PHIL 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: De Interpretatione, Posterior Analytics, Kantianism
3 May 2018
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History of Ancient Philosophy
10.26.17 Lecture Notes – Aristotle, De Interpretatione, Posterior Analytics
De Interpretatione
- Topic is the semantics – the study of meaning
o Units of language
o Philosophy of language – historically comes about after the abandonment of Aristotelian logic
o Different ways to look at it
- Section 2: name
o Spoken sound significant by convention, without time, none of whose parts is significant in
separation
o Without tie – contrasts with verbs which have a temporal element
o By oetio – names for things are agreed upon and people pick up the name
- Section 6: affirmation and negation
o Affiratios + egatios = assertios
o Assertions have to be able to be evaluated as true or false
o Affirmation – saying something has a certain property, while negation is dying the property to a
thing or group
- Look at the language, read off from the language some kind of properties of the world, and come up
with metaphysical categories
o Assumptions?
▪ That the language is complete
▪ Language accounts for only things that exist
▪ That the language represents the world
• Language is representational and if the bits of language hook onto things in the
world
- Section 1
o “poke souds are syols of the affetios i the soul…
o Affetios i the soul?
▪ Soul being affected or modified in some way by some kind of source such that
something in the soul represents something else
▪ Soul is being acted upon by something else and thereby carries a representation of that
thing
▪ Affections in the soul are likeness of things that really exist
• Likeness?
o Represents some other thing
• Things acts on our senses
▪ Things in the outside world (symbolized by) Affections in the soul Sounds
(symbolized by) Words
• We can look at the language and through this route of symbols and likenesses,
we can get to the properties of things
• Linguistic analysis of looking at the things you can say or would say – a way of
doing philosophy
• Representational view of language and the mind
o Logic – study of arguments, reasoning, and patterns of inference
▪ Uses language to tell us things in the world
▪ Aristotle’s logi is really ifluetial up to the poit of Kat, hih plays a role i Katia
philosophy
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Document Summary
10. 26. 17 lecture notes aristotle, de interpretatione, posterior analytics. Topic is the semantics the study of meaning: units of language, philosophy of language historically comes about after the abandonment of aristotelian logic, different ways to look at it. Section 10: dividing statements into 4 groups, multiple ways to think about assertions are related to each other and what that tells us about the world. Example: a) a man is just, b) a man is not just, c) a man is not-just, d) a man is not not-just, a and c are contradiction (when the truth of one implies the falsity of others) In every case of a contradiction one of the other must be true, they cannot both be false or both be true. Big picture aristotle trying to explore different forms of argument. His approach is very versatile in dealing with arguments. Section 5 of prior analytics: no n is m, every o is m, no o is n.
