CAN ARISTOTLE SOLVE MENO’S PARADOX IN THE CASE OF SEARCH FOR A SPECIES?

Authors

  • Игорь Владимирович  Берестов Institute of Philosophy and Law of Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, 8, ul. Nikolaeva, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation;

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu17.2017.406

Abstract

The article is devoted to analyzing the possibility for Aristotle to solve the version of Meno’s Paradox that threatens his project of building scientific knowledge. The author has shown that in order to implement the project one must to provide the possibility of search for a species, which is previously known to fall under a given genus. As he has established, the analyzing species version of Meno’s Paradox differs from the version Aristotle discusses in Analitica Posteriora, I, 1. As the author shows, it is quite natural to treat species in the species version as abstract objects in the sense of E. Zalta’s theory of abstract objects. He argues that the holistic approach to the object of knowledge, probably supported by Plato and Speusippus, makes it impossible to acquire a step-by-step knowledge about the species that fall under the given genus.
However, as the author shows, Aristotle has no reason to support a holistic approach. Neverthe-less, the article demonstrates that the search for species as abstract objects faces other difficulties. First, it is meaningless to search for such an abstract object that encodes a generic property: it already exists exactly as described. Secondly, any abstract object encoding any properties will satisfy the search con-dition if the properties encoded by it are supplemented with the search condition. Such non-selectivity of the finding, again, makes all the process of searching meaningless. Therefore, the author сomes to the conclusion that Meno’s Paradox cannot be considered as conclusively resolved by Aristotle. Refs. 20.

Keywords:

Meno’s Paradox, Posterior Analytics, genus and species, classification, eidos, episteme, Speusippus, holism, intentional acts, abstract objects, E. Zalta, objectual attitudes

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References

Литература

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References

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Scott D. Plato’s Meno. Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2006. x+238 p.

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Linsky B. Zalta E. N. Naturalized Platonism versus Platonized Naturalism. The Journal of Philosophy1995 vol. 92 no. 10 pp. 525–555.

Zalta E. N. Fregean Senses Modes of Presentation and Concepts. Philosophical Perspectives (Nous Supplement)2001 vol. 15 pp. 335–339.

Forbes G. Objectual attitudes. Linguistics and Philosophy2000 vol. 23 no. 2 pp. 141–183.

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Published

2018-10-02

How to Cite

Берестов, И. В. (2018). CAN ARISTOTLE SOLVE MENO’S PARADOX IN THE CASE OF SEARCH FOR A SPECIES?. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 33(4), 446–455. https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu17.2017.406

Issue

Vol. 33 No. 4 (2017): Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies

Section

Philosophy

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Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.