Aristotelian Epagoge Author(s): D. W. Hamlyn Source: Phronesis, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1976), pp.

167-184 Published by: BRILL Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4181988 . Accessed: 11/01/2011 19:17
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Aristotelian Epagoge
D. W. HAMLYN

perhaps the, orthodox account of Aristotle's view of scientific knowledge is the following. Aristotle frequently says that we think that we have scientific knowledge (episteme) when we know the cause or reason why. The PosteriorAnalytics offers a theory in terms of which it is revealed how the cause or reason why can be exhibited as the middle term of a demonstrative syllogism (II.11). There emerges in consequence a close connection between the notions of knowledge and demonstration. There is however an immediate problem how the first premises or first principles of an argument which amounts to demonstration can be known. This cannot be a matter of their being explained by a reason why in the same way; otherwise we shall be involved in an infinite regress and the very possibility of knowledge would thereby be ruled out. For by this fact we should be prevented from giving a full demonstration of the fact to be explained and would thus not have given a full explanation of it. (There are questions that might be raised here about the concepts of knowledge and explanation involved in this, but we may pass them by for the time being; they are not without importance for Aristotle's philosophy in general). For all these reasons it is incumbent upon Aristotle to explain how we can have knowledge (though not the true scientific knowledge so far considered) of the first premises of demonstration as used in science. Aristotle provides this explanation in the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, and there maintains that we come as a result of experience to an awareness or intuition of the first principles, so that we know them not by epistemebut by nous. This is a seeing of the general principle from or in particular cases, and the process of getting to the insight in this way is epagoge or induction. I shall not really question this account of Aristotle's problem, but I am not sure whether the account of the solution is quite right. Some of my doubts arise from the place given in this account to epagoge.The account of this and indeed of the issues in general make Aristotle's work something like a contribution to the logic of scientific discovery (if I may usurp Popper's title). That this is what it is has
A

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been doubted by others (e.g. G. E. L. Owen and Jonathan Barnes).' Owen concentrates on the place that epagoge has within dialectic. In that context it must be a method of argument by which someone is got to see some general conclusion; it will involve the use of pal-ticular cases to give point to a general position, and since for Aristotle there is an intimate connection between particulars and senise-perception, it will also thereby involve the use of what sense-perception can tell us. Aristotle frequently says that something can be seen by induction when he wants an alternative way of showing a conclusion to be true, apart from proof.2 It is important that when induction is construed in this way it is the use of cases to get us to see a general moral. It is also not without interest that when Aristotle in a well known passage (Met. 1078 b 28) attributes to Socrates the use or discovery of inductive arguments, he cannot have in mind that Socrates used to survey cases and abstract a general moral from them. For this, despite what some commentators seem to think, is not what Socrates does, at any rate in the dialogues. Rather Socrates uses particular cases or instances of a general principle to bring home that general principle itself or a further instance of it. This form of argument is of course dialectical in a very Aristotelian sense (according to the account given in Topics 1.1); it starts from what the other party to the debate will accept and seeks to persuade him of soinething that follows from this. In this sense the argument has nothing very much in common with what has come in modern times to be called 'ampliative induction' - generalizing from observed instances; rather it is a form of argument from analogy, in the sense that the other party to the debate is got to see the analogy between cases and that analogy is used to get a further conclusion. Another point in this connection is that in many places in his works
Aristotle contrasts and thereby sets into relation epagoge with apodeixis or syllogismos3. There is also in the Prior Analytics the odd passage,

though not perhaps so odd as all that, where he speaks of and gives an
I G. E. L. Owen 'Tithenai ta Phainomena' in Aristote et les problemes de la mithode, Louvain 1961 (reprinted in Aristotle, ed. J. M. E. Moravcsik, Londoln, 1968, pp. 167-190); J. Barnes, 'Aristotle's Theory of Demonstration', Phronesis, 14 (1969) 123-152: against these may be set a recent paper by James Lesher, 'The Meaning of Nous in the Posterior Analytics', Phronesis 18 (1973) 44-68, which, to my mind, makes rather heavy weather of the notion of nous. 2 cf. e.g. Met. 1054 b 33, 1055 a 6, b 17. ' cf. e.g. Pr.A. 42 a 3, Post. An. 81 a 40, Top. 105 a 5, Met. 992 b 33 - there are many other such passages.

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example of an inductive syllogism - so that epagoge is not simply opposed to syllogismos but characterised as a peculiar form of this. It is perhaps worth noting that the Oxford Translation renders the beginning of this passage at 68 b 15 as 'Now induction, or rather the syllogism which springs out of induction...'4. The words 'or rather' presumably express the feeling of the translator that epagogeis not itself an argument and that Aristotle must therefore be qualifying his first reference to epagogeif he is to go on to specify an argument as he in fact does. I am inclined to think that the 'rather'is a mistake; it is more likely that the 'xxi' is to be taken as an 'i.e.' or at least a specification rather than a qualification. The passage indicates nothing which suggests that Aristotle wants to distinguish between epagoge as a process of discovery and the argument or arguments associated with that. It is undoubtedly the case, therefore, that Aristotle sometimes treats epagoge as a form of argument different from but somehow parallel to demonstration. It is parallel just in that it is a form of argument for the truth of some proposition; it is different in that it does not constitute a form of proof. It is a dialectical argument and is subject to the conditions that Aristotle lays down about dialectic in the first chapter of the Topics. There are some passages on the other hand which associate epagogeclosely with sense-perception and might therefore be taken as indicating that it is, in Aristotle's mind, sometimes at any rate a means by which knowledge is derived from senseperception. The question is whether this last point follows simply from the association with sense-perception. Post. An. 78 a 34 says that the truth that that which does not twinkle is near must be taken, in the context of the argument there considered by way of example, to be grasped 'through induction or through sense-perception'. Whether the 'or' is an 'i.e.' or whether it expresses a genuine alternative, the passage cannot be taken as indicating that epagoge is a process of acquisition of knowledge, since it is clear that even if considered as an argument it can make use of facts discovered through sense-perception;hence the phrase 'throughinduction' does not clinch anything. A passage which may seem more promising at first sight is Post. An. 81 b 6 ff where Aristotle says that one cannot have episteme of particulars - 'for neither can one get to them from universals (sc. universal propositions)without epagoge,nor can one get to
4 The Greek is 'Emycoy? ,Lv o5v la'L xod 6 F brocycyiY auXoyWt

* ..

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them through epagoge without sense-perception'. But of course the passage does not say that one gets the knowledge of the universal as the result of a processwhich starts from the facts of sense-perception. It says rather that the application of general principles to particular cases presupposes epagoge and that the application of epagoge itself presupposes sense-preception. The latter is true when epagoge is consideredas a form of argument- the use of cases in general argument presupposes sense-perception as a means of getting experience of the cases. The earlier part of the remark has an interest of its own. For it suggests, as I have already expressed the point, that epagogeis involved in the applicationof general principles to cases, not just in the argument for the general principles themselves.5 Well, so it can be when epagogeis seen as a form of argument, but scarcely when seen as a process of discovery. One might set this part of the passage alongside another which also has its own particularinterest, and to which I shall return later. This is Pr. An. 67 a 2, where Aristotle criticises the argument of Plato's Meno for the existence of recollection and the thesis that this is what learning is. He says 'It never happens that we know the particular previously, but we get the knowledge of the instances along with epagoge,recognisingthem as e'7rtovzuv) (Mrv'rv xceTxtetpos it were. For we know some things immediately, e.g. when we see that it is a triangle, that its angles are equal to two right angles. And similarly in other cases.' The Oxford Translation overtranslates again, speaking of 'the process of being led to see the general principle' where 'epagoge' alone is mentioned. The example of the triangle suggests that the immediate knowledge, the recognition, is of the fact that a particular falls under a general principle or description. Seeing a triangle is ipso facto knowing that it is a figure of a certain general kind. If we put this into relationship with the exposition of the doctrine of recollection in the Meno, we can see that Aristotle is construing the problem presented in that dialogue as how one comes to recognise that particular figure as the one which... (that square as the one which has an area twice that of a given square). And he is saying that one recognises it immediately without any foreknowledge being presupposedalong with epagoge.What does this mean? It cannot surely mean that one recognises it along with the process
6 It might be noted again that the application of principles to cases is an essential part of the Socratic arguments that Aristotle calls 'inductive', cf. R. Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic ch. 4.

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of being led to see the general principle, if that means abstracting the general principle from particulars.But of course in the Meno the boy is led to see the general principle in a sense. For in seeing that the square drawn on the diagonal of the original square is the one which is twice the area of the original square he ipso facto sees a general principle that all squares which are twice the area of a given square have a side equal to the diagonal of that square. And that is what Aristotle says by means of his example of the triangle. Socrates in the Meno employs epagogebecause he uses the example to point to the general moral, and in seeing the particulas as an instance of the general principle the boy sees the general principle itself. And if we think, despite what Socrates is made to claim in the Meno, that the case of learning is too closely assimilated to one in which there is positive teaching, it might be pointed out that the process of discovery might be represented as one in which the learner treats cases in an analogous way. That is to say that the learner comes to see the application of the general principle to a case as a result of constructing and using suitable cases. It is the latter that is epagogenot the final getting of insight. If one can describe this final insight, as Aristotle does right at the end of the Posterior Analytics,6 as nous, which most interpreters construe as is intuition, epagoge not just the transition to that state; ratherit is that which makes it possible. I think that we should interpret similarly those passages, e.g. E.N. 1139 b 28, which say that epagogeis the arche of
to katholou, while syllogism or demonstration is ek tou katholou; there

is no necessary suggestion here that epagogeis merely the process of getting to the state of knowledge of the general or universal. With all this in mind we can now approach the famous passage in the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics in which Aristotle deals with the problem of knowledge of first principles. This is important for our purposes because he there gives an account of the origins of knowledge in a genetic way that makes the account a contribution to what Piaget has called 'genetic epistemology' (not psychology, since what Aristotle is concerned to do is to make clear the general terms in which an account of the development of knowledge is to be given, not to give that account itself in detail). This might not be so important in itself, but at the end he says (100 b 3) 'It is clear then that we must recognise the first (principles) by induction (epagoge); for sense perception introduces the universal in this way'. 'In this way'
cf. E.N. 1140 b 31 ff.

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may perhaps refer to the genetic account just offered. Does not this imply that that account is a description of epagogeitself? And if that is the case, must not epagogebe, at least sometimes, the process of acquiringgeneral knowledge? If I may declare my hand straight away, may I indicate that I think that the answer is 'No' or 'Not necessarily'. But to assess that conclusion it is best to look at the genetic account itself in some detail. It is of course repeated in less detail at the beginning of the Metaphysics. Strictly speaking Aristotle does not raise the issues that he wishes to discuss in the form of the problem how we can have knowledge of first principles if scientific knowledge involves demonstration from first principles. He is not, overtly at any rate, influenced here by sceptical considerations about the possibility of knowledge unless it has a firm foundation in knowledge of first principles.As in other parts of his philosophy Aristotle was less impressed by sceptical considerations about the possibility of knowledge (of whatever kind) than determined to understand the nature of that knowledge and its place in relation to other forms of knowledge and to present us with an account of that understanding. To say that we have nous or intuition of first principles would scarcely satisfy the sceptic, even when that claim is buttressed with an account of its origins. But it does do something, even if not very much, to answer the question of the nature of that knowledge, given that it cannot be like the knowledge that we may may have of the subject matter of particularsciences. Hence Aristotle states his general question at 99 b 17 as 'How do the first principles become known and what is the knowing state?' In view of what follows we perhaps ought to note the use of the word 'hexis', for although it is a commonplacethat Aristotle regardsknowledge (at least in the dispositional sense) as a hexis it is noteworthy that he also regards moral virtue as the same, and there may be some similarity between his account of the origins of moral virtue and his account of the origins of knowledge of principles. However this may be, Aristotle goes on to say that his general question may be clarified by considering some preliminary problems. The first set of problems raised are in effect elaborationsof the general question - whether knowledge of unmediated facts is the same or different from knowledge of the mediated, whether both forms of knowledge are episteme,or whether knowledge of the first principles (the unmediated facts to which I have referred)is of a different kind. His final answer to the general question, or at least the second half 172

of it - what is the knowing state? - is an answer to these questions

too: it is nous rather than episteme.But he finally throws in a different issue - whether the states in question come into being without being innate or whether they are innate but in such a way that we are not aware of having them. Why does he raise this issue? It seems to me that the question must have some reference to the issues raised in the Meno, just as the explicit reference at Pr. An. 67 a 22 to which I referred earlier.7 Aristotle obviously wants us to become clear about what learning consists in. More than this, there is some connection between what Aristotle says, even if that connection is oblique, and the dilemma put foward by Meno that led to Socrates' thesis about recollection. For Aristotle says by way of comment on his question 'It would be strange if we had the principles from birth; for it would follow that we had forms of knowledge more accurate than demonstration without being aware of this. While if we acquiredthem without previously having them, how would we recognise them and learn without pre-existing knowledge as a basis? For that is impossible as we said in the case of demonstrationtoo.' The last remarkseems to be a reference to the first chapter of Book 1 of the Posterior Analytics, where Aristotle begins with the principle that all teaching and learning of an intellectual kind arises from and depends upon previously existing knowledge. (That principle, incidentally, illustrates the extent to which Aristotle thinks of demonstration not just as a method for the justification of truth-claims per se, let alone the ascertainment of truth in an absolute sense, but as part of a learning context in which different people participate with different teaching/learning roles.8 The principle itself seems to me correct, but I shall not go into that now.) Later in the first chapter of the Posterior Analytics Aristotle makes another explicit reference to the Meno. In this passage (71 a 29) Aristotle refers directly to the dilemma that Meno puts forward in that dialogue and offers a distinction which, he claims, deals with it; and he goes on to reject another proposed solution. For our purposes, perhaps, it is unfortunate that Aristotle confines his attention to one kind of learning situation - that in which the learner, given a knowledge of a general principle, learns that a particular is an instance of it - that this triangle is an instance
7That the issues here have something to do with those raised in the Meno is by no means an original suggestion; cf. e.g., K. R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 12. 8 cf. Jonathan Barnes, op.cit.

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of the general principle that all triangles have angles jointly equal to two right angles, or that this pair is an instance of the principle that all pairs are equal. I say 'unfortunate' simply because Aristotle's remarks do not necessarily apply in this form to all cases of learning; but they are of course very pertinent to what I have already said about epagoge,since we have here again an example of the interplay between knowledge of principles and knowledge of cases, which is essential to our understanding of how epagoge works. Aristotle's solution to the Meno dilemma - that the learner knows something
that holds of an instance &7rt?o before the learning process, but that in he does not know it &Mt?q, but only xo6&0*?ou, a general way, applies

only to the case of learning that he has in mind; it will not work, for example, in the case of the acquisition of knowledge of the general principlesthemselves. And in the last chapter of the PosteriorAnalytics we seem to be concerned with just this. Nevertheless Aristotle seems right in a general way in his approachto the Meno dilemma. It is to be resolved only by the recognition that, if we are to come to know something by learning we must already know somethingabout, something that is relevant to, what is being learnt. In a sense Plato himself recognises this, but perhaps owing to the limitations in his conception of knowledge, he seems in the Meno itself to suppose that we must have prior knowledge of the very thing that is to be learnt. If all acquisition of knowledge is learning, and if all learning involves prior knowledge of the thing to be learnt, we shall be involved in an infinite regress, from which we can be saved only by a denial of one or other of the protases of my conditional. I do not know whether Plato saw the danger of the regress, but the development of the doctrine of recollection in the Phaedo, in a way that makes the prior knowledge knowledge of Forms, if that is meant to provide us with a general account of learning with respect to particulars (a matter on which we might have some doubt), gets him off the hook. It does so in a way that makes his view close to that of Aristotle in the sense that it involves a relationship between knowledge of universals and knowledgeof particulars. In general however Plato seems content with the view that we already know implicitly what we are to come to know and the piocess of learning involves making what is implicit completely explicit9. With all this in mind let us now return to the last chapter of the
9 cf. on this, Plato's treatment of a connected issue in his development of the aviary model in the Theaetetus; this depends again on the distinction betweenimplicit and explicit knowledge, and it is clearly not enough for his purposes.

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PosteriorAnalytics. He wishes, as we have seen, to reject the suggestion that we can learn without previous knowledge, so that if the following piece of genetic epistemology is construed as a theory of learning in which knowledge emerges out of something which is not knowledge it will be an account that breaks that principle. And that, surely, would be odd. On the other hand Aristotle will have nothing of the suggestion, which is Platonic, that we already know innately exactly what we come to know in learning. For, as we have seen, he argues that it would be very odd if we had knowledge of a degreeof accuracy which exceeds that which we have as a result of demonstration and knew nothing of it. That is to say, given that the problem is concerned with our coming to know first principles, it would be very odd to suggest that we know these innately, since we are quite unaware of being born with such knowledge and yet the knowledge is supposed ex hypothesinot to be something vague and indefinite but something quite precise. Given what we have seen of the kind of answer that Aristotle has given to the problem of the Meno dilemma in connection with the application of principles to cases, we ought to expect an analogous if not identical answer to the problem of our acquisition of knowledge of the principles themselves. It will not exactly do, that is, to say that we know the principles xoc6Xoubut not &7rXg, but we might expect an analogous distinction to be made. Is this the case? What he actually says is that we must possess a dunamis of some sort, but not one which is higher in respect of accuracy than the states of knowledge which are to develop. His use of the word 'dunamis' together with his earlier use of 'hexis' with regard to the developed states of knowledge should indicate to us that we may expect an account of the development of hexeis out of dunameis parallel to, say, the development of moral states out of natural potentialities, or at least one which is in accordance with his usual theory of hexeis and dunameis. And so it turns out; for the subsequent account is one which involves habituation as a result of the repetition of the exercise of natural potentialities. In the case of moral virtue however the state or capacity developed in this way by habituation is said to be incomplete without practical wisdom. It is therefore reasonable that we should seek something else apart from a state of mind (if that is the right word) produced by habituation if we are to look for the final account of knowledgeof first principles. But first the process of habituation itself. As an account of the origins of such knowledge I do not 175

think that it is really coherent any more than the suggestion that states of moral character can be produced by habituation. Aristotle says that all animals have an inborn discriminative potentiality, namely sense-perception. One might be inclined to translate
'xp'rtxW'

as 'for judgment' rather than 'discriminative' since De

Anima III (and to a lesser extent II) associates sense-perceptionwith judgment and it is clear that while Aristotle has in mind in this mainly discrimination, he means also to use the notion more widely to cover any perceptual judgment. To the extent that he does so, of course, the more sense-perception must be seen to involve the intellect. This involvement would, however, be foreign to anything that could be called a natural potentiality. Hence while the wider translation perhaps begs fewer questions in general, there can be little doubt that Aristotle has discrimination in mind here. Still the theory of senseperception that he invokes here is summary only and the relation of discrimination to the aisthema that is said to persist in some animals is left obscure, as is equally the question exactly what an aisthemais. The persistence of the aisthema is however said to be a necessary condition of knowledge outside the perception itself so that animals in which an aisthemadoes not persist lack either knowledge altogether or at least knowledge of the object of perception in question. Later the persistence of the aisthema is equated with memory. The theory presupposed is crude; memory just is the persistence of a senseimpression, however this comes about. But the crudity is to be expected if one state of mind or capacity is to be thought of as developed out of earlier and more 'natural' states by a process of habituation. For the means by which this comes about must on that account be mechanicalonly. The next stage of development perhaps presents even greater difficulties. For he says that there is a further distinction to be made between animals in which there is the persistence of aisthema so far discussed, in that in some but some only there comes about from the persistence of such things logos. What does this mean? The Oxford Translation speaks of a 'power of systematizing them', but this is surely to read things into the text, or at any rate to be overprecise. What we need is surely something closer to 'rationality'. Later in the passage Aristotle identifies this state as empeiria- experience - and speaks of it being a state in which the universal is established in the soul, the one over the many. Some have seen in this the idea that Aristotle is giving an account of concept formation, but this is surely 176

not quite right. What he is saying is that experience is the state in which a single universalis applied to cases - it is seeing things as such and suches, and so involves the ability to use judgment in a fullblown discursive sense. Hence my point about rationality, though it might be enough to translate 'logos'simply as 'judgment'. In other words some animals, but some only, have the ability to use concepts in relation to experience. Aristotle does not say how this comes about from having memory, or as he says later, from the repetition of memories. The implication is that it happens again from habituation, but it is really impossible to see how. However we regard the rest of Aristotle's story, there appears to be a definite lacuna in the theory here. There appears to be a lacuna at the next stage also, when he says that experience is the source (arche)of art (techne)and science or theoretical knowledge (episteme);for Aristotle gives no indication at this point how these things have their source in experience. Metaphysics A. 1 is a little more informative but only to the extent of saying more about the differences between experience on the one hand and art and knowledge on the other. The last two, for example, are said to have more concern with universals, they involve knowledge of the reason why, and those that possess them can teach others. None of this is said to be applicable to experience, and in various ways this is true. Empeiria has been said to involve universals in one sense - in that it involves the application of universals to cases in judgment; but it does not involve the ability to consider universals for their own sake in a way that is demanded of strictly universal judgments. It is this same factor which explains the other distinguishing marks the points that the knower knows the reason why and can teach others. For these things would not be possible unless one went beyond mere experience in such a way as to grasp the principles which lie behind it and in terms of which genuine knowledge is to be expressed. Yet it is to be noted once again that Aristotle does not tell us at the point which we have reached in the Posterior Analytics or in the Metaphysics passage how knowledge of principles is arrived at, although the latter suggests at 981 a 5 that it comes about through a repetition of experiential judgments. The same is true of the next sentences in the Posterior Analytics (100 a 9 ff), in which he introduces his famous illustration of the rout in battle. That simile is not altogether perspicuous. Presumably its point is to illustrate how from a flux of some sort something stable 177

can result. This happens as a result of the piling up of instances just as a stable formation in battle can come about by one man after another standing firm; the effect is cumulative. It is to be presumed that one factor in the image - the fact that the stable formation that comes into being is the same as the original one - is irrelevant to the situation being illustrated. Otherwise we should indeed be back with the Platonic solution to the problem of how learning is possible, since the doctrine of recollectionas describedin the Meno does perhapsmake the regaining of the original knowledge come about by repetition of
reminders.10

The summary that follows in the Posterior Analytics has the same characteristics and defects. It is this passage over which there has been most argument as to whether Aristotle is concerned with concept formation or knowledge as reflected in more and more general propositions. I do not myself think that it much matters which one says since I think the two are correlative, and I suspect that Aristotle thought so too. Insofar as in the account offered so far Aristotle has talked of universals it is in terms of their application to cases - something that implies judgment. To have a concept of X is among other things to kinowwhat sort of thing an X is and a fortiori to know what kind of things can be called 'X'; and this knowledge is clearly, and in a very good sense, propositional. Hence, no matter what terms are used in the summary that we are about to consider Aristotle is as much concerned with the development of general knowledge as with that of general concepts. What he says is that there is first a universal in the soul when one of the undifferentiated things (adiaphora)has made a stand; and he illustrates h1owthis works in sense perception by one of his familiar referencesto the fact that while we perceive particulars
cf. in this Socrates' point at Meno 85 c that the boy's state will become knowledge only as a result of repeated and varied questions. It is often presumed that the function of these questions is to allow the boy to achieve a kind of insight into the reasons for the conclusion to which he has come, and that this is what is referred to when it is said at 98 a that true beliefs can be turned
into knowledge by tying them down by
Xoym:s-. el'r(mq 10

I am less than sure

that this is the right interpretation; apart from anything else the 'rt which is the subject of the sentence referring to the tying down may well refer to the teacher, so that the calculation of cause is something carried out by the teacher. In that case the distinction between knowledge and true belief rests merely on the stability of the former, and the account will differ from Aristotle's merely in that on Plato's view what is learnt is not really new knowledge, but old knowledge regained.

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the perception is of universals (in other words we perceive Callias but what we perceive of him is man, i.e. we perceive him as a man, not, as Aristotle puts it, merely as Callias man). The adiaphora are presumably things which are undifferentiated prior to the act of perception, and they become differentiated only by making a stand, whatever that is to be taken to mean. The same thing happens to what they are differentiated as, so that by increasing familiarity with man we come to see man as an animal of such and such a kind, and then as animal generally, and so on. The whole process is a tendency to greater and greater generality because of the way in which what is more specific and particular becomes fixed and then subject to further repetition. Unfortunately the account, if representedin this way, is incoherent. What is presumably supposed to happen is that in a welter of undifferentiated items that affect our senses some come to stand out because of their very repetition; the process is thus entirely mechanical. I shall not go through all the possible objections to this kind of account, but I shall mention one or two. In the first place the account is totally a priori; we have little real idea of the relation between the characteristics of the world that we differentiate and their degree of repetition in experience. Is it plausible to suppose that we differentiate men, say, from certain other objects, becausewe experiencemen morefrequently? And as opposed to what objects - trees, for example? Suppose we think of the matter at a different level and consider how we come to distinguish colours. We have to suppose that distinct colours are initially undifferentiated, but they become differentiated because they each 'make a stand' as a result of their repetition in experience. But what is the principle of selection here, given that many different hues will affect our sense-organswith varying but unknown frequency? If we were to suppose that the sense-organs themselves had inbuilt tendencies to differentiation in reaction we should be given thereby a principle of selection - as to why among the indefinitely graded variation of hues some are picked out so as to provide a basis for a conception of red, blue etc. Repetition by itself seems however an empty explanation. I think that the truth is that Aristotle,like many others who have offered this kind of explanation, has in mind the fact that once given experience in general we can come to focus on certain things within experience because of the frequency of their occurrence; our attention may be drawn to them just because of their repetition. But that could 179

explain only why some things are differentiated from others, not the general process of differentiation from a state in which nothing is differentiated from anything else. It is also worth noting that there is no reason to suppose that the growth of understandingof the world is a matter of increasing generality, as seems to be supposed in the suggestion that we proceed from man to such and such kind of animal and from there to animal in general - and there is good reason to suppose that this is not how it is. Rather the growth of experience is not just a matter of sorting things out into wider and wider classes, but at least also and correlatively a matter of sorting things out from wider classifications. It is a familiar point made by many recent philosophers,for example, that one could not come to know what red is without at least some knowledge of what colour is and perhaps of the ways in which colours may be related to each other and to other things and their other properties. It is noteworthy in this respect that Aristotle's scale of generality is not, as he presents it, quite linear; he moves from man not to, say, vertebrate, and from there to animal, but from man to such and such a kind of animal, something that already presupposes for its intelligibility the wider classification. I shall not go on harping on this theme. If Aristotle really intends this to be an account of the genetic epistemology which he thinks underpins our knowledge of first principles it is not very plausible. It is in fact no more plausible than the suggestion that our understanding of moral principles has as its foundation habituation - for the account is similar in kind. I doubt whether Aristotle's account in either sphere can be saved, but perhaps we ought to consider further whether it is all that lie intends. After all, as I said earlierin this paper, the virtue that is produced through habituation is said to be incomplete without practical wisdom. Moreoverthere is no referencein the genetic account of the development of knowledge to teaching or the part played by other people in upbringing, whereas at the beginning of E.N. II Aristotle does at least say that the intellectual virtues arise from and are increased by teaching. With this in mind let us look at Aristotle's next remark in the Posterior Analytics. It is usually taken as his final summing up of the genetic account before he draws his conclusion and says that it must be by nous that we know the first principles. His words are 'It is clear then that we must recognise the first principles by induction (epagoge); for indeed perception introduces (inplants) the universal in this way'. I said earlier in this paper that 180

the words 'in this way' may refer to the genetic account. They may, however, refer back to the referenceto induction and they are so taken by the Oxford Translation, which translates 'for the method by which even sense-perceptionimplants the universal is inductive.' But even if induction is thought to be a process of coming to know something it is not strictly true that the way in which sense-perception implants or introduces the universal is a matter of induction. For on that account of induction it must still be the means by which one comes to knowledge of a general truth from sense-perception. But before one comes to that stage the universal has already been brought into existence, on Aristotle's own account. For he has said that there is first a universal in the soul when one of the adiaphorahas made a stand. Hence when one has come to the point of seeing something as something a universal has in that sense been introduced to or implanted in the soul. I do not think, therefore, that it could rightly be said that perception implants the universal by induction, even if induction were a process of acquisition of knowledge of a universal truth from experience. Because of this I think that the words 'in this way' must be taken as referring back to the genetic account, and that, or at least the part about the role of sense-perception, is offered as the reason why it must be the case that we recognise the first principles by induction. It must be rememberedthat Aristotle's original question was 'How do the first principles become known and what is the knowing state?' He did not ask 'How is it possible for them to be known?', a question which would be pertinent if his considerations were influenced by scepticism, but not necessarily otherwise. I think that as with the questions about demonstration that he raises at the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, he means to ask how scientific truths and first principles respectively become known by a learner. The question is neither the sceptically orientated one about the possibility of such knowledge nor one which belongs to the logic of scientific discovery in the sense that it asks how knowledge can justifiably be thought to come about not in the individual but in general. Hence it is not to be answered by on the one hand a refutation of the sceptic or a Kantian transcendental deduction of the possibility of such knowledge, or on the other hand by something parallel to saying that one must put up the boldest hypothesis, and subject it to the most stringent tests. For he is not concerned with justification of knowledge claims. If on the other hand one had already explained that John Smith could be got to see the truth of, say, some proposition about the 181

essential attributes of members of a given species by demonstration that it must be so, a pertinent comment might well be 'That is all very well, but how could John Smith be got to see the truth of the initial premisses?Moreoverif you say that what John Smith will have in the first case is episteme and that this involves seeing why the truth in question must be so, what he has when he sees the truth of the premisses cannot be episteme. So what is it?' Taking these questions backwards, Aristotle's answers seem to me to be 'Well he sees that it must be so; not of course in the literal sense of 'see' which implies senseperceptiondirectly but in a sense that implies a form of direct awareness of which some forms at least of sense-perception are particular cases. And secondly he can be got to see this by appeal to cases which of course presupposes sense-perception, and that is what epagoge is.' What then is the relevance of the genetic account? Surely the answer must be that it is meant to provide a frameworkof genetic epistemology in terms of which the notion of epagoge can be given a sense. For, of course, it is no good using epagoge unless the human mind is such that it can grasp it and make use of what is revealed to it by that means. It must be shown that people have the capacities that make appeal to epagoge in their case relevant. They must be capable of seeing the relevance of a number of cases knowledge,of which involves sense-perception,to a general principle. For that to be the case they must be capable of seeing a particularas an instance of a universal; and in saying this we are in the middle of the genetic account. Indeed if we were able to construe the stages of that account as merely providing the necessary, but not the sufficient, conditions of what follows in each case, e.g. there must be repetition of perceptions of something if there is to be memory of it, then the account might be free of many of the objections that might otherwise be brought against it. For objections such as those which I mentioned earlier are largely, if not entirely, directed against the thesis that what happens at one stage is, when repeated, a sufficient condition for the development of the next stage; and it is clear that it cannot be anything of the kind. (One might argue analogously that habituation is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition of the development of virtue; and the same applies to all those cases where Aristotle speaks of a hexis developing out of a previous dunamis as a result of the repeating exercise or actualization of the former.) The genetic accouintis thus not an account of epagoge itself but an account of what capacities must come to exist in human-beings if epagoge is to be used with advantage. 182

It remains true that an individual will come to see the truth of first principles only if he is got to see this (the word 'recognise' which is used with respect to knowledge of first principles in this chapter of the PosteriorAnalytics is thus pertinent); and he will be got to see it if he is taught by others through an appeal to cases or perhaps if he follows a similar technique with regardto himself. In the latter case of course the individual will have to possess abilities additional to the hexis that is acquiredaccordingto the genetic account, just as for the acquisition of complete virtue a man will, on Aristotle's account, have to have additional abilities apart from the moral hexeis that he will have acquired through habituation. Moreover the additional abilities will function in very much the same way. For just as the scientist will have an acquiredcapacity for generalization about the world, which needs to be supplemented by an intellectual facility for connecting this with cases if it is to be fruitful in enabling him to see scientific principles,so the moral agent will have an acquired capacity for generalization about moral conduct which needs to be supplemented by an intellectual facility for connecting this with cases if this is to be fruitful in enabling him to see moral principles. There are of course differences too which Aristotle sets out in the Nicomachean Ethics, differences which stem on the whole from the fact that ethics is a practical science and moral philosophy is concerned with practice, while science as ordinarily understood is theoretical and its philosophy equally concerned with theory. So different things are presupposedin the pursuit of these subjects. Nevertheless there is also a certain parallelism. If I am to teach someone to be moral I must presuppose in him both a general moral disposition or state of character and an ability to see the relevance of particular moral judgments to general moral principles; and the same applies if I am my own teacher. The main differencehere from what holds good in the acquisition of scientific knowledge is, as Aristotle says in E.N. I.4., that the ability to make correct particular moral judgments takes longer to acquire than that to make correct particular judgments about matters of fact. Given all this it is as much misleading to say that for Aristotle moral principles are acquired by habituation as to say that for him scientific principles are so acquired. For the principles themselves are acquired only by appeal to cases in the light of what is acquired by habituation - the hexis in question. It might be argued that Aristotle would have saved himself from being misunderstood if he had first said something about epagoge 183

in answer to his question as set out in the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics and then gone on to ask what it is that must be the case about human-beings and their psychical capacities (in the Aristotelian sense of 'psychical' of course) if the use of epagogeis to be both possible and fruitful. I think that this would be fair comment. I doubt if even then the genetic account could be completely saved from incoherence, but it would be a much better account than it seems at first sight and would provide a truer expression of what, as I believe, Aristotle wanted to say. Birkbeck College,Universityo/ London

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