A New Syllogism Closer to the Reality of Human Thinking -- On Lei Ma’s Substitution Logic

Abstract

The follow-up research of Aristotle’s syllogism has different approaches. The traditional syllogism follows Aristotle’s conceptual system and hopes to make improvements within Aristotle’s theory. Mathematical logic proposes a new conceptual system to accurately interpret Aristotle’s syllogism. Lei Ma puts forward an extended syllogism whose conceptual system is different from Aristotelian logic and mathematical logic. He thinks that Aristotle’s syllogism and traditional syllogism have tedious figures, moods, and reasoning rules, which are difficult for us to memorize. It is a theoretical conclusion of the human reasoning process but does not conform to the actual human thinking process. Ma’s syllogism is called substitution logic, which mainly concerns the substitution characteristics of a human thinking process, and summarizes the substitution rules in the reasoning process. Substitution logic appropriately describes the actual human reasoning process, thus inspiring us to establish a unified scientific theory of thinking and carry out normative research on the unity of abstract thinking and imaginative thinking. Substitution logic may be applied to the field of artificial intelligence, making artificial intelligence closer to the reality of human thinking. It seems that the research direction of substitution logic will give birth to human-like AI systems and promote the revolutionary transformation of AI research.