In this weeks reading, I read both the Truth Tables and The Aristotelian Logic chapters. I found alot of interesting things in both chapters. The concept that I found most useful was the section in Aristotelian Logic, "Syllogisms". My definition of a Syllogism is an argument that has many parts with two statements which are most of the time true, and they eventually lead to a conclusion. In the chapter Epstein talks about Categorical syllogisms. He states "A categorical syllogism is an argument composed of three categorical claims (two premises and a conclusion)." An example that Epstein gave in the chapter for a categorical syllogism is:
No Police officers are theives.
Some theives are sent to prison.
So no police officers are sent to prison.
The first two are claims, and then the last sentence is the conclusion. I believe categorial syllogisms are used in everyday life because it is often where these kinds of situations come up in an argument.
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This post was very well thought out. I enjoyed reading how you included your definition of syllogisms as well as the books definition, just to make it clear what it was. I believe that this technique for arguments and stating claims happens more often than we think, and by being able to use this technique to our advantage, we can have more clear and more precise arguments. The example given here is a good explanation of what syllogisms are, wherein the first two parts are claims given, and then the third part is the conclusion that can be drawn from the first two parts.
ReplyDeleteI liked this post on syllogism and you did a very good job of explaining what it was and how it works. This was a hard concept to understand but the way you put it together made it easy to get. I liked the way how you put the definition of syllogism and then used a quote from the reading. Your example was very good too how you put two different claims and then you combined them together to make a syllogism claim and made it work well by using the prison example. Very good job explaining this concept!
ReplyDeleteDear Sean,
ReplyDeleteI really like your post on syllogisms. They are fairly complicated so they need extra explanation. Your definition of syllogisms being two statements and a conclusion really helps me gain a better understanding. It also helped me when you added exactly what the text said after your definition so I was able to apply your definition to the example. What helped me understand this was breaking down the example that you gave. When I did this, I was able to better see that the first two premises are pretty much separate from each other and the conclusion pulls them together. Thanks again for helping me understand this concept better.
hb1