Prior Analytics 1.23; an elimination theorem to avail the scientist and the dialectician alike

Doukas Kapantais

The Research Centre for Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens invites you to the first meeting of the Monthly Philosophy Seminar for the academic year 2023-2024 which will take place on Wednesday 25 October 2023, 16:00-18:00 (ATH, GR timezone) at the Elli Lambridis Philosophical Library (9 Hypsilantou str., Athens).

Speaker: Doukas Kapantais, Research Director at the RCGPh, Academy of Athens

Topic: Prior Analytics 1.23; an elimination theorem to avail the scientist and the dialectician alike.

Those interested may attend either in person or via Zoom at the following link: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9147464241?pwd=Tyt3VGIrS3FFN1h6UVZIVmRjbEdYZz09

Meeting ID: 914 746 4241

Passcode: 621567

 ABSTRACT

I apprehend the Prior Analytics not as a treatise about a single “formal” theory but as a treatise on the deductive interplay between two such theories: (i) what Corcoran, Smiley and others have identified as the Syllogistic, and (ii) the fourteen syllogisms of the scholastics. The metatheory exploring their properties and deductive interaction is a contentual theory containing (primarily) the dicta, a pretheoretical reductio ad impossibile rule, and the square of opposition. The above interplay–I claim–culminates in the construction of the algorithmic apparatus in 1.28 aimed at availing both scientists and dialecticians. I take stock of some puzzling claims by Aristotle according to which whatever can be proved by reductio ad impossibile can also be proved ostensively. I argue that apprehending the content of the Prior Analytics that way vindicates these claims.