Abstract
It has for centuries been commonly believed that syllogistic reasoning is an essential part of human rationality. For this reason, Aristotelian syllogistics has since the rise of the European university been a standard component of logic teaching. During the medieval period syllogistic validity was presented in terms of a number of artificial words designed to summarize the deductive structure of this basic system. The present paper is a continuation of earlier studies involving practical experiments with informatics students using a student-facing Java-Applet running in the student’s browser, implemented using the Prolog programming language as embodied in a Java implementation called Prolog+CG. The aim of the present paper is to study some interesting conceptual aspects of syllogistic reasoning and to investigate whether CG formalism can be helpful in order to obtain a better understanding of syllogistic reasoning in general and the system of Aristotelian syllogisms conceived as a deductive (axiomatic) structure in particular. Some prototypes of tools for basic logic teaching have been developed using Prolog+CG, and various preliminary tests of the tools have been carried out.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aristotle: Prior Analytics, Jenkinson A.J. (transl.). The Internet Classics Archive (1994-2000), http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/prior.html
Kabbaj, A., Janta-Polczynski, M.: From PROLOG++ to PROLOG+CG: A CG object-oriented logic programming language. In: Ganter, B., Mineau, G.W. (eds.) ICCS 2000. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1867, pp. 540–554. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Kabbaj, A., Moulin, B., Gancet, J., Nadeau, D., Rouleau, O.: Uses, improvements, and extensions of Prolog+CG: Case studies. In: Delugach, H.S., Stumme, G. (eds.) ICCS 2001. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2120, pp. 346–359. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Parry, W.T., Hacker, E.A.: Aristotelian Logic. State University of New York Press (1991)
Petersen, U., Schärfe, H., Øhrstrøm, P.: Online Course in Knowledge Representation using Conceptual Graphs, Aalborg University (2005), http://cg.huminf.aau.dk
Petersen, U.: Prolog+CG: A Maintainer’s Perspective. In: de Moor, A., Polovina, S., Delugach, H. (eds.) Proceedings of the First Conceptual Structures Interoperability Workshop (CS-TIW 2006). Aalborg University Press (2006)
Sowa, J.F.: Conceptual Graph Summary, http://www.jfsowa.com/cg/cgif.htm (accessed February 2014)
Øhrstrøm, P., Sandborg-Petersen, U., Ploug, T.: Syllog - A Tool for Logic Teaching. In: Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence Workshops 2010 (AIW 2010), Mimos Berhad, pp. 42–55 (2010)
Øhrstrøm, P., Sandborg-Petersen, U., Thorvaldsen, S., Ploug, T.: Classical Syllogisms in Logic Teaching. In: Pfeiffer, H.D., Ignatov, D.I., Poelmans, J., Gadiraju, N. (eds.) ICCS 2013. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 7735, pp. 31–43. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Øhrstrøm, P., Sandborg-Petersen, U., Thorvaldsen, S., Ploug, T.: Teaching Logic through Web-Based and Gamified Quizzing of Formal Arguments. In: Hernández-Leo, D., Ley, T., Klamma, R., Harrer, A. (eds.) EC-TEL 2013. LNCS, vol. 8095, pp. 410–423. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Øhrstrøm, P., Sandborg-Petersen, U., Thorvaldsen, S., Ploug, T. (2014). Teaching Syllogistics Using Conceptual Graphs. In: Hernandez, N., Jäschke, R., Croitoru, M. (eds) Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning. ICCS 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8577. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08389-6_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08389-6_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08388-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08389-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)