If scientific knowledge is based upon first principles, how can we
come to know first principles? If we claim that 'all cows are
ruminants' is a first principle, in that it described the essence of a
cow, then we need to be able to develop it into a full explication of
the essence of a cow (e.g. 'cows are herbivorous, hoofed animals...').
Dialectic allows us to do this.
The process of dialectic is:
1) Begin from existing and conflicting opinions of reputable sources
2) Deduce the implications and problems that the endoxa face, and the implications of these problems
3) Evaluate the conflicts and problems according to agreed beliefs to which there is no worthwhile opposition (endoxa)
4) Reconcile the differences and conflicts until you arrive at an unobjectionable compromise
Why trust dialectic?
Since the opinions taken from (1) have been formed from some
reasoning, it is plausible that each of them will have some truth in
them, and that therefore the conclusion (4) will contain some truth.
Through taking step (2), we gain a clearer understanding both of the
problems we must resolve, without which we cannot begin the process
(akin, Aristotle says, to trying to untie yourself without first
studying the knot). And through taking step (3) we can evaluate each
opinion with this clearer understanding and so be in the best possible
position to recognise and deduce the elements of truth, and weed out
false aspects of the beliefs.
Objection: Dialectic undoubtedly gives us a coherent set of beliefs,
but why should we assume that these accurately represent the objective
truth? Particularly when we use dialectic to establish first
principles, are we not just allowing our methodology to deceive us,
when in fact we may deduce entirely false first principles and so build
all of our knowledge on false foundations?
Reply: Though one may be able to make quite a large web of coherent
beliefs that are entirely false, at some point you will inevitable find
anomalies, and so will be forced to evaluate the entire web against
those anomalies.
Objection reply: But if we are evaluating these anomalies in the
context of their coherence with the web, and in particular with endoxa,
they will simply discounted. To allow for radical new ideas to upset
the web, and so to assure us that dialectic is able to get us closer to
an objective truth, we must ignore the endoxa or be open to the idea
that the endoxa may be entirely wrong, e.g. evolution upsetting ideas
of creationism, anthrocentrism, etc.
Aristotle's responses:
a) We have no choice but to rely on the beliefs we have, and the beliefs that these lead us to
b) Those reputable beliefs we start out with are intrinsically
justified, and so do not require justification from other beliefs,
though some may be undermined by enquiry in the future
c) Some beliefs are necessary conditions for rational discourse
Objection 2: Through dialectic, Aristotle wants to establish first principles. In Metaphysics,
Aristotle says dialectic will also establish universal truths. But
necessary truths are objective, and coherent truths can only be
contingent, since we have Little reason, except that it hasn't yet
happened, to suppose those belief will always be true.
Possible replies: That we have no better way of knowing of objective
truth; that, as in (c) we have no choice in accepting certain beliefs
in discourse
Can, then, metaphysics have any claim on truth? Or is it simply experiential deduction?
And my essay on this subject:
Does Dialectic enable knowledge of reality? Why or why not?
In his enquiries in metaphysics, the natural and social sciences and
mathematics, Aristotle employed a method of acquiring knowledge called
dialectic; he thought that dialectic was the only method available that
could be said to establish knowledge as opposed to belief. This view
predominated for over one and a half millennia, and has in the past few
hundred years been further developed and extended in various different
ways to provide many quite different understandings of what constitutes
knowledge, and by what methods we can acquire knowledge, and even if we
acquire knowledge at all. Given the epistemic ambiguity of dialectic
itself, it is perhaps best to begin by studying its roots in
Aristotle's writings, and to analyse its key problems there.
In Topics, Aristotle set himself the task of explaining and
justifying dialectic as the only method of acquiring knowledge because
he wanted to "find a line of enquiry whereby we shall be able to reason
from opinions that are generally accepted" (Topics, 100a 19-20). In
other words, he wanted to avoid situations where critics could doubt
his premises and so undermine his arguments, and so sought to
establish, in most of his works, first principles upon which his other
fields of enquiry, from philosophy to botany, could be soundly and
unobjectionably based. Once established, these principles could be
employed in further dialectic, expanding our field of knowledge in a
reasonable manner.
So what is dialectic? As a form of learning, it involves four
stages: One begins with two or more conflicting opinions that come from
reputable sources (that is to say from those whom we deem to be learned
already); then, one deduces the problems posed by each opinion and the
implications of these problems, and the problems and implications of
the conflict between the two opinions; thirdly, one evaluates each
opinion according to a set of agreed beliefs; and finally one can
reconcile the differences between the two opinions, finding, according
to Aristotle, the truth within the resultant unifying opinion.
Why take this approach? To begin with, Aristotle suggests, we are
more justified in our certainty if we have good reason to believe the
opinions we begin with, as opposed to taking two radical and unpopular
views, since they will be based upon good rational or commonsense
arguments. Though this may be the case, it does present a significant
problem, since it doesn't allow for radical changes in our belief
system; we might instinctively ask whether or not we would have taken
Darwin or Einstein at all seriously if we were to only allow dialectic
as a route to knowledge. This however slightly misses the point, since
both Darwin and Einstein did base their work upon the ideas of others,
and so developed their radical theories in the context of an
acknowledged new belief system that itself was worked upon by reputable
sources. In fact, it is common sense that we don't take a proposition
seriously unless we have reason to believe that the proposer is at all
likely to be correct. Quite how far we take this is unclear in
Aristotle's writing, and could range from only accepting the work of
already-eminent theorists (which begs the question as to how anyone
could ever ascend to that position unless they were apprentices to
eminent theorists) to accepting any opinions from anyone with a
reasonable formal education.
Once we have the two conflicting reputable opinions, Aristotle says
that there must be some truth in each opinion, else the sources would
not hold them to be true, and so we must begin to find what truths can
be found in each. This is best done by first isolating the key problems
with each; Aristotle compared this to untying a knot, and pointed out
that one could not begin to untangle the knot until one first
appreciated that the knot exists, and further by appreciating the
nature of the knot. By analysing the endoxa we not only find that seems
unlikely about them, but also points in common between the differing
views. From here, it is a matter of employing rational arguments to
find the truth within the statements, almost as if in a dialogue
between two people.
So it seems that we have some reason to trust that dialectic might
provide us with relatively unobjectionable conclusions, but why employ
this method at all, since no other academic disciplines use it?
'Philosophy', according to J. D. Evans, can be 'distinguished by its
methods and focus of interest' (Evans, p.2). If its primary method is
dialectic, then it is because philosophy is not just 'occupied with
purely conceptual problems rather than substantive issues of fact'
(Evans, p.3). Philosophers must appreciate ideas from a diverse range
of disciplines that may not have a single method acceptable to each
discipline that could unite them. For example, one might want to use
substantive facts of biology to influence an argument over the nature
of the mind; since these two discussions are methodologically
incompatible, one needs a method that can unite them and cross over
axiomatic bases. That method is dialectic.
But if this is true, then we must accept the assumption that all
knowledge needn't reduce to the same axiomatic bases, which seems like
a fairly troubling conclusion, especially given Aristotle's commitment
to first principles. If we are to accept the idea of first principles,
we must consider the possibility that there is at least a substantial
number of principles that form more than a collection of priori and
logical truths upon which all disciplines are based. We must do this if
we accept the epistemological position known as foundationalism,
according to which every belief is based upon some others, and those
others are based on yet more fundamental beliefs, and that this pattern
continues until one finds foundational beliefs that are based upon no
other, i.e. they are self-evident or a priori truths. If we accept
foundationalism, then we must accept that every truth can reduce to the
foundational truths, and can be explained purely in terms of these
foundational truths, in the same way that all of mathematics can be
proved in terms of a few logical and observed truths. So in this case,
why should we think of dialectic as a useful way of discovering
foundational beliefs, let alone other less fundamental beliefs, if it
doesn't work from a single axiomatic base, but rather covers all it
encounters? Should we not, as Descartes proposed, begin from the
foundations and work our way up the 'knowledge tree'?
Aristotle provides a clear answer to this, but one that confuses his
epistemological position and brings into doubt his claims for first
principles. He emphasises, through his justifications for dialectic,
that what is important is that the beliefs we acquire cohere, hence
dialectic is such a good method, since it finds incoherence in
conflicting beliefs and resolves it, until, conceivably, we have one
coherent set of knowledge that is the truth about everything. According
to this view, there simple aren't any foundational beliefs, they're an
illusion or misconception; those truths that are self-evident or a
priori are simply not 'knowledge' at all, at least not in the sense
that 'John is wearing a green hat' is knowledge. To say: 'a bachelor is
an unmarried man' is not to express any knowledge about those two
terms, but rather to express an appreciation of their nature, their
definition. To say: '1+1=2', meanwhile, is simply to show that one
appreciates the way in which language conceptualises logical truths
about reality. To then say: 'John has one green hat and has bought a
new green hat, and so has two green hats' is to express knowledge,
based upon its coherence with one's observations of John's hat
collection according to logical truths. Other supposedly 'foundational'
beliefs may simply have very small 'webs' of coherence upon which they
are based, and so appear foundational when compared to more complex
beliefs, e.g. how trees grow.
So, if we take a coherentist epistemological stand, the role of
dialectic is to work on beliefs until we eventually find entirely
self-contained webs of truths. Of course, Aristotle still holds that we
can use strong dialectic to find first principles, but in a sense
strong dialectic only helps us to discover the logical, a priori and
linguistic truths upon which all of our arguments are based.
There remains, however, a serious worry about this stand, for
'coherence within common beliefs does not seem to be a ground for
claiming to have found objective principles' (Irwin, p.8). Aristotle
can't ever be immune from scepticism, from the doubt that his whole web
of knowledge is in fact wrong and that, if he were to reassess his
first principles or find a major new coherent web that conflicted with
his current web, he might find that all that he had once believed was
untrue. This criticism is especially telling of Aristotle's dialectic,
because he placed such a lot of value on intuition, upon which many
endoxa are founded. Aristotle himself believed the world to be
spherical, but had he not, one wonders what he might have said to
Copernicus when he challenged one of the most fundamental endoxa of his
time. Again this susceptibility to doubt is made worse by the
possibility of radical and unpopular opinions being closer to the
objective truth than received and accepted opinions. Aristotle might
have given this more thought had he considered his example of the knot
more closely, for what use is it knowing that there is a knot if one
refuses to take seriously the suggestion that one has completely missed
the most important threads in the tangle? To work with a coherntist
epistemology, one must surely scrap Aristotle's first step in dialectic
and allow for all views, endoxa or not, to be considered. This really
oughtn't be a big problem for Aristotle, since if a radical view is
really completely false and baseless, then it won't take long under
rational analysis and in comparison to endoxa to determine that it is
in fact totally false. If, on the other hand, it is true, or closer to
the truth than any endoxa, then it ought to animate in a dialectical
investigation sufficient problems and questions to make it worth
serious consideration, and so the truth ought to come out.
In this way also we can forget the worry of epistemological
reduction, because even if they do all reduce to certain axiomatic or
logical bases, we needn't know those bases nor the relationship of all
knowledge to those bases in order to make a claim to knowledge,
although being able to do such a thing would certainly strengthen a
case for coherence.
Furthermore, because dialectic concentrates more on conserving
endoxa where appropriate and developing them to resolve incoherence,
and is interdisciplinary, we are more likely to acquire knowledge of
reality, since any incoherence with reality will immediately be
considered as a problem. Other methods of knowledge acquisition, on the
other hand, may take the inquirer down one route ignoring other
evidence, and so may ignore apparent facts of reality altogether in
order to develop a particular theory or paradigm. In this sense, though
we cannot say that dialectic gives us absolutely objective knowledge of
reality, it does seem to give us more knowledge of reality, and a
better knowledge of reality, than other possible methods and other
epistemological systems.
Bibliography
Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon, 2001
Aristotle, Topics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon, 2001
J.D. Evans, Aristotle (Philosophers in Context), The Harvester Press, 1987
T.H. Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles, Clarendon Press, 1998