Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Edward Feser, On some alleged quantifier shift fallacies, Part III

We’ve been looking at alleged cases of the quantifier shift fallacy committed by prominent philosophers. We’ve seen that Aquinas and Locke can both be acquitted of the charge. Let’s now look at the common accusation that Aristotle commits the fallacy in the Nicomachean Ethics. Harry Gensler tells us that “Aristotle argued, ‘Every agent acts for an end, so there must be some (one) end for which every agent acts.’” But what does Aristotle actually say? And need it be interpreted the way Gensler interprets it?

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