Reducing Terms
Sometimes a syllogism that is apparently fallacious because it is stated with more than three terms can be translated into an equivalent, valid three term syllogism. For example:
- Major premise: No humans are immortal.
- Minor premise: All Greeks are people.
- Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal.
This EAE-1 syllogism apparently has five terms: "humans", "people", "immortal", "mortal", and "Greeks". However it can be rewritten as a standard form AAA-1 syllogism by first substituting the synonymous term "humans" for "people" and then by reducing the complementary term "immortal" in the first premise using the immediate inference known as obversion (that is, "No humans are immortal." is equivalent to "All humans are mortal.").
Read more about this topic: Fallacy Of Four Terms
Famous quotes containing the words reducing and/or terms:
“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)