Colloquium Pieter Sjoerd Hasper

Dr. Pieter Sjoerd hasper - Universität Hamburg: Appearances in Aristotle's Theory of Fallacy

Aristotle defines fallacies as incorrect arguments that appear correct, and recommends 'sophists', people who want to appear wise, i.e., to have scientific knowledge, to study his account of fallacies in order to achieve their goal: by refuting real scientists with the help of fallacies, they can appear to have scientific knowledge. For sophists it is thus helpful to know what features an argument should have in order to appear to refute: he should know the 'cause of the appearance'. The problem the paper addresses is that in its core, Aristotle considers fallacies as infringements of the rules for a correct argument (just as in the pragma-dialectical school, for example) and thus as mere errors; and that he uses 'cause of appearance' in three different ways, of which the features of arguments which make them appear correct, namely the similarity with correct arguments, is the least important, if it is at all paid attention to. In reply I will argue that Aristotle's most prominent conception of 'cause of appearance', the types of false beliefs people have when they accept incorrect arguments as correct, is already very helpful for the sophist, and that Aristotle also informs the sophist about ways how to trigger these false beliefs.