Some remarks against non-epistemic accounts of immediate premises in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1981-9471.v17i2p29-43Keywords:
Aristotle, demonstration, syllogism, immediacy, priorityAbstract
Most interpretations of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics believe that the term ‘ameson’ is used to describe the principles or foundations of a given system of justification or explanation as epistemically prior to or more fundamental than the other propositions in the system. Epistemic readings (as I shall call them) arguably constitute a majority in the secondary literature. This predominant view has been challenged by Robin Smith (1986) and Michael Ferejohn (1994; 2013), who propose interpretations that should be classified as non-epistemic according to the definition above. My aim in this article is purely negative. I intend to show that these non-epistemic interpretations are liable to serious objections and are in conflict with some important features of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration.
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