Aristotle's work on Logic.

Question

The six works of Logic collected by Organon divides to Categories, Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations; but I completely don't understand what all six of these mean in philosophy. Could someone that knows please explain them for me?

Answer 1

Categories: Aristotle lists and explains all the possible kinds of things that can be the subject of inquiry.  These are: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, activity and passivity.

Interpretation: Aristotle discusses propositions, their forms, and their relations.  It includes the "Square of Opposition", which describes each of the four propositions in terms of their relations.

Prior Analytics: Aristotle introduces syllogisms (in which a new proposition can be deducted from two or more premises) and discusses inductive reasoning.

Posterior Analytics: Aristotle explains that when the premises of a syllogism are true and the form of the syllogism is valid, the conclusion is apodeictic (i.e. could not be otherwise), and is called scientific knowledge.

Topics: Aristotle explains that when the form of a syllogism is valid, but the truth of the premises is not certain, the conclusion is dialectic (i.e. probable, but not certain; controversial) and is often the subject of rhetoric.

Sophistical Refutations: Aristotle explains that when the form of a syllogism appears valid but is not, the conclusion is sophistical (regardless of the truth or falsity of the premises), and this is called a fallacy.  Aristotle, identifies thirteen fallacies.

If you would like more information about these texts, please feel free to send me an email.

Answer 2

Andrew is absolutely correct.

But how does all that apply to philosophy? First, the mind is philosophical without studying it. It was not invented; it was discovered.

So the discovery of such things as you ask about affect the way other men begin to think, and the conclusions they come to after they understand what has been discovered.

As a matter of fact, philosophy is so pervasive, that you do not need to understand any of it yet you are affected by everything Aristotle ever wrote, because all men who came after Aristotle either accepted his ideas or refuted them, and wrote their own ideas. All ideas become accepted or rejected in civilization. Even those that are rejected are often the subject of continuing debate.

"If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders, it is Aristotle. He has been opposed, misinterpreted, misrepresented, and—like an axiom—used by his enemies in the very act of denying him. Whatever intellectual progress men have achieved rests on his achievements.

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back toward the cave of his antipode: Plato.

"Aristotle’s philosophy was the intellect’s Declaration of Independence. Aristotle, the father of logic, should be given the title of the world’s first intellectual, in the purest and noblest sense of that word.

"Throughout history the influence of Aristotle’s philosophy (particularly of his epistemology) has led in the direction of individual freedom, of man’s liberation from the power of the state . . . Aristotle (via John Locke) was the philosophical father of the Constitution of the United States and thus of capitalism . . . it is Plato and Hegel, not Aristotle, who have been the philosophical ancestors of all totalitarian and welfare states, whether Bismarck’s, Lenin’s or Hitler’s."

compiled from http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ar...

So you see, ideas are pervasive. You cannot get away from them. Ideas themselves are philosophical in one way or another.