Teaching syllogistic logic via a retooled Venn diagrammatical technique
College
College of Liberal Arts
Department/Unit
Philosophy
Document Type
Article
Source Title
Teaching Philosophy
Volume
40
Issue
2
First Page
161
Last Page
180
Publication Date
6-1-2017
Abstract
© Teaching Philosophy, 2017. In elementary logic textbooks, Venn diagrams are used to analyze and evaluate the validity of syllogistic arguments. Although the method of Venn diagrams is shown to be a powerful analytical tool in these textbooks, it still has limitations. On the one hand, such method fails to represent singular statements of the form, "a is F." On the other hand, it also fails to represent identity statements of the form, "a is b." Because of this, it also fails to give an account of the validity of some obviously valid arguments that contain these types of statements as constituents. In this paper, owing to the developments in the literature on Venn diagrams, we offer a way of supplementing the rules of the Venn diagram found in textbooks, and show how this retooled Venn diagram technique could account for the problem cases.
html
Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)
10.5840/teachphil201771767
Recommended Citation
Joaquin, J. B., & Boyles, R. M. (2017). Teaching syllogistic logic via a retooled Venn diagrammatical technique. Teaching Philosophy, 40 (2), 161-180. https://doi.org/10.5840/teachphil201771767
Disciplines
Logic and Foundations of Mathematics
Keywords
Venn diagrams
Upload File
wf_no