Aristotle on 'Logical'
One of the perplexing aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy is
his use of the word ‘logical’. For example, in Metaphysics Zeta 4, Aristotle speaks ‘logically’ concerning
substance, which seems to be about what we can say of the account of a
substance without bringing in form or matter. An even more unusual use of
‘logical’ appears in Topics V.1 where
Aristotle distinguishes between two distinctions of propria (i.e. non-essential characteristics of some individual or
class that distinguish it from something else).
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The second distinction is between propria that sometimes distinguish some individual or class and
those that always distinguish them. Thus, whereas being the fastest man in the world at the 100m dash is a proprium of Usain Bolt presently (or at
least until recently it was), it has not always been a proprium of him, since even limiting ourselves to the time in which
Usain Bolt has been alive he was not always the fastest. On the other hand,
something like being able to laugh is
always a proprium of human beings. I
will call the former ‘temporary propria’
and the latter ‘permanent’.
These two distinctions overlap in interesting ways. Some
permanent properties will be kath auto
(e.g. being able to laugh for man)
and others will be pros heteron (e.g.
being able to command for the soul
relative to the body). Similarly, some temporary properties will be kath auto (e.g. Usain Bolt’s being the fastest man at the 100m dash)
and some will be pros heteron (e.g.
Joseph’s being the youngest son,
which is relative to Jacob’s other sons and only true until Benjamin was born).
This brings us to the point about Aristotle’s use of
‘logical’ in this chapter. He describes three sets of propria as ‘most logical’: kath
auto propria, pros heteron propria, and permanent propria. Now as we see, these are not
mutually exclusive classes, since permanent propria
can be either kath auto or pros heteron. Thus Aristotle’s point
seems rather to be that compared to the permanent propria of whichever sort, the temporary propria are less ‘logical’.
Now what does ‘logical’ or ‘logikos’ mean in this claim?
I see two possibilities. First, it might mean that permanent
propria are more logically
perspicuous than temporary ones. Second, coming as the remark does in the context
of Aristotle’s claims about how many ‘problemata’
(instead of taking this as ‘objections’ we could take it to mean something like
‘lines of refutation’), it could mean that permanent propria have more problemeta
than temporary ones. The following lines seem to suggest that this is true and
also indicate that they justify this claim. Why do permanent propria have more lines of refutation?
The reasoning is simple. To show that a permanent proprium does not belong to some individual or class A (n.b. it will only apply to eternal
individuals), we can show either that it belongs to something other than A or
that it does not belong to all A, and we can show that one of these two things
is true either sometimes or always. On the other hand, we have half as many
ways to object that a temporary proprium
does not belong to some A because we have to show that one of these two things
is true always.
This seems to suggest that being more logical means being
able to be refuted in more ways, which is certainly a strange account of
logicality. Yet actually a direct relationship between the number of problemeta a claim has and how logical
it is isn’t so ridiculous. Indeed, a claim that has so many problemeta is clearly one that we should
attack first and foremost using logic, and similarly if we mean to defend it we
must do so by responding to various objections organized logically.
Contrastingly, a temporary proprium
is very difficult to attack or defend logically. Indeed, as Aristotle says, our
inquiry is relatively simple and short on arguments because we just see if at
some given time A is the only thing with the given attribute.
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