Abstract: Aristotle's solution to the problem raised in Ch. 4 depends on his account of how we arrive at thoughts on the basis of experience. In his view, we standardly acquire a term for a kind on the basis of contact with members of a kind, without thereby knowing that the kind in question exists. Further, we can grasp such terms without knowing that the kind (if it exists) has a unifying basic feature that explains its necessary properties. Our understanding of the kind is to be compared with that of a craftsman and not that of a proto-scientist. Aristotle's view is distinguished from several twentieth-century accounts of these issues (e.g. modern essentialists such as Putnam, neo-Fregeans, dual-component theorists).

Keywords: Aristotle, dual-component theories, essentialism, experience, Frege, master craftsman, Putnam, thought, understanding,