ABSTRACT
Aristotle realized, however, there was another question. How do we know if our reasons, our premises, are true? We can provide more premises, reasons for the reasons, but this only delays, not resolves the issue, since we can ask all over again for the justification of the new premises. Providing reasons for reasons is the “regress of reasons,” and Aristotle realized that an
infinite
regress, being impossible, would settle nothing. So how can the regress of reasons end? Only if there are propositions that, for whatever reason, do not need to be
logically
proven, i.e., do not need other reasons. These would be “first principles,”
archai
in Greek,
principia
in Latin. Why first principles would not need to be proven is the “Problem of First Principles.” Aristotle’s answer to the problem became the dominant one: First principles do not need to be proven, because they are
self-evident
, i.e., one knows them to be true just by
understanding
them. Aristotle did not believe that we come to understand first principles just by thinking about
them. He was at heart an empiricist, believing that knowledge comes from experience. He realized, however, that first principles are going to be general propositions, about universals, while descriptions of experience are particulars, about individual things. To get from the individuals to the universals is then the process of logical
induction
. Experience is examined, and a multitude of particular truths accumulated, until a generalization, to universals, is made. Aristotle realized that there is a difficulty here. How do we know
how many
individuals need to be examined before a generalization can be made? This is the “Problem of Induction.” A great many white swans can be examined before one happens on Australia and suddenly discovers black swans. Aristotle’s answer connects up with his answer to the Problem of First Principles. The idea is that when we get close enough to a first principle, we are able to make an intuitive leap, an act of “mind” (
noûs
in Greek), by which we achieve an understanding of the principle and its self-evidence. This is possible for a metaphysical reason: the mind absorbs (abstracts) the
essence
(
ousía
in Greek) of the matter from the objects. An essence is what makes something what it is, and in Aristotle’s metaphysics, the form or essence of a thing is its
actuality
.
