so, yeah, if you think that our grasp of essence is what a kind really is, is more piecemeal and gradual in this way, i think it makes sense to have something more like the explanation as picture.
01:03:14
Speaker
than this intuitionist one where it's, you know, if you think intuition is where it's atd it's hard to understand how you sort of piecemeal make your intuition better. Great. Yeah. Just um to get close close to kind of closing out our conversation, I want to just touch on something you mentioned earlier, which is like, you know, explanationism sometimes or the explanationist framework for how we know essences is maybe isn't equally compelling for every domain. So you mentioned mathematics, you know, it can seem hard to believe that um we arrive at the essence of a triangle through like empirical testing or explanatory inference. And so i guess, you know, reading your paper, that was one thought I had was like,
01:04:10
Speaker
um, are you tempted at all by a kind of like, so this is setting aside the interpretation of Aristotle for a second, but just, are you tempted at all by like a kind of like a pluralism about how we come to know essences? Like maybe it's the case that I don't know like biological kinds, the way we ah know an essence ah of a biological kind, like an Oak tree yet, maybe there it's more of like an explanationist type thing, but maybe with
01:04:42
Speaker
yeah like mathematics, it's more, maybe, you know, it's intuitionist. um Yeah. or Or maybe like, again, like you might think metaphysical things, like how do we know what time is or what space is? Right. Maybe these two, or, or to take some risk to doing examples, like what substances, maybe that isn't empirical. Maybe that's something else. Yeah.
01:05:06
Speaker
Right. So, yeah, no, do you have any thoughts about that whole, that, that question of like, should we instead have like a kind of, plralist approach to knowing essences or Yeah, no, it's a good question. i I think, I'm not sure as is partly answer. and There are some contemporary philosophers who both thinking about sort of modality, so just kind of necessary truths.
01:05:32
Speaker
And also essences who want this kind of pluralism, like maybe some of it is more empirical and some of it is more rationalist, a priori, intuition-y. um And you might draw the lines again along like sort of mathematical versus biological or metaphysical versus something that that's more rooted in the the experience of the world around us.
01:05:56
Speaker
um I'm not fully tempted to it because while I'm not a sort of philosophy of math person, i don't know a lot about it. um My sense is that... um
01:06:11
Speaker
there's some sort of explanatory thought here of that like a good theory, a good geometry is gonna sort of take a few simple kind of starting points, principles as Aristotle would put it, and show that these principles can be generative and helping us sort of see why other things that we know ah can be derived and fruitless sort of illuminatingly seen as following from this.
01:06:43
Speaker
And so I don't want to, I do think there's still like I do think there's still a kind of explanatory goal in these sciences. Now, maybe the sort of explanation to go back to the four causal framework is it's a different kind of explanation. Mathematical explanation isn't really what we're going for when we're going for like biological explanation.
01:07:05
Speaker
um And I think the more you lean into that, you might think, yeah, there's still, there's still there's kind of two-stage structure. um where you start with that kind of initial stage of here's what we know about the subject matter.
01:07:23
Speaker
And like a good definition, fundamental kind of the essence is ultimately gonna be adjudicated or tested against, justified against what we know about the kind.
01:07:37
Speaker
ay And a better definition is one that's gonna, and now we didn't talk much about this, but we might start to wanna construct a theory about what makes for a better or worse explanation. And maybe like parsimony is going to be better. Simpler explanation is better. Maybe certain kinds of general generalities are gonna be valuable. So like, I don't wanna define a triangle in such a way that I can't sort of appeal to the same sort of principles to define a square.
01:08:07
Speaker
If I like take one very ah approach to a triangle and different one to a square, well then at a like a higher level of not just defining triangles, but trying to define geometric figures in general, I'm gonna have a kind of disunified science. So unification might be relevant to better explanation. Can I kind of assimilate lot of different kinds, essences to this way of approaching to this specific kind? And I actually think this is something like Right for Aristotle's approach like part of the way to understand his hylomorphism is form matter approaches he thinks you can unify a lot of natural phenomenon.
01:08:48
Speaker
By adopting this kind of way of approaching explanation in terms of form and matter um. And I think something like that is right for our current ways of thinking about science, kind of meta-science, methodology of science that like, as we think about what makes for a better explanation, you know, parsimony or simplicity is one role, but unification is another role.
01:09:12
Speaker
Better to have a kind of theory with principles that allow us to unify different kinds of seemingly disparate subject matter than one that where it's like, well, here's how you, here are the principles for this subject matter and here are the very different principles for that subject matter.
01:09:27
Speaker
um So yeah, that was maybe a more long-winded answer than you want. No, that's great, yeah. That's where I'm sort of on the fence about that. I'm totally sure what to think about
Future Work on Aristotle's Dialectic
01:09:38
Speaker
it.
01:09:38
Speaker
That's great. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Chris. And it's been a great conversation, really rich. And i mean, before we ah wrap up, um you maybe want to tell us, you know, what you're working on now.
01:09:51
Speaker
yeah, yeah. Well, thanks. Yeah. I mean, I'm a bit of a generalist philosopher. and one of the things about philosophy is you can jump into different things. So I've, I've got this work on Aristotle and then I've written some things on other philosophers like Aquinas, uh,
01:10:04
Speaker
These days, I've been thinking a lot about free wills. I'm working on that. awesome ah But in terms of Aristotle, the the sort of next phase, so you mentioned there's this article coming out in Oxford Studies ah that we've been talking a lot about the ideas in that.
01:10:20
Speaker
And I had this earlier article that's engaging some of the four causal framework. What I want to do next is Aristotle has this, i throughout his work, you'll find the distinction between dialectic and science.
01:10:34
Speaker
um and one question is if the explanationist way of thinking about theoretical inquiry or scientific error inquiry for Aristotle is right, what exactly does he think the role of dialectic is? And those listeners who arere familiar with Plato will know Plato is big on dialectic. He thinks it's really important for sort of how to do philosophy.
01:10:56
Speaker
And so, yeah, i've I've got something in the works where I'm working on what role Aristotle thinks dialectical inquiry plays in science, given the kind of explanationist framework that I think he holds. And yeah, you'll have to wait for the article to see what exactly I want to say. I'm still working it out, but. Yeah, sounds good. right. Well, thanks again, Chris. Yeah. Thanks, Sam.