The Pythagorean Academy

Summer 2015

Logic Course: Introduction to Logic 1

Reader [Day One]
From Analytica Priora, Aristotle:
We must first state the subject of our inquiry and the faculty to which it belongs: its subject is
demonstration, and the faculty that carries it out demonstrative science. We must next define a premissa (sic),
a term, anda premiss then is a sentence affirming or denying one thing of another. This is either universal,
or particular, or indefinite. By universal I mean that something belongs to all or none of something else; by
particular that it belongs to some or not to some or not to all; by indefinite that it does or does not belong,
without any mark to show whether it is universal or particular.
a. premiss is the old spelling, it is now spelt premise.
From the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant:
Experience is without doubt the first product that our understanding brings forth as it works on the raw
material of sensible sensations. It is for this very reason the first teaching, and in its progress it is so
inexhaustible in new instruction that the chain of life in all future generations will never have any lack of new
information that can be gathered on this terrain. Nevertheless it is far from the only field to which our
understanding can be restricted. It tells us, to be sure, what is, but never that it must necessarily be thus and
not otherwise. For that very reason it gives us no true universality, and reason, which is so desirous of this
kind of cognitions, is more stimulated than satisfied by it. Now such universal cognitions, which at the same
time have the character of inner necessity, must be clear and certain for themselves, independently of
experience; hence one calls them a priori cognitions: whereas that which is merely borrowed from experience
is, as it is put, cognized only a posteriori, or empirically.
Now what is especially remarkable is that even among our experiences cognitions are mixed in that must
have their origin a priori and that perhaps serve only to establish connection among our representations of the
senses. For if one removes from our experiences everything that belongs to the senses, there still remain
certain original concepts and the judgments generated from them, which must have arisen entirely a priori,
independently of experience, because they make one able to say more about the objects that appear to the
senses than mere experience would teach, or at least make one believe that one can say this, and make
assertions contain true universality and strict necessity, the likes of which merely empirical cognition can
never afford.
From the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant:
In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought (if I consider only
affirmative judgments, since the application to negative ones is easy), this relation is possible in two different
ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly) contained in this concept
A; or B lies entirely outside the concept A, though to be sure it stands in connection with it. In the first case I
call the judgment analytic, in the second synthetic. Analytic judgments (affirmative ones) are thus those in
which the connection of the predicate is thought through identity, but those in which this connection is
thought without identity are to be called synthetic judgments. One could also call the former judgments of
clarification and the latter judgments of amplification, since through the predicate the former do not add
anything to the concept of the subject, but only break it up by means of analysis into its component concepts,
which were already thought in it (though confusedly); while the latter, on the contrary, add to the concept of
the subject a predicate that was not thought in it at all, and could not have been extracted from it through any
analysis; e.g., if say: "All bodies are extended," then this is an analytic judgment. For I do not need to go
outside the concept that I combine with the word "body" in order to find that extension is connected with it,
but rather I need only to analyze that concept, i.e., become conscious of the manifold that I always think in it,
in order to encounter this predicate therein; it is therefore an analytic judgment. On the contrary, if I say: "All
bodies are heavy," then the predicate is something entirely different from that which I think in the mere
concept of a body in general. The addition of such a predicate thus yields a synthetic judgment.

The Pythagorean Academy

Summer 2015

From the Universal Book of Mathematics:

Fred brings home 100 lbs (pounds) of potatoes, which (being purely mathematical potatoes) consist of
99 percent water. He then leaves them outside overnight so that they consist of 98 percent water. What is their
new weight?
From Parade Magazine:
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car;
behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens
another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to
your advantage to switch your choice?
Olbers Paradox
Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform
luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy since there could be absolutely no point, in all that
background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs,
we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing
the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.
From the Metaphysics, Aristotle:
Is the science which studies substance the same as that which also studies the properties of substance?
Thesis: If it is the same, then, since the science of properties must always be demonstrative, so must the
science of substance itself, but substance is not something that can be demonstrated, but only defined.
Anti-thesis: If it is not the same, the science that deals with the properties of substance but not with the
substance itself will not be a science, because a science must deal with a subject and its properties.
From Common Sense, Thomas Paine:
However, it matters very little now what the king of England either says or does; he hath wickedly
broken through every moral, and human obligation, trampled nature and conscience beneath his feet, and by a
steady and constitutional spirit of insolence and cruelty procured for himself a universal hatred.
From Egotism in German Philosophy, George Santayana,
Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and
superb morality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid
From A Social History of the Third Reich, R. Gruberger:
Nazi publishers used to send the following notice to German readers who let this subscriptions lapse:
Our paper certainly deserves the support of every German. We shall continue to forward copies of it to you
and hope that you will not want to expose yourself to unfortunate consequences in the case of cancellation.
From Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill:
The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only
proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it: and so, of the other sources of our experience. In like
manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people
actually desire it.