Paper detail

Aristotle's square of opposition in the light of Hilbert's epsilon and tau quantifiers

Aristotle considered particular quantified sentences in his study of syllogisms and in his famous square of opposition. Of course, the logical formulas in Aristotle work were not modern formulas of mathematical logic, but ordinary sentences of natural language. Nowadays natural language sentences are turned into formulas of predicate logic as defined by Frege, but, it is not clear that those Fregean sentences are faithful representations of natural language sentences. Indeed, the usual modelling of natural language quantifiers does not fully correspond to natural language syntax, as we shall see. This is the reason why Hilbert's epsilon and tau quantifiers (that go beyond usual quantifiers) have been used to model natural language quantifiers. Here we interpret Aristotle quantified sentences as formulas of Hilbert's epsilon and tau calculus. This yields to two potential squares of opposition and provided a natural condition holds, one of these two squares is actually a square of opposition i.e. satisfies the relations of contrary, contradictory, and subalternation.

preprint2016arXivOpen access

Signal facts

What is known right now

Open access2 authors1 topic

Next steps

Decide what to do with this paper

Use like or dislike for the fast social read. The more specific scholarly feedback stays available below when needed.

Log in to curate

Reading frame

Keep the important context close to the paper

Keep the important signals around this paper in one place: votes, save state, collection context, reviews and the metadata you need before deciding what to do next.

Institutions

Add specific reaction

Move through the context

Research map

Open full explorer

Move through nearby people, institutions, topics and adjacent work without leaving the paper page.

Building this map preview

BZPEER is loading the nearby papers, people, topics and institutions for this page.

Structured reviews

0 review(s)

ContributeLeave structured feedbackUse the review template when you have a concrete strength, concern or method question.Open review form

No structured reviews yet. High-signal critique starts here.

Work discussion

0 comment(s)

DiscussAdd a high-signal commentKeep quick notes, caveats and replication pointers separate from formal reviews.Open comment form

No discussion yet. The first strong comment sets the tone.