解释篇

《解释篇》(希腊语: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας)是亚里士多德所著工具论的第二部文本，是现存最早的西方传统中以全面、详尽、规范的方式处理语言和逻辑的关系的哲学作品之一。

该篇着重阐释了直接推理以及未来偶然性问题（包括其中引出的海战谬误）。

On Interpretation (Greek: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, Peri Hermeneias) is the second text from Aristotle's Organon and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit, and formal way.

The work begins by analyzing simple categoric propositions, and draws a series of basic conclusions on the routine issues of classifying and defining basic linguistic forms, such as simple terms and propositions, nouns and verbs, negation, the quantity of simple propositions (primitive roots of the quantifiers in modern symbolic logic), investigations on the excluded middle (which to Aristotle is not applicable to future tense propositions—the problem of future contingents), and on modal propositions.

From the work comes the idea of Apophansis' (Greek: ἀπόφανσις), which considers the nature of nouns and verbs and how they might be combined as a proposition, which is the combination of a subject a noun, a verb, and a tense that can be either outright credible (κατάφασις kataphasis) or not (ἀπόφημι apophasis).

The first five chapters deal with the terms that form propositions. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with the relationship between affirmative, negative, universal and particular propositions. These relationships are the basis of the well-known square of opposition. The distinction between universal and particular propositions is the basis of modern quantification theory. The last three chapters deal with modalities. Chapter 9 is famous for the discussion of the sea-battle. (If it is true that there will be a sea-battle tomorrow, then it is true today that there will be a sea-battle. Thus a sea-battle is apparently unavoidable, and thus necessary. Another interpretation would be: that we cannot know that which has not yet come to pass. In other words: if there is a sea battle tomorrow then it is true today that tomorrow there will be a sea battle. So, only if we can know whether or not there will be a sea battle tomorrow then can we know if there will be a sea battle).

Contents

Chapter 1. Aristotle defines words as symbols of 'affections of the soul' or mental experiences. Spoken and written symbols differ between languages, but the mental experiences are the same for all (so that the English word 'cat' and the French word 'chat' are different symbols, but the mental experience they stand for—the concept of a cat—is the same for English speakers and French speakers). Nouns and verbs on their own do not involve truth or falsity.

Chapter 2. A noun signifies the subject by convention, but without reference to time.

Chapter 3. A verb carries with it the notion of time. 'He was healthy' and 'he will be healthy' are tenses of a verb. An untensed verb indicates the present, the tenses of a verb indicate times outside the present.

Chapter 4. The sentence is an expression whose parts have meaning. The word 'cat' signifies something, but is not a sentence. Only when words are added to it do we have affirmation and negation.

Chapter 5. Every simple proposition contains a verb. A simple proposition indicates a single fact, and the conjunction of its parts gives a unity. A complex proposition is several propositions compounded together.

Chapter 6. An affirmation is an assertion of something, a denial an assertion denying something of something. (For example, 'a man is an animal' asserts 'animal' of 'man'. 'A stone is not an animal' denies 'animal' of stone').

Chapter 7. Terms. Some terms are universal. A universal term is capable of being asserted of several subjects (for example 'moon'—even though the Earth has one moon, it may have had more, and the noun 'moon' could have been said of them in exactly the same sense). Other terms are individual. An individual or singular term ('Plato') is not predicated (in the same) sense of more than one individual.