Aristotle's Life – Lecture 21 (History of Philosophy)

Discussion (3)

• Denis A

  105d ago

  Facts are not really the starting point, they are pre-supposed.

• Donny

  95d ago

  Right, that's what we mean by starting point in his context; what is assumed to be true. Prior to Aristotle, philosophers would assume their theory to be true, and took no issue with it contradicting the facts (classifying facts contrary to their theory as some how being illusions). Aristotle thinks a science ought to start by inductively reasoning on the facts to premises (your theory), and then applying logic to those premises to come to conclusions. He's the first (at least that's explicitly stated) to use facts as the criterion for validating/discarding a theory.

  • Denis A

    88d ago

    If you are going to assume the theory/context of the other philosophers, then there was no "contradicting the facts". The other philosophers may have referenced illusions but not because they were "contradictory facts" but rather because an illusion is just a error that you don't think is an error. Therefore, you can't say that Aristotle started with facts and others did not, but rather that whatever the presuppositions were for each philosopher, were indeed capital "F" the facts.

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