Induction as Spell-Casting

According to Aristotle experience induces or impresses (legitimate/correct) concepts upon us. These concepts, in their turn, contain knowledge of the taxonomies and syllogisms which science comprises. The extraction of such syllogisms out of the concepts and taxonomies that contain them is Aristotelian logic. Syllogisms justify and explain the very taxonomies which they extract. (Strictly speaking, first principles need no justification and no explanation, and syllogisms rely on them to justify and explain other taxonomies, namely the conclusions of syllogisms). As seen in previous chapters, this deductive picture is an elaborated explication of the (highly problematic) ancient notion of terms and its dubious conflation of semantics and ontology, that is its implicit presupposition that we have somehow obtained the legitimate concepts and terms, which properly slice up our world into objects (whatever that means exactly) and which spawn self-evident definitions and syllogisms. The validity of science, then, depends upon the validity of the process by which experience allegedly impresses (legitimate) concepts upon us, and the validity of the process of extracting taxonomies out of such concepts. In Aristotle there seems to be a cluster of closely connected such validation and extraction processes. Their exact function and character is under debate ever since they were described by him. The most notable among them is induction. Other such process, closely connected to it and partially overlapping it, are dialectics and intuition. They will be discussed now.