Aristotle

The latter portion of this Aristotelian treatise, on the Categories or Predicaments, consists of an Appendix, usually known under the title of ‘Post-Predicamenta;’141 wherein the following terms or notions are analysed and explained — Opposita, Prius, Simul, Motus, Habere.

Of Opposita, Aristotle reckons four modes, analogous to each other, yet not different species under the same genus:142 — 1. Relative-Opposita — Relatum and Correlatum. 2. Contraria. 3. Habitus and Privatio. 4. Affirmatio and Negatio.

These four modes of opposition have passed from the Categoriæ of Aristotle into all or most of the modern treatises on Logic. The three last of the four are usefully classed together, and illustrated by their contrasts with each other. But as to the first of the four, I cannot think that Aristotle has been happy in the place which he has assigned to it. To treat Relativa as a variety of Opposita, appears to me an inversion of the true order of classification; placing the more comprehensive term in subordination to the less comprehensive. Instead of saying that Relatives are a variety of the Opposite, we ought rather to say that Opposites are varieties of the Relative. We have here another proof of what has been remarked a few pages above; the narrow and inadequate conception which Aristotle formed of his Ad Aliquid or the Relative; restricting it to cases in which the describing phrase is grammatically elliptical.143 The three classes last-mentioned by Aristotle (1. Contraria, 2. Habitus and Privatio, 3. Affirmatio and Negatio) are truly Opposita; in each there is a different mode of opposition, which it is good to distinguish from the others. But the Relatum and its Correlatum, as such, are not necessarily Opposite at all; they are compared or conceived in conjunction with each other; while a name, called relative, which connotes such comparison, &c., is bestowed upon each. Opposita fall under this general description, as parts (together with other parts not Opposita) of a larger whole. They ought properly to be called Opposite-Relativa: the phrase Relative-Opposita, as applied to Relatives generally, being discontinued as incorrect.144

From Opposita Aristotle passes to Prius and Simul; with the different modes of each.145 Successive and Synchronous, are the two most general classes under which facts or events can be cast. They include between them all that is meant by Order in Time. They admit of no definition, and can be explained only by appeal to immediate consciousness in particular cases. Priority and Simultaneity, in this direct and primary sense, are among the clearest and most impressive notions of the human mind. But Aristotle recognizes four additional meanings of these same words, which he distinguishes from the primary, in the same way as he distinguishes (in the ten Categories) the different meanings of Essentia, in a gradually descending scale of analogy. The secondary Prius is that which does not reciprocate according to the order of existence with its Posterius; where the Posterius presupposes the Prius, while the Prius does not presuppose the Posterius: for example, given two, the existence of one is necessarily implied; but given one, the existence of two is not implied.146 The tertiary Prius is that which comes first in the arrangements of science or discourse: as, in geometry, point and line are prior as compared with the diagrams and demonstrations; in writing, letters are prior as compared with syllables; in speeches, the proem is prior as compared with the exposition. A fourth mode of Prius (which is the most remote and far-fetched) is, that the better and more honourable is prius naturâ. Still a fifth mode is, when, of two Relatives which reciprocate with each other as to existence, one is cause and the other effect: in such a case, the cause is said to be prior by nature to the effect.147 For example, if it be a fact that Caius exists, the proposition “Caius exists,” is a true proposition; and vice versâ, if the proposition “Caius exists” is a true proposition, it is a fact that Caius exists. But though from either of these you can infer the other, the truth of the proposition is the effect, and not the cause, of the reality of the fact. Hence it is correct to say that the latter is prius naturâ, and the former posterius naturâ.

This is a sort of article in a Philosophical Dictionary, tracing the various derivative senses of two very usual correlative phrases; and there is another article in the fourth book of the Metaphysica, where the derivations of the same terms are again traced out, though by roads considerably different.148 The two terms are relatives; Prius implies a Posterius, as Simul implies another Simul; and it is an useful process to discriminate clearly the various meanings assigned to each. Aristotle has done this, not indeed clearly nor consistently with himself, but with an earnest desire to elucidate what he felt to be confused and perplexing. Yet there are few terms in his philosophy which are more misleading. Though he sets out, plainly and repeatedly the primary and literal sense of Priority, (the temporal or real), as discriminated from the various secondary and metaphorical senses, nevertheless when he comes to employ the term Prius in the course of his reasonings, he often does so without specifying in which sense he intends it to be understood. And as the literal sense (temporal or real priority) is the most present and familial to every man’s mind, so the term is often construed in this sense when it properly bears only the metaphorical sense. The confusion of logical or emotional priority (priority either in logical order of conception, or in esteem and respect) with priority in the order of time, involving separability of existence, is a frequent source of misunderstanding in the Aristotelian Physics and Metaphysics. The order of logical antecedence and sequence, or the fact of logical coexistence, is of great importance to be understood, with a view to the proof of truth, to the disproof of error, or to the systematization of our processes of thought; but we must keep in mind that what is prior in the logical order is not for that reason prior in temporal order, or separable in real existence, or fit to be appealed to as a real Cause or Agent.149

CHAPTER IV.

DE INTERPRETATIONE.

In the preceding chapter I enumerated and discussed what Aristotle calls the Categories. We shall now proceed to the work which stands second in the aggregate called the Organon — the treatise De Interpretatione.

We have already seen that the Aristotelian Ontology distinguishes one group of varieties of Ens (or different meanings of the term Ens) as corresponding to the diversity of the ten Categories; while recognizing also another variety of Ens as Truth, with its antithesis Non-Ens as Falsehood.1 The former group was dealt with in the preceding chapter; the latter will form the subject of the present chapter. In both, indeed, Ontology is looked at as implicated with Logic; that is, Ens is considered as distributed under significant names, fit to be coupled in propositions. This is the common basis both of the Categoriæ and of the treatise De Interpretatione. The whole classification of the Categories rests on the assumption of the proposition with its constituent parts, and on the different relation borne by each of the nine genera of predicates towards their common Subject. But in the Categoriæ no account was taken of the distinction between truth and falsehood, in the application of these predicates to the Subject. If we say of Sokrates, that he is fair, pug-nosed, brave, wise, &c., we shall predicate truly; if we say that he is black, high-nosed, cowardly, stupid, &c., we shall predicate falsely; but in each case our predicates will belong to the same Category — that of Quale. Whether we describe him as he now is, standing, talking, in the market-place at Athens; or whether we describe him as he is not, sitting down, singing, in Egypt — in both speeches, our predicates rank under the same Categories, Jacere, Agere, Ubi. No account is taken in the Categoriæ of the distinction between true and false application of predicates; we are only informed under what number of general heads all our predicates must be included, whether our propositions be true or false in each particular case.

But this distinction between true and false, which remained unnoticed in the Categoriæ, comes into the foreground in the treatise De Interpretatione. The Proposition, or enunciative speech,2 is distinguished from other varieties of speech (interrogative, precative, imperative) by its communicating what is true or what is false. It is defined to be a complex significant speech, composed of two terms at least, each in itself significant, yet neither of them, separately taken, communicating truth or falsehood. The terms constituting the Proposition are declared to be a Noun in the nominative case, as Subject, and a Verb, as Predicate; this latter essentially connoting time, in order that the synthesis of the two may become the enunciation of a fact or quasi-fact, susceptible of being believed or disbelieved. All this mode of analysing a proposition, different from the analysis thereof given or implied in the Categoriæ, is conducted with a view to bring out prominently its function of imparting true or false information. The treatise called the Categoriæ is a theory of significant names subjicible and predicable, fit to serve as elements of propositions, but not yet looked at as put together into actual propositions; while in the treatise De Interpretatione they are assumed to be put together, and a theory is given of Propositions thus completed.

Words spoken are marks significant of mental impressions associated with them both by speaker and hearer; words written are symbols of those thus uttered. Both speech and writing differ in different nations, having no natural connection with the things signified. But these last, the affections or modifications of the mind, and the facts or objects of which they are representations or likenesses, are the same to all. Words are marks primarily and directly of the first, secondarily and indirectly of the second.3 Aristotle thus recognizes these two aspects — first, the subjective, next the objective, as belonging, both of them conjointly, to significant language, yet as logically distinguishable; the former looking to the proximate correlatum, the latter to the ultimate.

For this doctrine, that the mental affections of mankind, and the things or facts which they represent, are the same everywhere, though the marks whereby they are signified differ, Aristotle refers us to his treatise De Animâ, to which he says that it properly belongs.4 He thus recognizes the legitimate dependence of Logic on Psychology or Mental Philosophy.

That which is signified by words (either single or in combination) is some variety of these mental affections or of the facts which they represent. But the signification of a single Term is distinguished, in an important point, from the signification of that conjunction of terms which we call a Proposition. A noun, or a verb, belonging to the aggregate called a language, is associated with one and the same phantasm5 or notion, without any conscious act of conjunction or disjunction, in the minds of speakers and hearers: when pronounced, it arrests for a certain time the flow of associated ideas, and determines the mind to dwell upon that particular group which is called its meaning.6 But neither the noun nor the verb, singly taken, does more than this; neither one of them affirms, or denies, or communicates any information true or false. For this last purpose, we must conjoin the two together in a certain way, and make a Proposition. The signification of the Proposition is thus specifically distinct from that of either of its two component elements. It communicates what purports to be matter of fact, which may be either true or false; in other words, it implies in the speaker, and raises in the hearer, the state of belief or disbelief, which does not attach either to the noun or to the verb separately. Herein the Proposition is discriminated from other significant arrangements of words (precative, interrogative, which convey no truth or falsehood), as well as from its own component parts. Each of these parts, noun and verb, has a significance of its own; but these are the ultimate elements of speech, for the parts of the noun or of the verb have no significance at all. The Verb is distinguished from the Noun by connoting time, and also by always serving as predicate to some noun as subject.7

Aristotle intimates his opinion, distinctly and even repeatedly, upon the main question debated by Plato in the Kratylus. He lays it down that all significant speech is significant by convention only, and not by nature or as a natural instrument.8 He tells us also that, in this treatise, he does not mean to treat of all significant speech, but only of that variety which is known as enunciative. This last, as declaring truth or falsehood, is the only part belonging to Logic as he conceives it; other modes of speech, the precative, imperative, interrogative, &c., belong more naturally to Rhetoric or Poetic.9 Enunciative speech may be either simple or complex; it may be one enunciation, declaring one predicate (either in one word or in several words) of one subject; or it may comprise several such.10 The conjunction of the predicate with the subject constitutes the variety of proposition called Affirmation; the disjunction of the same two is Negation or Denial.11 But such conjunction or disjunction, operated by the cogitative act, between two mental states, takes place under the condition that, wherever conjunction may be enunciated, there also disjunction may be enunciated, and vice versâ. Whatever may be affirmed, it is possible also to deny; whatever may be denied, it is possible also to affirm.12

To every affirmative proposition there is thus opposed a contradictory negative proposition; to every negative a contradictory affirmative. This pair of contradictory opposites may be called an Antiphasis; always assuming that the predicate and subject of the two shall be really the same, without equivocation of terms — a proviso necessary to guard against troublesome puzzles started by Sophists.13 And we must also distinguish these propositions opposite as Contradictories, from propositions opposite as Contraries. For this, it has to be observed that there is a distinction among things (πράγματα) as universal or singular, according as they are, in their nature, predicable of a number or not: homo is an example of the first, and Kallias is an example of the second. When, now, we affirm a predicate universally, we must attach the mark of universality to the subject and not to the predicate; we must say, Every man is white, No man is white. We cannot attach the mark of universality to the predicate, and say, Every man is every animal; this would be untrue.14 An affirmation, then, is contradictorily opposed to a negation, when one indicates that the subject is universally taken, and the other, that the subject is taken not universally, e.g. Omnis homo est albus, Non omnis homo est albus; Nullus homo est albus, Est aliquis homo albus. The opposition is contrary, when the affirmation is universal, and the negation is also universal, i.e., when the subject is marked as universally taken in each: for example, Omnis homo est albus, Nullus homo est albus. Of these contrary opposites, both cannot be true, but both may be false. Contradictory opposites, on the other hand, while they cannot both be true, cannot both be false; one must be false and the other true. This holds also where the subject is a singular term, as Sokrates.15 If, however, an universal term appear as subject in the proposition indefinitely, that is, without any mark of universality whatever, e.g., Est albus homo, Non est albus homo, then the affirmative and negative are not necessarily either contrary or contradictory, though they may be so sometimes: there is no opposition, properly speaking, between them; both may alike be true. This last observation (says Aristotle) will seem strange, because many persons suppose that Non est homo albus is equivalent to Nullus homo est albus; but the meaning of the two is not the same, nor does the truth of the latter follow from that of the former,16 since homo in the former may be construed as not universally taken.

It thus appears that there is always one negation corresponding to one and the same affirmation; making up together the Antiphasis, or pair of contradictory opposites, quite distinct from contrary opposites. By one affirmation we mean, that in which there is one predicate only, and one subject only, whether taken universally or not universally:—

But this will only hold on the assumption that album signifies one and the same thing. If there be one name signifying two things not capable of being generalized into one nature, or not coming under the same definition, then the affirmation is no longer one.17 Thus if any one applies the term himation to signify both horse and man, then the proposition, Est himation album, is not one affirmation, but two; it is either equivalent to Est homo albus and Est equus albus — or it means nothing at all; for this or that individual man is not a horse. Accordingly, in this case also, as well as in that mentioned above, it is not indispensable that one of the two propositions constituting the Antiphasis should be true and the other false.18

With these exceptions Aristotle lays it down, that, in every Antiphasis, one proposition must be true and the other must be false. But (he goes on to say) this is only true in regard to matters past or present; it is not true in regard to events particular and future. To admit it in regard to these latter, would be to affirm that the sequences of events are all necessary, and none of them casual or contingent; whereas we know, by our own personal experience, that many sequences depend upon our deliberation and volition, and are therefore not necessary. If all future sequences are necessary, deliberation on our part must be useless. We must therefore (he continues) recognize one class of sequences which are not uniform — not predetermined by antecedents; events which may happen, but which also may not happen, for they will not happen. Thus, my coat may be cut into two halves, but it never will be so cut; it will wear out without any such bisection occurring.19