Abstract
In chapter 8 of the Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle claims that his theory of fallacy is complete in the sense that there cannot be more fallacies than the ones he lists. In this article I try to explain how Aristotle could have justified this completeness claim by analysing how he conceptualizes fallacies (dialectical mistakes which do not appear so) and what conceptual ingredients play a role in his discussion of fallacies. If we take the format of dialectical discussions into account, we will see that there are only so many mistakes one can make which still do not appear to be mistakes. Aristotle’s actual list is almost identical to these apparent mistakes.
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Notes
In the case of (2) Aristotle alludes to an infringement of the requirements mentioned in the definition of a proposition.
In chapter 6 Aristotle seems to present the reduction to ignoratio elenchi as an alternative way of distinguishing the fallacies he has listed in the previous two chapters.
The vocabulary of dialectical acts with correctness conditions is similar to the way fallacies are conceptualized in the pragma-dialectical school of argumentation theory: fallacies are infringements of correctness rules for speech acts pertinent in discussion—see: Van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004). The difference is that they have a far less strict conception of the structure of a dialectical discussion, and at the same time bring in considerations of reasonableness, instead of or in addition to Aristotle’s logic-based requirements.
One may also compare the morphology indicating tenses of verbs, though Aristotle does not mention the phenomenon in the context of his discussion of this fallacy, presumably because in ancient Greek there are very few ambiguities to be constructed that depend on them.
Though the point that the conclusion be different from any of the premisses is a normative element which is also mentioned in the definition of chapter 1 of the Sophistical Refutations.
References
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Hasper, P.S. The Ingredients of Aristotle’s Theory of Fallacy. Argumentation 27, 31–47 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-012-9281-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-012-9281-8