November 2022 Did Aristotle Endorse Aristotle’s Thesis? A Case Study in Aristotle’s Metalogic
Yale Weiss
Author Affiliations +
Notre Dame J. Formal Logic 63(4): 551-579 (November 2022). DOI: 10.1215/00294527-2022-0032

Abstract

Since McCall (1966), the heterodox principle of propositional logic that it is impossible for a proposition to be entailed by its own negation—in symbols, ¬(¬φφ)—has gone by the name of Aristotle’s thesis, since Aristotle apparently endorses it in Prior Analytics 2.4, 57b3–14. Scholars have contested whether Aristotle did endorse his eponymous thesis, whether he could do so consistently, and for what purpose he endorsed it if he did. In this article, I reconstruct Aristotle’s argument from this passage and show that he accepts this thesis. Further, I show that the argument he gives is, making plausible assumptions, a correct proof in a consistent fragmentary nonclassical metalogic for a metatheorem he previously states concerning his assertoric syllogistic. In this way, Aristotle’s argument emerges as a fascinating case study in the use of a nonclassical metalogic to prove a result about a nonclassical object system.

Citation

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Yale Weiss. "Did Aristotle Endorse Aristotle’s Thesis? A Case Study in Aristotle’s Metalogic." Notre Dame J. Formal Logic 63 (4) 551 - 579, November 2022. https://doi.org/10.1215/00294527-2022-0032

Information

Received: 24 February 2022; Accepted: 23 August 2022; Published: November 2022
First available in Project Euclid: 16 December 2022

MathSciNet: MR4522326
zbMATH: 07634482
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1215/00294527-2022-0032

Subjects:
Primary: 03B60
Secondary: 01A20 , 03A05

Keywords: ancient logic , Aristotle , connexive logic , metalogic , syllogistic

Rights: Copyright © 2022 University of Notre Dame

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Vol.63 • No. 4 • November 2022
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