4 commentary

describes someone who asserts that the diagonal can be measured

because (1) is true. For Aristotle’s opponent claims that (1) entails
(2), and so anyone who allows that (1) is true must therefore allow
(for example) that the diagonal can be measured.
Given that reading of the diagonal example, Aristotle’s response
is entirely appropriate. Aristotle does not endorse his opponent’s
account of modality ascription. He reiterates his own test (1047b 3,
9–11). He then shows that, according to that test, measurement of
the diagonal is impossible (1047b 11–12). But Aristotle’s test leaves
it entirely open that an instance of (1) should be true (and in fact
Aristotle thinks that some instances of (1) are true). So Aristotle
is able to establish by means of his test (3), and consistently with
(1) being true, that measurement of the diagonal is impossible; and
therefore Aristotle shows that (1) does not entail (2).
[C] This interpretation claims many of [B]’s advantages over [A].
Unlike [A], it avoids supposing either that Aristotle himself holds
that no instances of (1) are true, or that Aristotle believes that
(1) would entail (2). But, unlike [B], it fits more easily with the
text.
According to [C], Aristotle’s opponent does assert (1) quite
generally, as a deflationary account of impossibility according to
which all putative impossibilities are really just perpetual false-
hoods. What Aristotle is saying at 1047b 3–6 is that you cannot
assert (1) that something is possible but will never be the case
and draw from that the consequence that (2) nothing is really
impossible. Aristotle’s opponent, according to this interpretation,
is a counter to the Megarian opponent of Θ3. While the Megarian
admits too few possibilities, this opponent admits too many: hence
the parallel between Θ3, 1047a 18–19 (possibility and actuality
are different), and Θ4, 1047b 12–13 (falsity and impossibility are
not the same). Aristotle’s response to this opponent is to show
that, according to (3), the Θ3 test for possibility, some things
are genuinely impossible—for example, the measurement of the
diagonal (1047b 6–12). Aristotle thereby challenges a particular
instance of his opponent’s deflationary strategy: the replacement
of putative impossibilities by mere perpetual falsehoods—that
is, the assertion of (1) in order to establish (2). (For interpreta-
tion [C] see Kung 1978; McClelland 1981, and Owen in Burnyeat
1984: 102.)
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