Middle term Sentence Examples

The middle term must be distributed in one premise at least, i.e.

Thus, 1 - x would represent the operation of selecting all things in the world except horned things, that is, all not horned things, and (1 - x) (1 - y) would give us all things neither horned nor sheep. By the use of such symbols propositions could be reduced to the form of equations, and the syllogistic conclusion from two premises was obtained by eliminating the middle term according to ordinary algebraic rules.

The phyllites (q.v.) form a middle term between this group and the slates; they consist usually of quartz, white mica and chlorite, and have much of the foliation and schistosity of the mica-schists.

Ramus also set the modern fashion of deducing the figures from the position of the middle term in the premises, instead of basing them, as Aristotle does, upon the different relation of the middle to the so-called major and minor term.

In the syllogism " Every man is mortal and Socrates is a man," if in the minor premiss the copula " is " were not disengaged from the predicate " man," there would not be one middle term " man " in the two premisses.

This possibility, according to Averroes, led to the adoption by the physician Galen of the so-called fourth figure, in which the middle term is predicate of the major and subject of the minor.

More particularly "argument" means a synopsis of the contents of a book, the outline of a novel, play, &c. In logic it is used for the middle term in a syllogism, and for many species of fallacies, such as the argumentum ad hominem, ad baculum, &c. '(see' Fallacy).

Thus in the example of syllogism given above, " border-war between Thebes and Athens " is the minor term, " evil " the major term, and " border-war " the middle term.

The conception of linkage needs to be deepened by the realization of the middle term as the ground of nexus in a real order which is also rational.

It is not enough to have for middle term a causa cognoscendi merely.

The planets are near, and we know it by their not twinkling, 2 but science must conceive their nearness as the cause of their not twinkling and make the Arius in the real order the middle term of its syllogism.

This point of departure is noteworthy, as also is the treatment of the inductive syllogism as one in which the middle term is resoluble into a group or series (Reihe).

In the conclusion the middle term disappears and the other two are brought together.

The predicate of the conclusion is called the major term, the subject the minor term; the term which is common to the premises and disappears in the conclusion is the middle term.