The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  Clearly, then, there exists a class of arguments of this kind, and it is at this kind of ability that those aim whom we call sophists. Let us now go on to discuss how many kinds there are of sophistical arguments, and how many in number are the [35] elements of which this faculty is composed, and how many branches there actually are of this inquiry, and the other factors that contribute to this art.

  2 · Of arguments used in discussion there are four classes: didactic, dialectical, examinational, and contentious arguments. Didactic arguments are those that [165b1] deduce from the principles appropriate to each subject and not from the opinions held by the answerer (for the learner must be convinced); dialectical arguments are those that deduce from reputable premisses, to the contradictory of a given thesis; examinational arguments are those that deduce from premisses which are accepted [5] by the answerer and which any one who claims to possess knowledge of the subject is bound to know (in what manner, has been explained elsewhere);1 contentious arguments are those that deduce or appear to deduce to a conclusion from premisses that appear to be reputable but are not so. The subject of demonstrative arguments has been discussed in the Analytics, while that of dialectic arguments and [10] examinational arguments has been discussed elsewhere:2 let us now proceed to speak of the arguments used in competitions and contests.

  3 · First we must grasp the number of aims entertained by those who argue as competitors and rivals. These are five in number: refutation, falsity, paradox, solecism, and fifthly to reduce the opponent in the discussion to babbling (i.e. to [15] constrain him to repeat himself a number of times); or it is to produce the appearance of each of these things without the reality. For they choose if possible plainly to refute the other party, or as the second best to show that he is saying something false, or as a third best to lead him into paradox, or fourthly to reduce him to solecism, i.e. to make the answerer, in consequence of the argument, use [20] some barbarous mode of expression; or, as a last resort, to make him repeat himself.

  4 · There are two styles of refutation; for some depend on the language used, while some are independent of language. Those ways of producing the illusion [25] which depend on language are six in number: they are homonymy, ambiguity, combination, division, accent, form of expression. Of this we may assure ourselves both by induction and by deduction—among others, a deduction showing that this is the number of ways in which we might fail to mean the same thing by the same [30] names or accounts. Arguments such as the following depend upon homonymy. ‘Those who know grasp things; for it is those who know their letters who grasp what is dictated to them.’3 For to grasp is homonymous; it is to understand by the use of knowledge, and also to acquire knowledge. Again, ‘Evils are good; for what must be [35] is good, and evils must be.’ For what must be has a double meaning: it means what is inevitable, as often is the case with evils (for evil of some kind is inevitable), while on the other hand we say of good things as well that they must be. Moreover, ‘The same man is both seated and standing and he is both sick and in health; for it is he who stood up who is standing, and he who was recovering who is in [166a1] health; but it is the seated man who stood up, and the sick man who was recovering.’ For ‘The sick man does so and so’, or ‘has so and so done to him’ is not single in meaning: sometimes it means the man who is sick now, sometimes the man who was sick formerly. Of course, the man who was recovering was the sick man, who really [5] was sick at the time; but the man who is in health is not sick at the same time: he is the sick man in the sense not that he is sick now, but that he was sick formerly. Examples such as the following depend upon ambiguity: ‘I wish that you the enemy may capture.’ And ‘He who knows that, that knows’; for by this phrase one may signify as the knower either him who knows or that which is known. Also, ‘There [10] must be sight of what one sees; one sees the pillar; ergo the pillar has sight’. Also, ‘What you profess to be, that you profess to be; you profess a stone to be; ergo you profess to be a stone.’ Also, ‘Speaking of the silent is possible’; for ‘speaking of the silent’ also has a double meaning: it may mean that the speaker is silent or that the [15] things of which he speaks are so. There are three varieties of these homonymies and ambiguities: one when either the account or the name properly signifies more than one thing, e.g. mole and bank; one when by custom we use them so; thirdly when words that have a simple sense taken alone have more than one meaning in [20] combination; e.g. ‘knowing letters’. For each word, both ‘knowing’ and ‘letters’, may have a single meaning; but both together have more than one—either that the letters themselves have knowledge or that some one else has it of them.

  Ambiguity and homonymy, then, take these forms. Upon combination there depend instances such as the following: ‘A man can walk while sitting, and can write [25] while not writing’. For the meaning is not the same if one divides the words and if one combines them in saying that walking while sitting is possible. The same applies to the latter phrase, too, if one combines the words ‘to write while not writing’; for then it means that he has the power to write and not to write at once; whereas if one does not combine them, it means that when he is not writing he has the power to write. Also, ‘He knows now if he has learnt his letters.’4 Moreover, ‘One single thing [30] if you can carry many you can carry too’.

  Upon division depend the propositions that 5 is 2 and 3, and even and odd, and that the greater is equal (for it is that amount and more besides). For the same phrase would not be thought always to have the same meaning when divided and [35] when combined, e.g. ‘I made thee a slave free’, and ‘God-like Achilles left fifty a hundred men’.

  An argument depending upon accent is not easy to construct in unwritten [166b1] discussion; in written discussions and in poetry it is easier. Thus (e.g.) some people emend Homer against those who criticize as absurd his expression τὀ μὲν o꜋ καταπύθεται ὂμβρῳ. For they solve the difficulty by a change of accent, pronouncing [5] the $$$oυ with an acute accent.5 Also, in the passage about Agamemnon’s dream, they say that Zeus did not himself say ‘We grant him the fulfilment of his prayer’,6 but that he bade the dream grant it. Instances such as these, then, turn upon the accentuation.

  Others come about owing to the form of expression used, when what is really [10] different is expressed in the same form, e.g. a masculine thing by a feminine termination, or a feminine thing by a masculine, or a neuter by either a masculine or a feminine; or, again, when a quality is expressed by a termination proper to quantity or vice versa, or what is active by a passive word, or a state by an active word, and so forth with the other divisions previously7 laid down. For it is possible to use an expression to denote what does not belong to the class of actions at all as [15] though it did so belong. Thus (e.g.) ‘flourishing’ is a word which in the form of its expression is like ‘cutting’ or ‘building’; yet the one denotes a certain quality—i.e. a certain condition—while the other denotes a certain action. In the same manner also in the other instances.

  Refutations, then, that depend upon language are drawn from these commonplace [20] rules. Of fallacies that are independent of language there are seven kinds: one that which depends upon accident; secondly the use of an expression without qualification or not without qualification but with some qualification of respect, or place, or time, or relation; thirdly that which depends upon ignorance of what refutation is; fourthly that which depends upon the consequent; fifthly that which [25] depends upon assuming the point at issue; sixthly stating as cause what is not the cause; seventhly the making of more than one question into one.

  5 · Fallacies, then, that depend on accident occur whenever any attribute is claimed to belong in a like manner to a thing and to its accident. For since the same [30] thing has many accidents there is no necessity that all the same attributes should belong to all of a thing’s predicates and to their subject as well. Thus (e.g.), if Coriscus is different from a man, he is different from himself: for he is a man; or if he is different from Socra
tes, and Socrates is a man, then, they say, you have [35] admitted that Coriscus is different from a man, because it is an accident of the person from whom you said that he is different that he is a man.

  Those that depend on whether an expression is used without qualification or in a certain respect and not strictly, occur whenever an expression used in a particular [167a1] sense is taken as though it were used without qualification, e.g. ‘If what is not is an object of opinion, then what is not is’; for it is not the same thing to be something and to be without qualification. Or again, ‘What is, is not, if it is not a particular kind of being, e.g. if it is not a man.’ For it is not the same thing not to be something [5] and not to be without qualification: it looks as if it were, because of the closeness of the expression, i.e. because to be something is but little different from to be, and not to be something from not to be. Likewise also with any argument that turns upon the point whether an expression is used in a certain respect or used without qualification. Thus e.g. ‘Suppose an Indian to be black all over, but white in respect of his teeth; then he is both white and not white.’ Or if both characters belong in a particular respect, then, they say, contrary attributes belong at the same time. This [10] kind of thing is in some cases easily seen by anyone, e.g. suppose a man were to assume that the Ethiopian is black, and were then to ask whether he is white in respect of his teeth; thus if he is white in that respect, he might think, as he ended his questioning reductively, that he had argued that he was both black and not black. But in some cases it often passes undetected, viz. in all cases where, whenever [15] something is said to hold in a certain respect, it would seem to follow that it holds without qualification as well; and also in cases where it is not easy to see which of the attributes ought to be rendered strictly. A situation of this kind arises, where both the opposite attributes belong alike; for then it seems that one must agree that both or neither belongs without qualification: e.g. if a thing is half white and half [20] black, is it white or black?

  Those which arise because it has not been defined what a deduction is and what a refutation is,8 come about because something is left out in their definition. For to refute is to contradict one and the same attribute—not the name, but the object and one9 that is not synonymous but the same—and to confute it from the [25] propositions granted, necessarily, without including in the reckoning the original point to be proved, in the same respect and relation and manner and time in which it was asserted. (A false assertion about anything has to be defined in the same way.) Some people, however, omit some one of the said conditions and give a merely apparent refutation, showing (e.g.) that the same thing is both double and not [30] double—for two is double of one, but not double of three. Or, it may be, they show that it is both double and not double of the same thing, but not that it is so in the same respect—for it is double in length but not double in breadth. Or, it may be, they show it to be both double and not double of the same thing and in the same respect and manner, but not that it is so at the same time; and therefore their refutation is merely apparent. One might force this fallacy into the group dependent [35] on language.

  Those that depend on the assumption of the point at issue, occur in the same way, and in as many ways, as it is possible to postulate the point at issue; they appear to refute because men lack the power to keep their eyes at once upon what is the same and what is different.

  The refutation which depends upon the consequent arises because people [167b1] suppose that the relation of consequence is convertible. For whenever, if this is the case, that necessarily is the case, they then suppose also that if the latter is the case, the former necessarily is the case. This is also the source of the deceptions that attend opinions based on sense-perception. For people often supposed bile to be honey because honey is attended by a yellow colour; and since after rain the ground [5] is wet, we suppose that if the ground is wet, it has been raining; whereas that does not necessarily follow. In rhetoric demonstrations from signs are based on consequences. For when orators wish to show that a man is an adulterer, they take hold of [10] some consequence—that the man is smartly dressed, or that he is observed to wander about at night. There are, however, many people of whom these things are true, while the charge in question is untrue. It happens like this also in deductive reasoning; e.g. Melissus’ argument that the universe is infinite, assumes that the universe has not come to be (for from what is not nothing could possibly come to be) and that what has come to be has done so from a first beginning. If, therefore, the [15] universe has not come to be, it has no first beginning, and is therefore infinite. But this does not necessarily follow; for if what has come to be always has a first beginning, it does not follow that what has a first beginning has come to be; any more than it follows that if a man in a fever is hot, a man who is hot must be in a fever. [20]

  The refutation which depends upon treating as cause what is not a cause, occurs whenever what is not a cause is inserted in the argument, as though the refutation depended upon it. This kind of thing happens in deductions ad impossibile; for in these we are bound to demolish one of the premisses. If, then, it is reckoned in among the questions that are necessary to establish the resulting [25] impossibility, it will often be thought that the refutation depends upon it. E.g. the soul and life are not the same; for if coming-to-be is contrary to perishing, then a particular form of perishing will have a particular form of coming-to-be as its contrary: now death is a particular form of perishing and is contrary to life; life, therefore, is a coming-to-be, and to live is to come-to-be. But this is impossible; [30] accordingly, the soul and life are not the same. Now this has not been deduced; for the impossibility results even if one does not say that life is the same as the soul, but merely says that life is contrary to death, which is a form of perishing, and that perishing has coming-to-be as its contrary. Arguments of that kind, then, though not non-deductive without qualification, are non-deductive in relation to the proposed conclusion. And the questioners themselves often fail quite as much to see [35] a point of that kind.

  Such, then, are the arguments that depend upon the consequent and upon false cause. Those that depend upon the making of two questions into one occur whenever the plurality is undetected and a single answer is returned as if to a single question. [168a1] Now, in some cases, it is easy to see that there is more than one, and that an answer10 is not to be given, e.g. ‘Does the earth consist of sea, or the sky?’ But in some cases it is less easy, and then people treat the question as one, and either confess their defeat by failing to answer the question, or are exposed to an apparent refutation. Thus ‘Is [5] he and is he a man?’ Then if any one hits him and him, he will strike a man, not men. Or again, where some are good and some bad, are they all good or not good? For whichever he says, it is possible that he might be thought to expose himself to an apparent refutation or to make an apparently false statement; for to [10] say that something is good which is not good, or not good which is good, is to make a false statement. Sometimes, however, additional premisses may actually give rise to a genuine refutation; e.g. suppose a man were to grant that one thing and a number of things can alike be called white and naked and blind. For if a thing that cannot see though nature designed it to see is blind, then things that cannot see though [15] nature designed them to do so will be blind. Whenever, then, one thing can see while another cannot, they will either both be able to see or else both be blind; which is impossible.

  6 · We should either divide apparent proofs and refutations as above, or else refer them all to ignorance of what refutation is, and make that our starting-point; [20] for it is possible to analyse all the aforesaid modes of fallacy into breaches of the definition of a refutation. In the first place, we may see if they are non-deductive; for the conclusion ought to result from the premisses laid down, so that we state it necessarily and do not merely seem to. Next we should also take the definition bit by bit. For of the fallacies that consist in language, some depend upon a double [25] meaning
, e.g. homonymy and the account11 and similarity of form (for we habitually speak of everything as though it were a certain ‘this’—while fallacies of combination and division and accent arise because the account or the name as altered is not the same. But this too should be the same, just as the thing should be, if a refutation or deduction is to be effected; e.g. if the point concerns a doublet, then [30] you should deduce about a doublet, not about a cloak. For the former conclusion also would be true, but it has not been deduced; we need a further question to show that doublet means the same thing, in order to satisfy any one who asks the reason why.

  Fallacies that depend on accident are clear once deduction has been defined. [35] For the same definition ought to hold good of refutation too, except that a mention of the contradictory is here added; for a refutation is a deduction of the contradictory. If, then, there is no deduction as regards an accident of anything, there is no refutation. For supposing, when these things are the case, that must necessarily be, and that is white, there is no necessity for it to be white on account of the deduction. So, if the triangle has its angles equal to two right-angles, and it happens to be a figure, or a primitive or a principle, it is not proved that a figure or a [168b1] principle or a primitive has this character. For the demonstration proves the point about it not qua figure or qua primitive, but qua triangle. Likewise also in other cases. If, then, a refutation is a sort of deduction, an argument depending on an [5] accident will not be a refutation. It is, however, just in this that the experts and men of science generally suffer refutation at the hand of the unscientific; for the latter meet the scientists with deductions depending on accidents; and the scientists for lack of the power to draw distinctions either say ‘Yes’ to their questions, or else are thought to have said ‘Yes’, although they have not.12 [10]