The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in 12 volumes between 1912 and 1954. It is universally recognized as the standard English version of Aristotle. This revised edition contains the substance of the original Translation, slightly emended in light of recent scholarship three of the original versions have been replaced by new translations and a new and enlarged selection of Fragments has been added. The aim of the translation remains the same: to make the surviving works of Aristotle readily (...) accessible to English speaking readers. (shrink)

This interesting and imaginative monograph is based on the author’s PhD dissertation supervised by Saul Kripke. It is dedicated to Timothy Smiley, whose interpretation of PRIOR ANALYTICS informs its approach. As suggested by its title, this short work demonstrates conclusively that Aristotle’s syllogistic is a suitable vehicle for fruitful discussion of contemporary issues in logical theory. Aristotle’s syllogistic is represented by Corcoran’s 1972 reconstruction. The review studies Lear’s treatment of Aristotle’s logic, his appreciation of the Corcoran-Smiley paradigm, and his understanding (...) of modern logical theory. In the process Corcoran and Scanlan present new, previously unpublished results. Corcoran regards this review as an important contribution to contemporary study of PRIOR ANALYTICS: both the book and the review deserve to be better known. (shrink)

In Prior Analytics 1.15 Aristotle undertakes to establish certain modal syllogisms of the form XQM. Although these syllogisms are central to his modal system, the proofs he offers for them are problematic. The precise structure of these proofs is disputed, and it is often thought that they are invalid. We propose an interpretation which resolves the main difficulties with them: the proofs are valid given a small number of intrinsically plausible assumptions, although they are in tension with some claims found (...) elsewhere in Aristotle’s modal syllogistic. The proofs make use of a rule of propositional modal logic which we call the possibility rule. We investigate how this rule interacts and coheres with the core elements of the modal syllogistic. (shrink)

Aristotle was the first and one of the greatest logicians. He not only devised the first system of formal logic, but also raised many fundamental problems in the philosophy of logic. In this book, Dr Lear shows how Aristotle's discussion of logical consequence, validity and proof can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of logic. No background knowledge of Aristotle is assumed.

In this paper we provide an interpretation of Aristotle's rule for the universal quantifier in Topics Θ 157a34–37 and 160b1–6 in terms of Paul Lorenzen's dialogical logic. This is meant as a contribution to the rehabilitation of the role of dialectic within the Organon. After a review of earlier views of Aristotle on quantification, we argue that this rule is related to the dictum de omni in Prior Analytics A 24b28–29. This would be an indication of the dictum’s origin in (...) the context of dialectical games. One consequence of our approach is a novel explanation of the doctrine of the existential import of the quantifiers in dialectical terms. After a brief survey of Lorenzen's dialogical logic, we offer a set of rules for dialectical games based on previous work by Castelnérac and Marion, to which we add here the rule for the universal quantifier, as interpreted in terms of its counterpart in dialogical logic. We then give textual evidence of the use of that rule in Plato's dialogues, thus showing that Aris... (shrink)

La définition du sullogismos est strictement identique dans les Topiques et dans les Premiers Analytiques, alors qu'on admet généralement que, dans ce dernier traité, le terme désigne spécifiquement la structure formelle appelée aujourd'hui encore « syllogisme » . Le mot peut avoir le même sens d'un bout à l'autre de l'Organon et du corpus aristotélicien : il désigne le moment de la joute dialectique où l'interrogateur récapitule une section de la discussion et se montre en mesure d'imposer une conclusion à (...) laquelle son interlocuteur ne peut pas se dérober. À la suite de Hintikka (1993), on suggère que cette notion est issue des dialogues de Platon. C'est à partir de cette conception dialectique originelle que la théorie aristotélicienne de la rhétorique, d'une part, et la « syllogistique » formelle, de l'autre, ont pu se développer. The definition of a sullogismos in Aristotle's Topics and Prior Analytics is strictly identical, although it is generally admitted that in the latter treatise this word refers to the distinct deductive structure that we call "syllogism". This paper aims at showing that the word sullogismos may be given the same meaning throughout the Organon and throughout the Aristotelian corpus and that it refers to a characteristic move in the course of a dialectical debate, i.e. when the questioner, summing up a whole sequence of the previous discussion, shows that he is in a position to force upon his interlocutor a conclusion which the latter cannot escape. Following a suggestion made by Hintikka (1993), this paper shows that the notion most probably originates from Plato's dialogues, and uses it as a leading thread to show how the Aristotelian concept of rhetoric, on the one hand, and Aristotle's formal "syllogistic", on the other, may have grown out of this original dialectical core. (shrink)

Late ancient Platonists and Aristotelians describe the method of reasoning to first principles as "analysis." This is a metaphor from geometrical practice. How far back were philosophers taking geometric analysis as a model for philosophy, and what work did they mean this model to do? After giving a logical description of analysis in geometry, and arguing that the standard (not entirely accurate) late ancient logical description of analysis was already familiar in the time of Plato and Aristotle, I argue that (...) Plato, in the second geometrical passage of the "Meno" (86e4-87b2), is taking analysis as a model for one kind of philosophical reasoning, and I explore the advantages and limits of this model for philosophical discovery, and in particular for how first principles can be discovered, without circularity, by argument. (shrink)

I consider the proper interpretation of the process of ecthesis which Aristotle uses several times in the Prior analytics for completing a syllogistic mood, i.e., showing how to produce a deduction of a conclusion of a certain form from premisses of certain forms. I consider two interpretations of the process which have been advocated by recent scholars and show that one seems better suited to most passages while the other best fits a single remaining passage. I also argue that ecthesis (...) for Aristotle really means ?setting out? the case to be proved using letters. Aristotle?s remarks about the use of letters in mathematical proofs suggest that he had some understanding of rules equivalent to universal generalization and existential instantiation; the ?proofs through ecthesis? are so called because they rest on the latter rule, with which use of letters is involved in a special way. (shrink)

This pioneer study of Aristotle's theory of deduction in early medieval Islam provides invaluable first-hand information on both the classical and the Islamic ...

Demonstrative logic, the study of demonstration as opposed to persuasion, is the subject of Aristotle's two-volume Analytics. Many examples are geometrical. Demonstration produces knowledge (of the truth of propositions). Persuasion merely produces opinion. Aristotle presented a general truth-and-consequence conception of demonstration meant to apply to all demonstrations. According to him, a demonstration, which normally proves a conclusion not previously known to be true, is an extended argumentation beginning with premises known to be truths and containing a chain of reasoning showing (...) by deductively evident steps that its conclusion is a consequence of its premises. In particular, a demonstration is a deduction whose premises are known to be true. Aristotle's general theory of demonstration required a prior general theory of deduction presented in the Prior Analytics. His general immediate-deduction-chaining conception of deduction was meant to apply to all deductions. According to him, any deduction that is not immediately evident is an extended argumentation that involves a chaining of intermediate immediately evident steps that shows its final conclusion to follow logically from its premises. To illustrate his general theory of deduction, he presented an ingeniously simple and mathematically precise special case traditionally known as the categorical syllogistic. (shrink)

Applying the analytical methods of modern logic to problems of interpretation in Plato, the author traces the development of Plato's analytic method from the crude form expressed in the Phaedo to the considerably more sophisticated and powerful techniques practiced in the later methodological dialogues.