Aristotle

VIII.

The Eighth Book of the Topica brings our attention back to the general considerations contained in the First. In the intervening part of the treatise we have had the quadruple distribution of dialectical problems, with the enumeration of those Loci of argument which bear upon each or all: we are now invited to study the application of these distinctions in practice, and with this view to look once more both at the persons and the purposes of dialectical debate. What is the order of procedure most suitable, first, for the questioner or assailant; next, for the respondent or defender?363 This order of procedure marks the distinctive line of separation between the dialectician and the man of science or philosopher: to both of them the Loci of arguments are alike available, though each of them deals with those arguments in his own way, and in an arrangement suitable for his purpose.364 The dialectician, being engaged in debate, must shape his questions, and regulate his march as questioner, according to the concessions obtained or likely to be obtained from his respondent; who, if a question be asked having an obvious refutative bearing on the thesis, will foresee the consequences of answering in the affirmative, and will refuse to grant what is asked. On the contrary, the philosopher, who pursues investigation with a view to his own satisfaction alone, is under no similar restriction. He looks out at once for such premisses as conduct straight to a conclusion; and, the more obvious their bearing on the conclusion is, the more scientific will the syllogism be, and the better will he be pleased.365

In the praxis dialectica (as has already been stated) two talkers are assumed — the respondent who sets up a thesis which he undertakes to defend, and a questioner who interrogates with a view to impugn it; or at least with a view to compel the other to answer in an inconsistent or contradictory manner. We are to assume, farther, a circle of listeners, who serve to a certain extent as guarantees against any breach of the rules of debate.366 Three distinct purposes may be supposed in the debate. 1. You as a questioner may be a teacher, and the respondent a learner; your purpose is to teach what you know, while he wishes to learn from you what he does not know. 2. You engage in an intellectual contest or duel with the respondent, each of you seeking only victory over the other, though subject on both sides to observance of the rules of debate. 3. You neither seek to teach, nor to conquer; you and the respondent have both the same purpose — to test the argumentative consequences of different admissions, and to acquire a larger command of the chains of reasoning pro and con, bearing on some given topic.367

According as the aim of the talkers is one or other of these three, the good or bad conduct of the dialogue, on the part both of questioner and of respondent, must be differently appreciated. Of each of the three, specimens may be found in Plato, though not carefully severed but running one into the other. Aristotle appears to have been the first to formulate the distinction theoretically, and to prescribe for the practice of each separately. He tells us particularly that no one before him had clearly distinguished the third head, and prescribed for it apart from the second. The merit of having first done this he expressly claims for the Topica.368

Both the questioner and the respondent have a duty towards the dialogue; their common purpose is to conduct it well, not only obeying the peremptory rules, but displaying, over and above, skill for the attainment of their separate ends. Under the first and third heads, both may be alike successful. Under the second or contentious head, indeed, one only of the two can gain the victory; yet, still, even the defeated party may exhibit the maximum of skill which his position admits. This is sufficient for his credit; so that the common work will still be well performed.369 But a partner who performs his own part so as to obstruct instead of forwarding this common work — who conducts the debate in a spirit of ill-tempered contention rather than of regular Dialectic — deserves censure.370

Having thus in view the dialogue as a partnership for common profit, Aristotle administers counsel to the questioning as well as to the responding partner. You as questioner have to deal with a thesis set up by the respondent. You see at once what the syllogism is that is required to prove the contrary or contradictory of that thesis; and your business is so to shape your questions as to induce the respondent to concede the premisses necessary towards that syllogism. If you ask him at once and directly to concede these premisses, he sees your drift and answers in the negative. You must therefore begin your approaches from a greater distance. You must ask questions bearing only indirectly and remotely upon your ultimate conclusion.371 These outlying and preparatory questions will fall under four principal heads. Either (1) they will be inductive particulars, multiplied in order that you may obtain assent to an universal comprising them all; or (2) they will be put for the purpose of giving dignity to your discourse; or (3) they will be shaped with a view to conceal or keep out of sight the ultimate conclusion that you aim at; or (4), lastly, they will be introduced to make your whole argument clearer.372 The third of these four general heads — the head of questions for the purpose of concealment — comes out principally in dialectical contests for victory. In those it is of supreme importance, and the result depends much on the employment of it; but even in other dialectical debates you must employ it to a certain extent.373

Aristotle goes at great length into the means of Concealment. Suppose the proposition which you desire to get conceded is, The science of two contraries is the same. You will find it useful to commence by a question more general: e.g., Is the science of two opposites the same? If the respondent answers in the affirmative, you will deduce from his concession, by syllogism, the conclusion which you desire. If he answers in the negative, you must then try to arrive at your end by a string of questions respecting particular contraries or opposites; which if the respondent grants successively, you will bring in your general question ultimately as the inductive result from those concessions.374 Your particulars must be selected from obvious matters of sense and notoriety. You are likely to obtain in this way admissions which will serve as premisses for several different prosyllogisms, not indeed sufficient by themselves, yet valuable as conditions and preliminaries to the final syllogism whereby the thesis is refuted. For, when the questions are put in this way, the respondent will not see your drift nor the consequences of his own concessions; so that he will more readily concede what you want.375 The better to conceal your purpose, you will refrain from drawing out any of these prosyllogisms clearly at once; you will not even put the major and minor premiss of any one of them in immediate sequence; but you will confound the order of them intentionally, stating first a premiss belonging to one, and next a premiss belonging to another.376 The respondent, thus kept in the dark, answers in the affirmative to each of your questions successively. At length you find that you have obtained a sufficient number of concessions from him, to enable you to prove the syllogism contradictory of his thesis. You inform him of this; and it shows the perfect skill and success of your procedure, when he expresses surprise at the announcement, and asks on what premisses you reckon.377

There are also other manœuvres serving your purpose of concealment, and preventing the respondent from seeing beforehand the full pertinence of your questions. Thus, if you wish to obtain the definition of your major, you will do well to ask the definition, not of the term itself but, of some one among its conjugates. You will put your question, as if the answer were of little importance in itself, and as if you did not care whether it was given in the affirmative or in the negative;378 you will sometimes even suggest objections to that which you are seeming to aim at. All this will give you the air of a candid disputant; it will throw the respondent off his guard, and make him more ready to answer as he really thinks, without alarm for the consequences.379 When you wish to get a certain premiss conceded, you will put the question first upon a different premiss analogous to it. In putting your question, you will add that the answer which you desire is a matter of course, familiar and admitted by every one; for respondents are shy of contradicting any received belief, unless they have present to their minds a clear instance adverse to it.380 You will never manifest apparent earnestness about an answer; which would make the respondent less willing to concede it.381 You will postpone until the last the premiss which you wish to obtain, and will begin by putting questions the answers to which serve as remote premisses behind it, only in the end conducting to it as consequence. Generally speaking, questioners do the reverse, putting first the questions about which they are most anxious; while most respondents, aware of this habit, are most intractable in regard to the first questions, except some presumptuous and ill-tempered disputants, who concede what is asked at first but afterwards become obstinate in denegation.382 You will throw in some irrelevant questions with a view to lengthen the procedure, like fallacious geometers who complicate a diagram by drawing unnecessary lines. Amidst a multitude of premisses falsehood is more likely to escape detection; and thus, also, you may perhaps be able to slip in, unperceived and in a corner, some important premiss, which, if put as a separate question by itself, would certainly not have been granted.383

Such are the multifarious suggestions addressed by Aristotle to the questioner for concealing his method of attack;384 Concealment being the third of the four general heads relating to the treatment of premisses not immediately necessary for proof of the final refutative conclusion. On the other three general heads — Induction from particulars to an universal, Dignity, Clearness — Aristotle goes into less detail. For Clearness, he recommends that examples should be introduced; especially familiar examples, taken from well-known poets like Homer, not from obscure poets like Chœrilus.385

In regard to Induction, Aristotle points out an embarrassment often arising from the want of suitable universal names. When, after having obtained an affirmative answer about several similar particulars, you wish to put a question generalizing the result, you will sometimes find no universal term fitting the position. You are obliged to say: Will it not be so in all such cases? and this lets in a serious difficulty, how to know what other cases are like, and what are not. Here the respondent will often dispute your right to include this or that other particular.386 You will do well to coin a new universal term fitting the situation.

If the respondent answers in the affirmative to several questions of similar particulars, but answers in the negative when you sum them up in an universal comprehending all similar cases, — you may require him to cite some particular case justifying his denial; though you cannot require him to do this before he has made the affirmative answers.387 It is not sufficient that he should cite, as the single case of exception, the express case which forms the subject of the thesis: He ought to produce some distinct and independent instance, really comprised within the genus, and not merely connected with it by the link of an equivocal term.388 If he produces an adverse instance really comprised within the genus, you may perhaps be able to re-model your question, so as to make reserve for the basis on which this objection is founded. The respondent will then be compelled (unless he can foresee some new case of objection) to concede the universal with this special qualification; so that you will have gained all that you really require. Should the respondent continue to refuse, without producing any new case, he will transgress the rules of Dialectic; which recognize an universal affirmative, wherever there are numerous affirmative particulars without one assignable negative.389 Indeed, if you know the universal to hold in many particular cases, and do not know of any others adverse, you may boldly put your question at once in reference to the universal (without going first through the series of particulars). The respondent will hardly venture to deny it, not having in his mind any negative particulars.390

You must however keep in mind what a dialectic universal premiss really is. Not every question requiring an universal answer is allowed to be put. You must not ask for positive information, nor put such questions as the following: What is man? In how many different senses is good employed? A dialectic question is one to which the respondent makes sufficient reply by saying, Yes or No.391 You must ask in this form: Is the definition of man so and so? Is good enunciated in this or that different sense? To these questions the respondent may answer Yes or No. But if he persists in negative answers to your multiplied questions as to this or that sense of the term good, you may perhaps stand excused for asking him: “In how many different senses, then, do you yourself use the term good?”392

When you have obtained concessions which furnish premisses for a formal syllogism, you will draw out and propound that syllogism and its conclusion forthwith, without asking any farther question from the respondent or any leave from him to do so. He may indeed deny your right to do this, in spite of the concessions which he has made; and the auditors around, not fully appreciating all his concessions, may perhaps think that he is entitled to deny it. But, if you ask his leave to draw out the syllogism and he refuses to give leave, the auditors are much more likely to think that your syllogism is not allowable.393 If you have the choice between an ostensive syllogism and a Reductio ad Absurdum, you ought always to prefer the former, as plainer and more incontestable.394

You must not persevere long in the same line of questions. For, if the respondent answers them all, it will soon appear that you are in the wrong course, since your syllogism, if you can get one at all, will always be obtained from a small number of premisses; and, if the respondent will not answer them, you have no alternative except to protest and desist.395

The theses that are most difficult to attack are also most easy to defend; and these are the highest universals, and the lowest particulars. The highest you cannot deal with, unless you can get a definition of them; which is sometimes impossible and always difficult; since the respondent will neither define them himself nor accept your definitions. Those which are next to the highest are also difficult to impugn, because there are few intermediate steps of proof. Again, the lowest particulars are also difficult for the contrary reason, that there are so many intermediate steps, and it is tedious to enumerate them all continuously; while, if any are omitted, the demonstration is incomplete, and the procedure will appear sophistical.396 The most difficult of all to impugn are definitions framed in vague and unintelligible terms, where you do not know whether they are univocal or equivocal, literal or metaphorical. When the thesis tendered to you presents such difficulty, you may presume that it is affected with the obscurity of terms here indicated; or, at any rate, that its terms stand in need of definition.397 In geometrical construction, as well as in dialectical debate, it is indispensable that the principia or primary terms should be defined, and defined properly; without this, neither the one nor the other can be pursued.398

Sometimes the major and minor premisses of your syllogistic conclusion are more difficult to establish — more beyond the level of average intelligence — than the thesis itself. In such a case some may think that the respondent ought to grant these premisses, because, if he refuses and requires them to be proved, he will be imposing upon the questioner a duty more arduous than the thesis itself imposes; others may say that he ought not to grant them, because, if he did, he would be acknowledging a conclusion derived from premisses requiring proof as much or more than itself.399 A distinction must here be made. If you are putting questions with a view to teach, the learner ought not to grant such premisses as those above described, because he is entitled to require that in every step of the process he shall be inducted from what is more knowable to what is less knowable. Accordingly, when you attempt to demonstrate to him something which he knows little, by requiring him to concede something which he knows still less, he cannot be advised to grant what you ask. But, if you are debating with a companion for the purpose of dialectical exercise, he ought to grant what you ask whenever the affirmative really appears to him true.400

We have now said enough for the purpose of instructing the questioner how to frame and marshal his interrogations. We must turn to the respondent, and point out how he must answer in order to do well and perform his duty to the common work of dialogue. Speaking generally, the task of the questioner is to conduct the dialogue so as to make the respondent enunciate the most improbable and absurd replies which follow necessarily from the thesis that he has undertaken to defend; while the task of the respondent is to make it appear that these absurdities follow from the thesis itself, and not from his manner of defending it. The respondent may err in one of two ways, or indeed in both together: either he may set up an indefensible thesis; or he may fail to defend it in the best manner that it really admits; or he may do both. The second is a worse error than the first, in reference to the general purpose of Dialectic.401