Sophism

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Sophisma (plural Sophismata ; from the Greek σόφισμα sóphisma "clever thought", "cunningly invented", "logical device", "clever fallacy") is the name of ambiguous statements in their truth value in medieval logic and grammar from the late 12th century and for their systematic investigation with the aim of removing the ambiguity through appropriate distinctions.

In modern philosophical literature, fallacies that serve to deliberately mislead are sometimes referred to as "sophismata" or "sophisms" in order to distinguish them from erroneous fallacies . This definition is linked to an ancient word meaning.

In modern times, the foreign word was adopted into German, with the form sophism prevailing. In terms of educational language, it is used disparagingly in the sense of "niftiness" or "sham reason".

Antiquity

In common parlance in antiquity, the Greek word sophisma was used to denote clever or cunning ideas. It already appears in this meaning in Pindar . From the appearance of the Sophists , who in the second half of the 5th century BC. Chr. Gained great influence, a secondary meaning became established: Sophismata was now understood in a special sense to be the paradoxical claims and pseudo-arguments popular with the sophists, which were used to confuse, deceive and persuade listeners. This meaning became decisive for all philosophical schools. Aristotle examined the fallacies of the sophists in his sophistic refutations . He also used the term sophismata in his politics . It is not about logical fallacies, but about tricks with which the rulers disguise their intentions in order to take advantage of the part of the citizens who are not in power.

From the Greek, sophisma was adopted as a foreign word in Latin. Cicero mentioned in his dialogue Lucullus "lightweight" men, from whom "certain twisted and subtle sophismata" came; these are "insignificant catches " (fallaces conclusiunculae) . Gellius reported in his Noctes Atticae of a banquet in Athens, at which the question was asked about the resolution of a simple sophisma that reads: "If I lie and say that I am lying, am I lying or am I telling the truth?"

middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, fallaciae were an important topic in scientific discourse. In this context, the term sophisma was used , which until the late 12th century had only negative connotations. As in antiquity, it was understood to be an apparently compelling but flawed argumentation for the purpose of outwitting, a special type of violations of logical form determined by the intention of misleading.

However, from the late 12th century a new meaning became common. A sophism in this new sense is not a fallacy, but a sentence that appears as a riddle (enigma) or darkness (obscuritas) . The mysteriousness is based on the fact that the sentence in itself or in its consequences has an unclear, ambiguous meaning. Such a sentence can seem absurd or paradoxical. It has an unclear truth value, that is, it is true or false depending on the interpretation. As a result, it appears that one can prove both one's truth and falsehood. The confusing finding indicates a logical or grammatical difficulty. If it is a grammatical problem, it can be syntactic or semantic . An example frequently cited in scholastic textbooks is the phrase "every human being is necessarily a living being". The question is asked whether the statement is also true if it relates to a point in time when no one exists. Other examples deal with the status of statements about products of the imagination that cannot exist (type “The chimera is p”) or about those who are no longer alive (type “ Caesar is p”).

In the artistic faculties of the medieval universities, the discussion of such sophismata served to acquire the grammatical and logical skills that one needed to be able to work on any problem of scholastic science. Dealing with the paradoxes and aporias of the sophismata made it necessary to reflect on what was taken for granted, to analyze arguments, to recognize ambiguities and hidden difficulties in linguistic expression and to bring hidden basic assumptions to light. In this way the logical and grammatical rules were practiced. This should enable the students to adopt a philosophical stance, to express themselves precisely and to always pay attention to the formal correctness of the argumentation. At the same time one trained in text interpretation.

In class, such tasks were put together in collections for practice purposes. The collection of more than 300 examples of a master by the name of Richard, who was known as "Richard the Sophist" or "Master of abstractions", was particularly widespread. It originated in the 13th century and became the standard textbook in Oxford around the turn of the century. Johannes Buridan and Richard Kilvington created important collections in the 14th century . In the late Middle Ages debates on sophismata were compulsory exercises at the universities of Paris and Oxford . The aim was to remove the ambiguity by making appropriate distinctions. This was done with great seriousness and analytical rigor. The written disputations became a special genre, the sophismatic literature. The term sophisma was used not only to refer to the sentence that formed the occasion for the discussion, but also to the entire disputation.

Even natural philosophy problems were received for the formulation of Sophismata. It was not about the question of whether the assumptions discussed are physically possible, but only about the logical consistency. A productive subject area were statements about continuity , finitude and infinity .

Modern reception

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, dealing with sophismata was still part of the logic lesson in university operations, but the humanist reform movement put an end to the treatment of such topics in the 16th century. For the humanists, the late medieval sophismata were the target of ridicule and the harsh criticism they directed against scholastic logic. They saw pointless quibbles in it.

In the late 16th century, Sophisma was transferred from Latin into German. The foreign word has been used in educational language ever since, increasingly since the early 18th century, although the form sophism has increasingly prevailed since the end of the 18th century . The meaning is usually derogatory in the sense of “clever”, “subtlety”, “sham reason”, “sham evidence”.

In early modern philosophical discourse, terminology was inconsistent. The synonymous use of the terms paralogism (formally incorrect conclusion) and sophisma was widespread. However, in 1728 Christian Wolff made a distinction between sophisma as a fallacy, whose faulty form appears in a hidden manner, and paralogism as a fallacy, whose flawedness is not concealed. In this sense, Kant later made a distinction: a fallacy is "a paralogism, insofar as one is deceiving oneself by doing so, a sophism, insofar as one seeks to deceive others with intent". These definitions were adopted in German textbooks on logic from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In Medieval Studies , research into the sophismata has only got off the ground slowly, with Martin Grabmann playing a pioneering role. A large part of the extensive source texts has not yet been edited and examined. The similarities between the medieval sophismatic literature and the conceptions of modern logic and semantics are of particular interest.

See also

source

  • Alain de Libera (ed.): César et le phénix. Distinctiones et sophismata parisiens du XIII e siècle. Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1991, ISBN 88-1642-027-4 (critical edition)

literature

Overview representations

Collection of articles

  • Stephen Read (Ed.): Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar. Kluwer, Dordrecht et al. 1993, ISBN 0-7923-2196-0

Web links

Wiktionary: Sophisma  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. References in Henry George Liddell , Robert Scott : A Greek-English Lexicon , 9th edition, Oxford 1996, p. 1622.
  2. ^ Rolf Geiger: sophistikê / sophistics. In: Otfried Höffe (ed.): Aristoteles-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 459), Stuttgart 2005, p. 530 f.
  3. Cicero, Lucullus 75.
  4. Gellius, Noctes Atticae 18,2,10.
  5. Sten Ebbesen: Sophisma; Sophismata. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 9, Basel 1995, Sp. 1069-1075, here: 1071; Peter Schulthess: Sophismata, Abstractiones. In: Outline of the History of Philosophy. The Philosophy of the Middle Ages , Vol. 4/2, Basel 2017, pp. 1247–1250, here: 1247.
  6. Peter Schulthess: Sophismata, Abstractiones. In: Outline of the History of Philosophy. The Philosophy of the Middle Ages , Vol. 4/2, Basel 2017, pp. 1247–1250, here: 1247 f.
  7. Peter Schulthess: Sophismata, Abstractiones. In: Outline of the History of Philosophy. The Philosophy of the Middle Ages , Vol. 4/2, Basel 2017, pp. 1247–1250.
  8. ^ Stephen Read: Introduction. In: Stephen Read (Ed.): Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar , Dordrecht 1993, pp. XI – XVII, here: XV.
  9. Sten Ebbesen: Sophisma; Sophismata. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 9, Basel 1995, Sp. 1069-1075, here: 1074.
  10. Otto Basler (Ed.): Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch , Vol. 4, Berlin 1978, p. 270.
  11. Klaus Konhardt: paralogism. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 7, Basel 1989, Sp. 107–115, here: 111.
  12. Immanuel Kant: Logic. A handbook for lectures. In: Kant's works (Academy edition) Vol. 9, Berlin / Leipzig 1923, pp. 1–150, here: 134 f.
  13. Klaus Konhardt: paralogism. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 7, Basel 1989, Sp. 107–115, here: 114.
  14. Sten Ebbesen: Sophisma; Sophismata. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 9, Basel 1995, Sp. 1069-1075, here: 1069, 1074; Gereon Wolters: Sophisma. In: Jürgen Mittelstraß (Ed.): Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science , 2nd, revised edition, Vol. 7, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 423-425, here: 424.