Knowledge and Opinion about the same thing in APo A-33

Abstract

I discuss Aristotle’s contrast in Posterior Analytics A-33 between opinion and demonstrative knowledge. I argue that Aristotle is not interested in any general epistemological picture, for his aim is merely to catch the difference between demonstrative knowledge and a specific kind of opinion, i.e., opinions with explanatory claims, i.e., opinions of the form “I believe that C is A because of its being B”. Aristotle’s contrast can be perfectly understood from main features of his notion of demonstrative knowledge, like explanatory relevance. The so called “modal” terminology in the chapter is merely an awkward way of expressing the same concerns about explanatory relevance.