The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-26-1991

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a debate concerning whether Aristotle's 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's logical writings from a standpoint informed by knowledge and appreciation of the scientific and philosophical achievements of Aristotle's 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.

Notes

John Corcoran presented “The Birth of Logic” at the Society's meeting with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago in 1991. A revised version was published as “The Founding of Logic” in Ancient Philosophy 14 (1994) 9-24.

For information about the author, see http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~corcoran/

Share

COinS