180124 SE Aristotle's Logic (2018S)

Aristotle was the founder of logic and his work was considered foundational until the rise of modern logic with Frege. In the seminar we will first review the logical works of Aristotle, the so-called Organon, and then we will focus on the Prior Analytics, where Aristotle founds syllogistic. We will do a close reading of the chapters concerning the so-called assertoric logic, which Aristotle expounds in Prior Analytics I.1-7 and from chapter 23 onwards, yet we will briefly review modal logic, which is presented in chs. I.8-22. Our main aim will be to work out how exactly Aristotle’s syllogisms and syllogistic schemes work, what is a perfect and an imperfect syllogism, and how the latter can turn into perfect syllogism. We will also discuss general theoretical questions, such as how Aristotle’s syllogistic should be understood as a kind of predicative logic.