Aristotle SOPHISTICAL REFUTATIONS Complete

Translated by William Adair Pickard-Cambridge.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

50 pages - You are on Page 28

Part 17

First then, just as we say that we ought sometimes to choose to prove something in the general estimation rather than in truth, so also we have sometimes to solve arguments rather in the general estimation than according to the truth. For it is a general rule in fighting contentious persons, to treat them not as refuting, but as merely appearing to refute: for we say that they don't really prove their case, so that our object in correcting them must be to dispel the appearance of it. For if refutation be an unambiguous contradiction arrived at from certain views, there could be no need to draw distinctions against amphiboly and ambiguity: they do not effect a proof. The only motive for drawing further distinctions is that the conclusion reached looks like a refutation. What, then, we have to beware of, is not being refuted, but seeming to be, because of course the asking of amphibolies and of questions that turn upon ambiguity, and all the other tricks of that kind, conceal even a genuine refutation, and make it uncertain who is refuted and who is not. For since one has the right at the end, when the conclusion is drawn, to say that the only denial made of One's statement is ambiguous, no matter how precisely he may have addressed his argument to the very same point as oneself, it is not clear whether one has been refuted: for it is not clear whether at the moment one is speaking the truth. If, on the other hand, one had drawn a distinction, and questioned him on the ambiguous term or the amphiboly, the refutation would not have been a matter of uncertainty. Also what is incidentally the object of contentious arguers, though less so nowadays than formerly, would have been fulfilled, namely that the person questioned should answer either 'Yes' or 'No': whereas nowadays the improper forms in which questioners put their questions compel the party questioned to add something to his answer in correction of the faultiness of the proposition as put: for certainly, if the questioner distinguishes his meaning adequately, the answerer is bound to reply either 'Yes' or 'No'.

Previous Page / First / Next Page of the SOPHISTICAL REFUTATIONS

Aristotle Home Page ||| Search Aristotle's works

Plato ||| Other Greek Philosophers ||| Elpenor's Free Greek Lessons

Development of Greek Philosophy ||| History of Greek Philosophy ||| History of Ancient Greece

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/aristotle/sophistical-refutations.asp?pg=28