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In term logic (a branch of philosophical logic), the square of opposition is a diagram representing the relations between the four basic categorical propositions. The origin of the square can be traced back to Aristotle's tractate On Interpretation and its distinction between two oppositions: contradiction and contrariety. However, Aristotle did not draw any diagram; this was done several centuries later by Apuleius and Boethius.
In traditional logic, a proposition (Latin: propositio) is a spoken assertion (oratio enunciativa), not the meaning of an assertion, as in modern philosophy of language and logic. A categorical proposition is a simple proposition containing two terms, subject (S) and predicate (P), in which the predicate is either asserted or denied of the subject.
Every categorical proposition can be reduced to one of four logical forms, named A, E, I, and O based on the Latin affirmo (I affirm), for the affirmative propositions A and I, and nego (I deny), for the negative propositions E and O. These are:
In tabular form:
Name | Symbol | Latin | English* | Mnemonic | Modern form [1] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Universal affirmative | A | Omne S est P. | Every S is P. (S is always P.) | affirmo (I affirm) | |
Universal negative | E | Nullum S est P. | No S is P. (S is never P.) | nego (I deny) | |
Particular affirmative | I | Quoddam S est P. | Some S is P. (S is sometimes P.) | affirmo (I affirm) | |
Particular negative | O | Quoddam S nōn est P. | Some S is not P. (S is not always P.) | nego (I deny) |
*Proposition A may be stated as "All S is P." However, Proposition E when stated correspondingly as "All S is not P." is ambiguous [2] because it can be either an E or O proposition, thus requiring a context to determine the form; the standard form "No S is P" is unambiguous, so it is preferred. Proposition O also takes the forms "Sometimes S is not P." and "A certain S is not P." (literally the Latin 'Quoddam S nōn est P.')
** in the modern forms means that a statement applies on an object . It may be simply interpreted as " is " in many cases. can be also written as .
Aristotle states (in chapters six and seven of the Peri hermēneias (Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, Latin De Interpretatione , English 'On Interpretation')), that there are certain logical relationships between these four kinds of proposition. He says that to every affirmation there corresponds exactly one negation, and that every affirmation and its negation are 'opposed' such that always one of them must be true, and the other false. A pair of an affirmative statement and its negation is, he calls, a 'contradiction' (in medieval Latin, contradictio). Examples of contradictories are 'every man is white' and 'not every man is white' (also read as 'some men are not white'), 'no man is white' and 'some man is white'.
The below relations, contrary, subcontrary, subalternation, and superalternation, do hold based on the traditional logic assumption that things stated as S (or things satisfying a statement S in modern logic) exist. If this assumption is taken out, then these relations do not hold.
'Contrary' (medieval: contrariae) statements, are such that both statements cannot be true at the same time. Examples of these are the universal affirmative 'every man is white', and the universal negative 'no man is white'. These cannot be true at the same time. However, these are not contradictories because both of them may be false. For example, it is false that every man is white, since some men are not white. Yet it is also false that no man is white, since there are some white men.
Since every statement has the contradictory opposite (its negation), and since a contradicting statement is true when its opposite is false, it follows that the opposites of contraries (which the medievals called subcontraries, subcontrariae) can both be true, but they cannot both be false. Since subcontraries are negations of universal statements, they were called 'particular' statements by the medieval logicians.
Another logical relation implied by this, though not mentioned explicitly by Aristotle, is 'alternation' (alternatio), consisting of 'subalternation' and 'superalternation'. Subalternation is a relation between the particular statement and the universal statement of the same quality (affirmative or negative) such that the particular is implied by the universal, while superalternation is a relation between them such that the falsity of the universal (equivalently the negation of the universal) is implied by the falsity of the particular (equivalently the negation of the particular). [3] (The superalternation is the contrapositive of the subalternation.) In these relations, the particular is the subaltern of the universal, which is the particular's superaltern. For example, if 'every man is white' is true, its contrary 'no man is white' is false. Therefore, the contradictory 'some man is white' is true. Similarly the universal 'no man is white' implies the particular 'not every man is white'. [4] [5]
In summary:
These relationships became the basis of a diagram originating with Boethius and used by medieval logicians to classify the logical relationships. The propositions are placed in the four corners of a square, and the relations represented as lines drawn between them, whence the name 'The Square of Opposition'. Therefore, the following cases can be made: [6]
To memorize them, the medievals invented the following Latin rhyme: [7]
It affirms that A and E are not neither both true nor both false in each of the above cases. The same applies to I and O. While the first two are universal statements, the couple I / O refers to particular ones.
The Square of Oppositions was used for the categorical inferences described by the Greek philosopher Aristotle: conversion, obversion and contraposition. Each of those three types of categorical inference was applied to the four Boethian logical forms: A, E, I, and O.
Subcontraries (I and O), which medieval logicians represented in the form 'quoddam A est B' (some particular A is B) and 'quoddam A non est B' (some particular A is not B) cannot both be false, since their universal contradictory statements (no A is B / every A is B) cannot both be true. This leads to a difficulty firstly identified by Peter Abelard (1079 – 21 April 1142). 'Some A is B' seems to imply 'something is A', in other words, there exists something that is A. For example, 'Some man is white' seems to imply that at least one thing that exists is a man, namely the man who has to be white, if 'some man is white' is true. But, 'some man is not white' also implies that something as a man exists, namely the man who is not white, if the statement 'some man is not white' is true. But Aristotelian logic requires that, necessarily, one of these statements (more generally 'some particular A is B' and 'some particular A is not B') is true, i.e., they cannot both be false. Therefore, since both statements imply the presence of at least one thing that is a man, the presence of a man or men is followed. But, as Abelard points out in the Dialectica, surely men might not exist? [8]
Abelard also points out that subcontraries containing subject terms denoting nothing, such as 'a man who is a stone', are both false.
Terence Parsons (born 1939) argues that ancient philosophers did not experience the problem of existential import as only the A (universal affirmative) and I (particular affirmative) forms had existential import. (If a statement includes a term such that the statement is false if the term has no instances, i.e., no thing associated with the term exists, then the statement is said to have existential import with respect to that term.)
He goes on to cite a medieval philosopher William of Moerbeke (1215–35 – c. 1286),
And points to Boethius' translation of Aristotle's work as giving rise to the mistaken notion that the O form has existential import.
In the 19th century, George Boole (November 1815 – 8 December 1864) argued for requiring existential import on both terms in particular claims (I and O), but allowing all terms of universal claims (A and E) to lack existential import. This decision made Venn diagrams particularly easy to use for term logic. The square of opposition, under this Boolean set of assumptions, is often called the modern Square of opposition. In the modern square of opposition, A and O claims are contradictories, as are E and I, but all other forms of opposition cease to hold; there are no contraries, subcontraries, subalternations, and superalternations. Thus, from a modern point of view, it often makes sense to talk about 'the' opposition of a claim, rather than insisting, as older logicians did, that a claim has several different opposites, which are in different kinds of opposition with the claim.
Gottlob Frege (8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925)'s Begriffsschrift also presents a square of oppositions, organised in an almost identical manner to the classical square, showing the contradictories, subalternates and contraries between four formulae constructed from universal quantification, negation and implication.
Algirdas Julien Greimas (9 March 1917 – 27 February 1992)' semiotic square was derived from Aristotle's work.
The traditional square of opposition is now often compared with squares based on inner- and outer-negation. [14]
The square of opposition has been extended to a logical hexagon which includes the relationships of six statements. It was discovered independently by both Augustin Sesmat (April 7, 1885 – December 12, 1957) and Robert Blanché (1898–1975). [15] It has been proven that both the square and the hexagon, followed by a "logical cube", belong to a regular series of n-dimensional objects called "logical bi-simplexes of dimension n." The pattern also goes even beyond this. [16]
The logical square, also called square of opposition or square of Apuleius, has its origin in the four marked sentences to be employed in syllogistic reasoning: "Every man is bad," the universal affirmative - The negation of the universal affirmative "Not every man is bad" (or "Some men are not bad") - "Some men are bad," the particular affirmative - and finally, the negation of the particular affirmative "No man is bad". Robert Blanché published with Vrin his Structures intellectuelles in 1966 and since then many scholars think that the logical square or square of opposition representing four values should be replaced by the logical hexagon which by representing six values is a more potent figure because it has the power to explain more things about logic and natural language.
In modern mathematical logic, statements containing words "all", "some" and "no", can be stated in terms of set theory if we assume a set-like domain of discourse. If the set of all A's is labeled as and the set of all B's as , then:
By definition, the empty set is a subset of all sets. From this fact it follows that, according to this mathematical convention, if there are no A's, then the statements "All A is B" and "No A is B" are always true whereas the statements "Some A is B" and "Some A is not B" are always false. This also implies that AaB does not entail AiB, and some of the syllogisms mentioned above are not valid when there are no A's ().
First-order logic—also called predicate logic, predicate calculus, quantificational logic—is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects, and allows the use of sentences that contain variables. Rather than propositions such as "all men are mortal", in first-order logic one can have expressions in the form "for all x, if x is a man, then x is mortal"; where "for all x" is a quantifier, while x is a variable. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers or relations; in this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic.
In logic, the law of non-contradiction (LNC) states that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time, e. g. the two propositions "p is the case" and "p is not the case" are mutually exclusive. Formally, this is expressed as the tautology ¬(p ∧ ¬p). The law is not to be confused with the law of excluded middle which states that at least one, "p is the case" or "p is not the case", holds.
In logic, the law of excluded middle or the principle of excluded middle states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true. It is one of the three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradiction, and the law of identity; however, no system of logic is built on just these laws, and none of these laws provides inference rules, such as modus ponens or De Morgan's laws. The law is also known as the law / principleof the excluded third, in Latin principium tertii exclusi. Another Latin designation for this law is tertium non datur or "no third [possibility] is given". In classical logic, the law is a tautology.
In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or the validity of a proposition, by showing that assuming the proposition to be false leads to a contradiction. Although it is quite freely used in mathematical proofs, not every school of mathematical thought accepts this kind of nonconstructive proof as universally valid.
A syllogism is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.
The history of logic deals with the study of the development of the science of valid inference (logic). Formal logics developed in ancient times in India, China, and Greece. Greek methods, particularly Aristotelian logic as found in the Organon, found wide application and acceptance in Western science and mathematics for millennia. The Stoics, especially Chrysippus, began the development of predicate logic.
In traditional logic, a contradiction occurs when a proposition conflicts either with itself or established fact. It is often used as a tool to detect disingenuous beliefs and bias. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle's law of noncontradiction states that "It is impossible that the same thing can at the same time both belong and not belong to the same object and in the same respect."
In mathematical logic, a universal quantification is a type of quantifier, a logical constant which is interpreted as "given any", "for all", or "for any". It expresses that a predicate can be satisfied by every member of a domain of discourse. In other words, it is the predication of a property or relation to every member of the domain. It asserts that a predicate within the scope of a universal quantifier is true of every value of a predicate variable.
In logic and mathematics, the converse of a categorical or implicational statement is the result of reversing its two constituent statements. For the implication P → Q, the converse is Q → P. For the categorical proposition All S are P, the converse is All P are S. Either way, the truth of the converse is generally independent from that of the original statement.
In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition to another proposition "not ", standing for " is not true", written , or . It is interpreted intuitively as being true when is false, and false when is true. Negation is thus a unary logical connective. It may be applied as an operation on notions, propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. In classical logic, negation is normally identified with the truth function that takes truth to falsity. In intuitionistic logic, according to the Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov interpretation, the negation of a proposition is the proposition whose proofs are the refutations of .
In logic and formal semantics, term logic, also known as traditional logic, syllogistic logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for an approach to formal logic that began with Aristotle and was developed further in ancient history mostly by his followers, the Peripatetics. It was revived after the third century CE by Porphyry's Isagoge.
De Interpretatione or On Interpretation is the second text from Aristotle's Organon and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way. The work is usually known by its Latin title.
In traditional logic, obversion is a "type of immediate inference in which from a given proposition another proposition is inferred whose subject is the same as the original subject, whose predicate is the contradictory of the original predicate, and whose quality is affirmative if the original proposition's quality was negative and vice versa". The quality of the inferred categorical proposition is changed but the truth value is the same to the original proposition. The immediately inferred proposition is termed the "obverse" of the original proposition, and is a valid form of inference for all types of categorical propositions.
In logic, a categorical proposition, or categorical statement, is a proposition that asserts or denies that all or some of the members of one category are included in another. The study of arguments using categorical statements forms an important branch of deductive reasoning that began with the Ancient Greeks.
Epistemic modal logic is a subfield of modal logic that is concerned with reasoning about knowledge. While epistemology has a long philosophical tradition dating back to Ancient Greece, epistemic logic is a much more recent development with applications in many fields, including philosophy, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, economics and linguistics. While philosophers since Aristotle have discussed modal logic, and Medieval philosophers such as Avicenna, Ockham, and Duns Scotus developed many of their observations, it was C. I. Lewis who created the first symbolic and systematic approach to the topic, in 1912. It continued to mature as a field, reaching its modern form in 1963 with the work of Kripke.
In mathematical logic, a tautology is a formula that is true regardless of the interpretation of its component terms, with only the logical constants having a fixed meaning. For example, a formula that states, "the ball is green or the ball is not green," is always true, regardless of what a ball is and regardless of its colour. Tautology is usually, though not always, used to refer to valid formulas of propositional logic.
In logic and mathematics, contraposition, or transposition, refers to the inference of going from a conditional statement into its logically equivalent contrapositive, and an associated proof method known as § Proof by contrapositive. The contrapositive of a statement has its antecedent and consequent inverted and flipped.
In mathematical logic, a formula is satisfiable if it is true under some assignment of values to its variables. For example, the formula is satisfiable because it is true when and , while the formula is not satisfiable over the integers. The dual concept to satisfiability is validity; a formula is valid if every assignment of values to its variables makes the formula true. For example, is valid over the integers, but is not.
In philosophical logic, the logical hexagon is a conceptual model of the relationships between the truth values of six statements. It is an extension of Aristotle's square of opposition. It was discovered independently by both Augustin Sesmat and Robert Blanché.
This is a glossary of logic. Logic is the study of the principles of valid reasoning and argumentation.