Diversity Reading List

Summary: A comprehensive introduction to ancient (western) logic from the 5th century BCE to the 6th century CE, with an emphasis on topics which may be of interest to contemporary logicians. Topics include pre-Aristotelian logic, Aristotelian logic, Peripatetic logic, Stoic Logic and a note on Epicureans and their views on logic.

Abstract:

Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent, and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. Hass shows that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is crucial in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by overzealous "abstraction." But Hass argues that abstraction is not problematic; instead, it is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. Although she rejects Nye's form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more that is worthwhile in the criticisms of logic advanced by Luce lrigaray and Val Plumwood. These thinkers call for feminist alternatives to what has come to be standard deductive logic - and interestingly enough, their call is echoed in other contemporary criticisms from within the field of logic itself, for example, from intuitionist or entailment logics. The logical schemes envisaged by lrigaray and Plumwood would encompass more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyse reality and diverse experiences. Hass argues that, in Aristotle's case, we can glimpse something of such an alternative by looking to his account of negation, which is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary formal systems.

Abstract: Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent, and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. Hass shows that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is crucial in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by overzealous "abstraction." But Hass argues that abstraction is not problematic; instead, it is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. Although she rejects Nye's form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more that is worthwhile in the criticisms of logic advanced by Luce lrigaray and Val Plumwood. These thinkers call for feminist alternatives to what has come to be standard deductive logic - and interestingly enough, their call is echoed in other contemporary criticisms from within the field of logic itself, for example, from intuitionist or entailment logics. The logical schemes envisaged by lrigaray and Plumwood would encompass more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyse reality and diverse experiences. Hass argues that, in Aristotle's case, we can glimpse something of such an alternative by looking to his account of negation, which is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary formal systems.

Abstract:

This paper stresses the importance of identifying the nature of an author’s conception of logic when using terms from modern logic in order to avoid, as far as possible, injecting our own conception of logic in the author’s texts. Sundholm (2012) points out that inferences are staged at the epistemic level and are made out of judgments, not propositions. Since it is now standard to read Aristotelian sullogismoi as inferences, I have taken Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentaries to Aristotle’s logical treatises as a basis for arguing that the premises and conclusions should be read as judgments rather than as propositions. Under this reading, when Alexander speaks of protaseis, we should not read the modern notion of proposition, but rather what we now call judgments. The point is not just a matter of terminology, it is about the conception of logic this terminology conveys. In this regard, insisting on judgments rather than on propositions helps bring to light Alexander’s epistemic conception of logic.