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Necessity and Deliberation: An Argument from De Interpretatione 9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sarah Waterlow Broadie
Sarah Waterlow Broadie*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, CT06520U.S.A.
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Extract

In De Interpretatione 9 Aristotle considers the proposition that everything that is or comes to be, is or comes to be of necessity. From the supposition that this is so, he draws the following consequence: ‘[In that case] there would be no need (ού δέοο) to deliberate or take trouble, [saying] that if we do this there will be so and so, and if we do not do this there will not be so and so’ (18b31-3). Finding this result absurd, he rejects the supposition and concludes that some events or states of affairs are contingent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 289 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 Another absurd consequence: there would be no place for ‘chance.’ See e.g. 18b15-16.

2 19a1-5

3 ‘On What Would Have Happened Otherwise: A Problem for Determinism,’ The Review of Metaphysics 39 (1986), 433-56

4 Sorabji, Richar Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1983Google Scholar)

5 Sorabji, 228

6 Sorabji, 252

7 EN VI.2, 1139a13-14; cf, III.5, 1112a21-23 and EE II.10, 1226a21-22. See also 1225b34-36. For reference to the reasonable person, see EN III.5. 1112a19-21.

8 Sorabji, 228; cf. 251

9 EN III.5, 1112a30-34; b32; 4, 1111b30; EE II.10, 1226a20ff.; b15-16

10 The degree of likelihood that must obtain, if it is to be reasonable for him to deliberate, may vary with the situation and with the degree of importance attached to the outcome.

11 Sorabji, 228

12 For a different reconstruction see my review of R.W. Sharples’ Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate in Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 17, 1984, 173.

13 For a detailed discussion, see Waterlow, S. Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotle's ‘Physics,’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar), esp. ch. 3.

14 Probems concerning the time of bringing about were made the basis of an ancient sceptical attack on the notion of cause: see Barnes, J. ‘Ancient Skepticism and Causation,’ in Burnyeat, M. ed., The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1983) 149-203.Google Scholar To Barnes, the doubts arise from what he calls a ’fundamental error,‘ to wit: ‘that of treating causing as a dateable event, an occurrence in the world’ (186). Presumably Barnes would not deny that the so-called error is entrenched in what I have called ‘our natural way of thinking,’ any more than I would deny that a natural thought is not necessarily a coherent one. In what follows I attempt to show that the ‘error’ has some constructive implications too.

15 Notably Alexander of Aphrodisias: see esp. De Fato XI, 178-9. For an independent discussion of the problem in Alexander, see the article referred to in n. 12.

16 Cf. Barnes, 185-6.

17 Which is not to say that the time thus indicated bears no relation to the times of the items related. We can hardly make sense of the suggestion that the bringing about of Y by X was prior to the existence or occurrence of X, or that it was posterior to that of Y. For problems, see Barnes in M. Burnyeat, ed.

18 Or, for that matter, the more complex Stoic classification.

19 I should like to thank an anonymous referee at the CJP for helpful comments.