Aristotle's Empiricism

Aristotle is famous for thinking that all our knowledge comes from perception. But it’s not immediately clear what this view is meant to entail. For it’s not clear what perception is supposed to contribute to the more advanced forms of knowledge that derive from it, or indeed how we should understand the nature of its contribution—what it might mean to say that these more advanced forms of knowledge are “derived from” or “based on” what we perceive. Aristotle is often thought to have disappointingly little to say on these matters. I argue here that this thought is mistaken: a coherent and philosophically attractive view of perceptual knowledge can be found in the various texts in which Aristotle discusses perception’s role in animal life, the cognitive resources on which it does and does not depend, and the relation it bears to practical and theoretical modes of understanding. What emerges from these discussions is a moderate form of empiricism—an empiricism on which we can develop sophisticated forms of knowledge by broadly perceptual means, but nonetheless rely on our intellectual powers for more advanced forms of understanding. I consider the role this empiricism plays in Aristotle’s account of our learning, and its implications for his views about practical wisdom and the cognitive lives of nonrational animals.