Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

I
ON THE CONCEPT
OF TRUTH
(Lecture delivered to the Vienna Philosophical
Society on 27 March, 1889)
1. When Aristotle laid the foundations of science, in the broadest sense of that term, he
needed a scientific terminology. None existed. He had to invent one himself, and his
accomplishment showed great perspicacity and a delicate scientific touch.
A whole set of terms was entirely his own invention; other terms he took over from
ordinary speech; where these were vague he provided sharp delineation, and where they
were ambiguous he distinguished between their various meanings, always attempting to
elucidate their content by breaking it up into its conceptual components.
2. Unanticipated equivocations emerged in connection with the term cause, the term part,
and even in connection with being.
Generally speaking, certain kinds of equivocation were found in almost every word, or
at least in entire classes of words. Consider, for example, the ambiguity which stems from
our using one and the same term to designate sometimes an activity, sometimes a power,
sometimes a capacity for an activity. We may say of a man that he sees, even if his eyes
happen to be closed, thus distinguishing him from a blind man; we mean that he has the
capacity to see. We may say of someone that he doesn’t hear, and in saying this we wish to
convey that he is deaf. We say that man is a thinking being, and yet without contradiction
we may speak of a man who has just lost consciousness. We say that a man has knowledge
if he is able to supply good grounds for his opinion; but we attribute knowledge even to the
sleeping scholar provided that he has acquired certain dispositions. Again, we may say of
a man “I know what it is that he wants” even though the man himself may not be thinking
about what it is that he wants. We say of someone that he plays the flute, sometimes when
we want to say that he is actually playing, but at other times when we wish merely to
attribute to him the skill of flute-playing. And so on.
3. Aristotle did not eliminate equivocations of this sort; they have a kind of regularity
and might be said to belong to the spirit of language. On the contrary, he imitated and
multiplied them. No one who properly considers the matter will condemn him for this.
The many attacks which have been levelled against Aristotle because of this ambiguity
of his terms are without justification. It is true that his way of writing often gave rise to
misunderstandings; the compression of his style really presupposes another Aristotle as a
reader.
4. He was aware of the danger presented to logic by equivocation, and he studied this
linguistic phenomenon thoroughly. He distinguished three classes: accidental equivocations,