Discussion of the Aristotelian syllogistic over the last sixty years has arguably centered on the question whether syllogisms are inferences or implications. But the significance of this debate at times has been taken to concern whether the syllogistic is a logic or a theory, and how it ought to be represented by modern systems. Largely missing from this discussion has been a study of the few passages in the Prior Analytics where Aristotle provides explicit guidance on how to individuate syllogisms. (...) I argue that syllogisms are individuated by unordered premise pairs and so may be fruitfully thought of as multi-succedent sequents. I conclude by drawing a few consequences for the representation of the syllogistic. (shrink)

This paper discusses the following question: why was the term “dunatos” (“possible”) employed by Aristotle as an alternative label for imperfect syllogisms in his discussion of assertoric syllogistic? My answer ascribes to Aristotle a bottom up perspective, in which he stresses what is necessary in the premise-pairs to attain target conclusions of a given form within a given figure. I argue that “dunatos” is employed by Aristotle to stress that an imperfect syllogism is always one of the possible options to (...) attain a conclusion of a given form within a given figure. I also argue that this picture sheds some light on Aristotle’s clarifications of the final clause in his definition of syllogism. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant on Aristotle’s logic. The Sections I, II, III, and IV list respectively 23 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. Section I starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article—from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his discovery of Aristotle’s natural deduction system—and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article—from his Buffalo period first reporting his original results. It ends with works published in 2015. (...) Some items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that, in retrospect, are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 10 items published in the 1970s, 24 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 60 in the 2000s, and 70 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally in some cases, even of the Łukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably George Boger, Charles Kahn, John Mulhern, Mary Mulhern, Anthony Preus, Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. (shrink)

The article examines the relevance of Aristotle’s analysis that concerns the syllogistic figures. On the assumption that Aristotle’s analytics was inspired by the method of geometric analysis, we show how Aristotle used the three terms, when he formulated the three syllogistic figures. So far it has not been appropriately recognized that the three terms — the major, the middle and the minor one — were viewed by Aristotle syntactically and predicatively in the form of diagrams. Many scholars have misunderstood Aristotle (...) in that in the second and third figure the middle term is outside and that in the second figure the major term is next to the middle one, whereas in the third figure it is further from it. By means of diagrams, we have elucidated how this perfectly accords with Aristotle's planar and graphic arrangement. In the light of these diagrams, one can appropriately capture the definition of syllogism as a predicative set of terms. Irrespective of the tricky question concerning the abbreviations that Aristotle himself used with reference to these types of predication, the reconstructed figures allow us better to comprehend the reductions of syllogism to the first figure. We assume that the figures of syllogism are analogous to the figures of categorical predication, i.e., they are specific syntactic and semantic models. Aristotle demanded certain logical and methodological competence within analytics, which reflects his great commitment and contribution to the field. (shrink)

Aristotle's General Definition of the Syllogism may be taken as consisting of two parts: the Inferential Conditions and the Final Clause. Although this distinction is well known, traditional interpretations neglect the Final Clause and its influence on syllogistic. Instead, the aforementioned tradition focuses on the Inferential Conditions only. We intend to show that this neglect has severe consequences not just on syllogistic but on the whole exegesis of Aristotle's Prior Analytics I. Due to these consequences, our objective is to analyse (...) the General Definition's Final Clause and its consequences on syllogistic. We propose a reading of the Final Clause as an additional criterion for distinguishing some arguments as properly syllogistic ones and as a main theme which connects all parts of the Prior Analytics I into one coherent piece of work. (shrink)

De acordo com Aristóteles, conhecemos algo cientificamente quando apreendemos a causa pela qual essa coisa é e apreendemos, também, certa relação necessária entre aquilo que pretendemos conhecer e o que descobrimos ser a causa adequada que explica por que tal fato é o caso. Além disso, o filósofo identifica o conhecimento científico com a posse de um silogismo científico ou demonstração. Neste trabalho, analisamos a relação entre a teoria demonstrativa que Aristóteles desenvolve, principalmente, no livro I dos Segundos Analíticos e (...) sua teoria silogística dos Primeiros Analíticos I e tentamos responder por que o conhecimento científico deve ser via silogismo. Também procuramos explicitar como as noções de causa e de necessidade, pelas quais Aristóteles define o conhecimento científico, são contempladas pela exigência de que as proposições de uma demonstração sejam per se. Finalmente, discutiremos como essas noções de per se, necessidade e causa se encaixam na estrutura silogística, uma vez que conhecer algo cientificamente é possuir um silogismo científico. (shrink)

JUNE 2015 UPDATE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY: JOHN CORCORAN’S PUBLICATIONS ON ARISTOTLE 1972–2015 By John Corcoran -/- This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant to his research on Aristotle’s logic. Sections I, II, III, and IV list 21 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his Aristotle studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article from his (...) Buffalo period first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that in-retrospect are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 23 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 69 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally, of the Lukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. -/- REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. Also, let me know of passages I should comment on. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications devoted at least in part to Aristotle’s logic. Sections I–IV list 20 articles, 43 abstracts, 3 books, and 10 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article that antedates Corcoran’s Aristotle’s studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated with endnotes connecting them with (...) other work. In addition, Section V “Discussions” is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 22 in the 1980s, 39 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 65 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is annotated with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. As is evident from the Acknowledgements sections, all of Corcoran’s publications benefited from correspondence with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in consultation with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. (shrink)

I provide a survey of the contents of the works belonging to Aristotle's Organon in order to define their nature, in the light of his declared intentions and of other indications (mainly internal ones) about his purposes. No unifying conception of logic can be found in them, such as the traditional one, suggested by the very title Organon, of logic as a methodology of demonstration. Logic for him can also be formal logic (represented in the main by the De Interpretatione), (...) axiomatized syllogistic (represented in the main by the Prior Analytics) and a methodology of dialectical and rhetorical discussion. The consequent lack of unity presented by those works does not exclude that both the set of works called Analytics and the set of works concerning dialectic (Topics and Sophistici Elenchi) form a unity, and that a certain priority is attributed to the analytics with respect to dialectic. (shrink)

In the Posterior Analytics (I 6, 75a18–27) Aristotle discusses a puzzle which endangers the possibility of inferring a non-necessary conclusion. His solution relies on the distinction between the necessity of the conclusion's being the case and the necessity of admitting the conclusion once one has admitted the premisses. The former is a factual necessity, whereas the latter is meant to be a normative or deontic necessity that is independent of the facts stated by the premisses and the conclusion. This paper (...) maintains that Aristotle resorts to this distinction because he thinks that, as long as it is conceived as a factual relation, logical consequence cannot exist independently of the facts expressed by the premisses and the conclusion. As a corollary, the necessity of such a consequence relation always requires the necessity of these facts. Aristotle holds this factual conception of logical consequence responsible for the puzzle, since it cannot account for valid syllogisms with contingent or false premisses. The alternative conception of necessity is then introduced by him in order to make good this deficiency. The distinction between the necessity of being and the necessity of saying was revived by the Oxford logician E. W. B. Joseph, and taken over by Frank Ramsey in his seminal Truth and Probability, but has not received attention from recent interpreters of Aristotle's logic. This paper, however, argues that, in spite of its intrinsic interest, the distinction bore no significant fruit in Aristotle's logical doctrine. (shrink)