Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, in 4 key points

This Greek philosopher laid the foundations of Western thought by explaining how the mind works.

In the history of philosophy, Aristotle's theory of knowledge is one of the most relevant intellectual ingredients in the construction of Western culture. In fact, even if we have never heard of this Greek scholar (as difficult as this may be today), without realizing it, his philosophical works are influencing the way we think.

In the following we will see what Aristotle's theory of knowledge consists ofThe following is a way of understanding the way in which our intellectual activity is formed.

Aristotle's theory of knowledge.

These are the main elements that structure Aristotle's theory of knowledge. However, it should be noted that there are many explanatory gaps in it, partly because at the time of this thinker it was not customary to develop philosophical systems very much.

1. The primacy of the senses

According to Aristotle's theory of knowledge, the senses are the starting point of any form of knowledge. This means that any information likely to trigger intellectual activity is contained in the "raw" sensory data that enter our body through the eyes, ears, smell, etc.

In this sense, Aristotelian thought clearly differs from the ideas of Plato, for whom what surrounds us cannot be known nor can it generate meaningful intellectual activity, given that the material is mutable and is constantly changing.

2. The creation of concepts

As we have seen, the process of generating knowledge begins with sensory stimuli. However, up to this stage, the process is the same as what according to this philosopher occurs in the minds of other forms of animal life. This knowledge is of a sensitive type, and is not exclusive to human beings.

The properly human process of cognition, according to Aristotle's theory of knowledge, begins with the way in which we elaborate sensory data to arrive at more abstract conclusions than what we have seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. To do this, first of all common sense unifies the properties of the object or entity we are perceiving to create a "common sense". that we are perceiving to create a "mental image" of it thanks to our imaginative capacity.

So, although everything starts with the perceptual impression, it is necessary for that information to pass through a series of mental mechanisms. How is it done?

3. To know is to identify

As Aristotle admits that reality is composed of changing elements, for him to know means to know how to identify what each thing is. This process of identification consists in recognizing the efficient, the formal, the material and the final cause. All these are potentialities that for Aristotle reside in matter and that allow us to understand each thing and what it will be transformed into.

Thus, the combination of imagination and memory not only makes us retain an image of what we have experienced through the senses, but also provides us with a first piece from which we can understand what are the potentials of the senses. we can understand what the potentialities of each thing are, how it is and how it is going to be transformed.how it is and how it is changing. For example, thanks to this we know that from a seed can grow a tree, and also that a part of the tree can be used to build houses and ships.

So, from the impressions left by the senses, we create abstractions. These abstractions are not reflections of a reality composed of pure ideas, as Plato believed, but are representations of qualities contained in material elements that make up physical reality.

4. The creation of universals

Parallel to the creation of the image we generate a universal of that idea, that is, the concept that we will apply not only to what we have seen, heard, touched and tasted, but also to other hypothetical elements with which we have not come into direct contact, on the one hand, and others that we had not seen before, on the other.

For Aristotle, the process by which from the impression the universal is created is carried out by something he calls "agent understanding", whereas from the recognition of the universal inwhile the recognition of the universal in the new forms of sensory stimuli is carried out by the "patient understanding".

An intellectual legacy that still affects us today.

Aristotle is and has been one of the most remembered Greek philosophers in history, and not without reason.and not without reason. The influences of his thought are still present today, more than two millennia after his birth.

Along with Plato, his work in epistemological philosophy has laid the foundation of Western culture influenced by Christianity, which in the Middle Ages articulated its explanations of nature using the ideas of this thinker.

Today the influences of the Church are no longer so noticeable, but many elements that were used to shape its doctrine are still in force, and Aristotelian thought is one of them. In fact, since the Renaissance, at the same time that the question of knowledge being revealed by God began to be called into question, the principles of Aristotle were also reinforced, to the point that they made one of the main currents of philosophy, such as empiricismThe work of the Greek was totally indebted to the work of the Greek.