Abstract
What role, if any, does dialectic play in Aristotle’s epistemology in the Topics? In this paper I argue that it does play a role, but a role that is independent of endoxa. In the first section, I sketch the case for thinking that dialectic plays a distinctively epistemological role—not just a methodological role, or a merely instrumental role in getting episteme. In the second section, I consider three ways it could play that role, on two of which endoxa play at least a co-starring role. But in the third section, I argue that endoxa don’t play that co-starring role, by arguing for a deflationary account of what endoxa are. For that reason, the third view emerges as the most plausible; but the third view is, I’ll suggest, Platonic.
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- 1.
Topics I.2, 101a25-b4. Otherwise unattributed page references in this paper are to the Topics.
- 2.
Thus, while I don't dispute that dialectical skill following the rules set out in Topics VIII could lead to better argumentative skills, and so to “good rational argument” ([8, p. 89]), this consequence of dialectical skill does not count as a specifically epistemological role for dialectic, in my sense. Nor do other effects of dialectical skill and exercise considered in [8] and [9].
- 3.
See especially [16, pp. 352–354] for these readings and the justifications for them which I gloss below.
- 4.
At the start of Topics IV. Accidents presumably get left out not because they are of no interest in their own right but because they aren't elements of definitions; cf. 120b12–15.
- 5.
Posterior Analytics I.2. 71b20–24; 72a25ff makes clear that this will include being more familiar to the cognizer.
- 6.
I'm intending to distinguish in this paragraph between proving (which I take to be a modern notion), establishing (which I take to be a quasi-technical notion in the Topics, of getting the respondent to assent to the premises of a syllogism), and demonstration in the sense of the Posterior Analytics. To be charitable to Smith, the tradition to which he is responding (e.g. [13], [7]) does often speak as if, on their view, Aristotle thinks dialectic is going to "establish" the definitions - without clarifying what that would mean, or distinguishing it from demonstration or proving. Also against the background of that tradition, Wlodarcyzk defends the thesis that Aristotle in the Topics has a unified view of how definitions can be established, but she does not take this to amount to proving them. Rather, on her view, establishing a definition helps one achieve a "more articulated level of understanding" ([18, p. 191]). While that is one way to understand how dialectic plays its epistemological role, I'm inclined to doubt that there is any one argument which Aristotle takes to achieve the goal, as I explain in the next footnote.
- 7.
Among those reasons: Aristotle nowhere gives any reason to think we gain knowledge of first principles by giving a single argument. When Aristotle does talk about a dialectician establishing a definition, in Topics VII.3, the sample argument uses premises of a form which do not occur in "conventional wisdom" or "reputable views," and anyway to "establish" a definition in this sense is simply to win one dialectical encounter - not to prove them in any way that is not ad hominem against a very special opponent who happens to admit the premises.
- 8.
- 9.
Albeit for other reasons: Irwin takes for granted that Aristotle's scientific realism is incompatible with a coherence theory of justification. A reader of [4], published over a decade earlier, would not have taken that view for granted.
- 10.
[7, p. 476].
- 11.
[12] inter alia.
- 12.
- 13.
[16, p. 347].
- 14.
[17, p. 42]: “As I interpret [endoxos] it is in fact a relative term: a proposition is endoxos with respect to some definite group of persons…” It is not clear that Smith takes all things people think to count as endoxa, since he regards the lists as "specifying the different types of endoxa" [emphasis mine], p. 78. But it is also unclear why he would not do so.
- 15.
[1, p. 500].
- 16.
One quibble with Smith on this point: the goal is to maximize the student's dialectical ability, not their performance on each occasion. So there is no reason to think that dialecticians will find "the best argument available for a given conclusion and a given respondent" ([17, p. 55]). Even experts have bad days, and the best all around basketball player might not be the best free-throw shooter.
- 17.
100b21-23: ἔνδοξα δὲ τὰ δοκοῦντα πᾶσιν ἢ τοῖς πλείστοις ἢ τοῖς σοφοῖς, καὶ τούτοις ἢ πᾶσιν ἢ τοῖς πλείστοις ἢ τοῖς μάλιστα γνωρίμοις καὶ ἐνδόξοις.
- 18.
[14, p. 158].
- 19.
104a8-11: ἔστι δὲ πρότασις διαλεκτικὴ ἐρώτησις ἔνδοξος ἢ πᾶσιν ἢ τοῖς πλείστοις ἢ τοῖς σοφοῖς, καὶ τούτοις ἢ πᾶσιν ἢ τοῖς πλείστοις ἢ τοῖς μάλιστα γνωρίμοις, μὴ παράδοξος.
- 20.
One might well wonder what the exception comes to: exactly which of the views of the wise will count as paradoxon. Para whose doxon? The present point does not require answering this question; but there are at least some clear cases: if the view is paradoxon to literally everyone else.
- 21.
In particular, interpreters have often thought that VIII.4/5 use "endoxon" differently than the rest of the Topics. This seems to me a mistake, but the issues are too tangled to work out here.
- 22.
[6, p. 189].
- 23.
[14, p. 159].
- 24.
159b4-5: ἀδόξου μὲν οὖν οὔσης τῆς θέσεως ἔνδοξον ἀνάγκη τὸ συμπέρασμα γίνεσθαι, ἐνδόξου δ' ἄδοξον.
- 25.
I am grateful to Colin King for pressing me on this issue.
- 26.
100b26–28.
- 27.
cf. [17, pp. 48–49].
- 28.
Euthydemus 295b ff.
- 29.
159a38-b1: Ἀνάγκη δὴ τὸν ἀποκρινόμενον ὑπέχειν λόγον θέμενον ἤτοι ἔνδοξον ἢ ἄδοξον θέσιν ἢ μηδέτερον, καὶ ἤτοι ἁπλῶς ἔνδοξον ἢ ἄδοξον ἢ ὡρισμένως, οἷον τῳδί τινι, ἢ αὐτῷ ἢ ἄλλῳ.
- 30.
142a9-11: ἴσως δὲ καὶ τὸ ἁπλῶς γνώριμον οὐ τὸ πᾶσι γνώριμόν ἐστιν ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῖς εὖ διακειμένοις τὴν διάνοιαν, καθάπερ καὶ τὸ ἁπλῶς ὑγιεινὸν τὸ τοῖς εὖ ἔχουσι τὸ σῶμα.
- 31.
159b24-25: τὰ δοκοῦντα ἁπλῶς.
- 32.
This is not to say that inquiry will have a different goal; indeed, as I understand VIII.5, it will not. The point is instead that those with episteme—for instance, a teacher—set the standard for what is endoxon without qualification.
- 33.
As Karbowski appreciates in [11].
- 34.
[3, p. 75].
- 35.
Posterior Analytics 72a25-b4, esp. b3-4.
- 36.
Of course, on this account, things that are endoxon without qualification may have some special status - but it will be possible to believe them without your belief having a correspondingly privileged status. Moreover, not all endoxa will be endoxon without qualification.
- 37.
[2, p. 103].
- 38.
[5], Chapter 13. On Bronstein's positive account, the question "in effect asks ‘how do they begin to become known’" (p. 231). That reading seems to me quite strained in comparison with the natural reading I present here, though of course Bronstein's reading is partly motivated by considerations of fit—i.e. how II.19 fits with the rest of Posterior Analytics. Whether Bronstein's view leaves room for an epistemological story like the one here is a difficult question; it explicitly leaves room for dialectic only to do the work, prior to real scientific inquiry, of discovering that genuses exist (p. 188).
- 39.
Posterior Analytics II.19, 99b17–8: περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀρχῶν, πῶς τε γίνονται γνώριμοι.
- 40.
Thanks for helpful feedback on this paper are due to audiences in Berlin and Gothenburg and especially to Jakob Fink, Ronja Hildebrandt, Colin King, Giouli Korobili, Ana Maria Mora Marquez, David Merry, Stephen Menn, Robert Roreitner, Christopher Roser, Johanna Schmitt, Gisela Striker, and Benjamin Wilck.
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Bjelde, J. (2021). Endoxa and Epistemology in Aristotle’s Topics. In: Bjelde, J.A., Merry, D., Roser, C. (eds) Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity. Argumentation Library, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70817-7_10
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