through and manifest in the particular and so on.250 Thus, the gap in the theory of knowledge must be bridged and the circular definition of knowledge must be broken. But how? Aristotle’s answer is simple: By help of reason, for reason is that activity which is elevated above perception and sensible activities, consequently reason is an activity separated from corporeal restraints and thus purely spiritual in nature.251 Hägerström observes that the problem is that according to Aristotle Reason itself does not have the capacity to create neither the concepts and forms nor the axioms and the principles of proof a priori, Reason itself, the Soul only has the capacity to formally assimilate and classify impressions.Accordingly, neither of these categories, which express absolutely certain knowledge, are a priori in the Human soul.252 According to Hägerström, Aristotle sets Reason as the abstract, purely universal form that assimilates its content from external sources.253 Here, Hägerström interjects that Aristotle’s introduction of Reason fails to solve the problem of how empirical data can be the object of formal knowledge. Hägerström’s analysis shows that Aristotle, in order to bridge the gap between particular knowledge and universal knowledge, introduced what must be called a “third kind” - the definition, which is a category providing the philosophical, formal reason for a thing’s being. It is through the middle term, the definition that the determination of what and the reasons to why a thing is supposed to be facilitated.The definition expresses what something is, while simultaneously constituting a condition for the evidence (that something is), which in turn facilitates the formation of a definition, since the evidence proves that the object p a r t i 1 , c h a p t e r 4 116 4 . 1. 2 solut ion to the aporia of induct ive reasoning 250 Ibid., pp. 59-60. 251 Ibid., pp. 60-61. 252 Ibid., p. 61. 253 Ibid., p. 62.
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