Abstract
The paper discusses the place and the status of fallacies in Arnauld and Nicole’s Port-Royal Logic, which seems to be the first book to introduce a radical change from the traditional Aristotelian account of fallacies. The most striking innovation is not in the definition of a fallacy but in the publication of a new list of fallacies, dropping some Aristotelian ones and adding more than ten new ones. The first part of the paper deals with the context of the book’s publication. We then show the influence of Cartesian and Augustinian/Pascalian philosophy on the whole book, especially their common critical views about logic, dialectic and their traditional academic teaching. The third part of the paper discusses the two chapters on fallacies. It focuses on their place in the book and their relation with its general orientation, before turning to their content, closely connected with some major concerns of the time.
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Notes
I always refer to Descotes’ recent critical edition (2014) which is based on the 1664 version of the Logic and parts of the 1662 and 1683 editions. I quote J.V. Buroker’s translation (1996), sometimes slightly modified when it seems to miss an important point. Buroker’s translation is based on the 1683 edition, hence a difference of one unity in the numbering of the chapters on fallacies in the French and the English references.
I abridge references to the text of the Logic. To refer both to the French edition (2014) and to the English translation (1996), I do not write, for instance, Arnauld and Nicole (2014, 43, 1996, 54), but simply (L, 43; 54). So, the first number refers to the page in the French edition and the second in the English one. A short introduction to the Logic can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Buroker 2017).
All the shorts quotations without reference are expressions borrowed from the work just discussed, here the Logic.
Some commentators speculated that it could have been Blaise Pascal.
This move away from “formal” logic could be interpreted as a move towards informal logic, in the sense given today to this term. On this topic, see Finocchiaro (1997).
Descotes’ edition of the Logic (2014) provides an up to date account of the speculations of historians about the writing of The Logic and a useful comparative chart of the structure of its various versions. Remember that Buroker’s translation is not based on the 1664 edition but on the 1683 one.
I quote Descartes from the reference edition of Descartes’ works by Adam & Tannery (AT). So, instead of (Descartes 1964/1976, Vol IX, 298), for instance, I will write (AT IX, 298). The English quotations of Descartes come from the translation by Cottingham, Stoothoff & Murdoch (Descartes 1985). This is why I will finally refer to Descartes in the following way (AT IX, 298; 186): the second page number (186) is the page in this English translation which also refers to Descartes (1964/1976). This should make things easier for English speaking readers.
On Descartes’ view of Logic, see Gauckroger (1989).
I restore the “sometimes” that exists in the French text, but disappeared in the English translation, for it stresses the uselessness of the methods of dialecticians.
See Descotes’ discussion of Pascal’s influence on the Logic in his “Introduction” to his edition, pp. 38–46.
The passage I quote is an addition to the original manuscript. It is missing in some contemporary English editions.
What are the rules of geometry for Pascal? Here, the most important point is not the very rules of geometry (that Descartes deeply changed with the introduction of what we now call “analytic geometry”), but the fact that the practice of geometers is the best illustration of the three powers of reason, especially its analytic power, the power to discover new truths. Geometry is the best rational science, but this does not entail that it is rationally perfect. Descartes makes this clear in the first lines of Regula IV: even geometers often discover truth by chance, for they lack the right method.
Descartes complains more about dialecticians than logicians. Here, Pascal’s target is only logicians. In any case, it seems that they can be identified.
We shall see that the Logic does not use the old French term fallace, still used at this time and very close to the English “fallacy”. It uses sophisme, that it explicitly identifies with paralogisme.
Barbara and Baralipton were two famous examples of the mnemonic devises invented in the middle ages to help students remember the list of types of valid syllogisms classified by figures (arrangement of terms) and mood (arrangement of categorical propositions).
Buroker translates the French “surprises” by “mistakes”. This is certainly what the Logic means, but this translation loses the careful politeness of the Logic’s funny metaphorical expression.
Some aspects of this argument can, however, be traced back to Aristotle’s concept of “dialectical argument”, introduced in the Topics. An argument is dialectical when there is no general agreement about its premises; for instance, when ordinary men and some wise men disagree about them.
In the French of this time, “tout le monde” often only means “all the educated people”.
This is the case, among other works, in Peter of Spain’s Summaries of Logic, Roger Bacon’s The Art and Science of Logic, Ockham’s Summa logicae, Buridan’s Summulae de Dialectica, Ramus’ Institutionum Dialecticarum and, at the beginning of the XVIIth century, S. Dupleix’ Logic.
The number of this chapter changes with the changing order of the chapters in the various editions.
The reduction of a syllogism is a way of showing that all syllogisms are either obviously valid or valid because they are reducible by valid rules of argumental deduction to one or another of the ones that are obviously valid.
See note 14.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
On the definition of a fallacy that is sometimes called “standard”, see also Hansen (2002).
It became the current Collège de France in 1870.
The meaning of the French word is also very close to “rude”.
In On Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle claims that there are only thirteen types of paralogisms. We still use the Latin name of some of them. According to Aristotle, six paralogisms are “dependent on language”: homonymy, amphiboly, form of the expression, composition, separation, accent. The seven others are “independent of language”: accident, secundum quid, ignoratio elenchi, consequent, petitio principi, non causa pro causa, multiple question.
This could explain the mistake about the number of fallacies in this chapter: “seven or eight” are announced in all the editions. This was true in 1662, false in 1664, because of the introduction of this fourth sophism. The author probably forgot to replace “seven or eight” by “eight or nine” in the 1664 edition. Did any proofreader ever check the number of fallacies actually listed in this chapter?
In Aristotle’s On sophistical refutations (4,166a20-b1 and 20,177a32-b35) these sophisms belong to the paralogisms in dictione. This verbal aspect is less explicit in the Logic, even though it says that it is a matter of sense.
This does not appear in Buroker’s English translation based on the 1683 edition.
The Logic explicitly states that the project to understand what leads people to make false judgments would require “a separate work that would include practically all of ethics” (L, 454; 203). This is precisely what Nicole did.
Buroker uses “unsound argument” which may nowadays have unwelcome technical connotations to understand the Logic. “Bad reasonings” keeps literally closer to the French “mauvais raisonnements”.
Buroker uses “fallacious inference”.
The Logic does not use the term ad hominem, already used by Clauberg (2007 (IV,9), 274).
Probably Descartes. He states this in the second part of his Discourse on Method (AT VI, 16; 119).
In this passage, Buroker translates the French singular “he” by “they”. I return to the original singular.
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