Aristotle's “Topics” and linguistic conventionalism in the context of dialectical argumentation

In the paper, some problematic aspects of ancient linguistic conventionalism in the context of Aristotelian philosophy of language, developed in “Topics” and “On Interpretation”, are considered. The dialectical (dialogic-eristic) principle of manipulating various etymological aspects of names (primary / present / suitable / literal) is analyzed within the framework of ancient theories of etymology. The paper substantiates the idea of certain functional closeness of ancient linguistic naturalism to conventionalism for the purposes of dialectical persuasion. Although linguistic naturalism is opposed to conventionalism as an alternative; nonetheless, conventionalism also recognizes the idea of semantic hierarchies of names in the context of primary/secondary, authentic/non-authentic, appropri-ate/inappropriate etymological entities for the purpose of didactics or discussion. Conventionalism and naturalism are functionally indistinguishable at the level of selection and use of etymologies. Moreover, for conventionalism, postulating the connection of a relevant etymon with an appropriate convention, the rejection of a conventionally established meaning of a word may have specific eristic value. In the paper, the etymological transformations of names proposed by Aristotle in “Topics” 112a are explored by means of Stephen Toulmin's minimal argumentative model. Aristotle's argument can be treated as a sophistic legerdemain: if the opponent alters the semantics of the proponent's argument (data), the basis of argumentation (warrant) becomes irrelevant and, consequently, the thesis becomes unsupported. The paper aims to raise research interest in ancient logic and philosophy of language.

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