On Interpretation

De Interpretatione or On Interpretation (Greek: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, Peri Hermeneias) is the second text from Aristotle's Organon and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way. The work is usually known by its Latin title.

The work begins by analyzing simple categoric propositions, and draws a series of basic conclusions on the routine issues of classifying and defining basic linguistic forms, such as simple terms and propositions, nouns and verbs, negation, the quantity of simple propositions (primitive roots of the quantifiers in modern symbolic logic), investigations on the excluded middle (what to Aristotle is not applicable to future tense propositions — the problem of future contingents), and on modal propositions.

The first five chapters deal with the terms that form propositions. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with the relationship between affirmative, negative, universal and particular propositions. These relationships are the basis of the well-known Square of opposition. The distinction between universal and particular propositions is the basis of modern quantification theory. The last three chapters deal with modalities. Chapter 9 is famous for the discussion of the sea-battle. (If it is true that there will be a sea-battle tomorrow, then it is true today that there will be a sea-battle. Thus a sea-battle is apparently unavoidable, and thus necessary. Another interpretation would be: that we can not know that which has not yet come to pass. In other words: if there is a sea battle tomorrow then it is true today that tomorrow there will be a sea battle. So, only if we can know whether or not there will be a sea battle tomorrow then can we know if there will be a sea battle).

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