Talk:Term logic

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[edit] Dead Link

The Link to the lecture notes of Terence Parson is dead. There are, however, other lecture notes on his wegpage (bottom of http://admin.cdh.ucla.edu/facwebpage.php?par=91) which might replace the old ones. I'm not sure which ones to chose but I didn't want to finally remove the link either. May someone with a better knowledge on logic have a look at it? 134.155.84.12 09:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Syllogistic vs. term logic

From Aristotelian logic we have:

Aristotelian logic, also known as syllogistic, is the particular type of logic created by Aristotle, primarily in his works Prior Analytics and De Interpretatione. It later developed into what became known as traditional logic or Term Logic.

and on this page we have:

Traditional logic, also known as term logic, is a loose term for the logical tradition that originated with Aristotle and survived broadly unchanged until the advent of modern predicate logic in the late nineteenth century.

There is a bit of a disagreement between the two pages: the former suggests that there is a difference between syllogistic and term logic, the latter suggests the former is part of the latter. We should not have this inconsistency. Does anyone know what the origin of "term logic" is? It's my impression that Fred Sommers was first to start using the phrase term logic, but his student, George Engelbretsen, uses the two terms apparently interchangeably. ---- Charles Stewart 13:55, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] From the article

Following to do list pulled out of the article:

To do: Predicables, Influence on philosophy: to include "existence as a predicate", the Kantian categories, and the petitio principii problem, Explanation of "reduction per impossibile"

I think Talk is a better place for this. — mark ✎ 13:29, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Following tutorial-style section moved out of the article (was a sub-section of 'The Syllogism'):

[edit] Examples

Let's try to write a syllogism of the first figure, of the mood EAE (known as "Celarent") . This must have the first premise beginning "no", the second beginning "all" and the conclusion beginning "no". And it must have a major term (P), let's say "vegetarians", a middle term, say "cats", and a minor term, say "domestic felines". The order of terms for the premises in first figure (see table above) is
M-P
S-M
which we rewrite replacing the major term P by "vegetarians", the middle term "M" by "cats", and the minor term S by "domestic felines".
No cats are vegetarians
All domestic felines are cats
Finally, the conclusion must consist of the minor term followed by the major term. This gives
No domestic felines are vegetarians
But note the logic we were following was strictly based on the rules above. You didn’t have to think what the premises were saying at all. It could have been a syllogism in a foreign language, you still could have reached the conclusion by following the rules. Now, as an exercise, read the premises, think what they mean, and try to think what that implies. No cats are vegetarians. None of these things we are thinking about, eat vegetables. But all domestic felines are wholly included in these things, cats. So none of those domestic felines can eat vegetables either. But wait, that's the conclusion we reached by the other method. And it seemed so natural. Perhaps that's why Aristotle thought the syllogism (and particularly the first figure), was so natural. It's a mechnical rule-based process, yet something deeply embedded, in a way that seems quite un-rule-like, in our heads.
As an amusement: write a program to make syllogisms from random terms, moods and figures. Hint: only use common nouns in the plural, as adjectives are harder to convert into the traditional term structure.

This is not Wikibooks. The section might need to be rewritten, or might be left out entirely. If kept, it might need to be moved to Syllogism. — mark ✎ 14:25, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Redundancy

In Talk:Aristotelian logic I've suggested that we have too many articles on Aristotle's logic. --- Charles Stewart 19:40, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to merge

I'm proposing merging the article Aristotelian logic into this one. See Talk:Aristotelian logic for more info. --- Charles Stewart 19:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Term logic/Danielsavoiu's summary

I'm mostly done with the merge, with the summary of Aristotelian syllogistic that User:Danielsavoiu posted excepted, which I have put in the above subpage of this one. It's less comprehensive than the one we have, but I think it will be rather easier for the newcomer to read. I'm not sure what best to do with it, but it is perhaps best if we make this the first section getting to grips with the system, and turn the existing treatment into supporting discursions into significant topics. Thoughts? --- Charles Stewart 19:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I made some additions recently over on the syllogism page, before looking over this page closely. I suspect all three of the pages need to be merged together. I'm willing to do it myself, but it seems you took a headstart on this project. how should we coordinate on this? Ted 07:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] okie dokie

I've gone ahead and integrated the Term Logic page and Syllogism page. Hopefully the integration meets with the approval of everyone; if not, go ahead and revert, and we can discuss it here. Ted 04:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


You might like to add a reference to Peter Geach's 'History Of The Corruptions Of Logic' in his Logic Matters (Blackwell 1972), pp.44-61.

Rosa L. 05/05/06

[edit] mnemonics

I came here looking for an explanation of the consonants in the mnemonic words for syllogisms, and apparently that text no longer exists on this page or Syllogism. I was able to get some information from historical versions of this page but it seems like it should be on an active page. Also in the Decline section, this article says: "Term logic cannot, for example, explain the inference from "every car is a vehicle", to "every owner of a car is an owner of an vehicle ", which is elementary in predicate logic." Isn't this just an oblique proposition? Gimmetrow 20:54, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Predicate Logic too hard?

The article says A 100 years ago, school children were taught a usable form of formal logic. The predicate logic that took its place is too difficult to teach in schools. Hence today, – the information age – notwithstanding, children learn no logic whatsoever. Predicate logic is a technical subject studied only philosophers (and a few mathematicians) in universities.

Without evidence, this isn't an NPOV statement? Where is the evidence that predicate logic is too hard? It pretty common in computer science; the logic language Prolog is built on a first order predicate calculus, so it must not be that hard.

Prolog is not taught to school-children. In the US, at least, the term "school-children" is understood to refer to the students in primary school, and certainly not to high-school or college students, where young adults first encounter predicate logic. At a deeper level, I agree -- there is a mountain of math that could be taught at the primary-school level. However, there is a wide-spread failure to do so; I presume because the teachers and administrators themselves don't know the material or how to teach it. linas (talk) 14:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Revival of Term Logic in the context of AI

From actually referring to Aristotelean logic as in Pei Wang's Return to Term Logic, to logics which simply have proposition-denoting terms like in SNePS, term logic is not forgotten.

Could someone update the article to take account of this? Perhaps the second use of the term (a logic with proposition denoting terms) should be disambiguated?