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Article: Aristotle's Modal Logic: Essence and Entailment in the Organon.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Review of Metaphysics
- Article date:
- June 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Philosophy Education Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Quite a number of contemporary students of logic tend to consider Aristotle's logic mainly from a formal point of view. Richard Patterson, on the other hand, attempts to show that Aristotle's system of logic as well as his modal logic must be studied in the light of his fundamental theory of syntax and his metaphysics. Even if all of Aristotle's modal logic has not been accepted in the West, the ideas underpinning it are those of his syllogistic logic. Patterson observes that, in his modal logic, Aristotle uses modal copulae rather than modal predicates.
Chapter 4 reminds the reader that in syllogisms of the third figure, premises, of which the copula does not ...