Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book I

It can be a difficult thing to begin reading Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book I and not come away with the initial impression that he is not the brightest of philosopher, though it must be admitted that any impression carried by a modern reader is undoubtedly swayed by his or her own removal from Aristotle's own time and (lack of proper?) understanding of science.

While Aristotle's first statement in Metaphysics, that "All human beings by nature desire to know" (115) is arguably true, Aristotle's arguments for the idea are not very good. For instance, he argues that "a sign of this is our liking for the senses; for even apart from their usefulness we like them for themselves" (115). In other words, we humans desire to know things because we like our senses. What? The extension of that argument, that "even apart from their usefulness we like them for themselves," is a classic example of a philosopher spouting something that sounds good until you think about it. We like our senses even apart from their usefulness? Really? How exactly is that possible? Let's say the sense of sight's usefulness, for example, lies in the fact that it enables us to distinguish between things, i.e. so that we don't run into things or so that we can tell one thing from another with relative ease. Well, what exactly is sight used for besides that? How can one like sight apart from its usefulness if all you can do with it is see things? No, sight, as well as our other senses, is liked precisely because of its usefulness.

Aristotle is using this line of thinking to build his argument that our sense perception leads us to memory, which builds to experience and thus finally to craft or reasoning. (As an aside here, even if craft or reasoning is a sign of knowing, that infers nothing as to a human's desire to know, it just follows that humans eventually get to know something, not that they desired to.) It is at this point he brings his vast knowledge of the biology of the animal kingdom into play, saying that in some animals, but not all, "perception results in memory, making them more intelligent and better at learning that those that cannot remember" (115). The assertion that those beings who can remember are better at learning than those who cannot is valid; the assertion that only some animals possess memory is arguable, at best. Even rats have been shown in lab tests to remember being shocked after hearing certain tones and to act accordingly the next time the tone is played.

What makes Aristotle's logic here even less weighty is his choice of examples for animals that cannot learn. He says, "Some animals that cannot hear sounds (for instance, bees and similar kinds of animal) are intelligent but do not learn" (115). Now the assertion that bees cannot hear sound is a question for Google, but the assertion that bees are intelligent but do not learn is ridiculous.

It is probably 100 percent certain that Aristotle did not have The Discovery Channel, but if he did he would know that bees tell other bees in their colony where pollen is by performing a dance for them which somehow gives them directions to find it. This means that not only do bees have a memory with the capacity to recall directions, but that they also have the capacity to see a coded dance, interpret that dance, and remember the information coded in that dance in order to find a particular location. (This also brings into play the interesting notion of Aristotle's later assertion that "a sign that distinguishes those who know from those who do not is their ability to teach" (116). It would seem that following this logic even bees can be considered to have craft and reasoning, as they can apparently teach things to each other.)

It would seem then that Aristotle's claim that "Nonhuman animals live by appearances and memories but have little share in experience" (115) is not entirely accurate. Again, while some of Aristotle's philosophies in this book are intriguing, it can be hard to give them too much weight when there are so many disputable discrepancies such as these within its first two pages.

Source:

Aristotle. "Metaphysics." Introductory Readings. Trans. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996.