Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and deliver human trust online at

www. History of Philosophy dot net.

Today's episode A Principal Stand Aristotle's Epistemology.

All men, by nature, desire to know. This is the opening line of Aristotle's metaphysics.

It expresses his conviction that the thirst for knowledge is not something limited to full-time thinkers like himself.

It's something we all share.

But the fact that everybody wants something doesn't mean that everybody gets it.

After all, most of us would like to live

forever, but no one has managed that yet. I myself hope to achieve immortality. I may need to,

if I'm going to cover the whole history of philosophy in these podcasts. need to

be if I'm going to cover the whole history of philosophy in these podcasts.

Everyone does get what they want at least to some extent.

Everybody knows quite a few things.

You for instance know that you are listening to a

podcast right now. You know that the podcast is about Aristotle. You know what you had for breakfast.

And I do hope you had a good breakfast, since, as you also also know it's the most important meal of the day.

But what allows you to say that you know any of these things?

What in fact is knowledge?

As I've mentioned before, this is the core question of the area of philosophy called

epistemology, the study of knowledge. Epistemology recognizes a basic distinction between

knowledge and mere belief.

Clearly these are different.

...