Epistemic status: I’m no expert on this, but I’m fairly confident in my understanding.
Yeah, saying that dialectica simply means logic is actually misleading and I likely should edit that note to be clearer.
I think that many of Bacon’s terms are best understood with reference to Aristotle’s system (after all, the whole name of the book is a reference to Aristotle’s). Probably others at the time, if they’d all been reading Aristotle, would be using the terms in that way too when talking philosophy of science. Key terms are dialectical arguments, syllogism, deduction, and demonstration. SEP’s explanations of these seemed clear to me in its article on Aristotle’s logic.
I’ll try to quote/explain a few pieces for those interested.
As I touched on in a note above, Aristotelian science involves starting with some premises about nature which are assumed to be true and then applying logic/deduction to derive new conclusions. I believe Bacon’s issue isn’t with logic itself, but with the way logic is being applied to what Bacon believes are wholly unjustified premises. The whole question of “where do you get your premises from?” is a big question in understanding Aristotle.
For this reason, science requires more than mere deduction. Altogether, then, the currency of science is demonstration (apodeixis), where a demonstration is a deduction with premises revealing the causal structures of the world, set forth so as to capture what is necessary and to reveal what is better known and more intelligible by nature (APo 71b33–72a5, Phys. 184a16–23, EN 1095b2–4).
Aristotle’s approach to the appropriate form of scientific explanation invites reflection upon a troubling epistemological question: how does demonstration begin? If we are to lay out demonstrations such that the less well known is inferred by means of deduction from the better known, then unless we reach rock-bottom, we will evidently be forced either to continue ever backwards towards the increasingly better known, which seems implausibly endless, or lapse into some form of circularity, which seems undesirable. The alternative seems to be permanent ignorance.
There’s specifically a section on Dialectical Argument. Dialectic arguments seem to be variations on demonstrations which involves taking different premises. There’s disagreement about which exact premises Aristotle means.
8. Dialectical Argument and the Art of Dialectic
Aristotle often contrasts dialectical arguments with demonstrations. The difference, he tells us, is in the character of their premises, not in their logical structure: whether an argument is a sullogismos is only a matter of whether its conclusion results of necessity from its premises. The premises of demonstrations must be true and primary, that is, not only true but also prior to their conclusions in the way explained in the Posterior Analytics. The premises of dialectical deductions, by contrast, must be accepted (endoxos).
8.1 Dialectical Premises: The Meaning of Endoxos
Recent scholars have proposed different interpretations of the term endoxos. Aristotle often uses this adjective as a substantive: ta endoxa, “accepted things”, “accepted opinions”. On one understanding, descended from the work of G. E. L. Owen and developed more fully by Jonathan Barnes and especially Terence Irwin, the endoxa are a compilation of views held by various people with some form or other of standing: “the views of fairly reflective people after some reflection”, in Irwin’s phrase. Dialectic is then simply “a method of argument from [the] common beliefs [held by these people]”. For Irwin, then, endoxa are “common beliefs”. Jonathan Barnes, noting that endoxa are opinions with a certain standing, translates with “reputable”.
My own view is that Aristotle’s texts support a somewhat different understanding. He also tells us that dialectical premises differ from demonstrative ones in that the former are questions, whereas the latter are assumptions or assertions: “the demonstrator does not ask, but takes”, he says. This fits most naturally with a view of dialectic as argument directed at another person by question and answer and consequently taking as premises that other person’s concessions. Anyone arguing in this manner will, in order to be successful, have to ask for premises which the interlocutor is liable to accept, and the best way to be successful at that is to have an inventory of acceptable premises, i.e., premises that are in fact acceptable to people of different types.
In fact, we can discern in the Topics (and the Rhetoric, which Aristotle says depends on the art explained in the Topics) an art of dialectic for use in such arguments. My reconstruction of this art (which would not be accepted by all scholars) is as follows.
If Bacon has a similar interpretation as the above, that the premises taken are just whatever whoever you’re talking with is likely to accept or just what is commonly believed or is “reputable”, then it makes sense why he’d write:
29. Anticipations and dialectics have their place in sciences based on opinions and dogmas, because in those sciences the aim is to be master of •what people believe but not of •the facts.
So it’s this sense of logic + unfounded premises (just what people already believe) that Bacon finds so offensive.
I couldn’t quickly find examples of Aristotelian science, but here’s one concerning thunder:
Premise: Sound accompanies the extinguishing of fire.
Premise: Fire is extinguished in the clouds.
Therefore, a sound [thunder] occurs in the clouds.
The logic is valid, but the conclusion is only as good the premises, which Bacon reckons are often not very good. Bacon says you can’t just come up with general premises based on what seems generally correct from non-systematic, common-sense observation.
Epistemic status: I’m no expert on this, but I’m fairly confident in my understanding.
Yeah, saying that dialectica simply means logic is actually misleading and I likely should edit that note to be clearer.
I think that many of Bacon’s terms are best understood with reference to Aristotle’s system (after all, the whole name of the book is a reference to Aristotle’s). Probably others at the time, if they’d all been reading Aristotle, would be using the terms in that way too when talking philosophy of science. Key terms are dialectical arguments, syllogism, deduction, and demonstration. SEP’s explanations of these seemed clear to me in its article on Aristotle’s logic.
I’ll try to quote/explain a few pieces for those interested.
As I touched on in a note above, Aristotelian science involves starting with some premises about nature which are assumed to be true and then applying logic/deduction to derive new conclusions. I believe Bacon’s issue isn’t with logic itself, but with the way logic is being applied to what Bacon believes are wholly unjustified premises. The whole question of “where do you get your premises from?” is a big question in understanding Aristotle.
There’s specifically a section on Dialectical Argument. Dialectic arguments seem to be variations on demonstrations which involves taking different premises. There’s disagreement about which exact premises Aristotle means.
If Bacon has a similar interpretation as the above, that the premises taken are just whatever whoever you’re talking with is likely to accept or just what is commonly believed or is “reputable”, then it makes sense why he’d write:
So it’s this sense of logic + unfounded premises (just what people already believe) that Bacon finds so offensive.
I couldn’t quickly find examples of Aristotelian science, but here’s one concerning thunder:
The logic is valid, but the conclusion is only as good the premises, which Bacon reckons are often not very good. Bacon says you can’t just come up with general premises based on what seems generally correct from non-systematic, common-sense observation.
See also: Empty Labels