The article examines the relevance of Aristotle’s analysis that concerns the syllogistic figures. On the assumption that Aristotle’s analytics was inspired by the method of geometric analysis, we show how Aristotle used the three terms, when he formulated the three syllogistic figures. So far it has not been appropriately recognized that the three terms — the major, the middle and the minor one — were viewed by Aristotle syntactically and predicatively in the form of diagrams. Many scholars have misunderstood Aristotle (...) in that in the second and third figure the middle term is outside and that in the second figure the major term is next to the middle one, whereas in the third figure it is further from it. By means of diagrams, we have elucidated how this perfectly accords with Aristotle's planar and graphic arrangement. In the light of these diagrams, one can appropriately capture the definition of syllogism as a predicative set of terms. Irrespective of the tricky question concerning the abbreviations that Aristotle himself used with reference to these types of predication, the reconstructed figures allow us better to comprehend the reductions of syllogism to the first figure. We assume that the figures of syllogism are analogous to the figures of categorical predication, i.e., they are specific syntactic and semantic models. Aristotle demanded certain logical and methodological competence within analytics, which reflects his great commitment and contribution to the field. (shrink)

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have fueled widespread academic discourse on the ethics of AI within and across a diverse set of disciplines. One notable subfield of AI ethics is machine ethics, which seeks to implement ethical considerations into AI systems. However, since different research efforts within machine ethics have discipline-specific concepts, practices, and goals, the resulting body of work is pestered with conflict and confusion as opposed to fruitful synergies. The aim of this paper is to explore ways to (...) alleviate these issues, both on a practical and theoretical level of analysis. First, we describe two approaches to machine ethics: the philosophical approach and the engineering approach and show how tensions between the two arise due to discipline specific practices and aims. Using the concept of disciplinary capture, we then discuss potential promises and pitfalls to cross-disciplinary collaboration. Drawing on recent work in philosophy of science, we finally describe how metacognitive scaffolds can be used to avoid epistemological obstacles and foster innovative collaboration in AI ethics in general and machine ethics in particular. (shrink)

Collin Howson (2000) challenges van Cleve’s reliabilist defense of induction (1984) based on an adaptation of Goodman Paradox (or new riddle of induction). I will try to show that Howson’s argument does not succeed once it is self-defeating. Nevertheless, I point out another way which Howson could have employed the new riddle to undermine the reliabilist defense.

This article deals with a set-theoretic interpretation of the Talmudic rules of General and Specific, known as Klal and Prat (KP), Prat and Klal (PK), Klal and Prat and Klal (KPK) and Prat and Klal and Prat (PKP).

This article uses tagmemic theory as a semiotic framework to analyze symbolic logic. It attends particularly to the issue of context for meaning and the role of personal observer/participants. It focuses on formal languages, which employ no ordinary words and from one point of view have “no meaning.” Attention to the context and the theorists who deploy these languages shows that formal languages have meanings at a higher level, colored by the purposes of the analysts. In fact, there is an (...) indefinitely ascending hierarchy of theories of theories, each of which analyzes and evaluates the theories at a lower level. By analogy with Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theory, no level of the hierarchy can capture within formalism everything in a sufficiently complex system. The personal analysts always have to make judgments about how a formalized system is analogous to the world outside the system. Arguments in analytic philosophy can be useful in clarification, but neither clarification of terms nor clarification of the structure of arguments can eliminate the need for personal judgment. (shrink)

This paper gives an overview of logico-philosophical issues of time and determinism. After a brief review of historical roots and 20th century developments, three current research areas are discussed: the definition of determinism, space-time indeterminism, and the temporality of individual things and their possibilities.

This is the first special issue of the British Journal of the History of Philosophy to be devoted to the thought of the Middle Ages. Its topic is relations. The articles have been chosen to give an...

This is a review of A. Skodo (ed.) "Other Logics: Alternatives to Formal Logic in the History of Thought and Contemporary Philosophy".

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

According to Philoponus, the activity of drawing syllogisms is a dynamic operation. Following the classical idea that actions are specified by their objects and habitual powers by their actions, Philoponus concludes that only a dynamic power can elicit the act of syllogizing. This power is identified with discursive reasoning (dianoia). Imagination, on the contrary, is a static power, that cannot elicit that particular motion of drawing a syllogistic inference. The issue, however, is not entirely uncontroversial, because Ammonius maintains that sophistical (...) syllogisms can only be formed by imagination, since they involve “empty concepts” as terms and only imagination can form such concepts. In this paper I will reconstruct Philoponus’ and Ammonius’ theories about the “activity” of syllogizing, and I shall explain how Philoponus can deal with sophistical syllogisms in a consistent way. (shrink)

This paper contends that Stoic logic (i.e. Stoic analysis) deserves more attention from contemporary logicians. It sets out how, compared with contemporary propositional calculi, Stoic analysis is closest to methods of backward proof search for Gentzen-inspired substructural sequent logics, as they have been developed in logic programming and structural proof theory, and produces its proof search calculus in tree form. It shows how multiple similarities to Gentzen sequent systems combine with intriguing dissimilarities that may enrich contemporary discussion. Much of Stoic (...) logic appears surprisingly modern: a recursively formulated syntax with some truth-functional propositional operators; analogues to cut rules, axiom schemata and Gentzen’s negation-introduction rules; an implicit variable-sharing principle and deliberate rejection of Thinning and avoidance of paradoxes of implication. These latter features mark the system out as a relevance logic, where the absence of duals for its left and right introduction rules puts it in the vicinity of McCall’s connexive logic. Methodologically, the choice of meticulously formulated meta-logical rules in lieu of axiom and inference schemata absorbs some structural rules and results in an economical, precise and elegant system that values decidability over completeness. (shrink)

Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...) and were essentially inseparable in medieval thought. This constitutes the foundation for a bridge, and this article analyzes the causality-based ontology of the late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg from the viewpoint of today's upper-ontology engineering. In this bridging attempt, it offers a translation into English of the first part of Dietrich's De origine (abbreviated title) that is a compromise between traditional scholarly translations of medieval Latin philosophical texts and contemporary ontology. (shrink)