Pre-Critical Kant on Traditional Logic: What is the Mistake in Syllogistic Theory?

Abstract

Immanuel Kant held nearly two decades before (1762) the beginning of his ‘Critical period’ (1781) that the traditional tripartite/quadripartite division of the figures in categorical syllogistic remained a ‘mistaken subtlety’ (falsche Spitzfindigkeit), given (i) that the Aristotelian perfect moods were the only ‘pure’ patterns of reasoning that exemplify the term order – called the first figure – prescribed by the general rule of ratiocination per se, and (ii) that every imperfect mood in the same theory could be ‘reduced’ to one of those four. There really are sheer logical problems, already noted in the literature, in Kant’s reading of the standard reductive scheme for categorical syllogistic as a set of instructions for restoring the first figure within the premises of a given imperfect mood. However, the real issue is the way Kant benefits from these points to justify his ‘mistaken subtlety thesis’ (MST), which translates in turn into the issue of the correct interpretation of the thesis itself. This paper aims to show that, contrary to appearance, MST might fail to make any definite sense; to that end, it first presents and evaluates Kant’s own special conception of judgment and reasoning that centers around the notion of syllogistic mediation, on which basis Kant states MST; then it shows that a tenable reading of MST answering to the Kantian conception and to common facts about inference and deduction cannot be made. The paper concludes by proposing to connect this negative result to Kant’s wavering between descriptive and prescriptive perspectives on purely logical matters.