Monthly Philosophy Seminar RCGPh AA acad. year 2023-2024

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,

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.

Info: keef@academyofathens.gr

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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.

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FULL SCHEDULE

October 25, Doukas Kapantaïs

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

November 15, Michel Crubellier

How is it possible to claim that every συλλογισμός is a syllogism?

December 6, Marko Malink

Aristotle on reductio ad impossibile: from dialectic to syllogistic logic

January 17, Christof Rapp

Reasonableness of Argument and strategic maneuvering in Topics VIII

February 28, Mathieu Marion

Semantics of Interaction: A New Perspective on the relation between Topics and Prior Analytics

March 20, Paolo Fait

How can the investigation of demonstration and demonstrative science (Prior Analytics 1.1 24a10–11) accommodate dialectical syllogisms?

April 3, Gisela Striker

The place of dialectic in Aristotle's Prior Analytics

May 15, Laura Castelli

Universal premises in the Topics

May 29, Colin G. King

Language formalization in the Topics and the Prior Analytics

June 12, Zoe McConaughey

Syllogistic and dialogues