Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic

Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic
Author: Marko Malink
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674727541

Aristotle was the founder not only of logic but also of modal logic. In the Prior Analytics he developed a complex system of modal syllogistic which, while influential, has been disputed since antiquity—and is today widely regarded as incoherent. In this meticulously argued new study, Marko Malink presents a major reinterpretation of Aristotle’s modal syllogistic. Combining analytic rigor with keen sensitivity to historical context, he makes clear that the modal syllogistic forms a consistent, integrated system of logic, one that is closely related to other areas of Aristotle’s philosophy. Aristotle’s modal syllogistic differs significantly from modern modal logic. Malink considers the key to understanding the Aristotelian version to be the notion of predication discussed in the Topics—specifically, its theory of predicables (definition, genus, differentia, proprium, and accident) and the ten categories (substance, quantity, quality, and so on). The predicables introduce a distinction between essential and nonessential predication. In contrast, the categories distinguish between substantial and nonsubstantial predication. Malink builds on these insights in developing a semantics for Aristotle’s modal propositions, one that verifies the ancient philosopher’s claims of the validity and invalidity of modal inferences. Malink recognizes some limitations of this reconstruction, acknowledging that his proof of syllogistic consistency depends on introducing certain complexities that Aristotle could not have predicted. Nonetheless, Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic brims with bold ideas, richly supported by close readings of the Greek texts, and offers a fresh perspective on the origins of modal logic.

Aristotle's Modal Logic

Aristotle's Modal Logic
Author: Richard Patterson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2002-08-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521522335

This 1995 book argues that a proper understanding of Aristotle's modal logic requires an appreciation of its connection to the metaphysics.

Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap

Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap
Author: Adriane Rini
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1107077885

Introduces readers to the history of necessity and possibility, two modal concepts which play a key role in philosophy.

First-Order Modal Logic

First-Order Modal Logic
Author: M. Fitting
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401152926

This is a thorough treatment of first-order modal logic. The book covers such issues as quantification, equality (including a treatment of Frege's morning star/evening star puzzle), the notion of existence, non-rigid constants and function symbols, predicate abstraction, the distinction between nonexistence and nondesignation, and definite descriptions, borrowing from both Fregean and Russellian paradigms.

Aristotelian Logic

Aristotelian Logic
Author: William Thomas Parry
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791406892

Proceedings of an international research and development conference, Tuscon, Arizona, October 1985. One hundred and twenty-eight papers are presented in this hefty volume. They are grouped into chapters covering climate, underutilized plants, irrigation and water management, biosphere reserves, water policy, animal resources, desert ecology, crop physiology and agronomy, urban environments, desertification, land intensification, and other topics related to the economy and management of arid lands. Provides detailed treatment of topics in traditional logic: theory of terms, theory of definition, informal fallacies, and division and classification.

Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard

Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard
Author: Irene Binini
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2021-10-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004470468

This book offers a major reassessment of Abelard’s modal logic and theory of modalities, and provides a comprehensive study of the 12th-century context in which his views originated and developed, by analysing many logical sources that are still unedited and mostly unexplored.

Medieval Modal Systems

Medieval Modal Systems
Author: Paul Thom
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2017-09-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351918524

This book explores noteworthy approaches to modal syllogistic adopted by medieval logicians including Abélard, Albert the Great, Avicenna, Averröes, Jean Buridan, Richard Campsall, Robert Kilwardby, and William of Ockham. The book situates these approaches in relation to Aristotle's discussion in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, and other parts of the Organon, but also in relation to the thought of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Boethius on the one hand, and to modern interpretations of the modal syllogistic on the other. Problems explored include: Aristotle's doctrine of modal conversion, the pure and mixed necessity-moods, modal ecthesis, the pure and mixed contingency-moods, and Aristotle's use of counter-examples. Medieval logicians brought various concepts to bear on these problems, including the distinction between per se and per accidens terms, the notion of essential predication, the distinction between ut nunc and simpliciter propositions, the distinction between de dicto and de re modals, and the notion of ampliation. All these are examined in this book.

The Actual and the Possible

The Actual and the Possible
Author: Mark Sinclair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2017
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0198786433

The Actual and the Possible presents new essays by leading specialists on modality and the metaphysics of modality in the history of modern philosophy from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It revisits key moments in the history of modern modal doctrines, and illuminates lesser-known moments of that history. The ultimate purpose of this historical approach is to contextualise and even to offer some alternatives to dominant positions within the contemporary philosophy of modality. Hence the volume contains not only new scholarship on the early-modern doctrines of Baruch Spinoza, G. W. F. Leibniz, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, but also work relating to less familiar nineteenth-century thinkers such as Alexius Meinong and Jan Lukasiewicz, together with essays on celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell, whose modal doctrines have not previously garnered the attention they deserve. The volume thus covers a variety of traditions, and its historical range extends to the end of the twentieth century, addressing the legacy of W. V. Quine's critique of modality within recent analytic philosophy.

Passage and Possibility

Passage and Possibility
Author: Sarah Broadie
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1982
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

'Masterly ... She combines philosophical sophistication with an enviable ability to interpret the texts in a perceptive and illuminating way ... Will stimulate discussion for a long time to come.'--Times Literary Supplement.