Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A syllogism (Ancient Greek: συλλογισμός, syllogismos, 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.
An invalid hypothetical syllogism either affirms the consequent (fallacy of the converse) or denies the antecedent (fallacy of the inverse). A pure hypothetical syllogism is a syllogism in which both premises and the conclusion are all conditional statements. The antecedent of one premise must match the consequent of the other for the ...
The central aspect of Aristotelian logic involves classifying all possible syllogisms into valid and invalid arguments according to how the propositions are formed. [112] [115] For example, the syllogism "all men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal" is valid. The syllogism "all cats are mortal; Socrates is mortal ...
The first type of enthymeme is a truncated syllogism, or a syllogism with an unstated premise. [6] Here is an example of an enthymeme derived from a syllogism through truncation (shortening) of the syllogism: "Socrates is mortal because he's human." The complete formal syllogism would be the classic: All humans are mortal. (major premise ...
An example of a syllogism of the third figure is: All mammals are air-breathers, All mammals are animals, Therefore, some animals are air-breathers. This validly follows only if an immediate inference is silently interpolated. The added inference is a conversion that uses the word "some" instead of "all." All mammals are air-breathers,
Types of syllogism to which it applies include statistical syllogism, hypothetical syllogism, and categorical syllogism, all of which must have exactly three terms. Because it applies to the argument's form, as opposed to the argument's content, it is classified as a formal fallacy.
A polysyllogism is a complex argument (also known as chain arguments of which there are four kinds: polysyllogisms, sorites, epicheirema, and dilemmas) [1] that strings together any number of propositions forming together a sequence of syllogisms such that the conclusion of each syllogism, together with the next proposition, is a premise for the next, and so on.
In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle defines syllogism as "a deduction in a discourse in which, certain things being supposed, something different from the things supposed results of necessity because these things are so." In modern times, this definition has led to a debate as to how the word "syllogism" should be interpreted.