If you asked an Aristotelian philosopher whether Carol the grocer was mortal, they would say "Yes." If you asked them how they knew, they would say "All humans are mortal, Carol is human, therefore Carol is mortal." Ask them whether it was a guess or a certainty, and they would say it was a certainty (if you asked before the sixteenth century, at least). Ask them how they knew that humans were mortal, and they would say it was established by definition.
I highly doubt that this would be true of typical pre-sixteenth century Aristotelian philosophers. After all, Carol may be an angel or demon pretending to be human.
Today's post, Words as Hidden Inferences was originally published on 03 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Parable of Hemlock, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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