Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

The Converse Does Not Hold

If you paid attention in Logic 101 you may remember that the immediate inference called 'conversion' is valid  for the I and E forms of the traditional square of opposition but not for the A and O forms.  Poetic illustration courtesy of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) where 'Every poet is a fool' is an A-proposition:

Sir, I admit your gen'ral rule
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

(Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber, 1977, p. 82)


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