[lit-ideas] Aristotle's Sillygistic
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:42:13 EST
>I'll rechristen my son, Bertrand.
Rather than Aristotle?
Aristotle, Geary says, was a silly man. "Silly" originally meant "blessed",
as in The Silly Virgin Mary.
For Aristotle, a sillygism has, as P. A. Stone notes, the following
structure:
premises e.g. All cats purr
This is a cat
and
conclusion e.g This cat purrs.
---
A sillygism is silly in the sense of the Kantian adage,
"Nothing in the conclusion that was not
already in the premises"
As Geary writes,
"Whose premises? When I'm on someone's else
premises, I never want to conclude"
The sillygism is developed in the so-called Sillygistic. It's five volumes
of Analytica Priora and Analytica Posteriora. Geary recommends,
"Don't get misled by the titles. It's best to approach
Aristotle from the Analytica Posteriora. I always
found that title _specially_ silly. Surely one's anus
is at one's posterior, no? Indeed, in my idiolect,
derriere and end are synonymous."
Aristotle tried to systematise in sillygistic form all the subtleties of
the greatest poet Greece never knew: Plato. Plato never used a sillygism.
But with Aristotle, the emphasis of formalism was evident and growing
stronger. Aristotle is very bold in his use of symbolism in his sillygistic.
Notably, he uses TWO symbols, which he calls
Alpha for which he uses the capital "A"
and
Beta for which he uses the capital "B"
--- that is Aristotle's symbolism for his sillygistic FINISHED.
He never knew propositional logic Bertrand was familiar with. Aristotle
thought that syncategoremata, like 'and', 'or', and 'if' were, in his words,
"not logically important".
That's why Frege refused to allow Aristotle's sillygisms in his picture of
things.
Anscombe, a woman, found that Aristotle was perhaps not as silly as he
sounds. "There must be something to his Practical Sillygism, in any case", she
thought, and spent the sexual years of her life writing about it. A
practical sillygism has the form:
You want to get fat?
Then eat sugar.
Yes, I want to get fat
____________________
Therefore, I eat sugar!
Anscombe writes, "The practical sillygism is not as silly as the
theoretical sillygism. At least it's not valid".
Why, well, because it's 'defeasible'. Practical sillygisms are ALWAYS
defeasible. E.g
Geary loves peaches and cream
____________________________
Therefore, Geary loves peaches.
Geary protests, "I don't. I like peaches AND cream; _with_ cream. Never
alone".
A practical sillygism deals with desires and desires are opaque contexts,
which in logical parlance means that we don't see diddly through them. Hence
the sillyness.
When Lukasiewicz was almost _fired_ from Poland, he settled in Germany.
Surely he needed the Gymnasium doctorate habilitazionschrift, and he wrote his
PhD on the sillygistic of Aristotle from the standdpoint of formal logic.
In Lukasiewicz symbolism,
"Barbara", Aristotle's first sillygism, becomes, "Karen" -- "a more
beautiful name, in Polish", he claimed.
"Celarent", which is Aristotle's second syllogism, becomes, "Tom". -- "Why
should all sillygisms have female names?"
The conclusion is never important, for, for Aristotle, man is a rational
animal. So conclusion means ... death.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
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