ABSTRACT
OUR NATURAL FLAIR FOR THE TRUTH The Sophist's hard-won disrincrions between names, verbs and sentences were for Aristotle, as they are for us, platitudinous. Aristotle expounds them as such at the start of the De Interpretatione: here they are not the conclusion of a long and agonised investigation, but the obvious starting point for further reftection. And as far as Aristotle is concerned, it is equally platitudinous that we must distinguish merely thinking of a thing from having the son of interweaving of thoughts wh ich alone is capable of teuth and falsehood (e.g. De Anima 430 a 26-8, 432 a 11-12). Ir is unsurprising therefore that Aristotle never devotes anything like Plato's amount of effon to explaining how there can be falsehood. Bur though Aristotle takes it for granted that there can be falsehood, he is equally prone to take it for granted that by and large our thoughts are true. Symptomatic of his attitudes are a few remarks from the beginning of the Rhetoric. At 13 5 5 a 15-17 he telb us that:
people are by nature adequately disposed towards what is teue, and in most respects they do reach the truth. That is why those who can hit on what is respectable are in a similar state to those who can hit on what is true.
