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A syllogism (Ancient Greek: συλλογισμός, syllogismos, 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.
Disjunctive syllogism (sometimes abbreviated DS) has one of the same characteristics as modus tollens in that it contains a premise, then in a second premise it denies a statement, leading to the conclusion. In Disjunctive Syllogism, the first premise establishes two options.
Negative conclusion from affirmative premises is a syllogistic fallacy committed when a categorical syllogism has a negative conclusion yet both premises are affirmative. The inability of affirmative premises to reach a negative conclusion is usually cited as one of the basic rules of constructing a valid categorical syllogism.
An invalid hypothetical syllogism either affirms the consequent (fallacy of the converse) or denies the antecedent (fallacy of the inverse). A pure hypothetical syllogism is a syllogism in which both premises and the conclusion are all conditional statements. The antecedent of one premise must match the consequent of the other for the ...
Types of syllogism to which it applies include statistical syllogism, hypothetical syllogism, and categorical syllogism, all of which must have exactly three terms. Because it applies to the argument's form, as opposed to the argument's content, it is classified as a formal fallacy.
The central aspect of Aristotelian logic involves classifying all possible syllogisms into valid and invalid arguments according to how the propositions are formed. [112] [115] For example, the syllogism "all men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal" is valid. The syllogism "all cats are mortal; Socrates is mortal ...
At present, syllogism is used exclusively as the method used to reach a conclusion closely resembling the "syllogisms" of traditional logic texts: two premises followed by a conclusion each of which is a categorical sentence containing all together three terms, two extremes which appear in the conclusion and one middle term which appears in ...
The name "disjunctive syllogism" derives from its being a syllogism, a three-step argument, and the use of a logical disjunction (any "or" statement.) For example, "P or Q" is a disjunction, where P and Q are called the statement's disjuncts .