Aristotle's answer: the relation between language and reality in Metaphysics Book

• Grant number: 15/21405-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2015
• End date: November 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marisa da Silva Lopes
• Grantee: Rafael José da Silva
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research has as its goal to analyze the relation between language and reality in Aristotle's philosophy, taking as a central problem the support of the discourse from Meaning Theory and the establishment of Non-Contradiction Principle, both presented by the Stagirite in Metaphysics book “. The question that moves such theses is that of the possibility of declarative discourse, in other words, the possibility of enunciation, which is set to dispute the notion of identity between being and thinking, once introduced by Parmenides and mainly marked by Sophistic reception of Eleatic philosophy. The problem brought by Sophist school deprives the discourse from its essential susceptibility to truth or falsity as far as it conceives the language as an instrument of persuasion, an instrument that deals with appearances intending only to convince the interlocutor of what has been said, once the discourse, in obedience to the Eleatic principle of identity, would admit contradiction and then would be unable to point to an impersonal sphere, that is, to point to the being of things itself. Keeping up with this discussion presented by Plato in the dialogue "Sophist", whose central section investigates the possibility of a false enunciation and the relationship between what the discourse must keep to that which it describes, so Aristotle proposed a theory on the foundations of language and logic. In Metaphysics book “, Aristotle exposes two foundations that justify the possibility of discourse to express the being as such and its faculty to truth or falsity: the Meaning Theory and the Non-Contradiction Principle. In his attempt to answer the questions raised by the Sophists and face the problems arising from identity and false enunciation, the Stagirite redefined the relationship between lógos and ón when he discerned a certain distance between language and being, a thesis that conceives being as permeable to discourse and establishes the links between both of them. Aristotelian solution consists of defending the link of mere possibility of meaning to the Non-Contradiction Principle. Therefore, we will analyze the nexus between the Meaning Theory and the Non-Contradiction Principle and which are the necessary conditions for a declarative act any may be defined as a meaningful discourse able to refer itself to the world, explaining the relationship between logical principle and its ontological foundation; in few words, how discourse structure connects itself to the structure of reality. (AU)