On Interpretation

Aristotle, Grammar, and Reality, Part 2.

https://medium.com/@peterseanbradle/aristotle-grammar-and-reality-part-2-eb7d608b407d

On Interpretation by Aristotle

Aristotle's “On Interpretation” is next on the batting order for Online Great Books (“OGB”). I was surprised by this book. Despite being familiar with Aristotle, I had never heard of this text previously. When it was assigned, I thought it would be a selection of topics. Instead, “On Interpretation” seems to be foundational for Metaphysics. For OGB, I read Aristotle in this order: Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics, Categories, and On Interpretation. It makes more sense to reverse the order since the building blocks are provided in reverse order.

In Metaphysics, I suspected that Aristotle was connecting grammar and reality. It seemed as if Aristotle was identifying humanity's knowledge of grammar with humanity's power of knowing reality. In Categories, the connection became clear, as I pointed out in my prior essay. In Interpretation, Aristotle states:

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images. This matter has, however, been discussed in my treatise about the soul, for it belongs to an investigation distinct from that which lies before us.
Aristotle's thesis is that words are symbols of ideas in the mind. Words are the way we get out into the public what exists in our private mental world. In turn, those ideas come from the outside world. The “treatise about the soul” must be De Anime. In De Anime, Aristotle assumes that our mental ideas are abstracted from our experience. The Scholastic (and later Empiricist) version of this was the epigram “There is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses.”

So, words are intimately based on external reality.

In turn, words are divided into “nouns” and “verbs.” “Nouns” are things that exist (or which can be extrapolated from existing things):

By a noun we mean a sound significant by convention, which has no reference to time, and of which no part is significant apart from the rest.

Aristotle called nouns “substances” or “subjects” in Metaphysics and Categories. Things that are connected to symbols[1] in the category of “nouns” exist independently from other things - they exist in themselves whether they are a man or a man's head.

“Verbs” are predicates and necessarily convey a time element:

A verb is that which, in addition to its proper meaning, carries with it the notion of time. No part of it has any independent meaning, and it is a sign of something said of something else. I will explain what I mean by saying that it carries with it the notion of time. ‘Health' is a noun, but ‘is healthy' is a verb; for besides its proper meaning it indicates the present existence of the state in question. Moreover, a verb is always a sign of something said of something else, i.e. of something either predicable of or present in some other thing.

Verbs are “accidents” in the sense used by Metaphysics. Verbs connote things that do not exist by themselves. You cannot point to “running” but point to a running deer. The element of time exists because things happen to things in time.

Aristotle also posits things that are contradictory to nouns. “Not-man” is the contradictory of “man.” “Not healthy” is the contradictory of “healthy.” Because it is not clear what these words are referring to - Do they have a mental image other than the negation of man and healthy? - he calls the former “indefinite nouns” and the latter “indefinite verbs” since “since they apply equally well to that which exists and to that which does not.”[2]

Nouns and verbs are gathered into sentences. “Propositions” are sentences which can be true of false. “Feed the dog” is not a proposition; “The dog has been fed to the crocodile” is a proposition. An affirmation is a positive assertion of something about something; a denial is a negative assertion.

Every affirmation has an opposite denial and vice versa. Aristotle defines this kind of opposition as “contradiction”:

We will call such a pair of propositions a pair of contradictories. Those positive and negative propositions are said to be contradictory which have the same subject and predicate. The identity of subject and of predicate must not be ‘equivocal'. Indeed there are definitive qualifications besides this, which we make to meet the casuistries of sophists.

Aristotle's interest in On Interpretation is mostly about contraries, contradictions, and unity.[3]
Aristotle defines “contraries” as pertaining to “universals.”[4]

Our propositions necessarily sometimes concern a universal subject, sometimes an individual. If, then, a man states a positive and a negative proposition of universal character with regard to a universal, these two propositions are ‘contrary'. By the expression ‘a proposition of universal character with regard to a universal', such propositions as ‘every man is white', ‘no man is white' are meant. When, on the other hand, the positive and negative propositions, though they have regard to a universal, are yet not of universal character, they will not be contrary, albeit the meaning intended is sometimes contrary. As instances of propositions made with regard to a universal, but not of universal character, we may take the ‘propositions ‘man is white', ‘man is not white'. ‘Man' is a universal, but the proposition is not made as of universal character; for the word ‘every' does not make the subject a universal, but rather gives the proposition a universal character. If, however, both predicate and subject are distributed, the proposition thus constituted is contrary to truth; no affirmation will, under such circumstances, be true. The proposition ‘every man is every animal' is an example of this type.

An affirmation is opposed to a denial in the sense which I denote by the term ‘contradictory', when, while the subject remains the same, the affirmation is of universal character and the denial is not. The affirmation ‘every man is white' is the contradictory of the denial ‘not every man is white', or again, the proposition ‘no man is white' is the contradictory of the proposition ‘some men are white'. But propositions are opposed as contraries when both the affirmation and the denial are universal, as in the sentences ‘every man is white', ‘no man is white', ‘every man is just', ‘no man is just'.

So, contraries can be found in universals. Contradictions are oppositions of universals or statements with “a universal characteristic” that oppose the universal with a singular. Thus:

Contrary
Every man is white
No man is white
Contradiction
Every man is white
No man is white
Not every man is white
Some men are white

Later, Aristotle offers this example:

Contrary
Every man is unwise (false)
Is every man wise?
Answer: No.
Contradiction
Not every man is wise (true)

This seems reasonable. Even if “not every man is wise,” some men might be wise.
An interesting feature of propositions is that one of the propositions must be true. Further, the true one must have always been true and will always be true. The truth of one of the propositions is a matter of necessity.

These awkward results and others of the same kind follow, if it is an irrefragable law that of every pair of contradictory propositions, whether they have regard to universals and are stated as universally applicable, or whether they have regard to individuals, one must be true and the other false, and that there are no real alternatives, but that all that is or takes place is the outcome of necessity. There would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble, on the supposition that if we should adopt a certain course, a certain result would follow, while, if we did not, the result would not follow. For a man may predict an event ten thousand years beforehand, and another may predict the reverse; that which was truly predicted at the moment in the past will of necessity take place in the fullness of time.

Aristotle goes on to note:

Let me illustrate. A sea-fight must either take place to-morrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take place to-morrow, neither is it necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not take place to-morrow. Since propositions correspond with facts, it is evident that when in future events there is a real alternative, and a potentiality in contrary directions, the corresponding affirmation and denial have the same character.

Of course, either event exists as a potential event. It is at this point that I would suggest that potentiality exists in “matter” and “accident,” which imply that there is a “form” that does not change. Could that form be “truth” or God? This section reminded me of an article in Communio (Winter 2005), Rationality and Faith in God by Robert Spaemann. Spaemann argued that The author asked what it meant for the truth to be eternal if the present could be forgotten. When we say something about the future - there will be a sea-fight 3023 AD - our statement implies a connection between past and future. The connection, according to Spaemann, is that the present always remains the past of that future. Remove the present and the future's past is removed. What then would remain? Spaemann quotes Nietzsche's aphorism from “Death of the Idols,” “I am afraid that we are not free of God because we still believe in grammar.” In some sense, this is what Aristotle (whom Nietzsche despised) may have been driving at.

Aristotle also deals with “modal logic,” possibilities and impossibilities. He offers this list of contradictions:

We must consider the following pairs as contradictory propositions:

It may be. It cannot be.
It is contingent. It is not contingent.
It is impossible. It is not impossible.
It is necessary. It is not necessary.
It is true. It is not true.

Aristotle also deals with something that can look like the ultimate hair-splitting, namely, what is the contrary to the proposition “Callias is good.” The possibilities map out:

Callias is Good
Good is good (essential) and not bad (accidental)
1 Not-Callias is good
2Callias is not good
3Callias is bad

Prima facie #1 is out of the running because there might be something that is not-Callias which is bad, e.g., Bob might be bad.

#2 and #3 seem to be the same thing, but Aristotle finds a distinction between the “not good” and “bad.”

Now that which is good is both good and not bad. The first quality is part of its essence, the second accidental; for it is by accident that it is not bad. But if that true judgement is most really true, which concerns the subject's intrinsic nature, then that false judgement likewise is most really false, which concerns its intrinsic nature. Now the judgement that that is good is not good is a false judgement concerning its intrinsic nature, the judgement that it is bad is one concerning that which is accidental. Thus the judgement which denies the true judgement is more really false than that which positively asserts the presence of the contrary quality. But it is the man who forms that judgement which is contrary to the true who is most thoroughly deceived, for contraries are among the things which differ most widely within the same class. If then of the two judgements one is contrary to the true judgement, but that which is contradictory is the more truly contrary, then the latter, it seems, is the real contrary. The judgement that that which is good is bad is composite. For presumably the man who forms that judgement must at the same time understand that that which is good is not good.

This is hard to follow. I wonder if everything “not good” is “bad.” I've seen movies that lack the quality of being “good” but which I would not call “bad.” Mediocre perhaps?

The principle behind this is the Law of Non-contradiction. This principle goes without explicit mention. It is developed in Metaphysics. The concluding paragraph of On Interpretation gives it a definite acknowledgment:

It is evident, also, that neither true judgments nor true propositions can be contrary the one to the other. For whereas, when two propositions are true, a man may state both at the same time without inconsistency, contrary propositions are those which state contrary conditions, and contrary conditions cannot subsist at one and the same time in the same subject.

[1] “The limitation ‘by convention' was introduced because nothing is by nature a noun or name-it is only so when it becomes a symbol; inarticulate sounds, such as those which brutes produce, are significant, yet none of these constitutes a noun.” Aristotle. Categories and On Interpretation (With Active Table of Contents) Kindle Edition.
[2] The indefinite noun is a universal of everything but the noun. Later in On Interpretations, Aristotle points out the absurdity of thinking that the contradiction of “man is white” is “not man is white,' which would imply that a piece of wood is “a man that is not white.”
[3] We can see an introduction to Aristotle's logical treatises in On Interpretation.
[4] Universals are things of a nature that “can be predicated of many subjects,” e.g., “man.”