TWO SYLLOGISMS IN THE MOZI: CHINESE LOGIC AND LANGUAGE

This article examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse argument) is valid but the other (the two-horse argument) is not. To explain this difference, the article uses English plural constructions to formulate the arguments. Then it shows that the one-horse argument is valid because it has a valid argument form, the plural cousin of a standard form of valid categorical syllogisms (Plural Barbara), and argues that the two-horse argument involves equivocal uses of a key predicate (the Chinese counterpart of ‘have four feet’) that has the distributive/nondistributive ambiguity. In doing so, the article discusses linguistic differences between Chinese and English and explains why the logic of plural constructions is applicable to Chinese arguments that involve no plural constructions.

Logic, ancient

Western antiquity produced two great bodies of logical theory – those of Aristotle and the Stoics. Both aim to explain what distinguishes good arguments from bad. Both see that the best arguments are valid and that an argument’s validity depends on its form. For both, therefore, logic’s business is to identify the valid argument forms. Both theories do this by laying down a small number of basic argument forms – Aristotle’s ‘perfect syllogisms’, the Stoics’ ‘indemonstrables’ – and rigorously deriving other valid forms from them. Both theories also try – though in a less systematic manner – to classify the ways in which an argument can go wrong. Here the similarities between these two logics end. Their most significant differences can be illustrated by comparing basic argument forms from each. The argument ‘Every swan is an animal and every animal is moving, so every swan is moving’ has the same form as the argument ‘Every musician is human and every human is a substance, so every musician is a substance’. The Aristotelian expression of this form is ‘A belongs to all B and B belongs to all C, so A belongs to all C’. In this form the letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ stand for any terms whatever, and ‘A belongs to all B’ replaces ‘Every B is an A’. This represents the Aristotelian approach. Compare it with the following. The argument ‘If it is day then it is light, it is day, so it is light’ has the same form as the argument ‘If Dion walks then Dion moves, Dion walks, so Dion moves’. This form is expressed by the Stoics as ‘If the first then the second, the first, so the second’. Here the expressions ‘the first’ and ‘the second’ stand for any declarative sentences whatever. In both cases, the validity of the argument form is tantamount to the validity of all arguments having that form (though the Stoics, unlike Aristotle, require that the precise words used in an argument should recur in its form). But the Aristotelian argument form is different in kind from the Stoic one: while it abstracts from terms, the Stoic form abstracts from sentences. Aristotelian logic is a term logic, Stoic logic a sentential one.

THE CONCEPTHORSEIS A CONCEPT

I offer an analysis of the sentence ‘the concepthorseis a concept’. It will be argued that the grammatical subject of this sentence, ‘the concepthorse’, indeed refers to a concept, and not to an object, as Frege once held. The argument is based on a criterion of proper-namehood according to which an expression is a proper name if it is so rendered in Frege’s ideography. The predicate ‘is a concept’, on the other hand, should not be thought of as referring to a function. It will be argued that the analysis of sentences of the form ‘Cis a concept’ requires the introduction of a new form of statement. Such statements are not to be thought of as having function–argument form, but rather the structure subject–copula–predicate.

Two-year-olds but not younger children comprehend it in ambiguous contexts: Evidence from preferential looking

Children use pronouns in their speech from the earliest word combinations. Yet, it is not clear from these early utterances whether they understand that pronouns are used as substitutes for nouns and entities in the discourse. The aim of this study was to examine whether young children understand the anaphoric function of pronouns, focusing on the interpretation of the pronoun it in English-speaking children at 1;6 and 2;0. We tested whether adults and children would prefer to look at a previously introduced vs. novel visual object depending on the argument form (it, the + noun, a + noun, or silence). Results demonstrate that, like adults, two-year-olds understand that it refers to a previously introduced referent. There is no evidence that this knowledge is established in children at 1;6. This suggests that some time between 1;6 and 2;0 children come to understand that it refers to a highly accessible referent introduced in the prior context.

On Novels as Arguments

If novels can be arguments, that fact should shape logic or argumentation studies as well as literary studies. Two senses the term ‘narrative argument’ might have are (a) a story that offers an argument, or (b) a distinctive argument form. I consider whether there is a principled way of extracting a novel’s argument in sense (a). Regarding the possibility of (b), Hunt’s view is evaluated that many fables and much fabulist literature inherently, and as wholes, have an analogical argument structure. I argue that a better account is that some novels inherently exhibit a transcendental argument structure.

The Argument Form "Appeal to Galileo": A Critical Appreciation of Doury’s Account

Following a linguistic-descriptivist approach, Marianne Doury has studied debates about “parasciences” (e.g. astrology), discovering that “parascientists” frequently argue by “appeal to Galileo” (i.e., defend their views by comparing themselves to Galileo and their opponents to the Inquisition); opponents object by criticizing the analogy, charging fallacy, and appealing to counter-examples. I argue that Galilean appeals are much more widely used, by creationists, global-warming skeptics, advocates of “settled science”, great scientists, and great philosophers. Moreover, several subtypes should be distinguished; critiques questioning the analogy are proper; fallacy charges are problematic; and appeals to counter-examples are really indirect critiques of the analogy.