The Founding of Logic Modern Interpretations of Aristotle's Logic

Ancient Philosophy 14 (1994) © Mathesis Publications 9 The Founding of Logic Modern Interpretations of Aristotle's Logic John Corcoran Introduction Since the time of Aristotle's students, interpreters have considered Prior Analytics to be a treatise about deductive reasoning-more generally, about methods of determining the validity and invalidity of premise-conclusion arguments. People studied Prior Analytics in order to leam more about deductive reasoning and to improve their own reasoning skills. Some people naively and irresponsibly thought that the deductive reasoning described by Aristotle was entirely adequate for derivation of the theorems of geometry from the basic premises. Moreover, even such perceptive people as Boole who were insightful about the gross lack of comprehensiveness in the mIes of deduction attributed to Aristotle nevertheless understood Aristotle to be treating the process of deducing conclusions implied by given premise-sets. These interpreters understood Aristotle to be focusing on two epistemic processes : First, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion follows necessarily from a set of premises (that is, on the epistemic process of extracting information implicit in explicitly given information) and, second, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion does not follow. Despite the overwhelming tendency to interpret the syllogistic as formal epistemology, it was not until the early 1970s that it occurred to anyone to think that Aristotle may have developed a theory of deductive reasoning with a well worked-out system of deductions comparable in rigor and precision with systenls such as propositional logic or equationallogic familiar from mathenlatical logic. When modem logicians in the 1920s and 1930s first tumed their attention to the problem of understanding Aristotle's contribution to logic in modem terms, they were guided both by the Frege-Russell conception of logic as formal ontology and at the same time by adesire to protect Aristotle from possible charges of psychologism. They thought they saw Aristotle applying the informal axiomatic method to formal ontology, not as making the first steps into formal epistemology. They did not notice Aristotle's description of deductive reasoning. Ironically, the formal axiomatic method (in which one explicitly presents not 10 merely the substantive axioms but also the deductive processes used to derive theorems from the axioms) is incipient in Aristotle's presentation. Partly in opposition to the axiomatic, ontically-oriented approach to Aristotle's logic and partly as a result of attempting to increase the degree of fit between interpretation and text, logicians in the 1970s working independently came to remarkably similar conclusions to the effect that Aristotle indeed had produced the first system of formal deductions. They concluded that Aristotle had analyzed the process of deduction and that his achievement included a system of natural deductions including both direct and indirect deductions which, though simple and rudimentary, was semantically complete. Where the interpretations of the 1920s and 1930s attribute to Aristotle a system of propositions organized deductively, the interpretations of the 1970s attribute to Aristotle a system of deductions, extended deductive discourses, concatenations of propositions , organized epistemically. The logicians of the 1920s and 1930s take Aristotle to be deducing laws of logic fronl axiomatic origins; the logicians of the 1970s take Aristotle to be describing the process of deduction and in particular to be describing deductions themselves, both those deductions that are proofs based on axiomatic premises and those deductions that, though deductively cogent, do not establish the truth of the conclusion but only that the conclusion is implied by the premise-set. Thus, two very different and opposed interpretations had emerged, interestingly both products of modem logicians equipped with the theoretical apparatus of mathematicallogic. The issue at stake between these two interpretations is the historical question of Aristotle's place in the history of logic and of his orientation in philosophy of logic. This paper affirms Aristotle's place as the founder of logic taken as formal epistemology, including the study of deductive reasoning. A by-product of this study of Aristotle's acconlplishments in logic is a clarification of a distinction implicit in discourses among logicians-that between logic as formal ontology and logic as formal epistemology. Aristotle's Logic: New Goals, New Results Our understanding of Aristotle's logic has increased enormously in the last sixty years. It is gratifying to review the cascade of progress beginning with the independently achieved but remarkably similar advances reported in 1929 by Jan Lukasiewicz and in 1938 by James Wilkinson Miller. Penetrating examination and critical evaluation of the Lukasiewicz-Miller viewpoint in the 1950s and 1960s set the stage for work in the early 1970s by Timothy Smiley and myself. Subsequent work in the late 1970s and early 1980s by various people including Timothy Smiley, Robin Smith, Michael Scanlan and myself can be seen as culminating, at least for the moment, in the 1989 translation and commentary on Prior Analytics by Robin Smith. Since the early 1970s the progress has been dialectical rather than linearly cumulative, and the spirit of objectivity and sympathetic criticism currently pervading the field makes it likely that the dialectical paradigm will continue. 11 Each succeeding contribution not only benefitted from and built on previous efforts but it also found itself refining, revising, correcting, and refllting various features of previous efforts, often previous efforts by the same author. There is no such thing as a unique fixed contenlporary doctrine on Aristotle's logic. Indeed, as far as I know, none of the current investigators has yet to become committed to a definitive viewpoint although there is wide agreement on loose, general principles. In some instances, e.g. Smith's 1982 work on ecthetic deduction, progress was made by widening the range of Aristotelian processes amenable to treatment by modem methods of symbolic logic. In some cases, e.g. Scanlan's 1983 work on issues of compactness in the Analytics, progress consisted largely in clarifying issues and correcting errors of previous works. In some cases, e. g. the independent work by Smiley and by myself on syllogistic deduction, progress involved radically increasing the degree of fit required between modem interpretative reconstruction and the Aristotelian text. Neither Lukasiewicz nor Miller attempted to reconstruct a logical system originally presented by Aristotle. Cf. Corcoran and Scanlan 1982, 78-79. The repayment for these two independent attempts at increasing the precision of interpretation was a sweeping revision of our understanding of Aristotle's most fundamental concepts, methods, and goals. In retrospect it is difficult to imagine two types of interpretative theories more thoroughly different than those proposed before World War 11 by Lukasiewicz and by Miller, on one hand, and those proposed twenty-five years after the war by Smiley and by myself, on the other. The pre-war Lukasiewicz-Miller view takes Aristotle's main concems in Prior Analytics to be ontic, to the exclusion of epistemic concems. Lukasiewicz goes so far as to say that the logic of Prior Analytics per se has nothing to do with thinking, that it concems thought per se no more than does a mathematical theory. It is true of course that this nonepistemic approach was motivated in part in order to defend Aristotle from false charges of psychologism. The post-war Smiley-Corcoran view takes Aristotle's main focus to be on epistemic concems, as opposed to but not excluding ontic concems. According to this view, among other things Aristotle was concemed with how human beings deduce a conclusion from premises that logically imply it. More generally, Aristotle was concemed with the methodology of deduction and counterargumentation: with how we know that this conclusion follows logically from these premises and with how we know that this conclusion does not follow from these premises. These questions, according to the Smiley-Corcoran view, were motivated largely by Aristotle's concem to understand the axiomatic method that he treats in the Posterior Analytics and that was practiced in the Academy. Prior Analytics studies an aspect of the axiomatic method; it does not use the axiomatic methode Thus the Lukasiewicz-Miller view attributes to Aristotle's Prior Analytics a goal drastically different from the goal attributed by the Smiley-Corcoran view. One should expect then that the methods attributed to Aristotle would likewise differ significantly and indeed this is the case, with some curious qualifications 12 and exceptions. The main exception has to do with the already mentioned fact that neither Lukasiewicz nor Miller claims to have reconstructed a system actually to be found in Prior Analytics, or even an approximation thereof. It is a bizarre irony that defenders of the Lukasiewicz-Miller view are often found to be claiming for the view merits that its originators disclaimed. Instead of having as a goal understanding the processes of determining whether or not a given conclusion follows from a given premise-set, Lukasiewicz and Miller think that Aristotle's goal is the establishing as true or as false, as the case may be, of certain universally quantified conditional propositions, vize those that 'correspond' to what have been called valid and invalid categorical arguments with arbitrarily large premise sets. For example, the following is to be established as true: given any three terms A, B, and C, if A belongs to every B and C belongs to no A, then B belongs to no C. And the following is to be established as false: given any three terms A, B, and C, if A belongs to every B and B belongs to every C, then C belongs to every A. In contrast , according to Smiley and Corcoran, Aristotle's goal rather was to develop and apply a method of deductive reasoning to deduce a proposition 'B belongs to no C' from propositions 'A belongs to every B' and 'c belongs to no A', and in regard to the second example, the Smiley-Corcoran view is that Aristotle's goal was to exhibit a method for establishing that a proposition 'c belongs to every A' is not a necessary consequence of propositions 'A belongs to every B' and 'B belongs to every C'. According to the Smiley-Corcoran viewpoint, examples of the first sort, Le., establishing that a given conclusion follows from given premises that actually imply it, are handled by Aristotle's method of deduction which involves both direct (ostensive) deductions and indirect (per impossible) deductions. Aristotle's method of deduction is treated in more detail below. Here I want to indicate that because Lukasiewicz does not realize what Aristotle is doing with indirect deductions, Lukasiewicz thinks that Aristotle does not understand per impossible reasoning. In fact, he thinks that Aristotle's misunderstanding of indirect reasoning was so defective that Aristotle commits a fallacy not just here and there but each and every time it is used in the syllogistic. See Corcoran 1974. According to the Smiley-Corcoran viewpoint, exanlples of the second sort, i.e. establishing that a given conclusion does not follow from given premises actually not implying it, are handled by Aristotle's method of counterarguments which consist in exhibiting another argument in the same form having premises known to be true and conclusion known to be false. Lukasiewicz also thinks that this method is fundamentally flawed. See Lukasiewicz 1957, 72. It is worth noting that the two interpretations, the pre-war as well as the post-war, are in complete agreement that Aristotle's syllogisms are not abstract forms (whether forms of propositions, forms of arguments or forms of deductions). In the case of the LukasiewiczMiller view, the 'terms' of the syllogism (indicated by letters A, B, C above) are actually object-Ianguage variables, not piace-holders in forms. In the case of the Smiley-Corcoran view, the 'terms' are concrete substantives such as 13 'human,' 'animal, ' 'plant,' etc. There is no evidence whatever to support the widespread belief that Aristotle postulated abstract forms over and above concrete propositions, concrete argunlents, or concrete deductions. Indeed, such postulation would have been characteristically platonistic and nonaristotelian. The Background of Aristotle's Logic In order to appreciate what is accomplished in the Organon, more specifically, in the Analytics, it is necessary to have some appreciation of the state of development of geometry and arithmetic in the Academy during the period immediately preceding and during Aristotle's writing of these works. It is also helpful to be aware of Plato's attitude toward the mathematical knowledge of his time and to understand Plato's views on the role of mathematical knowledge in education and in intellectuallife. Some graduates of modem universities do not achieve knowledge of mathematics comparable to that required by Plato for admission as a beginner in the Academy. Plato believed that mathematical knowledge serves as a paradigm of knowledge itself, a paradigm through which people may come to grasp the nature of knowledge and to realize the criteria that must be applied to distinguish genuine knowledge from mere belief. Cf., e.g. Republic, Book 7, 525a-527c and VIastos 1988, 138. Especially important for appreciating Aristotle's logic is acquaintance with dialectic, with the Socratic method of hypotheses and with the method of analysis as applied in geometry. Cf. Hintikka and Remes 1974 and Corcoran 1979. Perhaps the most important fact to bear in mind is that an axiomatically organized geometry text was in use in the Academy when Aristotle was a student. Cf. Heath 1926, i, 116. This geometry text probably resembled the book by Euclid that came to replace it. Cf. Knorr 1975, 7, 22. Two points of resemblance are especially relevant. Firstly, two kinds of proof were used. On the one hand there were direct proofs which erased doubt and established knowledge of their conclusions by so-to-speak building up the conclusion from material already established. On the other hand there were indirect proofs which erased doubt and established their conclusions by so-tospeak first inviting the doubt to be openly embraced for purposes of reasoning and then showing that such embrace was in conflict with already established results. The second point of resemblance is the orientation toward the ontic as opposed to the epistemic; this is not to impose a dichotomy or to suggest that in actual practice one orientation excludes attending to the other. Rather one should say that in a typical axiomatization of a science there is an orientation toward the ontology of the science, toward the class of objects comprising the subjectmatter or genus of the science, rather than on the process or processes of knowledge being employed. Euclid, e.g., sets forth the basic axioms and definitions first and then, without saying anything about the processes of deduction to be used, he proceeds to the extended elaboration of one chain of reasoning after the other. 14 This pattern of articulating the ontic while leaving the epistemic in an unarticulated and tacit state is repeated in axiomatization after axiomatization even up to the present day. For more on this point, including aremark by Alonzo Church, see Corcoran 1973, especially pages 24-29. People are sometimes surprised to leam that Hilbert's famous 1899 axiomatization of geometry, though carefully stating the axioms in clear naturallanguage (not in a symbolic language), proceeds to deduce consequence after consequence without any discussion of the methods used. In other words, the geometrical axioms are presented but the mIes of deduction from the underIying logic are left tacit. Church 1956, 27 speaks of the informal axiomatic method when the underlying system of deductions is left tacit as in Euclid's Elements and Hilbert's 1899 Grundlagen; he contrasts it with what he calls the formal axiomatic method wherein the deductions themselves are formally analyzed and made explicit. Using Church's terminology one can say that Lukasiewicz and Miller are on firm ground when they imply that Aristotle did not use the formal axiomatic methode See e.g. Lukasiewicz 1929, 106. They think that Aristotle's syllogistic is an application of the informal axiomatic method and thus, in particuIar, that Aristotle does not articulate the mIes of deduction of his syllogistic system. According to the Smiley-Corcoran view, Aristotie did not employ the formal axiomatic method in the syllogistic because he did not employ any axiomatic method there. However, in Prior Analytics Aristotle does indeed present a fully explicit and self-contained system of deductions with meticulously described mIes of deduction and with what amounts to a definition of a complete set of formal deductions including direct deductions and indirect deductions. Thus, according to the Smiley-Corcoran view, although Aristotle does not apply any axiomatic method (whether formal or informal) in Prior Analytics he does make the essential first step beyond the informal axiomatic method toward the formal axiomatic method by clearly indicating the possibility of articulating the means of deduction. Intuition and Deduction: Two Epistemic Processes In an axiomatization of a science the information is concentrated in the propositions explicitly stated as axioms and this information is extracted from the axiom set and amplified, often in surprising ways, in the course of the development of the series of theorems. The theorems are all contained in the axiom set, as is shown by the chains of reasoning that extract them. The information processing techniques, which are typically not explicit, are not regarded as part of the axiomatization but rather as mIes of deduction in the underlying Iogic presupposed by the axiomatization in question and presupposed by other axiomatizations of the same science or of different sciences. The axiom set is proper to the particular science under study but the underlying Iogic is topical neutral. 15 In order for a proposition to be an axiom it is not sufficient for it to be true; it must be known to be true by the scientist. In order for an information processing technique to be a rule of deduction it is not sufficient for it to be logically sound; it must be cogent or logically epistemic for the persons who use the underlying logic. Compare Quine 1986, pages 49, 83, and 98. To say that an information processing technique, or information transformation, is logically sound is to say that the result of applying the process has no information not already in the information that it is applied to, Le., that the information or the resultant or conclusion is contained in its raw material of premises. Put another way, a logically sound process produces from a given set of premises conclusions that are logically implied by that set. A conclusion is logically implied by a given premise-set if it is logically impossible for the conclusion to be false were the premises all true, Le. if the negation of the conclusion contradicts the premise-set. But not every logically sound information process is a rule of deduction of an underlying logic; a rule of deduction has the appropriate evidentiality or obviousness, it must be usable by persons to produce knowledge that a conclusion is implied by given premises. For more on this point see Weaver 1988. The epistemically effective information processing relevant to the axiomatic method, and to the hypothetical method used by Socrates and to the analytic method used in geometry, serves to extract information implicit in the propositions to which it is applied, in other words, to produce logical consequences from premises, and to do it in a way that makes evident to those using the processes that the conclusions indeed foIIow. These epistemic processes have come to be known collectively as deduction. The process of establishing the axioms to begin with has been called intuition recently; an earlier term still in use this way is induction See Hintikka 1980 and Corcoran 1982. All three words are ambiguous. In the hypothetical method, deduction is used to determine consequences of a hypothesis which is rejected as false when one of its consequences is determined to be false. The process of deduction, being part of the underlying logic, merely determines implied consequences of propositions. Deduction applies to information content per se; it is not limited merely to true propositions and certainly not merely to propositions already known to be true. To say that deduction is truth-preserving is an understatement at best; it is usually an insensitive and misleading half-truth; and it often betrays ignorance of logical insights already achieved by Aristotle. See Myhill 1960, 461-463. Deduction is not merely truth-preserving, it is information-conservative, Le. consequence-conservative in the sense that every consequence of a proposition deduced from a given set of propositions is already a consequence of the given set; there is no information in the deduced proposition not already in the set of propositions from which it was deduced. Not every truth-preserving transformation is consequence-conservative, but, of course, every consequence-conservative transformation is truth-preserving. For example, the rule of mathematical 16 induction is truth-preserving but not consequence-conservative. See the Appendix below. The epistemic status of knowledge ofaxioms contrasts sharply with that of knowledge of deduction. The former is propositional knowledge (or 'know-that') whereas the lauer is operational knowledge (or 'know-how'); it is an epistemic skill. To avoid confusion we should note that intuition and deduction are both operational knowledge; the one productive of propositional knowledge, the other productive of implicational knowledge, Le. knowledge that a given proposition is logically implied by a given set of propositions . The initial-versus-derivative distinction applies both to propositional knowledge in the narrow sense and to implicational knowledge, Le. to results of pure deduction. There are clear senses in which in an axiomatic science the axioms are initial and the theorems are derivative. When we turn to the processes by which the theorems are deduced from the axioms we see the stepby-step reasoning reported in what are called deductions; a deduction is a discourse or argumentation composed of a premise-set, a conclusion, and a chain of reasoning that makes evident that the conclusion follows logically from the premise-set. These chains of reasoning also break down into initial and derivative. The initial chains of reasoning are those which are composed of a single link, so to speak: these are the chains in which the conclusion is deduced immediately from the premise-set. The derivative chains are constructed by concatenating the initial chains. Just as axioms are epistemically fundamental in the realm of propositional knowledge, the initial chains of reasoning are fundamental in the realm of deduction. The proximate product of the deductive process is the chain of reasoning that forms the core of the discourse or argumentation that we call a deduction. There are many interesting analogies between the realm of propositional knowledge and other realms of knowledge. Here we have mentioned only one: an axiom is to a theorem as an immediate (one-link) chain of reasoning is to a mediated (multi-link) chain of reasoning. For further discussion see Corcoran 1989. Aristotle was fully aware of both of the above applications of the initial-versus-derivative distinction: that in the realm of known propositions and that in the realm of epistemically effective chains of reasoning. The initial-versus-derivative distinction in the realm of known propositions is implicit in Aristotle's view that every proposition known to be true is either known by 'induction' or deduced by a chain of immediate inferences whose ultimate premises are known by induction. This of course is closely related to Aristotle's truth-and-consequence conception 0/ proo/, vize that demonstrating the truth of a proposition is accomplished by showing that it is a logical consequence of propositions already known to be true. The initial-versusderivative distinction in the realm of cogent argumentations is exemplified in Aristotle's theory of the completing of syllogism: an incomplete (or 'imperfect') syllogism is completed ('perfected') by chaining together simple syllogisms that are already complete in themselves ('perfect'). 17 It should be noticed that the initial-versus-derivative distinction applies in many other places as well; it would be amistake to think that it is limited to axiomatic sciences and systems of deductions. The ordinary recursive grammars used by modern symbolic 10gicians apply this distinction to formalized languages: the 'atomic' fornlulas are initial and the 'molecular' formulas are derivative. In fact, the initial-versus-derivative distinction is applied in several ways in the context of a formalized language. In Corcoran 1976, several kinds of recursive (or generative) grammars are discussed: term grammars that generate derivative terms from initial terms, sentential grammars that generate derivative sentences from initial sentences, deduction grammars that generate derivative deductive discourses (designed to express chains of reasoning) from initial deductive discourses, and 'theorem grammars' (or axiomatizations) that generate propositions (theorems) deductively known from propositions (axionls) known initially without use of deduction. Every axiomatic system involves an initial-versus-derivative structure. But, as is almost too obvious to mention, not every system involving an initial-versusderivative structure is axiomatic. Thus detection of an initial-versus-derivative structure in a certain text is no sign that the text contains an axionlatic systenl. In particular, the fact that the Aristotelian syllogistic system has an initialversus-derivative structure with the 'perfect' syllogisms as initial does not imply that the syllogistic is an axiomatic system. Never once does Aristotle apply to a perfect syllogism one of the terms that he characteristically uses elsewhere for axiom per se. There are several ways of misconstruing Aristotle's syllogistic as an axiomatic system; Lukasiewicz 1951 is representative of one type of misconstrual while Parry and Hacker 1991 represents an entirely different type of misconstrual. The 'perfect' syllogisms do have a certain priority, they are fundamental, they are basic, the 'imperfect' syllogisms are known through the 'perfect' ones. Nevertheless, the 'perfect' syllogisms are not axioms for Aristotle and the syllogistic is not an axiomatic system. Logic as Formal Ontology There are several different conceptions of the nature of logic. Here I want to contrast an ontic conception with an epistemic conception. On one ontic conception logic investigates certain general aspects of 'reality', of 'being as such', in itself and without regard to how (or even whether) it may be known by thinking agents: in this connection logic has been calledformal ontology. On one epistemic conception, logic amounts to an investigation of deductive reasoning per se without regard to what it is reasoning about; it investigates what has been calledformal reasoning. On this view, logic is part of epistemology, vize the part that studies the operational knowledge known as deduction. It has been said that one of the main goals of epistemically-oriented logic is to explicate the expression 'by logical reasoning' as it occurs in sentences such as: 18 a deduction shows how its conclusion can be obtained by logical reasoning from its premise-set. Relevant to the axiomatic method there would be two branches of epistemology: one to account for knowledge of the axioms and one to account for how knowledge of the theorems is obtained from knowledge of the axioms, in other words, one investigating induction and one investigating deduction. The latter is logic according to the epistemic conception. On the ontic view of logic, on the other hand, logic is an attempt to gain knowledge of the truth of propositions expressible using only generic nouns (individual, property, relation, etc.) and other 'logical' expressions. In the framework of Principia Mathematica those are propositions expressible using only variables and logical constants. Principia Mathematica is an excellent example of an axiomatic presentation of logic as formal ontology. Below are some typical laws of formal ontology. Excluded middle: Given any individual and any property either the property belongs to the individual or the property does not belong to the individual. Noncontradiction: Given any individual and any property it is not the case that the property both belongs to the individual and does not belong to the individual. Identity: Given any individual and any property, if the property belongs to the individual then the individual has the property. Dictum de omni: Every property A belonging to everything having a given property B which in turn belongs to everything having another property C likewise belongs to everything having that other property C. Dictum de nullo: Every property A belonging to nothing having a given property B which in turn belongs to everything having another property C likewise belongs to nothing having that other property C. Commutation 0/ Complementation with Conversion: Given any relation R the complement of the converse of R is the converse of the complement of R. From this sampie of logic as ontic science we can see how the focus is on ontology, or, as has been said by others, on the most general features of reality itself and not on methods of gaining knowledge. According to Russell 1919, 169, 'logic is concemed with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.' These six laws are purely ontic in that they involve no concepts concerning a knowing agent or conceming an epistemic faculty such as perception, judgement, or deduction. This is not to deny that there is an epistemic dimension to logic as ontic science but only to affirm that the focus if ontic. Every science in so far as it is science has an 19 epistemic dimension. The epistemic differs from the ontic more as size differs from shape than as, say, animal differs from plant. Logic as ontic science was referred to above as formal ontology. Logic as epistemic metascience may in like manner be called formal epistemology. It is important and interesting to note that both are called formal logic but for very different reasons. Some formal onticists justify the adjective formal by reference to the fact that its propositions are expressed exclusively in general logical terms without the use of names denoting particular objects, particular properties, etc. cf. Russell 1919, 197. Some formal epistenlicists justify the adjective formal by reference to the fact that the cogency of an argumentation is subject to a principle of form and in particular to the following principles: (1) every two argumentations in the same form are either both cogent or both noncogent, (2) every argumentation in the same form as adeduction is itself adeduction. In fact, some formal epistemicists such as Boole claimed, with some justification, that they were dealing with the forms of thought, Le. with the forms of cogent argumentations. For more on cogency of argumentations and the principles of form see Corcoran 1989. Formal onticists are often easy to recognize because of their tendency to emphasize the fact that formal ontology does not study reasoningper se. In fact, the formal onticists often think that the study of reasoning belongs to psychology and not to logic. For example, Lukasiewicz in his famous book on Aristotle's syllogistic makes the following two revealing remarks. Lukasiewicz 1957 pages 12 and 73, respectively. 'Logic has no more to do with thinking than mathematics.' ,[Aristotle's] system is not a theory of the forms of thought nor is it dependent on psychology; it is similar to a mathematical theory ... ' There are significant differences among formal onticists. For example, even among those that emphasize the truth-preserving character of deduction some accept the view that it is consequences-conservative as well and some reject this view. For example, Lukasiewicz 1929, 16 explicitly rejects the view that deduction is a process of information extraction. He says that in deductive inference ' ...we may obtain quite new results, not contained in the premises'. Conclusion The tendency of interpreters to find an epistemically-oriented theory in Aristotle has been overwhelming. With the exception of James Wilkinson Miller's 1938 book and the writings of Jan Lukasiewicz and those directly influenced by these two, few interpreters have found a theory of formal ontology in Aristotle's Prior Analytics. Down through the ages, with these exceptions, interpreters have agreed that Prior Analytics is about methods of deternlining validity and invalidity of arguments. People studied Prior Analytics in order to leam more about deductive reasoning and in order to improve their own reasoning skills. Despite the overwhelming tendency to interpret the syllogistic epistemically it wasn't until the early 1970s that it occurred to anyone to wonder whether 20 Aristotle had a developed theory of deductive reasoning with a well worked-out system of deductions comparable in rigor and precision with the systems then fanliliar from mathematical logic. Of the logicians that studied Prior Analyties from this point of view, two of them published articles in same twelve-month period with remarkably similar systems affirming in clear and unequivocal terms the epistemic nature of Prior Analyties: Corcoran 1972 and Smiley 1973. The simpler of the two articles holds that Aristotle's theory of deductions recognizes two kinds of extended deductions of conclusions from arbitrarily large premise sets: direct deductions and indirect deductions. A direct deduction of a conclusion from given premises begins with the premises and proceeds by chaining together simple one-premise and two-premise inferences until the conclusion is reached. An indirect deduction of a given conclusion from given premises is in effect a direct deduction of a pair of contradictory opposites from the premises augmented by the contradictory opposite of the conclusion. This view is spelled out in more detail in the introduction to Smith's 1989 translation of Aristotle's Prior Analyties. According to the ontic interpretation the syllogistic is a system of true propositions about inclusional relations among classes. It is a system which is organized deductively, axioms followed by deduced theorems, by employment of an underlying logic never explicitly mentioned by Aristotle. It is a system whose place in the Organon, in Greek philosophy, and in the history of philosophy raises many problems. When we turn to the epistemic interpretation the changes are dramatic. From the epistemic perspective the syllogistic is a system of deductions or chains-of-reasoning. It is organized according to an initial-versus-derivative structure with the derivative components as chainings of initial components. It is a system which can be seen to explain epistemic processes of deduction presupposed by the Socratic hypothetical method, by the so-called method of analysis, by the axiomatic method and even by dialectic itself. According to the epistemic interpretation, the focus of the syllogistic is on methods as opposed to results; it concems the process of deduction rather than conclusions per se. One might say that it concems how to think rather than what to think. And it is a step toward understanding the nature of proof as opposed to persuasion and toward fulfilling the demand made by Socrates in the Phaedo for a teehne logike. This step made by Aristotle was so firm, so detailed, and so well-developed that it warrants the title of THE FOUNDING OF LOGIC. Appendix The word eonservative is used in connection with political thinking in several senses, two of which are relevant here. On the one hand, a person's thinking is called conservative to the extent that he aims at preserving and protecting what he takes to be traditional principles and values. On the other hand, a person's thinking is called conservative to the extent that he aims at preventing new principles and values from being realized. The word eonservative in the 21 expressions information-conservative and consequence-conservative is used in analogy with the second, negative or privative sense. In an application of an infornlation-conservative or consequence-conservative process the resultant contains no information not in the premises processed; such a process 'prevents' new information from intruding. Uses of hyphenated, adjectival expressions ending with 'conserving', 'conservative', 'preserving', and 'preservative' seem to be intrinsically confusing. Use of such expressions withol)t explanation and waming is misleading. For example, 'information-conserving' suggests the bizarre condition that the resultant contain all of the information contained in the datum, exactly the reverse of what is wanted. 'Every rectangle is a parallelogram and every square is a rectangle' contains all of the information contained in its consequence, 'Every square is a parallelogram' , not the other way around. We can say that a given process is contained in or constrained by a given relation if in every application the premises or raw material is in the given relation to the resultant. A truth-preserving process is constrained by material implication but not by logical implication, whereas a consequence-conservative process is constrained by logical implication (and thus also a fortiori by material implication) . To see that not every truth-preserving process is consequence-conservative it is sufficient to consider the rule of mathematical induction which, for example, when applied to the two propositions 'zero is even' and 'every natural number which is the successor of an even natural number is even' results in 'every natural number is even.' This resultant is materially implied by the given premise-set since the second premise is false and, of course, every proposition is materially implied by every set of propositions having a false member. On the other hand, the resultant is not logically implied by the given premise-set. To see this use the method of counterarguments : 'zero is integral' and 'every real number which is the successor of an integral real number is integral' are both true whereas 'every real nUITlber is integral' is false, of course; one-half is not integral, for example. The rule of mathematical induction, which is applicable only to propositions about the natural numbers (or, what amounts to the same thing, to sentences interpreted appropriately in the universe of natural numbers), is a rule of inference in Frege's sense but, as we have seen, it is not a rule of deduction in the information-extracting sense usual in logic. There are rules of derivation, let us say, which are truth-preserving but which are not even rules of inference. One extreme case is what I call the rule of truth-deriving: from an arbitrary set of propositions derive an arbitrary true proposition. This example shows that the property of being truth-preserving could not merit the emphasis that it has gotten. 22 Acknowledgements The original version of the paper was presented to the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy at its meeting on April 26, 1991 in Chicago. I thank its officers, Julius Moravcsik and Anthony Preus, for the opportunity to address the Society and I thank various members of the Society for their warm reception and for the lively discussion that followed. A new version of the paper, taking account of criticisms and suggestions made by members of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, was presented to the Conference on Aristotle's Logic, Science and Dialectic on May 24, 1991 in Manhattan, Kansas. I thank the organizers, Robin Smith and Robert Bolton, for the opportunity to be a part of the conference and I thank the several participants for their generous and interesting suggestions, which led to a third version. The third version was read carefully and critically by several people, including James Gasser (University of Geneva), Allan Gotthelf (Trenton State College), Michael Scanlan (Oregon State University), Sriram Nambiar (University of Buffalo) and George Boger (Canisius College) who gave me some penetrating criticisms and some imaginative suggestions. Boger's suggestions were especially useful. A fourth version was presented in November 1991 to the Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Toronto. Subsequently, parts of this paper have been presented to the Berkeley Logic Colloquium and to the Philosophy Colloquia at California State University at San Francisco and the University of Califomia at Davis. A closely related paper 'The Birth of Logic' was presented at the Buffalo Logic Colloquium, the Philosophy Colloquium of the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Department of Logic of the University of Barcelona; translated by Jose Sagüillo and Concha Martinez, it is to appear as 'EI nacimento de la 16gica' in the Spanish journal Agora. My thanks to everyone who helped me to gain clarity and to correct errors on this project. Department of Philosophy State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Prior Analytics, see Smith 1989. Benson, Hugh, ed. 1992. Essays on the Philosophy 0/ Socrates. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Bunge, Mario, ed. 1973. Methodological Unity 0/ Science. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht. Church, Alonzo. 1956. Introduction to Mathematical Logic. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Corcoran, John. 1972. 'Completeness of an ancient logic' Journal 0/ Symbolic Logic 37: 696-702. 23 Corcoran, lohn. 1973. 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