CEU Hosts Public Lecture by Pieter Sjoerd Hasper on Aristotle’s Account of Experience

On March 2nd, 2010, the Department of Philosophy welcomed Pieter Sjoerd Hasper, current Adam Smith Guest Professor at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, who delivered his lecture: “Between Perception and Scientific Knowledge: Aristotle’s Account of Experience”.

Throughout his works Aristotle claims that scientific knowledge is of universals. It is an important claim for him, because he holds that there are only definitions of universals, and not of particulars; and definitions are at the basis of scientific knowledge. Moreover, he also characterizes other epistemic states, such as knowledge consisting of having experience, in contrast to being concerned with particulars.

Hasper discussed two problems with this claim. First, if experience is of particulars, Aristotle’s idea that experience may concern universal propositions seems inconsistent – as it has indeed been held to be. Second, Aristotle’s claim that knowledge is of universals might get him into trouble, for he rejects the Platonic position that universals are ontologically primary and exist independently from particulars. Aristotle thus faces the difficulty of having to explain how scientific knowledge can be of universals without committing himself to independently existing universals and without reducing this knowledge of universals to knowledge of particulars.

Both problems can be solved, Hasper argued, by taking seriously the context of proof in which Aristotle formulates his account of scientific knowledge. The concept of proof Aristotle presupposes is that of proof conducted in the case of an arbitrary individual. Hasper discussed first Aristotle’s argument against the existence of Platonic Forms as an argument concerning the ontological status of this arbitrary individual: is it a universal or a particular? Then Hasper showed that with Aristotle’s account of such proofs it is possible to interpret his claim that scientific knowledge is of universals in such a way that it does not also entail that forms of knowledge which are of particulars cannot be universal, and that it allows Aristotle to maintain the ontological primacy of particulars without reducing scientific knowledge to some form of knowledge of particulars.

Pieter Sjoerd Hasper is Research Fellow in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and the recipient of the 2004 Keetje Hodshon Price.