''Sophistical Refutations'' ( el, Σοφιστικοὶ Ἔλεγχοι, Sophistikoi Elenchoi; la, De Sophisticis Elenchis) is a text in
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
's ''
Organon
The ''Organon'' ( grc, Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics.
The six ...
'' in which he identified thirteen
fallacies
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. The term in the Western intellectual tradition was intr ...
.
[Sometimes listed as twelve.] According to Aristotle, this is the first work to treat the subject of
deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be fal ...
in ancient Greece (''Soph. Ref.'', 34, 183b34 ff.).
Overview
''On Sophistical Refutations''
consists of 34 chapters. The book naturally falls in two parts: chapters concerned with tactics for the Questioner (3–8 and 12–15) and chapters concerned with tactics for the Answerer (16–32). Besides, there is an introduction (1–2), an interlude (9–11), and a conclusion (33–34).
Fallacies identified
The fallacies Aristotle identifies in Chapter 4 (formal fallacies) and 5 (informal fallacies) of this book are the following:
:Fallacies in the language or formal fallacies (''in dictionem'')
#
Equivocation
In logic, equivocation ("calling two different things by the same name") is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument.
It is a type of ambiguity that stems from a phrase havin ...
#
Amphibology
Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.
Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meani ...
#
Composition
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
*Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
#
Division
Division or divider may refer to:
Mathematics
*Division (mathematics), the inverse of multiplication
*Division algorithm, a method for computing the result of mathematical division
Military
*Division (military), a formation typically consisting ...
#
Accent
#
Figure of speech
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...
or form of expression
:Fallacies not in the language or informal fallacies (''extra dictionem'')
Footnotes
References
External links
*
* HTML Greek text vi
Greco interattivo*
* {{citation, last1=Parry, first1=William T. , last2=Hacker, first2=Edward A. , title=Aristotelian Logic, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Sg84H6B-m4C&pg=PA435, year=1991, publisher=SUNY Press, isbn=978-0-7914-0690-8, page=435
Works by Aristotle
Logic literature