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I found this Melanie & Mike's page in the Burnside site. Perhaps it is worth discussing. I do not accept M&M' view.
By the way, we've always been puzzled by the following syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
[Therefore] Socrates is mortal.
It seems obvious on the face of it but, when it is examined more deeply, one realizes that there is a flaw: one cannot say that "all men are mortal" until one knows whether or not Socrates is mortal. What would Aristotle have said of that?
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If he coulda, he woulda consulted Plato.
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Logic is comprised of premises that are assumed to be true for the time being, as long as the conclusion would be true if the premises were true.
jimthedog
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funny, hyla... but i think round's funnier.  [somewhat-esoteric-movie-reference-e]
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I don't know much about the details of Aristotle's thought, but I think he would have said that the major premiss is part of the logical structure of the world. Being mortal is an essential property of being a man. And since Socrates possesses the property of being a man, therefore Socrates possesses any other properties logically contained in it. The inclusion of mortality inside humanity is not inductive but essential.
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NicholasW comments: I think he would have said that the major premise is part of the logical structure of the world. Being mortal is an essential property of being a man.
And in the long run, it doesn't matter. The validity of a syllogism is not dependent on the truth of its premises. The syllogism:
All lizards have feathers
All robins are lizards
Therefore, all robins have feathers.
is logically valid. The lack of truth of the major and minor premises has no bearing on its validity nor does it make the conclusion untrue.
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All lizards etc.
As my old logic professor, Dr. Albert Hammond, used to warn us, whenever you see a proposition in the form of a syllogism which contains the universal tag "all": BEWARE -- scrutinize the veracity of the premises with all possible care. As Faldage notes, 'all' can produce a perfectly logical conclusion, but not necessarily a true conclusion.
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Pooh-Bah
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all men
Def: "all men" is a category.
Syllogism:
All syllogisms are arguments from major to minor premise
Socrates is not a premise
Therefore, "All men are mortal..." is not a syllogism
(mortality is essential, as was said elsewhere)
***
Is the following true?
Since the majority of people who have ever lived are living still, probability does not support the major premise of the syllogism in question, namely, that all men are mortal.
***
And here is an interesting piece of rhetoric: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights..." No, I'm not making a political statement. This fragment contains at least three performative utterances. It is a revolution unto itself.
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Dear inselpeter: have you proved that Socrates is still alive?
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