1/10/2024 0 Comments Dialectic examples![]() ![]() While the syllogistic form can be used in any science, the principles which form the necessary matter for demonstrations are each restricted to one science. The logical tool that is demonstration, in contrast, does not give us such a power. Our casual discussions can also be about any philosophical subject.Īristotle also says that dialectic gives us an ability to discuss the conclusions or principles of any discipline. We are training the intellect as a whole to be sharper in thinking about any subject. When we are training someone's intellect, we are not training it just for one particular task. First, dialectic gives you the power to discuss anything. What these three uses have in common indicates two important properties of dialectic. It enables us, not to prove them, but to discuss and reason about them, and this helps us to learn them. Dialectic allows us to discuss the principles of demonstrative syllogisms, and even reason about them. But he points out in the Topics that that process is often a dialectical process. Aristotle does not say what exactly that process is in the Posterior Analytics. What is clear from our discussion is that the principles do not come directly from sense experience, but rather that we have to go through a process to draw them out of sense experience. We said before, at the end of our last lesson, that all demonstration goes back to first principles, first premisses which are not demonstrated, but which we learn in some way through sense experience. Philosophers also use dialectic to discuss the first principles of philosophy. Aristotle says that dialectic is the tool for that kind of procedure. For example, if he is trying to demonstrate that God exists, he may also want to look at the arguments that purport to show that God does not exist. First, when a philosopher wishes to come to some conclusion in the philosophical sciences, it is often helpful for him to look at both sides of the issue. Aristotle says that dialectic is that kind of tool.įinally, philosophers use dialectic in two ways. He will need some other kind of logical tool in order to have a discussion about philosophy with that person. He cannot present philosophical demonstrations to that person because the latter will just not be able to follow them. ![]() Suppose that one wishes to discuss a philosophical question with somebody who has not studied philosophy. The second use is for casual discussions. If debating sharpens the mind, and dialectic is a skill in debating, then the practice of dialectic clearly contributes to sharpening the mind. Even today teachers recommend that promising students becomes involved in their school's debate society. And it is clear that debate sharpens the mind. Even a superficial reading of Plato's dialogues reveals that what he calls dialectic is an art of intellectual debate. Let us take up these uses one at a time.Īristotle thinks that the first use of dialectic is for intellectual training. They are three: intellectual training, casual encounters, and the philosophical sciences.Īristotle here enumerates three different uses for the dialectical art. Aristotle explains it as follows: We must say how many and for what purposes the treatise is useful. Since I want to make sure that our discussion of logic is useful in your intellectual life, the first thing we are going to examine in dialectic is not its nature or definition, but rather its utility. This lesson will examine Aristotle's Topics. Aristotle calls the chief part of discovering logic dialectic and discusses it in a book called the Topics. Thus before we can use the judging part of logic, we need to use the discovering part. But we also noted in our discussion of demonstration that before we can judge whether a theory is true or false, we need to discover it. Judgment always has certitude, and the certitude of judgment can come from either the form of reasoning alone, that is, the syllogism simply, or from the matter of reasoning, as in the demonstrative syllogism. In our last lesson we finished our discussion of the judging part of logic.
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