On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations

Summary

This record covers four of the six treatises that later editors grouped as Aristotle's Organon, the 'instrument' of thought: On Interpretation, the Prior Analytics, the Topics and On Sophistical Refutations, in the Oxford translations by E. M. Edghill, A. J. Jenkinson and W. A. Pickard-Cambridge. (The attached text also carries G. R. G. Mure's Posterior Analytics, which the library treats with the Physics, and the Categories has its own record.) Read in this order, the treatises move from the single statement, to valid deduction, to argument with an opponent about what is commonly believed, to arguments that only look valid. On Interpretation begins with language. Spoken words are signs of experiences in the soul, and written words of spoken ones; a noun and a verb joined make a statement that can be true or false. Aristotle then maps how affirmations and denials are opposed (the relations later drawn as the square of opposition) and treats statements of possibility and necessity. Its ninth chapter asks whether 'there will be a sea-fight tomorrow' is already true or false today, and answers that while the whole disjunction is necessary, neither half need be, a passage argued over by Stoics, medieval theologians concerned with God's foreknowledge, and modern logicians. The Prior Analytics invents formal logic. Aristotle defines the syllogism as discourse in which, certain things being stated, something else follows of necessity, and works out which combinations of universal and particular, affirmative and negative premisses in his three figures yield valid conclusions, using letters as variables for the first time in Western thought. Book I adds modal syllogisms; Book II treats circular proof, reduction to the impossible, induction, argument from example, and the enthymeme. The Topics turns from proof to debate. It is a handbook for dialectic, the trained exchange of question and answer in which one speaker defends a thesis drawn from reputable opinion and another tries to refute it. Aristotle sorts predicates into definition, property, genus and accident, and then supplies hundreds of 'places' (topoi) from which arguments can be drawn, closing in Book VIII with practical advice on how to ask, answer and train. On Sophistical Refutations catalogues the ways an argument can seem to refute while failing to: six fallacies that depend on language, such as equivocation and amphiboly, and seven that do not, such as begging the question, false cause and many questions treated as one. In its last chapter Aristotle claims that on reasoning, unlike rhetoric, nobody before him had done any systematic work at all. For students the four books together are both the source of the logic taught in the trivium and a sustained argument that clear thinking can be learned.

Plot or Argument

• On Interpretation: words, statements and opposition

  Names, verbs and sentences are defined; only statements are true or false. Contradictory and contrary pairs of statements are distinguished, including those with indefinite and singular subjects.

• On Interpretation 9: the sea-fight tomorrow

  Aristotle asks whether future contingent statements are already true or false and argues that necessity belongs to the disjunction, not to either alternative, so deliberation is not made pointless.

• Prior Analytics I: the figures of the syllogism

  The syllogism is defined, conversion rules are set out, and the valid moods of the three figures are proved by reduction to the perfect moods of the first; modal syllogisms follow, with advice on finding premisses.

• Prior Analytics II: properties and kinds of inference

  True conclusions from false premisses, circular and reciprocal proof, reduction to the impossible, errors of reasoning, induction, example, objection and the enthymeme from signs and probabilities.

• Topics I: the aims and tools of dialectic

  Dialectic is useful for mental training, for conversation and for the sciences' first principles; reasoning is divided into demonstrative, dialectical and contentious, and predicates into definition, property, genus and accident.

• Topics II-VII: the places of argument

  Book by book Aristotle collects commonplaces for attacking or defending claims about accident, genus, property and definition, and for questions of sameness and difference.

• Topics VIII: the practice of debate

  How the questioner should arrange and conceal his premisses, how the answerer should grant or refuse them, and how students should train by memorizing arguments and practising both sides.

• On Sophistical Refutations: the fallacies

  Apparent refutations are divided into those that depend on language and those outside it; each type is defined, illustrated and given a solution, and the work closes with Aristotle's claim that he founded the subject.

Lessons

• Words signify thoughts, thoughts signify things

  On Interpretation opens by placing language between the mind and the world: the same experiences are shared by all, though speech differs from people to people. Grammar and logic meet in the statement, the smallest unit that can be true or false.

  • Why does Aristotle say a prayer is a sentence but not a statement?
  • What follows if mental experiences are the same for all speakers?
  • How does this account help a translator?

• Necessity and the open future

  The sea-fight argument shows that 'either it will happen or it will not' can be necessary without making either outcome necessary. Aristotle defends deliberation against the claim that everything is already fixed.

  • Restate the sea-fight argument in your own words.
  • Does Aristotle's answer protect human choice?
  • How did later Christian thinkers connect this problem to God's foreknowledge?

• Validity before truth

  The Prior Analytics separates the form of an argument from the truth of its premisses: a syllogism can be valid with false premisses, and Aristotle shows how true conclusions can even follow from false ones. Letters as variables let him study form alone.

  • Construct a valid syllogism with a false conclusion.
  • Why does Aristotle reduce the second and third figures to the first?
  • What can formal logic not tell you about an argument?

• Arguing well from what people believe

  The Topics treats debate as a discipline with rules. Dialectic starts from reputable opinions, held by all, by most or by the wise, and examines them by question and answer; Book VIII teaches both attacker and defender to argue honestly and skilfully.

  • How does dialectical reasoning differ from demonstration and from contentious reasoning?
  • Why should students practise arguing both sides?
  • Where does a classroom debate fall short of Aristotle's dialectic?

• Seeming and being in argument

  On Sophistical Refutations begins with the difference between real and apparent health, beauty and gold, and applies it to arguments. Naming fallacies is a defence of truth against those who only want to seem wise.

  • Find an example of the fallacy of many questions in advertising or politics.
  • Why does Aristotle say the sophist wants to seem wise rather than be wise?
  • Is it ever right to use a fallacy knowingly?

Context

Aristotle developed his logic in the generation after Plato, partly out of the Academy's practice of dialectical debate and partly against the paid teachers of eristic argument whom Plato satirized. The treatises are lecture materials rather than polished books. Andronicus of Rhodes and the ancient commentators gathered them, with the Categories and Posterior Analytics, under the name Organon, a tool for all inquiry rather than a branch of philosophy.

Composition

Dates are uncertain; most scholars place the Topics and Sophistical Refutations early, possibly in Aristotle's Academy years before 347 BC, with the Prior Analytics later. On Interpretation's authenticity has occasionally been questioned but is generally accepted. The translations used here appeared in the Oxford Works of Aristotle under W. D. Ross between 1926 and 1928.

Reception

Boethius translated On Interpretation and the Prior Analytics into Latin in the sixth century; the 'old logic' and later the 'new logic' became the core of medieval university study. Syllogistic remained the standard formal logic until Frege and Boole in the nineteenth century, and Kant could still say logic had not advanced a step since Aristotle. The fallacy names taught today largely descend from Sophistical Refutations.

Comparisons

• Categories

  The Categories classifies the terms that On Interpretation joins into statements; read it first for Aristotle's account of substance, quality and relation.

• Posterior Analytics and Physics

  The Posterior Analytics takes the syllogism forms proved in the Prior Analytics and asks what makes a deduction scientific knowledge rather than mere validity.

• Rhetoric

  The Rhetoric calls itself the counterpart of dialectic; its enthymemes and topics adapt the Topics and Prior Analytics II to speeches before crowds.

• Euthydemus

  Plato's comic dialogue shows two eristic brothers producing exactly the verbal tricks that Sophistical Refutations later names and solves.

• A System of Logic, Book III: Of Induction

  Mill argued that every syllogism hides an induction; set his account of inductive method beside Aristotle's brief treatment of induction in Prior Analytics II.23.

• Logical Writings on Binary Arithmetic and Universal Character

  Leibniz admired syllogistic and tried to extend it into a universal calculus of reasoning, a step toward the symbolic logic that finally displaced Aristotle's.

Quotes

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Draw the square of opposition from On Interpretation using sentences about your school, then test which pairs can both be true and which can both be false.

• Dialogue

  Write a Topics-style debate of twelve exchanges in which a questioner tries to refute the thesis 'courage is knowledge' using only yes-or-no questions.

• Classroom

  Collect three examples of fallacies from advertisements or speeches and label each with its name from Sophistical Refutations, explaining the solution Aristotle would give.

• Essay

  Does the sea-fight argument succeed in showing that the future is open? Present Aristotle's reasoning fairly and then evaluate it.

Further Reading

• Categories, Aristotle

  The first treatise of the Organon.

• Rhetoric, Aristotle

  Dialectic adapted to public speech.

• Euthydemus, Plato

  A dramatized display of sophistic fallacies.

• A System of Logic, John Stuart Mill

  A nineteenth-century challenge to syllogistic.