La The fake history of the origin of fallacies
Abstract
Abstract. Modern students of logic usually give the name of 'fallacies' to the thirteen apparent syllogisms that Aristotle exposes in the Sophistic Refutations (SE) and to other false or misleading arguments that are exposed in the works of that philosopher and other ancient Greek authors. This denomination seems well founded, because it is thought that Aristotle created the theory of fallacies and that the philosopher Boethius (6th century AD) identified that theory and described the fallaciae that the Greek philosopher studied in his works. However, the word fallacia is rare in classical Latin and it is not used to designate some kind of false argument. In keeping with the above, Boethius makes very little use of the word fallacia in his translations and commentaries on Aristotelian texts and applies it to designate certain errors in relation to contrary opinions or statements, but not to refer to apparent or false syllogisms in Aristotle. This use must have been given in the 12th century, first in the work of Jacobo of Venice, who wrote a now lost book from the glosses to false or fallacious arguments in the works of Aristotle. This paper studies the use of the word fallacia in classical Latin and its use in Boethius' translations and commentaries on Aristotelian texts in order to show that neither Aristotle nor Boethius exposes any theory of fallacies, nor both offer some list of fallacies.References
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