... in many cases. The activities of reason are twofold. First there is inference, in which we move from old knowledge to new knowledge. The strongest form of this is valid deductive inference, which occurs when it is not possible that our premises (what we are moving from) are true if our conclusion (what we are moving to) is false. One question ... such inference could ever yield new knowledge and whether our conclusions follow from the premises. The second supposed activity of reason is the direct discovery of new truths or inductive reasoning. A truth that can be discovered by the activ...

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... 's logic deduction. He worked extensively with logic because, as told by D. J O"Conner, he "rightly regarded logic as providing the method or technique of philosophical progress"(38). The first to develop deductive inference, Aristotle defined syllogism as "a discourse in which certain things having been stated, something else follows of necessity from their being so"(Charles 24). Syllogisms can be represented by a's are ... geometry, as Aristotle himself understood the subject. Only one of six works on logic, deal with formal logic as Aristotle understood the subject. The five others de...

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• Grade Level: High School

... the same. However, despite the work of such modern philosophers as Edmund Gettier, our inciting question (What is knowledge?) remains essentially unanswered to this day. Still, one is led by deductive reasoning to understand at the very least that knowledge is not true belief, and Plato retracts the former statement made by the character Theaetetus. He reasons that true belief cannot stand ... ...

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