Aristotle on Human and Animal Empeiria

7/27/2019 Aristotle on Human and Animal Empeiria

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Torrey Wang12-9-2011

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Aristotle on Human and AnimalEmpeiria

0. Introduction

Michael Frede has argued that contrary to the received view, Aristotle is not just not an

empiricist, but is in fact an extreme rationalist, intransigently opposeddespite his scattered

encomia suggesting the contraryto the doctrine traditionally ascribed to him, that genuine, or

unqualified, or scientific, knowledge/understanding (episteme) is epistemically grounded in the

lesser knowledge man gains from perceptual experience (empeiria).1 In a nutshell, Frede

contends that we have confused the undoubtedly significant role Aristotle conceives empeiria as

playing in the course of a human beings acquisition ofepistemeits developmentalrole in

acquiring primitive, as yet inarticulate, notions of thingswith what is distinctive of reason

itself, viz., the ability to grasp universal features and to have insight by seeing the relations

between them (166). But since having episteme for Frede entails the grasp of relations and

universals which only a fully developed reason is adequate to, the state in which men of

experience acquire knowledge from empeiria is epistemically impotent with respect to

episteme. Thus, Frede concludes that empeirias value in relation to episteme is wholly

causal/developmental, and not at all epistemic.2

1 Michael Frede, Aristotle's Rationalism, inRationality in Greek Thought, ed. Michael Frede and Gisela Striker

(1996; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 157-73. Hereafter, all in-page citations will be in reference

to this work unless otherwise noted.

2 I take it that by epistemic, Frede means whatever it is in virtue of which ones perceptual judgments and

knowledge of particulars and accidents in empeiria is able to ratify a claimed item of scientific knowledge, this so

because Frede defends his rationalist reading of Aristotle by arguing that Aristotle thought that all knowledge

gained through empeiria is powerless to confirm, i.e., explain, our characteristic apprehension of universals and

principles in episteme for which it serves the highly important, albeit non-epistemic, causal role. Though proving


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I disagree with Frede, whose view I find too much at variance with what we can

reasonably surmise on the most plausible readings of Aristotles key passages. In order to stress

the counter-intuitiveness of Fredes view, I shall seek to establish that Aristotle regarded human

empeiria as important for priming men of experience for making the sort of judgments which

characterize men who have episteme. To this end, I shall refer to textual evidence which show,

after disambiguation, that Aristotle held what I call the exclusive causal thesis, which states that

human empeiria is causally sufficient for yielding universals3

which are amenable to the

development of art (techne) and understanding or knowledge (episteme) in its subjects.4

On this basis, I argue that Aristotle distinguishes human empeiria from animal empeiria

not just in their complexity of perceptual integration, depth of sensory information uptake, etc.,

but also in the way that they cognize these phenomenal contents. This corollary stems from the

discovery that underlying human empeiria is a distinctive capacity for reasoning that is engaged

when and only when men of experience reason in the weak sense presupposed by mans ability

to process features of his environment in the way required of human empeiria to make sense at

all. I therefore conclude that Fredes assumption that human empeiria is not substantively better

what, accordingly, I call the epistemic thesis, viz., that Aristotle thought that knowledge from empeiria yields

properties that confirm judgments characteristic ofepisteme, was the original impetus for this papers conception,

that pursuit deserves independent treatment. Thus, only insofar as discussing aspects of this thesis helps to shed light

on my primary concern with the causal thesis will I broach this subject.

3 More specifically, as we shall see, the properties by virtue of which humans perceive universals differently from

higher beasts. This will be defended in section 3.

4 Hereafter, I use brutes, animals, and beasts interchangeably to refer to all non-human animals, except where

I mean to refer to man and brutes collectively, in which case I will simply use animals. Any movement between

these two senses of animals will be evident through context.


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than animal empeiriabecause it yields nothing more than more complex phenomenal data which

reason must still deign to simplify commits a fallacy of false equivalency.5

I. The Causal and Incausal Theses

In the following sections, I will examine a number of key passages by Aristotle that

expound on the nature ofempeiria and which, I argue, when purged of the interpretive hurdles

that prevent their proper understanding, undermine Fredes thesis that Aristotle thought that

human empeiria is distinguished from animal empeiria only in, inter alia, the complexity of its

phenomenal contents and perceptual integration. To orient what I will be focusing on in this

paper for the reader, the thesis that I will be seeking to establish in this paper is:

(A)Exclusive Causal Thesis.6Aristotle thought that the empeiria men ofexperience have is differentiated from that which brutes have in virtue of

being causally sufficient for yielding features specific to human perception ofuniversals which are amenable to techne and episteme, i.e., art and

understanding or knowledge. Human empeiria thus presupposes a rationalcapacity in men of experience, which, at minimum, is a rudimentary form of

logismos that is nevertheless unique to man in the sense that it prepares him

forepisteme and techne, even if unused. Thus, empeiria of mere men ofexperience differs from that of brutes not only in in complexity of sensoryinformation uptake and perceptual integration, inter alia, which Frede

considers epistemically irrelevant, butfurther,issui generis with respect to allbrutes as a result of being underwritten by its integration of reason, which

colors their experience in a unique way.

Alternatively, (A) can be understood less volubly, and perhaps less abstractly, as the claim that

what suffices to call man a rational creature is the empeiria characteristic of its kind, for the

5 A caveat is in order: because I construct essentially my own proof of thesis (A), and so some of the passages I

cite are not addressed by Frede, in the interest of keeping this paper as cohesive as possible, I will sometimes

address the Fredean instead of Frede himself, imputing to the Fredean views which I take to follow from or be

assumed by Fredes own seeming commitments as gleaned from his article, and which these passages imply.

6Hereafter referred to alternatively as the causal thesis.


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reason that human empeiria is unique in the animal kingdom for necessitating a specific form of

cognition of what is perceived, which prepares individuals fortechne and episteme. Thesis (A) is

to be contrasted with Fredes variant on the causal thesis, which I will seek to refute:

(B)Inclusive Causal Thesis.7Aristotle thought that the empeiria men ofexperience have is differentiated from that of beasts only in, inter alia,

complexity of sensory information uptake and perceptual integrationi.e.,only in depth of content; empeiria in general brings about differences only in

degree across different species of animals.8

II. On WhetherEmpeiria Is Common to All Animals: A Problem of Ambiguity

Let us begin our examination by observing the following oft-quoted passage from

Posterior Analytics II.19,9 as its disambiguation will be critical for establishing our causal thesis:

[A1]. [A] [S]ome [animals] can still hold the percepts in their soul after

perceiving them. When this occurs often, there is then a further difference: [B] someanimals come to have an account [logos] based on the retention of these items, and others

do not.Thus from perception there comes memory, as we call it, [C] and from memory

(when it occurs often in connection with the same item) experience (empeiria); formemories which are many in number form a single experience. [D] And from experience,

or from all the universal which has come to rest in the soul (the one apart from the many,

i.e. whatever is one and the same in all these items), there comes a principle of skill[techne] or understanding [episteme]of skill if it deals with how things come about, of

7 Hereafter referred to alternatively as the incausal thesis.

8Though proving what I call my epistemic thesis, which states that Aristotle in fact thought that knowledge

from empeiria yields properties that confirm orjustifyjudgments characteristic ofepisteme, was the original impetus

behind this papers conception, it requires a much more extensive treatment than is possible in a paper of this length.

Thus, only insofar as discussing aspects of this issue helps to shed light on my primary concern with my causal

thesis will I broach this subject.

9 All translations of passages from AristotlesPosterior Analytics that I use in this paper are lifted from Posterior

Analytics , 2nd ed., trans. Jonathan Barnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).


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understanding if it deals with how things are. (100a3-9)10

Now, if[A1A][A1D] state what I think Aristotle means, namely, that the type of

empeiria adequate to the formation of universals which are conducive to the development of

principles oftechne orepisteme automatically excludes certain kinds of animals from the

limiting remarks in [A1B] - [A1D], then we should find something in [A1] that points to what

the relevant differentia might be. In fact, there is such an indication. Notice that Aristotle

describes whatever referent is intended in [A1B] as whichever kinds of animals are able to attain

a logos as a result of having the type ofempeiria through which they can hold their percepts in a

way conducive to acquiring principles oftechne and episteme. (Because Aristotle often plots

animals according to which powers of nutrition, sensation, locomotion, or thought they have,11

let us keep this observation in mind as we press forward.) Given the preceding, then, that

Aristotle characterizes empeiria in this passage with reference to the principles oftechne and

episteme which it engenders turns out, as one will see, to be of great consequence.

Notwithstanding these important findings, however, we need an additional piece of information

not therein contained to come to a definitive reading of this passage, viz., the answer to the

question: which animals in [A1B], qualified by some, is Aristotle referring to as those whose

experience is congenial to the development of principle[s] of skill or understanding? Are these

animals coextensive with those referred to in [A1A]? But if so, then contrary to our thesis,

Fredes incausal thesis would be correct. Or might some of them necessarily, as I see it, be

excluded based on the relationship between techne and episteme and a persons ability to furnish

10 I adopt the convention of setting off the main claims in this passage for the sake of convenient reference by

prefixing each claim with corresponding bracketed letters (which are seen in bold here).

11See, e.g.,De Anima II.3. I shall return to this topic in III.2.


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logoi which Aristotle envisages? But if so, we would need to explain away Fredes scruples in

arriving at his incausal thesis. To answer these and related questions, we need to step into the

territory of universals and see how they figure in Aristotles epistemology. Because these

questions are various and oftentimes confusing, allow me to prepare us for the ensuing

discussions by reciting the nature and relevance of the problem of ambiguity in connection to

proving our causal thesis.

To begin, why is the ambiguity in [A1A] and [A1B] as to the intended referent of

animals a real obstacle in our attempt to prove the causal thesis?To see this, notice the tension

caused by [A1A] when read in conjunction with the puzzling transition from [A1C] to [A1D]:

since [A1A] clearly references all animals that can retain some percepts in their soul after being

initially impressed with them, its proximity to [A1B], on the face of it, seems to suggest that

Aristotle is catholic as to which kinds of animals that are able to retain their perceptions as

memoriesas referenced in [A1A]are able to have the empeiriaborne of such perceptions. As

there is no clear indication in the chapter from which this passage is taken as to what the

correlative referents of these particular lines might be, [A1D] might be taken toindicate that all

empeiria, whether of man or animals, is by nature equipped with the ability to yield all the

universal which is amenable to the development of principles of skill or of understanding.

Observe, however, that Aristotle describes the type ofempeiria he has in mind as that

which yields all the universal, or, in the OCT translation, the whole universal. 12 This

12 In his Essentialism and Semantic Theory in Aristotle: Posterior Analytics, II, 7-10, The Philosophical Review

85, no. 4 (Oct., 1976): 530, Bolton notes this device as well in his account of how the possessor of a nominal

definition has understanding of universals of the sort which is best known to sense, an understanding which

Bolton identifies as central to the man ofempeiria. I provide a closing argument in defense of this crucial point in

III.2.


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unfamiliar turn of phrase, I contend, belies the passages actual purpose: to attribute to all of

man, and man alone, the possession of this especial variant ofempeiria. This is just what the

causal thesis says. As a first step toward seeing this, it is imperative that we understand the

problem-causing relative clause in [A1D] as exepegetic, i.e., as functioning to state a defining

characteristic of its antecedent, empeiria of the kindwhich is amenable to the development of

techne and episteme. This is for the reason that this is its most natural reading, since what

Aristotle is primarily doing inPosterior Analytics II.19 is motivating his view that animals

which are able to know anything at all are necessarily endowed with some sort of capacity which

allows them to arrive at a state of knowledge or art vis--vis the primitives/universals on account

of which they have knowledge, even though universals cannot be understood demonstratively

(99b27-34). Positing a distinctive kindofempeiria which in its ordinary mode of operation

grasps all the universal for an individual would thus be a way for Aristotle to make this point,

since it is reasonable to suppose that empeiria ramifies into numerically distinct kinds in

accordance with the varying potential different species of animals possess for grasping the whole

of a universal, or, what comes to the same thing, episteme relative to the universal in question.

Given this eminently plausible reading of[A1D], the next step toward establishing the

causal thesis is determining which species of animals Aristotle thinks in fact possess the type of

empeiria that yields all the universal which is amenable to techne and episteme. The rationale

for this step is provided both by [A1B], in which Aristotle indicateshis intention to restrict the

scope of animals in [A1D] to just animals that are able to form an account, orlogos, of the

universals that they perceive in whole, and the fact that Aristotle holds elsewhere, in abundance,

that the ability to formulate logoi is exclusive to man in the animal kingdom, which ability he


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states is due to their possession ofreason.13 Having seen this, if we then accept, as I do, that

these two steps for resolving the alleged problem of ambiguity are indeed recommended by [A1]

and what we already know about Aristotles views on logoi and the animals which are able to

formulate them, we have very strongprima facie grounds for believing that the empeiria specific

to man presupposes the backing of a rationalcapacity which, by virtue of being an activity of

and hence answerable to reason, on that account alone sufficiently distinguishes allhumans from

animals. Thus, Aristotle would on the exepegetic reading be construed in [A1] as alerting us to

his idiosyncratic vision of human empeiria in contrast to the rest of the animal kingdom, which

he thinks lacks the kind of acuityor sensitivity that is able to reflect or, in a sense, apprehend

universals in whole.

On my reading, the problem-causing clause is hence not plausibly interpreted as

corrective, i.e., as serving to introduce a distinction between a lower grade of human empeiria

that is assimilable to animal empeiria and a higher grade that is exclusive to men of wisdom,

since this would ignore the function [A1B] serves in the overall context of not just [A1], but also

that ofPosterior Analytics II.19, which Ive argued is concerned with demarcating human

empeiria from animal empeiria qualitatively whether our subject is a mere man of experience or

of wisdom. Thus, if the exepegetic interpretation is correct, we should not expect to find

Aristotle stating elsewhere that animals which cannot formulate logoi have the type ofempeiria

which contains the essential ingredient for the acquisition of principles of skill or

understanding, viz., the type ofempeiria which yields all the universal which has come to rest

in the soul. This is because Aristotle is in general loath to impute to nature vanity in the

phenomena it causes to bring about, seeing in it nothing but the most austerely necessary causes

13See, e.g.,Nicomachean Ethics I.13.


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for its effects;14 and possessing features for which an organism has no use would seem to be a

paradigmatic way of flouting that rule.

However, all of these concerns are moot if we should find Aristotle to see in universals

no vital role in human episteme that sets it apart from animal empeiria. Accordingly, I shall

argue in the next section that Aristotle has very particular views about universals which are built

upon his own distinction of the intellectual states by which men come to possess truth, and that

this best explains his rationale in [A1B] of choosing to restrict the scope of animals referred to in

[A1D]by mentioning the fact that he is interested thereafter only in discussing animals that can

form logoi. As we shall see, this all but establishes the causal thesis.

III. That HumanEmpeiria Is Distinct from AnimalEmpeiria

III.1. Fredes Problem

Let us then grant to the Fredean for the sake of argument that since there is no reason to

think that Aristotle meant to disambiguate the intended referent in [A1B] from that of[A1A], the

class of animals referenced in [A1B] by extension includes both man and certain higher animals.

Indeed, the following passage by Frede suggests that this is the line he would take in discharging

this ambiguity:

[F1]. [A] ...It is true that some animals, having experience, have sense orphronesis, but they do not have this just in virtue of perception. Otherwise all animals

would have it. It also presupposes a certain kind of memory. [B] But, in addition, thoughit is true that mere experience can explain how one can have sense of a sort, how one can

behave in a way which looks sensible or even reasonable, [C] we should not confusehaving sense (phronesis) with having insight (nous), i.e. that ability in virtue of which we

have not only experience, but true knowledge. [D] In any case, it is clear that Aristotle isaccusing his predecessors of failing to acknowledge that which he takes to be distinctive

of human cognition, namely nous, the ability to grasp universal features and to haveinsight by seeing the relations between them. [E] Even when his predecessors do talk of

14E.g.,Physics II.5-6, 8; De Anima III.11, 434a30-3.


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nous, at best, he seems to think, they only talk of the kind ofphronesis animals have,too. (165-6)

Thus, by claiming that empeiria is capable only of explainingphronesis[F1C] at the most, Frede

equates, in effect, human empeiria with animal empeiria in terms of cognitive achievement, and

there is thus, as a corollary, no substantive difference in the manner in which universals are

cognized by humans. Is Frede correct?

We can start to make inroads toward refuting this view by simply considering Aristotles

description in hisPosterior Analytics of what universals are useful for. Universals, loosely

speaking, are the intrinsic or non-accidental properties of a kind by which we are said to grasp or

know something of the essence of particulars belonging to it. A logos, accordingly, is that which

mediates between ones merely knowing from empeiria and knowing from understandingthat

something holds of another. Thus, to know of an object that it has some property that is

attributed to it in the course of an inquiry that seeks to establish that it does presupposes that one

grasps its essence in whole, i.e., all of its essential universals, in undertaking the task. Indeed, the

standard characterizations in hisPosterior Analytics of a demonstration almostalways stress the

fact that grasping the universals associated with a kind in a scientifically amenable, albeit

rudimentary, mannerantecedentto gaining knowledge that some universal holds of ones object

of inquiry, or even that it exists, is necessary for acquiring episteme.15

Clearly, grasping

universals is invaluable for gaining episteme, since they are what enable us to formulate an

account of the object under investigation in the first place. But, as Aristotles demands make

clear, we must grasp them in a certain way as well. To show whether animal empeiria differs

15 For understanding this aspect of Aristotles theory of definition, I am helped by David Charles, Aristotle On

Meaning and Essence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 34-35.


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from human empeiria, then, we need but explain how the universals perceived in human

empeiria are amenable to the development of principles oftechne and episteme in a way that

they arent for the beasts; for, if we can describe the relevant ways in which this is the case, we

can simply compare Aristotles abundant remarks on the cognitive abilities of the beasts to the

cognition implicated in human empeiria to decide definitively on the matter.

To begin, let us consider how a functionalist about mental states might dismiss our

worries here with the charge that our ambiguity problem is an imagined problem. Universals, as

roughly speaking, states of the mind that correspond to the ability of animals to make sense out

of ones surrounding events,

16

are clearly as necessary, and hence apprehended in the same

manner, in human empeiria as they are in the empeiria of certain higher animals. This is a fact

confirmed by mere observation of, say, members of the kind dog. These animals engage with

environmental stimuli and other features of their surroundings much like humans do, with

predictable routine and the occasional deviation that is often easily accounted for by noting the

presence of certain irregularities in the offending instances which could have contributed to these

disruptions. As such, it would be hardly surprising if Aristotle did in fact mean to ascribe the

possession of universals in this and like passages to animals. Conversely, if having reason means

to have the requisite knowledge of universals and their relations characteristic ofepisteme

already stored up within oneself and ready to be manifested in action and in thought,

16SeePosterior Analytics II.8-11. For helpful scholarly work on the nature and importance of accounts for Aristotle

in scientific inquiry which are useful for a complete understanding of the issues confronting us here, see, e.g., Robert

Bolton, The Epistemological Basis of Aristotelian Dialectic, inFrom Puzzles to Principles?: Essays On Aristotle's

Dialectic , ed. May Sim (Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999), 57-105, David Charles, op. cit., 23-77, and David

Demoss and Daniel Devereux, "Essence, Existence, and Nominal Definition in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics II 8-

10,"Phronesis 33, no. 2 (February 1988): 133-54.


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characteristics called to mind by Aristotles notion of the contemplative man,17 then that the man

of experience is unable to manifest the actions and thoughts constitutive ofepisteme in his

everyday affairs would seem to unexceptionably demote him to whatever level is beneath him in

the hierarchy of cognitive achievements.

Indeed, something along these lines is just what Frede in [F1B] appears to say. This

would explain why Frede readsPosterior Analytics II.19 as Aristotle focusing on the distinctive

contribution reason makes, in virtue of which we not only, like other animals, have experience,

but can have knowledge (167). Here, Frede is trading on some past remarks of his to the effect

that men of mere experience do not,strictly speaking, have reason; nor, a fortiori, do they reason

about the universals that they perceive in experience, because of their lack ofepisteme.Taken

together, Fredes antipathy about human empeiria and its inability to explain episteme

unsurprisingly modulates to the tune of a wholesale denial of the claim that there is anything

substantively unique about human empeiria in relation to animal empeiria at all.18

Now, there is something suspicious about Fredes passage from observing that Aristotle

doesnt thinkempeiria explains episteme to the claim that he therefore collapses the distinction

between human and animal modes ofempeiria. This is true only if Aristotle held that if a

17Nicomachean Ethics X, 8-10.

18Now, I dont know if Aristotle can be called a functionalist, nor do I think settling this question important for our

purposes; my point is just that any application of this label in light of his claim in [A1D] for the purposes of

vindicating the incausal thesis and delivering a blow to the causal thesis must square with his disquisitions on

episteme and techne in which are described how the apprehension of particular features of universals is needed for

one to embody any kind of reasoning at all, which would controvert [A1D] understood in our present interpretation

of it.


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judgment from human empeiria does not count as putting an agent in a state ofepisteme, or,

alternatively, that if ones belief does not amount to an instance ofepisteme, then there is nothing

about the resources that are enlisted in that failed process of attempting to arrive at episteme that

can be said to distinguish human empeiria substantively from animal empeiria, since animal

empeiria is typified by the universal epistemic failure of being unable to put its possessor in a

position to know anything. Indeed, just because Aristotle thinks that the types of judgments

which confine men to empeiria miss the mark of truth does not mean that he therefore holds that

there is nothing substantively distinct in human empeiria from animal empeiria. Fortunately for

us, our previous discussions have prepared us for a relatively straightforward refutation of this

assumption, which will put the nail in the coffin on Fredes interpretation of Aristotles

conception of human empeiria, as it were, and finally establish the causal thesis. To this I now

turn.

III.2. That Human Empeiria is Distinct from Animal Empeiria

We begin this final section by considering an aspect of Aristotles view on the relation

human empeiriabears toscientific inquiry, as it will lay bare at once the motives behind his, I

argue, distinctive conception of human empeiria and the sort of universals that figure in it.

Before we go there, though, a few remarks are in order concerning scientific inquiry. Why does

Aristotle feel impelled to tie up his conception of knowledge with science? It is this. Aristotle

despised Platos intellectualist19

solution to Menos paradox, the doctrine of innate knowledge,

because he thought that it marginalizes the role experience plays in leading our minds to

universals on the way to gaining knowledge. This fact is evidenced by his ubiquitous concern

19I mean by this term the doctrine that truths can be established, and hence known, only a priori.


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with how universals are grasped in ordinary experience. Yet Aristotle is acutely aware that his

own offering appears also to suffer from the same problem that he criticizes Platos for,

embodied by the many moments in hisPosterior Analytics when, in almost the same breath, he

utters such statements as that though we get to know universals through induction, it is the

intellectual state of comprehension that is the principle of grasping them.20

This, no doubt, is

caused by his own exacting vision of scientific inquiry, and his attribution of a corresponding

state of knowledge in the inquirer upon a successful venture makes known the intellectual labors

associated with carrying out such an inquiry.21

In a way, episteme is reward for a job well done.

To separate himself from Plato, however, Aristotle must explain how it is that the universals

which human empeiria are acquainted with are useful, even though they cannot be known

through perception unaided.22 This will suffice as an introduction to the remainder of this

section.

For our purposes,Metaphysics I.1 is a good place to get a grip on Aristotles conception

ofempeiria, since we wont go into all the niceties. What we want instead is just what is enough

to refute Fredes incausal thesis. For Aristotle, human empeiria is distinctive for its essential

20Posterior Analytics II.19, 100b4, 14-5;Metaphysics VII.10, 1036a7-11.

21 G. E. L. Owen in his Tithenai ta Phainomena, in Aristote et les Problemes de Methode , ed. S. Mansion

(Louvain: Symposium Aristotelicum, 1961), 83-103, and Jonathan Barnes in his Aristotle's Theory of

Demonstration,Phronesis 14, no. 2 (1969): 123-52, are some of the main dissenters of the view that Aristotle held

that the method described in thePosterior Analytics II supersedes dialectical inquiry (which we might consider an

analogous method that starts from reputable opinions instead of a survey of perceptual phainomena).

22 E.g., Aristotle states almost ruefully inPosterior Analytics I.9, 76a25-30, that [i]t is difficult to know whether

you know something or not. For it is difficult to know whether or not our knowledge of something proceeds from its

principlesand this is what it is to know something.


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connection to art and reasonings, as opposed to the beasts, which live, at best, by a sort of

learning that is centered in mere sensory appetite. Importantly, it is through the multiple

thoughts that empeiria stimulates in men that they come to make universal judgment[s] about

similar objects. Now, this and other initially fulsome characterizations ofempeiria are later

tempered a few lines down, when Aristotle clarifies that experience is knowledge of individuals,

art of universals. Indeed, Frede hammers at this passage in particular, stating that in empeiria,

men merely discriminate on the basis of experience, or impression, e.g., as when a man judges

that people with this complexion benefit from a certain treatment if they suffer from this fever

(164); and this is just the sort oflogismos that is observed in the beasts.

Despite these somewhat depressing remarks for our thesis, we must not consider this

passage in isolation from Aristotles statements on the character of human empeiria, for amidst

Fredes forceful protests, Aristotle sees in human empeiria a unique relation to man which is

geared toward actualizing its subjects innate capacity to reason. To appreciate this, we must

recognize the impasse involved in asserting at once both that human empeiria is essentially the

same as animal empeiria, with only differences in complexity of phenomenal presentation, and

that our congenital rational capacities and associated forms of reasoning are not properly

speaking reason at all (163), but merely ways of discriminating. For then we might wonder how

reason, properly speaking, is ever exercised at all. Let me explain why this is so. Consider that

on Aristotles view, the mind is unable to think on its own without a proper object brought up to

it with which to think; to wit, the mind is basically nothing without forms, i.e., universals,

brought up to it by the appropriate sense faculties.23

Thus, since the sense faculties are likewise

23De Anima III.3-5, 7.


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indiscriminate with respect to what the personperceives,24 to grasp the relevant feature of a

percept of an individual which is intrinsic to the essence that the individual provides through the

percept, for the sake of gaining techne and episteme, is already itself a matter of right

selection, Aristotles standard phrase for describing the manner of execution of intellectual and

moral excellences. It seems to me then that, plainly, for us to know in the robust sense implied

by Aristotles concept ofepisteme, the sensory capacities must be coordinated with the objects of

possible knowledge in such a way that the mind can take up the appropriate features of the

percepts which are initially, as Aristotle states, confused masses.25

As surely must be the case

as well, insofar as the faculties which we most engage in ordinary experience are able to do this,

we are priming ourselves, as it were, to arrival at the state which Frede exalts as the end of all

human empeiria.

To see this point, I will consider but one passage,Physics I.1, which suggests that

Aristotle is thinking along these lines as well. Here, Aristotle is seeking to relate our ability to

grasp universals in empeiria to the impact it has on his general procedure of scientific inquiry, as

laid out inPosterior Analytics II. We saw inMetaphysics I.1 how Aristotle doesnt say much

about what the relevant difference between human empeiria and animal empeiria is, except that

the human race also lives by art and reasonings, suggesting that some dont, which Frede

accepts as the right reading. But when read side by side withPhysics I.1, Aristotle clearly has a

more nuanced view of how empeiria is not merely a systematized memory more unified than that

of the beasts, but also conduces to, for the man of experience, a type of understanding of a

24Posterior Analytics II.31, 87b28-30.

25Physics I.1, 184a22.


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to each other on the basis of our sense experiences distinctive of human empeiria. Just because

episteme does not consist in any respect in what is better known to us, as Aristotle puts it often,

does not mean that it doesnt consist in any respect in what is better known to sense-perception

(184a25). Given these findings, we need only establish that animals do not perceive these

features of universals in animal empeiria which conduce to the development of full-blown

reason. Indeed, we are but this short step away from concluding that human empeiria is in fact

distinct in kind in the ways specified in our causal thesis.

In [F1], we saw that Frede equates animalphronesis with humanphronesis. Clearly, if

animalphronesis allows for the perception of the features of universals that human empeiria

affords, then Frede is correct, and we might as well assimilate animal phronetic reasoning to the

phronetic reasoning found in men of experience, since the sort of behavior seen there is merely

one of conditioning or learning, which Aristotle inMetaphysics I.1, takes to consist only in

learning from sensation.28

But equally as clearly, while Aristotle does occasionally ascribe

phronesisto brutes, he does so only to the extent that they exhibit common sense, and not

because he means to purposely elevate their intellectual capacities to that of men who live only

by empeiria. As he elaborates later on, despite appearing to approve of Fredes claim when he

states that this is why we say that animals have practical wisdom, he asserts this in the context

of comparing the phronetic man with the man having philosophic wisdom (sophia).29

Indeed,

the staggering implausibility of seriously attributing this view to Aristotle is corroborated by

Aristotles various pronouncements to the effect that brutes are incapable of thinking,30

28Metaphysics I.1,981a1-5.

29Nicomachean Ethics VI.7, 1141a26-30.

30De Anima III.3, 427b9-15; 433a9-14.


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believing,31 having thought,32 and most devastatingly of all, do not have reason, nor hence

reasoning (logismos).33

That he hence does not conceive of beasts as beings capable of having

reason in any way, even if they exhibit intelligence andphronesisby analogy, is shown by his

crediting them with a power of foresight in the very passage which Frede takes to expose

Aristotle as affirming his belief that animals havephronesis.34

This type ofphronesis would

clearly not be sufficient to be put in the service of reason, whose function Aristotle holds to be

the attaining of truth in respect either of unqualified, scientific matters or qualified, productive or

practical matters.

And since as I mentioned in 2 that Aristotle is in general loath to impute to nature

vanity in the phenomena it causes to bring about, seeing in it nothing but the most austerely

necessary causes for its effects; and possessing features for which an organism has no use would

seem to be a paradigmatic way of flouting that rule, we have established that animal empeiria

differs from human empeiria in the very ways specified in our causal thesis: the absence of

features in the universals that are perceived in them that conduce to gaining human episteme.

IV. Conclusion

It is well known that a major preoccupation of Aristotle in his logical thought was to

provide an account of how first principles come to be known, and that because Aristotles theory

of understanding prevents him from recognizing demonstration as what is responsible for said

31Ibid., 428a20-3.

32Ibid., 429a5-7.

33 Thought is found only where there is discourse of reason. Also, seeParts of Animals I.1, 641b7;Politics VII.13,

1332b5;Metaphysics I.1, 980b28.

34Nicomachean Ethics VI.7, 1141a26-30.


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knowledge of first principles, he therefore posits comprehension as that principle through which

they are known.35

Mutatis mutandis, a similar concern and resolution is exemplified in his

scientific thought; and these concerns are collected into a single treatise in his Posterior

Analytics. With respect to science, it is widely accepted that Aristotle holds that empirical

induction (epagoge) by way of perception is that which enables our apprehension of universals,

though without turning them into knowledge. It is a genuine mystery, then, how any prospective

knower, by nature originally suspended in the benighted state of ignorance characteristic of

empeiria,actually makes the leap across this intellectual chasm to episteme, and, to Aristotles

credit, he does give us a plausible explanation as to how this is possible.

However, scholars have generally missed this crucial aspect of Aristotles

epistemological thought. Instead, they have tended to fixate on how there is a clear risk involved

in toeing the line between perceiving a universal and knowing it, for, it seems that insofar as

Aristotle wishes to uphold that human empeiria is substantively distinct from animal empeiria, if

he weakens the conditions whereby ordinary human empeiria is sufficient to enable said

acquaintance with universals in order to aggrandize the latters utility in mans everyday dealings

(which Frede tendentiously callsphronesis), he will end up widening the gulf between human

sense-perception of universals in ordinary empeiria and their manifestation in episteme, making

explanation ofepisteme impossible except by way of positing something that plays this part.

And, if this were so, Frede would not be unjustified in supposing that nous, which he regards as

genuine reason, is that capacity by which Aristotle thinks we do make this leap.

But the consequent of this conditional is not true. As we have seen, Aristotle s resolution

to this quandary wasnt to insist on this dichotomy. Instead, there is a much more intimate

35See, e.g.Posterior Analytics I.10.


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relationship between the ordinary induction seen in empeiria of man and his developed reason in

episteme, such that although the former does not suffice to produce knowledge, nevertheless,

because it habituates men of experience to proper modes of reasoningtraces of which are

initially nascent in them due to their distinctive manner of sense-perception, which allows them

to cognize certain features of universals which lead to principles oftechne and epistemeit is in

virtue of human empeiria that men of experience are able to begin scientific inquiry in the first

place with the correct orientation toward the relevant features of universals already placed in

them.

Suffice it to say that since my inferences here have merely been an elaboration or

application of what I take to be some of the least disputable aspects of Aristotles oeuvre, viz., his

statements on episteme and techne, their relation to men ofempeiria andsophia,and the

conditions which govern their place in nature, Fredes assumption that human empeiria is not

substantively distinct from animal empeiria in an epistemically relevant way because it yields

nothing more than more complex phenomenal data which reason must still deign to unravel or

decrypt is mistaken; it is precisely owing to the features embedded in universals which are

conducive to episteme and techne that can only be picked up in the course of ordinary human

empeiria that start men of experience on the path toward episteme. And this is just what my

causal thesis says: Aristotle does see in the empeiria of humans a special role in producing

episteme after all.

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Aristotle on Human and Animal Empeiria

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