Aristotle's modal syllogisms (Q775347)

The author's book is concerned with the treatment of modal syllogisms in the \textit{Prior Analytics}, a part of traditional logic that has always tended to be dismissed as erroneous and obscure and that has for a long time been generally neglected. Interest in the subject has recently revived, however, and studies have been published by A. Becker, J. Łukasiewicz, and N. Rescher. In the author's view, it is Rescher who has come nearest to understanding Aristotle's thought. In the enlarged second edition (1957) of his book ''Aristotle's syllogistics'' Łukasiewicz published a rather free formalization of the Aristotelian theory, in which many but by no means all of Aristotle's conclusions are obtainable; and in the present volume the author offers an alternative formalization, meant to correspond more closely to Aristotle's intentions. For the apodeictic moods, the author sets up an '' \(L\)-\(X\)-\(M\) calculus'', which is completely successful in that the moods represented by derivable formulae are precisely those accepted by Aristotle. The calculus admits of a decision procedure, based on an axiomatic characterization of rejection of invalid formulae. as well as the usual characterization, in terms of formal derivation, of acceptance of valid formulae. For the contingent moods, an extended \(L\)-\(X\)-\(M\)-\(Q\) calculus is set up, with a further primitive modal operator \(Q\) for contingency in addition to the primitive operator \(L\) for necessity in the \(L\)-\(X\)-\(M\) calculus: but here the agreement with Aristotle is no better than 85 per cent.