Category Discussions from Ancient Philosophical and Logical Approaches to the Present: The History of Argumentation Studies and Three Different Types of Argumentation in Aristotelian Philosophy

Abstract

When we investigate the history of philosophy from Heraclitus to Aristotle, we see that almost each philosopher in this process has tried to explain (or define) what being, non-being, motion, truth, knowledge, value and so on are. Undoubtedly, the inquiries here are directly related to determine the categories of these mentioned things. As is known, categorization process is a structural activity that shapes all human cognitive processes in terms of classifying not only physical objects but also mental states and abstract ideas. This means that perception, thinking, learning, explaining and making sense of the objects and properties in the external world become possible only through categorization. We claim that the mentioned ancient philosophical discussions on categorization issue historically form the basis of argumentation studies. That Aristotle who’s been influenced by previous philosophical discussions has systematically structured argumentation studies through his theory of categories makes this clear. That Aristotle and some Aristotelian philosophers consider arguments not only as demonstrative (apodeictic) arguments but also dialectical and rhetorical arguments show that argumentation studies have a wide range of application, namely it should not be limited to just demonstrative or rhetorical arguments.

Keywords

• category,argument,demonstration,dialectic

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