Syllogism

AKA: Syllogistic Argument, Categorical Syllogism.
Context:
- It must contain a major premise and minor premise.
- It applies deductive reasoning to arrive a conclusion which must be a logical consequence that follows from the premises.
- It requires a conclusion that differs from the premises and must contain a major term and a minor term.
- It can range from being a Disjunctive Syllogism to being a Hypothetical Syllogism.
Examples:
- All men are mortal (major premise). Socrates is a man (minor premise).Therefore, Socrates is mortal (conclusion).
- B always comes after A (major premise). C comes after B (minor premise). Therefore, C comes after A (conclusion).
- …
Counter-Example(s):
- a Polysyllogism,
- an Analogical Argument,
- a Logical Fallacy,
- a Moral Argument.
See: Inference, Logical Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning, Proposition, Aristotle, Socrates, Formal Argument.

References

(Smith,2018) ⇒ Robin Smith (2018). "Aristotle's Logic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
- QUOTE: Aristotle’s most famous achievement as logician is his theory of inference, traditionally called the syllogistic (though not by Aristotle). That theory is in fact the theory of inferences of a very specific sort: inferences with two premises, each of which is a categorical sentence, having exactly one term in common, and having as conclusion a categorical sentence the terms of which are just those two terms not shared by the premises. Aristotle calls the term shared by the premises the middle term (meson) and each of the other two terms in the premises an extreme (akron). The middle term must be either subject or predicate of each premise, and this can occur in three ways: the middle term can be the subject of one premise and the predicate of the other, the predicate of both premises, or the subject of both premises.

(Wikiversity, 2018) ⇒ https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Categorical_Syllogism Retrieved:2018-11-10
- QUOTE: A Categorical Syllogism is modernly defined as
  "a particular kind of argument containing three categorical propositions, two of them premises, one a conclusion"^[1].
  A categorical proposition is of the type "This S is P" and "This man is a man", no 'if', no 'but' and no 'either or'. There are other forms of syllogisms in use. Other examples include Disjunctive Syllogism, Hypothetical Syllogism and Polysyllogism.

↑ Howard Kahane, Logic and Philosophy: A Modern Introduction [Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1990], p.270. cited in Jordana Wiener, Aristotle's Syllogism: Logic Takes Form, accessed 25 Oct 2008, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Jordana/LOGIC.html

(Bobzien, 2016) ⇒ Susanne Bobzien (2016). "Ancient Logic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
- QUOTE: Aristotle's non-modal syllogistic (Prior Analytics A 1–7) is the pinnacle of his logic. Aristotle defines a syllogism as ‘an argument (logos) in which, certain things having been laid down, something different from what has been laid down follows of necessity because these things are so’. This definition appears to require (i) that a syllogism consists of at least two premises and a conclusion, (ii) that the conclusion follows of necessity from the premises (so that all syllogisms are valid arguments), and (iii) that the conclusion differs from the premises. Aristotle's syllogistic covers only a small part of all arguments that satisfy these conditions.