 OK. So today we're going to talk about scientific explanation and Aristotle's account of knowledge. And I want to remind you of the analysis I gave of how we get to wisdom. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, so that's what we're trying to get. How, in Aristotle's view, do we get wisdom by having scientific knowledge? How do we get scientific knowledge when we have demonstrations, proofs, and explanations? How do we get demonstrations, proofs, and explanations? We get those out of certain kinds of syllogisms. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. What kind of syllogisms produce the demonstrations and explanations that constitute scientific knowledge? Now, as you all know, the way we get syllogisms is by synthesizing propositions, at least three, two of them being premises, one of them being a conclusion. How do we get propositions? We synthesize terms. Each proposition consists of exactly two terms and some logical operators. How do we get the terms? We get that by reflecting on categories. And so that's a kind of analysis of wisdom. Or we can go in the other direction and have a synthesis. Synthesizing terms produces propositions. Synthesizing propositions produces syllogisms. Synthesizing syllogisms produces demonstrations and explanations. Synthesizing those constitutes scientific knowledge. Synthesizing scientific knowledge constitutes wisdom. And that's the end of our inquiry. OK, so handout coming around, which just has basically lists many of the syllogisms I'm going to be using. Would you take one and pass it back and forth? Back into the side. By the way, notice that each of these stages sort of has works in our corpus dedicated to it. So the categories is dedicated to this level of analysis. What work in the Aristotle corpus is dedicated to this part? Producing propositions. Interpretation. Yes, on interpretation, deinterpretazione, periherminase in Greek. And what work is concerned with how propositions get synthesized into syllogisms? The prior analytics. And so then what work is dedicated to how syllogisms produce demonstrations or scientific explanation? Posterior analytics. The name prior and posterior are introduced by later editors, like the term metaphysics. Aristotle does make internal cross references to this work, but he just calls it the analytics. And so there are dedicated works that show us methodologically how we get to each of these steps. Now let me just introduce a little bit of vocabulary, since most of you have deficient educations where you haven't learned any ancient Greek by now. And so to attack that horrible, horrible weakness, I need to introduce some Greek terms here. Epistemi, where we get the term epistemology, meaning theory of knowledge, can mean science, knowledge, or understanding. And it is translated with all three of those terms in our textbook. But there's one Greek term that is so translated. Another term that is multiply translated is in Greek apodaxis, which means demonstration or proof. And we actually have an obscure English term from this apodictic, which means proof-oriented or demonstrative. And then another crucial term in Greek ition or itia means explanation or cause. Fundamentally, it means blame or responsibility. And it's originally a term from the legal lexicon. We're trying to figure out who is to blame or who is responsible for that murder. And so who or what is the ition or itia of it. But we expand that notion broadly to who or what is responsible for any other thing that happens. And the generic name for that thing responsible or to blame for it happening is its cause. And evincing the cause or bringing out the cause of something is what an explanation is. So I will use these terms interchangeably, explanation, cause with reference to the Greek term ition or itia, demonstration and proof, when I'm talking about apodexus and science knowledge and understanding when I'm talking about epistemy. OK. Now, first thing I want to do is very closely analyze a passage that I asked you to read for today from the second chapter of the first book of the posterior analytics. And here we have Aristotle's attempt to define and explain his concept of knowledge. So just walk you through. We think we know each thing absolutely and not in the manner of the sophists according to incidental attributes. When we think we recognize, one, the cause because of which the thing exists. Two, that it is a cause of this. And three, that it is not possible for it to be otherwise. When we think we know what the cause is, we think that it's the cause and we don't think there's any other way it could be, then we think we know it. Like I'm pretty sure the cause of the ashes in my fireplace are due to the fire that was burning in it last night. That's what produced the ashes. That's what's responsible for the ashes. That's what's to blame for the ashes. That's what caused the ashes. I don't think it's possible to otherwise produce ashes then through burning. So I'm pretty sure I know the cause of those ashes in my fireplace. Now, going on, Aristotle says, it is at any rate clear that knowledge is this kind of thing. Both those who do not know and those who do know think so. Although the former, those who don't actually know, think they're in the stated condition, while those who do know are, in fact, in that condition. That which is known absolutely cannot be otherwise. Now, whether there is some other way to have science or to have knowledge or understanding, we'll ask about that later. But at any rate, we assert that it is possible to know by means of a demonstration or a proof. So all Aristotle is concerned to do is show you that scientific knowledge is possible. I can give you a specimen of a piece of scientific knowledge. And once I do, you will agree that you know or you understand that thing. Now, he defines demonstration. By demonstration, I mean a scientific syllogism, a syllogismon epistemonicon. So an epistemic syllogism, a special kind of syllogism. Last time on Wednesday, we talked about syllogisms in general. And I gave you an account of what, in Aristotle's view, is every valid argumentative form or a syllogism. Although there was an excellent question asked about so-called fourth figure syllogisms, because not every permutation of terms was exhausted in Aristotle's analysis. He says, hey, these work, but couldn't there still be others since there are other ways to resolve those terms? So I posted a paper to Canvas called On the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism, which contains speculative explanations as to why he did not investigate the fourth figure. And there are several different attempts to explain that. One says that they are just, it would be redundant because they're permutations of what happens in third figure syllogisms. Another says he's not interested in it because what he's really interested in is modal syllogisms, and there's no effective fourth figure syllogisms on modal syllogisms. And it turns out there's been a controversy about this since antiquity. And some people simply take Aristotle the task and say he didn't resolve it. But anyway, the best set of explanations of this whole phenomenon I can find, I've posted in a 1949 article to Canvas. But the point is we discussed a lot of syllogisms last time. And syllogisms are forms of reasoning, but not every form of reasoning produces scientific knowledge in the sense that Aristotle thinks is conducive to wisdom. So we're going to be talking about what kind of reasoning exactly does constitute scientific knowledge. And for that, we need not just a syllogism, but a scientific syllogism. So this is a continuation of the quote. Now, if to have knowledge is, as we have described it, it is necessary for a scientific demonstration to exist from propositions that are. And there is either three or six different conditions here or any depending on how you number them. I'm going to group them into three. One, propositions have to be truths and include primary and immediate truths, which are two more understandable and prior to the conclusion and are three causes of the conclusion. For without these, the principles will not be appropriate to the thing that is demonstrated. So again, to summarize the criteria of what the quality of the premises in a scientific syllogism must be. They must be true, because we can't say we know something on the basis of falsehoods. We require truth in order to know things. We have to involve what he's calling immediate or primary truths, which turn out to be axioms or definitions that is self-evident truths. We need self-evident truths or axioms in order to produce any other kind of knowledge, or at least produce this kind of knowledge, which all are agreed constitute scientific knowledge. The premises in the syllogism have to be, as he says, more understandable and prior to the conclusion. How exactly I will show by means of examples in due course. And the premises have to specify and contain the cause of the conclusion, or contain that element that is the basis for us saying that's to blame, that's responsible, that the explanation of it involves that thing. So those are the criteria of a scientific demonstration. Now, here is the generic form of a scientific syllogism. Should be very familiar to you by now. It's an AAA syllogism in Barbara. All of the premises consist of universal affirmations. Notice there's no negations. Notice there's no partial or particular assertions. If A of every B, and if B of every C, then A of every C. That is the paradigm form that a piece of scientific knowledge is going to take. Now, usually it won't exactly be that short, because we could have multiple causes or multiple explanations of the same phenomenon. And so we may need to add premises and have a more complex syllogism. But we will always be able to reduce the elements of more complex syllogisms to simpler ones, and ideally to our favorite Barbara syllogism. OK, so let me give my example that appears in posterior analytics 2, 12, to 14 chapters. I didn't ask you to read, because I just asked you, I think, to read chapter 11 of book 2 of posterior analytics. But I can exhibit more easily what he's saying in that chapter by means of an example that he uses later. So what I'm going to try to do is explain why vines periodically shed their leaves. Because I've noticed, walking out here in Murakalid, that every once in a while the leaves on those vines shrivel up and die. And that's what we mean by deciduous. This seems to happen periodically every fall if you happen to live in a state that has different seasons unlike here. But apparently periodically this is happening. And the question is, why is this happening? Well, suppose I have knowledge somehow that every broad-leafed plant is deciduous. And then I learn either by report or by my own sensation that a vine is a broad-leafed plant. It doesn't have little needles like on a pine tree. It has broad leaves. Then I can form a kind of explanation of why the vine is deciduous, perhaps, as follows. Now, I've assigned the relevant terms to the variables that play into the formal account of the syllogism. But here is the syllogism I'm working with. Deciduousness, or periodic shedding of leaves, applies to every broad-leafed plant. Broad-leafed plant applies to every vine. Therefore, deciduousness applies to every vine. And you'll notice that we have a sort of class inclusion situation here, very similar to the idea that living thing applies to every animal. Animal applies to every human. Therefore, living thing applies to every human, which just means that human is part of a larger class called animal, which is itself part of a larger class called living things. And here, vine is part of a larger class of broad-leafed plants. And broad-leafed plants are part of a larger class of deciduous things. So the first premise, earlier I introduced how we can talk about major and minor terms. Now I'm going to talk about major and minor premises. The most general principle is our major premise. All broad-leafed plants are deciduous, to put it in plain English. The minor premise is the specific theorem I'm operating with. All vines are broad-leafed plants. And the conclusion is the phenomenon to be explained. Remember, I wanted to know why vines are deciduous. Why do vines periodically shed their leaves? Well, I've now, I represent the phenomenon I'm trying to explain as the conclusion. And I subsume it under a class of more general things that is apparently explanatory. Now, the reason why this doesn't seem like a very satisfying explanation right now is because, first of all, a lot of you have no idea what I'm talking about with vines or deciduousness. We don't have very many, we're talking about succulents or something around here. Another thing is, you don't know why should you accept the notion that deciduousness applies to every broad-leafed plant. Some botanist told you that, but how did he know it? Or she know it? But if you had, if you knew this and you went out and determined this, saw this, examined and compared those leaves, then you could conclude this and you would know it and you would know the reason. You would know that it was because it's broad-leafed. Now, I can do two things to expand this syllogism. And what I can do is add an extreme term and so widen the scope of my knowledge or I can pack in another middle term which will deepen my knowledge of the same phenomenon. So here's an example of how we would widen the knowledge to include more things. So here's our major premise. Deciduousness applies to every broad-leafed plant. And I've already determined that a vine is a broad-leafed plant and so I drew that wonderful conclusion that I'm trying to understand. But I'm an observant person. I've noticed that maple leaves, because I lived in Canada for a while, and I noticed that maple leaves are also broad-leafed plants. And I don't know this myself, but somebody told me that marijuana leaves are broad-leafed plants. And so I can add any time I can identify something as a broad-leafed plant if I know this major premise, then I can formulate those terms into a proposition that I can subsume under this general principle and thus explain this phenomenon. So if somebody comes up to me later and says, why is it that those Canadian trees, those maple leaves, periodically shed their leaves? And I say, well, the explanation is because they're broad-leafed plants. And all broad-leafed plants periodically shed their leaves. That's why we call them deciduous. Yeah. Well, so adding other examples, that will never prove that broad-leafed plants are deciduous because you're just providing examples. Yes, except I'm not proving broad-leafed plants are deciduous. I'm proving that vines are deciduous or maples are deciduous. I'm not proving this point. And whether you're right that it could or not, I'm not agreeing with your point, but I think I know what you're getting at, something called the problem of induction or something. So hopefully we'll get to that later. But that's not what I'm trying to prove. Actually, in the next slide, I am going to try to prove that. But so far, I haven't. All I have tried to prove is this observation that I made. And again, I stipulated if I knew this somehow. So I didn't prove that. I assumed that. I presupposed that. That's functioning as a principle or an axiom, a starting point of understanding or knowledge, not an ending point where we would prove that. But we will get to that, because somehow we've got to figure out how we get these things. Now, that shows how we can expand it. Now, let me show you how we can deepen the explanation and talk about the cause of broad-leafed plants being deciduous. So somehow, being a broad-leafed plant explains why vines, maples, marijuana plants, and so forth are deciduous, why they periodically shed their leaves. But there seems to be a deeper cause at play, a kind of mechanism here. And it's because nutritive sap ends up coagulating. Nutritive sap comes up through the soil and through the stem. And on broad-leafed plants, the sap coagulates into this narrow stem and can't fill into the rest of the broad leaf. And so lacking nutrient, it dies withers and dies on the vine. Narrow-leafed plants don't have that problem. They don't have to nourish a broad leaf. They just have to get sap into this narrow part. So what I'm going to do is now try to demonstrate the major premise of the previous syllogism. And what I'm going to do is predicate deciduousness of every sap coagulator and then sap coagulator of every broad-leafed plant. And that will produce or prove the premise that deciduousness applies to every broad-leafed plant. Now, notice I didn't prove this by going out and surveying every broad-leafed plant and saying, I've looked at 100 of them, so it must be the case that they're all this way, or I've looked at 10 million of them, or I've looked at an infinite number of them. Because you're right, that might not do the trick. But I proved it in another way. I proved it by packing in another middle term, sap coagulator. So now I have to assume my undemonstrated and immediate principle or axiom here is that deciduousness applies to every sap coagulator. And if I know that, then I can know that deciduousness applies to every broad-leafed plant. And so I pack in another middle term, and here we have a complex syllogism, but it's just a unity of two Barbara syllogisms. If deciduousness applies to every sap coagulator, sap coagulator applies to every broad-leafed plant, then deciduousness applies to every broad-leafed plant. But if deciduousness applies to every broad-leafed plant and a broad-leafed plant applies to every vine, every maple, every marijuana plant, then deciduousness applies to every vine, maple, et cetera. And so now I have a deeper explanation of why it is that vines periodically shed their leaves. You ask me why? I tell you, well, it's because they're broad-leafed plants. And then you say, well, why do broad-leafed plants periodically shed? And I say, oh, it's because they're sap coagulators. And then that story about sap coagulation. So notice that in the extension argument, we add extreme terms. In the deepening of the explanation, we pack in more middle terms. OK, so then what we want to do is take this putative piece of scientific knowledge and return to the criteria that Aristotle set up for scientific knowledge in chapter 2 of Book 1. So the first criterion is that the propositions all have to be true. So are the propositions true? Well, Proposition 5, deciduousness of every vine, and 5 prime, deciduousness of every maple, and 5 prime prime deciduousness of every marijuana leaf, and so forth. I conclude that from premises 3 and 4, which are a Barbara syllogism. I know that's a valid form of reasoning. So if those premises are true, this premise must be true. Remember the definition of a syllogism, certain things being assumed, something assumed to be true, something else must be true as a result of them. Propositions 4 and 4 prime, I know through observation. I go out and look at vines. I look at maples. I see they have broad leaves. I look at pine trees, and I see they don't have broad leaves. And I notice, oh, they don't shed leaves. They're evergreen. Proposition 3, again, I conclude from 1 and 2. It's a conclusion of a Barbara syllogism. How about propositions 1 and 2? Those are the immediate and indemonstrable propositions, principles, axioms, or definitions. I haven't demonstrated those. I have assumed those in order to produce this knowledge. So according to that, I've just explained why all of those propositions are true. So we can check that criterion off. All those premises are true. Second criterion, the premises have to be more understandable and prior to the conclusion. Now he says that there are two ways that this can fail. One way is circularity. Circularity is a situation where proposition 3 is proved by 1 and 2. 1 is proven by 4 and 5. 4 is proven by 3 and 2. And so 4 ends up being both prior and posterior to 3. And so it's not prior if it's in any sense posterior. So if I had to work in here as some kind of premise that vines are deciduous, then if I ended up with a conclusion that vines are deciduous, I wouldn't actually have any kind of knowledge because my premises are not more understandable than the conclusion. In fact, I'm just assuming the conclusion. What we call begging the question. Another way that this can fail is infinite regression. So if I need to continually add more premises, so now I need to explain SAP coagulation, then whatever it is that explains SAP coagulation needs to be explained by something else. So SAP coagulation gets explained by the molecular structure of SAP. The molecular structure of SAP gets explained by the atomic structure of those molecules, the atomic structure of those molecules gets explained by the sub-atomic structure of muons, gluons, and quarks. But muons, gluons, and quarks have to be explained, right? So they must be the result of vibrating strings and n-dimensional membranes, right? But then those have to be explained. No. At some point, that has to come to an end somewhere. And we say, this is the fundamental claim that we're making on the basis of which all these other things are known. But notice how that stops at some point. If it had to go on infinitely, if we required every premise to be demonstrated, then we would have an infinite series. But life is short. We can't traverse an infinite series. And so if we required an infinite series in order to know anything, we couldn't know anything. So we must not have to traverse an infinite series. So there must be certain premises that aren't demonstrated, that are just assumed. And so they function as axioms or self-evident propositions or definitions. Now, these propositions do not involve circularity. So I haven't assumed deciduousness of vines in demonstrating that phenomenon. And there isn't an infinite regression, because it wouldn't fit on the slide if there was. But I have a finite set of premises. The mind can traverse all of those. And so I can have a kind of scientific knowledge or understanding of why vines periodically shed their leaves. And then remember, the third set of criteria, the premises have to actually be causes of the conclusion. So being a broadleaf plant has to actually be a cause of why vines are deciduous. And that is because nutritive sap coagulates, et cetera. And so a cause has been identified, sap coagulation. So there is a scientific demonstration, checks off all of the boxes for the criterion of scientific knowledge, so it looks like a piece of scientific knowledge. Not a very impressive piece, but it shows how scientific knowledge would be possible. We need to identify a phenomenon we want explained. We have to find what classes those objects are included in, and then we need explanations, general level explanations for those classes that are somehow causal. And at some point, that will involve assumptions that we don't prove, but we just assume to be the case. So then the question arises, how do we actually know these axioms, these prior and immediate truths? We have to know them somehow, because if we don't know them, then we're not going to be able to produce the more limited knowledge. If we don't know the general things, then we're not going to know the particular things that are supposed to be subsumed from them. So we need some way of knowing these axioms or principles without being able to actually demonstrate them. And the means to that knowledge, we generally call induction. But Aristotle uses this notion of induction, but when he's describing the phenomenon, he actually talks about a mental state of something like insight or intuition. So think about the structure of something like Euclidean science of geometry. I'm using the example because you all have some knowledge of this. Why do you have knowledge of it? Because you were forced in junior high to sit there and go through Euclid. Now, you may have wondered, I'm not going to go on to build any bridges. Why do I need to know this shit? Why are they making me learn this? And the reason is not because we care whether you do any geometry later, but because we're trying to show you an example of how a proof works. And so you would see what scientific knowledge is like. So when you go through those tedious steps to prove that the interior angles of a triangle add up to the sum of two right angles, or you prove that the figure inscribed in the semicircle is necessarily a right angle, when you go through the steps to prove that, you say, wow, I know that that has to be the case. And I know it can't be otherwise, and I know the cause of it. How do I know the cause of it? Because I can trace it back to axioms and definitions, definitions of what a straight line is, what an angle is, what a triangle is, what a circle is, what a semicircle is. Those are the principles that I assume in order to demonstrate a non-obvious conclusion from them, for example, that the interior angles of the triangle add up to two right angles. That isn't defined. What's defined is that a triangle is a three-sided figure, and that interior angles are such and such. And if you were reading Euclid and where he's defining figures, angles, lines, points, and so forth, then you either got that or you didn't. You could either understand the notion of a plain figure where its extremity, every point on its extremity is equidistant from some single point. That's a definition of a circle. You either get that definition or you don't. I can't prove to you that that's what a circle is. I can't prove to you that a line is such and such or an angle is such and such. I just define these, and then I make certain other self-evident propositions called axioms like that subtracting equal amounts from equal sums results in equal sums. That's not something I can actually prove to you. What I do is I say, assume that's true and assume these definitions are true. And if you make all of those assumptions and don't require them to be proven, then I can prove to you that these other things are true. But if you either refuse to accept my definitions because you want to use language in some different way or you just fail to comprehend them, I just don't get what he's talking about here, then you will not be able to produce scientific knowledge of those phenomena. But how do we grasp these axioms? Everything I've said about scientific knowledge shows how scientific knowledge proceeds from axioms to these conclusions through demonstration. So if you've agreed with that, you understand how scientific knowledge is possible through demonstration, but you don't yet know how we get the starting points of demonstration in these principles and axioms. And that is the topic of posterior analytics 219. And I've got another handout for that because I want to go into some detail about it and take one of these and hand them around these. And so Aristotle raises this seemingly all-important question at the very end of the entire inquiry. In the last chapter, he says, OK, so now I'll explain how we get those crucial undemonstrated principles that I've been saying we need to assume in order to get demonstrative knowledge. In order to get apodactic knowledge or proofs, we need to assume these. How do we get them? Here's what he says. So the chapter begins, and he says, as regards syllogism and demonstration, the definition of and conditions required to produce each of them are now clear. I'm sure you were nodding your head when you read that. Yes, OK, that's all clear. And with that, also the definition of and conditions required to produce demonstrative knowledge since it is the same as demonstration. As to the basic premises, how they become known and what is the developed state of knowledge of them is made clear by raising some preliminary problems. So this is often the way that Aristotle attacks the difficult issue. He says, yeah, there actually are a bunch of problems here. You think there's one problem of how do I access this? Well, let me tell you how problematic this actually is. We've already said that scientific knowledge through demonstration is impossible unless a person knows the primary immediate premises. But there are questions which might be raised in respect to the apprehension of these immediate premises. One might ask, is apprehension of the immediate premises of the same kind? Is the apprehension of the conclusions? Two, is there or is there not scientific knowledge of both the immediate premises and the conclusion? Or is there scientific knowledge only of the conclusion but of the immediate premises? There's some other kind of knowledge. And three, are the developed states of knowledge not innate but come to be in us? Or are they innate but at first unnoticed? Now, in my punctuation and outlining of this passage, I think what he does is takes those questions in the opposite order. So he answers them 3, 2, 1. So the first thing he does is try to answer the perplexity or operia whether developed states of knowledge are innate or come to be in us. And he says, will it be really strange if we possess them already from birth? For it means that we already possess apprehensions more accurate than demonstration, but we fail to notice them. So we're born and we already have all of the premises that we need. We already comprehend all of the axioms, so we don't need to learn them in junior high out of a horrible geometry textbook? No. We must acquire them. If, on the other hand, we acquire them and do not previously possess them, how could we apprehend and learn them without a basis of pre-existent knowledge? For that's impossible, as we used to find in the case of demonstration. Demonstration shows we need pre-existing knowledge. I need pre-existing knowledge that deciduousness applies to every sap collage later in order to know the deciduousness applies to every broadleaf plant. And I need to know deciduousness applies to every broadleaf plant in order to know that it applies to every vine. So it emerges that neither can we possess them from birth, nor can they come to be in us if we are without knowledge of them to the extent of having no such developed state at all. Therefore, we must possess a capacity of some sort, but not such as to rank higher in accuracy than these developed states. And this, at least, is an obvious characteristic of all animals, for they do possess a congenital discriminative capacity, which is called sense perception. So the solution to this is going to be sense perception somehow. So he goes on to say, though sense perception is innate in all animals, in some, the sense perception come to persist in others it does not. So animals in which this persistence does not come to be have either no knowledge at all outside the act of perceiving or no knowledge of objects of which no impression persists. Animals in which it does come into being have perception and continue to retain sense impression in the soul. And when such persistence is frequently repeated, a further distinction at once arises between those which out of the persistence of such sense impressions develop the power of systematizing them and those which do not. Now, we read a parallel passage to that in Metaphysics 1, where we had a very simple model of cognition, where we went from sensation to memory. And we saw that some animals, all animals have sensation, but some of them don't have some modes of sensation. Some of them have all of them. Humans have all of them, but some animals lack hearing or some animals lack other senses. But and most of them lack memory. And very few of them have the next stage of this experience. And it's out of experience that we produce arts and sciences, scientific knowledge. So already then, you knew that the basis of getting to this scientific knowledge began with a process of sense, and somehow in sensation, systematizing the sensations, whatever that means, into experience. And once we've got that experience, then we can apprehend these causes, produce demonstrations, and then we have scientific knowledge. So then the next part is even more parallel to that passage. So out of sense perception comes to be what we call memory. And out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience. For a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience again, i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the many, which is a single identity within them all, originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be, and science in the sphere of being. Now, to the student who asked the question, out of any number of sensations, you're never going to produce the universal principle. This and the preceding paragraph are crucial because Aristotle here seems to be asserting the opposite, that there is some method of getting from sensations, somehow systematizing them, somehow creating a unity out of this plurality of senses. This is what he says. I'm not saying that it's clearer that it solves the problem of induction, but if we want to question his theory about this, we have to understand what he's saying here and then take it apart. Yeah? So you mentioned intuition. And I was wondering if you could explain. So he says that the knowledge that we have is not innate in us, but isn't intuition in a way something innate in us? Well, intuition is the name of an intellectual virtue. Certain, you may have noticed, certain people are better at geometry than others because they can just grasp those definitions more easily. They're still getting those definitions aren't innate in them, but their ability to apprehend them is innate in them. So it would be weird if I already had all of this geometric knowledge in my brain, never having studied it, I was just born with it. So Plato has a strange view like that. We already know everything. I mean, you might be happy to learn this. There's no reason to go to university. You already have all the knowledge inside yourself. Difficulty is when you got born into this body, you forgot it all, and you had to recover it. And that takes a long process of going through sensation, memory, experience, and so forth in order to build it back up. But he has a theory of innate ideas. And that's a popular idea that persists in the early modern period, and the people we call rationalists and so forth that believe that we have these innate mental structures that already constitute some kind of knowledge. But Aristotle rejects that. And he says, those structures aren't innate. Yes, there are differences in ability to apprehend things, which shows that there is, we need intellectual virtues in order to be able to do geometry or to do botany. But we don't already contain implicit within us all that botanical knowledge. OK, now that is explained in the next paragraph, OK? And here he gets metaphorical. And so this, of course, leads to centuries and centuries of comment trying to unpack and figure out what he's saying. How do we get this inductive knowledge? We conclude that these states of knowledge are neither innate in a determinative form nor developed from other higher states of knowledge but from sense perception. Oh, OK, good. And now he's going to explain it to us. It's like a route in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted as to be capable of this process, right? And then noticing that that isn't really going to cut it, he says, let us now restate the account given already, though with insufficient clearness. When one of a number of logically indiscriminable particulars has made a stand, and the earliest universal is present in the soul, for through the active sense perception is of the particular, its content is universal. Human, for example, not the individual human callus or Andrew or whatever. A fresh stand is made among these rudimentary universals, and the process does not cease until the indivisible concepts, the true universals are established. For example, such and such species of animal is a step towards the genus animal, which by the same process is a step towards a further generalization, like living thing, being, et cetera. Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises by induction. Thank you for the message.