What is Sophistry? That some reasonings are genuine, while others seem to be so but are not, is evident. This happens with arguments, as also elsewhere, through a certain likeness between the genuine and the sham. For physically some people are in a vigorous condition, while others merely seem to be so by blowing and rigging themselves out as the tribesmen do their victims for sacrifice; and some people are […]
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“Categories” by Aristotle
Aristotle’s Foundational Works on Logic The general categories enumerated herein have been widely accepted and used even at present, which speaks to Aristotle’s enormous influence on western civilization. His reasoning, however, is faulty in quite a few instances, especially with regard to the relation between genus and species. Categories Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection. [–Update in 2014 –] 1. Substance Substance, in the truest […]
Read more“On Interpretation” by Aristotle
Propositions “Truth and falsity imply combination (copulation) and separation.” The denial must deny just that which the affirmation affirms concerning the same subject, and must correspond with the affirmation both in the universal or particular character of the subject and in the distributed or undistributed sense in which the proposition is understood. If anything else be negatively predicated of the subject or if anything else be the subject though the […]
Read more“Posterior Analytics” by Aristotle
The Cause of Its Own Essence Demonstration is syllogism that proves the cause, i.e. the reasoned fact, and it is rather the commensurate universal than the particular which is causative (as may be shown thus: that which possesses an attribute through its own essential nature is itself the cause of the inherence, and the commensurate universal is primary; hence the commensurate universal is the cause). To know its essential nature […]
Read more“Prior Analytics” by Aristotle
Demonstrative vs. Dialectical The demonstrative premiss differs from the dialectical, because the demonstrative premiss is the assertion of one of two contradictory statements, whereas the dialectical premiss depends on the adversary’s choice between two contradictories. A perfect syllogism needs nothing other than what has been stated to make plain what necessarily follows; a syllogism is imperfect, if it needs either one or more propositions, which are indeed the necessary consequences […]
Read more“Parmenides” by Plato
The Being Or the Not-Being of One A discourse on the relations among being, not-being, whole, part, one, many, same, other, rest and motion. Of all twenty-four Plato’s dialogues included in the Western Canon, this is the most abstract and mind-boggling to me, partly due to my lack of training in abstract reasoning, and partly due to a lack of clear definition of each abstract term, the root cause of which […]
Read more“Euthydemus” by Plato
The Nature of Intermediates (Compromises) “For all persons or things, which are intermediate between two other things, and participate in both of them–if one of these two things is good and the other evil, are better than the one and worse than the other; but if they are in a mean between two good things which do not tend to the same end, they fall short of either of their […]
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