Ancient Logic and its Modern Interpretations: Proceedings of the Buffalo Symposium on Modernist Interpretations of Ancient Logic, 21 and 22 April, 1972

Articles by Ian Mueller, Ronald Zirin, Norman Kretzmann, John Corcoran, John Mulhern, Mary Mulhern,Josiah Gould, and others. Topics: Aristotle's Syllogistic, Stoic Logic, Modern Research in Ancient Logic

The Founding of Logic: Modern Interpretations of Aristotle’s Logic

Since the time of Aristotle's students, interpreters have considered Prior Analytics to be a treatise about deductive reasoning, more generally, about methods of determining the validity and invalidity of premise-conclusion arguments. People studied Prior Analytics in order to learn more about deductive reasoning and to improve their own reasoning skills. These interpreters understood Aristotle to be focusing on two epistemic processes: first, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion follows necessarily from a set of premises (that is, on the epistemic process of extracting information implicit in explicitly given information) and, second, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion does not follow. Despite the overwhelming tendency to interpret the syllogistic as formal epistemology, it was not until the early 1970s that it occurred to anyone to think that Aristotle may have developed a theory of deductive reasoning with a well worked-out system of deductions comparable in rigor and precision with systems such as propositional logic or equational logic familiar from mathematical logic. When modern logicians in the 1920s and 1930s first turned their attention to the problem of understanding Aristotle's contribution to logic in modern terms, they were guided both by the Frege-Russell conception of logic as formal ontology and at the same time by a desire to protect Aristotle from possible charges of psychologism. They thought they saw Aristotle applying the informal axiomatic method to formal ontology, not as making the first steps into formal epistemology. They did not notice Aristotle's description of deductive reasoning. Ironically, the formal axiomatic method (in which one explicitly presents not merely the substantive axioms but also the deductive processes used to derive theorems from the axioms) is incipient in Aristotle's presentation. Partly in opposition to the axiomatic, ontically-oriented approach to Aristotle's logic and partly as a result of attempting to increase the degree of fit between interpretation and text, logicians in the 1970s working independently came to remarkably similar conclusions to the effect that Aristotle indeed had produced the first system of formal deductions. They concluded that Aristotle had analyzed the process of deduction and that his achievement included a semantically complete system of natural deductions including both direct and indirect deductions. Where the interpretations of the 1920s and 1930s attribute to Aristotle a system of propositions organized deductively, the interpretations of the 1970s attribute to Aristotle a system of deductions, or extended deductive discourses, organized epistemically. The logicians of the 1920s and 1930s take Aristotle to be deducing laws of logic from axiomatic origins; the logicians of the 1970s take Aristotle to be describing the process of deduction and in particular to be describing deductions themselves, both those deductions that are proofs based on axiomatic premises and those deductions that, though deductively cogent, do not establish the truth of the conclusion but only that the conclusion is implied by the premise-set. Thus, two very different and opposed interpretations had emerged, interestingly both products of modern logicians equipped with the theoretical apparatus of mathematical logic. The issue at stake between these two interpretations is the historical question of Aristotle's place in the history of logic and of his orientation in philosophy of logic. This paper affirms Aristotle's place as the founder of logic taken as formal epistemology, including the study of deductive reasoning. A by-product of this study of Aristotle's accomplishments in logic is a clarification of a distinction implicit in discourses among logicians--that between logic as formal ontology and logic as formal epistemology

A BIBLIOGRAPHY: JOHN CORCORAN’S PUBLICATIONS ON ARISTOTLE 1972–2015

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

Hegelian and syllogistic logic compared

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1947. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

The Birth of Logic

The last two decades have witnessed a debate concerning whether Aristotle\u27s syllogistic is a system of deductive discourses having epistemic import exemplifying an Aristotelian theory of deductive reasoning and justifying the claim that Aristotle is the founder of logic taken as the scientific study of proof or whether, on the contrary, the syllogistic is a system of true propositions of a theory of classes justifying the claim that Aristotle is the founder of logic is taken as the scientific study of formal relations such as class inclusion. An epistemically-oriented interpretation has been contending with an ontically-oriented interpretation. This debate should not be confused with the related issue, which is partly terminological, of whether logic should be construed as an organon and epistemic metascience of reasoning or as an ontic science on a par with but antecedent to, and more abstract than, other sciences. The present nontechnical, nonpolemical, expository essay attempts to show that approaching Aristotle\u27s logical writings from a standpoint informed by knowledge and appreciation of the scientific and philosophical achievements of Aristotle\u27s predecessors, especially Socrates, Plato and the Academic mathematicians, (rather than from the standpoint of the logicistic, Frege-Russell paradigm) will make the epistemically-oriented interpretation more plausible than the ontically-oriented one. The epistemically-oriented interpretation permits the birth of logic as epistemic metascience to be located with Aristotle while deferring the birth of logic as ontic science to the modern period. In contrast, the ontically-oriented interpretation permits the birth of logic as ontic science to be located with Aristotle while deferring the birth of logic as epistemic metascience to the modern period

Buddhist syllogistic theory

This paper aims at giving elements of an exposition, with critical observations, of an integral part of Buddhist logic - that which corresponds to what in Western philosophy is referred to as 'syllogism' - as presented by Stcherbatsky in Part III of his book Buddhist Logic (1930) which is entitled 'The Constructed World'. In his book, Stcherbatsky deals with elements of Buddhist literature which show some sort of parallelism with the main stream of European logic of his time. Such elements include "a doctrine of the forms of syllogism, ... a theory on the essence of judgement, on the import of names and on inference." Also, he deals with other aspects which are included by the Buddhists in their system of 'logic' but are not included under logic in the West. These include "a theory on the part of pure sensation in the whole context of our knowledge, a theory on the reliability of our knowledge and on the reality of the external world as cognised by us in sensations and images." Buddhists did not achieve a clear separation of logic from ontology and epistemology. This is further emphasized by the ultimate aim of Buddhist logic, namely, explaining "the relation between a moving reality and the static constructions of thought.'"peer-reviewe

The enthymeme according to whom? : the enthymeme and its pedagogical implications

Pembelajaran ICT adalah pembelajaran yang bearasaskan konsep pembelajaran computer dan multimedia. Pendidikan pembelajaran ICT saat ini sudah berkembang pesat di berbagai daerah. Adapun tujuan dalam penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui peranan media pembelajaran berbasis ICT dalam meningkatkan motivasi belajar siswa Sekolah Dasar Negeri II Bataraguru. Peneliti mengambil sampel secara acak  (random sampling) yakni kelas rendah yang terdiri dari kelas 1, II, dan kelas III serta kelas tinggi yang terdiri dari kelas IV, V, dan kelas VI. Pada penelitian ini menggunakan bebrapa metode anatara lain: 1) Metode Wawancara atau Interview. 2) Metode Observasi. 3) Metode Dokumentasi. Hasil dari penelitian ini diperoleh bahwa implementasikan media pembelajaran berbasis ICT dalam setiap proses pembelajaran  dilaksanakan dengan baik ditunjang dengan sarana dan prasarana,  komitmen kepala sekolah bersama guru serta kualiatas penguasaan guru dalam pengajaran. Media pembelajaran berbasis ICT sangat berperan penting dalam meningkatkan motivasi belajar siswa di Sekolah Dasar Negeri II Batatguru, hal ini dikarena guru dalam menyampaikan materi pelajaran dengan menggunakan media pembelajaran berbasis ICT membuat siswa lebih antusias dan tertarik mengikuti kegiatan belajar, siswa lebih terfokus dan terarah dalam memperhatikan pelajaran yang disampikan oleh guru dan terciptanya suasan belajar yang menyenagkan bagi sisw