Aristotle’s Language for Success in (Practical) Explanations

Abstract

This chapter discusses some occurrences of “true” (alēthes) and “false” (pseudes) (or expressions belonging to the same families) in Aristotle’s works and spots an important but neglected phenomenon: Aristotle sometimes uses those expressions to refer to items that contribute to the success (or to the failure) of higher level kinds of arguments. A “true” argument of kind F is the argument that successfully delivers the product that F-arguments are meant to deliver, and a “false” argument of kind F is an argument that fails to deliver the product that F-arguments are meant to deliver. But Aristotle also applies the same terms “true” and “false” to terms and premises, according to the contribution they make for the success or failure of the argument they compose. Thus, a “false middle term”, for instance, can be a middle term that decisively makes the argument fail to deliver its F-product. In the case of explanations, having true premises is only a sine qua non (but not a sufficient) condition for explanatory success, and this leaves room for a false argument (in the sense explicated above) having true premises. Thus, a “false premise” in an attempted explanation can be a proposition that, even being true, decisively makes the argument fail to deliver the fully appropriate explanation of its conclusion. Such an approach has important consequences for discussions around the notions of practical truth and practical wisdom (phronēsis), but the aim of the paper is only to explain Aristotle’s terminology and point to its further consequences.