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Single Idea 8084

[filed under theme 4. Formal Logic / A. Syllogistic Logic / 2. Syllogistic Logic ]

Full Idea

Syllogisms are useless for discovery, and serve only for verbal fencing.

Gist of Idea

Syllogisms are verbal fencing, not discovery

Source

John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]), quoted by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.3

Book Ref

Devlin,Keith: 'Goodbye Descartes: the end of logic' [Wiley 1997], p.62

A Reaction

This illustrates the low status of logic, and the new high status of experimental science, in Locke's time. Locke's seems to miss the point that you can infer new discoveries from old ones.

The 14 ideas with the same theme [general ideas about formal arguments in syllogism form]:

13819 Aristotle's said some Fs are G or some Fs are not G, forgetting that there might be no Fs [Bostock on Aristotle]
20778 Stoics like syllogisms, for showing what is demonstrative, which corrects opinions [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
8084 Syllogisms are verbal fencing, not discovery [Locke]
12572 Many people can reason well, yet can't make a syllogism [Locke]
18806 Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt]
14453 The Darapti syllogism is fallacious: All M is S, all M is P, so some S is P' - but if there is no M? [Russell]
5401 The mortality of Socrates is more certain from induction than it is from deduction [Russell]
18949 The universal syllogism is now expressed as the transitivity of subclasses [Putnam]
15879 The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré]
13439 Venn Diagrams map three predicates into eight compartments, then look for the conclusion [Bostock]
19006 An 'enthymeme' is an argument with an indispensable unstated assumption [Yablo]
8081 'No councillors are bankers' and 'All bankers are athletes' implies 'Some athletes are not councillors' [Devlin]
10688 'Equivocation' is when terms do not mean the same thing in premises and conclusion [Beall/Restall]
13915 Syllogistic can't handle sentences with singular terms, or relational terms, or compound sentences [Engelbretsen/Sayward]