[lbo-talk] Conversation with Derrida

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Nov 5 04:40:24 PST 2009


Eubulides wrote:
>
>
> "Now of the intellectual faculties that we use in the pursuit of truth
> some are always true, whereas others -- opinion and calculation--
> admit falsity; and no other kind of knowledge except intuition is more
> accurate than scientific knowledge...It follows that there can be no
> scientific knowledge of the first principles; and since nothing can be
> more infallible than scientific knowledge except intuition, it must be
> intuition that apprehends the first principles. This is also evident
> not only from the foregoing considerations but also because the
> starting point of a demonstration is not itself a demonstration, and
> the starting point of scientific knowledge is not itself scientific
> knowledge [Posterior Analytics II 19, 100]

I haven't read much Aristotle either, nor much commentary -- a very bad mistake. Somewhat surprisingly I got a lot of it, however, just from reading and rereading Langer's _Philosophy in a New Key_ 60 years ago.

***** Apparently intuition is insufficient everyone, however, to grasp the fallacy in the following.

A asseerts X.

A is a jerk.

Therefore X is false. *****

And of course if intuition fails, then (e.g.) it is impossible to grasp a syllogism (or to see the falsity in an invalid syllogism). Carrol



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