Aristotle S Syllogistic From The Standpoint Of Modern Formal Logic

Offering a bold new vision on the history of modern logic, Lukas M. Verburgt and Matteo Cosci focus on the lasting impact of Aristotle's syllogism between the 1820s and 1930s. For over two millennia, deductive logic was the syllogism and syllogism was the yardstick of sound human reasoning. During the 19th century, this hegemony fell apart and logicians, including Boole, Frege and Peirce, took deductive logic far beyond its Aristotelian borders. However, contrary to common wisdom, reflections on syllogism were also instrumental to the creation of new logical developments, such as first-order logic and early set theory. This volume presents the period under discussion as one of both tradition and innovation, both continuity and discontinuity. Modern logic broke away from the syllogistic tradition, but without Aristotle's syllogism, modern logic would not have been born. A vital follow up to The Aftermath of Syllogism, this book traces the longue durée history of syllogism from Richard Whately's revival of formal logic in the 1820s through the work of David Hilbert and the Göttingen school up to the 1930s. Bringing together a group of major international experts, it sheds crucial new light on the emergence of modern logic and the roots of analytic philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Aristotle's Syllogistic Underlying Logic is a ground- breaking and thorough study of Aristotle's logic, including a new translation of select chapters of Prior Analytics that treat the logic's formal components. This study shows that Aristotle consciously modeled his Underlying Logic, that Prior Analytics is a metasystematic discourse with its own underlying logic. The author clearly demonstrates that Aristotle conceived his logic as natural by explicating his notion of human cognition, central to which is his epistemic concern with syllogistic mediation that restricts a syllogism to two premises. The study further represents Aristotle's philosophy of logic as having a fully developed ontology that underlies the epistemics of syllogistic argumentation. It identifies his distinctions between syntax and semantics and provides his definitions of logical consequence and deducibility to demonstrate his metasystematic sophistication. The study carefully sets out Aristotle's metasystematic analyses and his proof-theoretic demonstrations of the logic's soundness and completeness. Unlike previous scholarship, this study works with the entire corpus of the Organon - inclusive of On Expression, Predications, Topics, Sophistical Refutations and chapters of Metaphysics - to assemble Aristotle's underlying logic in Aristotle's own words with extensive citation of primary texts. The translations are accompanied by the original Greek texts that serve as a ready resource for comparative analyses. For the translation of Prior Analytics, the Greek text and the translation appear on facing pages. The author includes a set of principles used for making the translation. An especially innovative feature of the new translation is to block passages of the text and to insert subsection titles that help (1) to elucidate Aristotle's meaning, (2) to indicate the movement of his thinking, and (3) to reveal the careful and systematic character of his logical investigations. The reader will find, in one volume, a thorough and meticulous examination of the full compass of Aristotle's logical investigations that establish him as the founder of formal logic.

For more than two thousand years, Aristotle's Principle of Non-Contradiction was almost universally accepted as the most certain and best known of all logical and metaphysical principles in Western philosophical thought. Hegel was the first modern philosopher to challenge its validity, but it was not until the emergence of modern analytic philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that the truth of the principle became the object of critical analysis and debate. Jan ?ukasiewicz' work on Aristotle and the principle of contradiction, first published in 1910, presents one of the first and truly pioneering investigation into the logical and metaphysical foundations of this principle. ?ukasiewicz applies the newly developed analytic tools of mathematical logic to Aristotle's seminal defense of the principle in Book IV of the Metaphysics and aims to show that the principle is not nearly as secure as the generally accepted, mostly uncritical, and often dogmatic belief in its universal truth would have it. ?ukasiewicz' goal, however, is far more ambitious than a critical analysis of the principle. He wants to develop a revolutionary new logic, a non-Aristotelian logic, a formally constructed logic that does not include or endorse the principle of contradiction in its Aristotelian conception! As such, his work on Aristotle and the principle of contradiction marks the first step in his search for a new logic that does not entail the consequence of an all-encompassing logical determinism, a search that saw its first success some ten years later with his development of a three-valued propositional calculus in 1920. ?ukasiewicz' approach to the issues surrounding the Aristotelian conception of the principle of contradiction and its modern descendants is both historical and analytical-it is a sustained and methodical effort to think critically and historically about logic and the foundations of logical inference. The arguments and results that ?ukasiewicz develops in his metalogical analysis touch on many topics that are still part of a lively and often inconclusive debate that continues to this day.

This book provides detailed treatment of topics in traditional logic: the theory of terms; the theory of definition; the informal fallacies; and division and classification. Aristotelian Logic teaches techniques for solving semantic problems — problems caused by confusion over terminology. It teaches the theory of definition — the different kinds of definition and the criteria by which each is judged. It also teaches that definitions are like tools in that some are better suited for a particular task than others. Several chapters are devoted to informal fallacies. A new classification is given for them, and the concept of proof is presented, without which some of the traditional informal fallacies cannot be explained adequately. Another chapter is devoted to division and classification, which occurs in all of the sciences. Other topics covered include the square of opposition, immediate inferences, and the syllogistic and chain arguments.

Originally published in 1966 On the Syllogism and Other Logical Writings assembles for the first time the five celebrated memoirs of Augustus De Morgan on the syllogism. These are collected together with the more condensed accounts of his researches given in his Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic an article on Logic contributed to the English Cyclopaedia. De Morgan was among the most distinguished of nineteenth century British mathematicians but is chiefly remembered today as one of the founders of modern mathematical logic. His writings on this subject have been little read, however since apart from his Formal Logic, they lie buried for the most part in inaccessible periodicals. De Morgan’s own later amendments are inserted in the text and the editorial introduction gives a summary of the whole and traces in some detail the course of the once-famous feud with Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh.

The present book is the English version of a monograph 'Die aristotelische Syllogistik', which first appeared ten years ago in the series of Abhand 1 lungen edited by the Academy of Sciences in Gottingen. In the preface to the English edition, I would first like to express my indebtedness to Mr. J. Barnes, now fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He not only translated what must have been a difficult text with exemplary precision and ingenuity, but followed critically every argument and check ed every reference. While translating it, he has improved the book. Of those changes which I have made on Mr. Barnes' suggestion I note only the more important ones on pages 4, 12, 24sq, 32, 39, 6lsq, and 158. Since the second edition of the German text appeared in 1963 some further reviews have been published, or come to my notice, which I have 2 been able to make use of in improving the text of this new edition. I must mention here especially the detailed critical discussions of my results and arguments published by Professor W. Wieland in the Philosophische Rundschau 14 (1966), 1-27 and by Professor E. Scheibe in Gnomon 39 (1967), 454-64. Both scholars, while agreeing with the main drift and method of my interpretation, criticise some of my results and disagree with some of my arguments. It would not be possible to discuss these technical matters here with the necessary thoroughness.

This book uncovers and examines the confusion in antiquity between Aristotle’s hypothetical syllogistic and Stoic logic, and offers a fresh perspective on the development of Aristotelian logic through to the early Middle Ages.