ONT Re: Verities Of Likely Stories
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VOLS. Note 6
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| A probability [Greek 'eikos'] is not the same as a sign ['semeion'].
| The former is a generally accepted premiss; for that which people
| know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, usually
| in a particular way, is a probability: e.g., that the envious
| are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate.
| A sign, however, means a demonstrative premiss which
| is necessary or generally accepted. That which
| coexists with something else, or before or
| after whose happening something else has
| happened, is a sign of that something's
| having happened or being.
|
| An enthymeme is a syllogism from probabilities or signs;
| and a sign can be taken in three ways -- in just as many ways
| as there are of taking the middle term in the several figures ...
|
| We must either classify signs in this way, and regard their middle term as
| an index ['tekmerion'] (for the name "index" is given to that which causes
| us to know, and the middle term is especially of this nature), or describe
| the arguments drawn from the extremes as "signs", and that which is drawn
| from the middle as an "index". For the conclusion which is reached through
| the first figure is most generally accepted and most true.
|
| Aristotle, "Prior Analytics", 2.27.
|
| Aristotle, "Prior Analytics",
| Hugh Tredennick (trans.), in:
|'Aristotle, Volume 1', G.P. Goold (ed.),
| William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938, 1983.
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