Truth, Facts, and Demonstration in Aristotle. Revisiting Dialectical Art and Method

FABIAN MIE

HUMANITAS

Morcelliana

Lugar: Brescia; Año: 2016 vol. 6 p. 97 - 120

0018-7461

As a result of having called into question some views on Aristotelian dialectic made popular by G.E.L. Owen and his followers according to whom the so-called ?dialectical method? is a feasible way to discover scientific principles by examining and solving puzzles , dialectic was no longer seen as sufficient to discover and establish principles. In order to accommodate the scientific use of dialectic anew, two opposite lines of interpretation have been developed. Some interpreters claimed that the dialectical art of argumentation is not really aimed at establishing principles, but it is much more concerned with refuting wrong opinions (Smith, Brunschwig); while others meant that dialectical art is designed to do that, but they controversially make some sort of éndoxa be like empirically well-justified information (Bolton). In this paper, I aim to offer a more balanced solution to the scientific use of éndoxa. I will certainly claim that dialectical art is of methodological use for science, but also that it does not suffice to establish scientific explanatory principles, its very role being located in the pre-demonstrative stage of Aristotelian science, where it pursues for getting at true explainable facts.