ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a form of inference—of common occurrence in everyday life—in which from the conjunction of a composite premiss with a simple premiss a simple conclusion is inferred. It examines the traditional Latin name of the form. The chapter presents arguments that were very awkwardly dealt with by the traditional Logicians, owing to their restriction of premisses to the subject-predicate form. Its logical form consists in the combination of implicative and disjunctive premisses. It may be defined as follows: A dilemma is a compound argument consisting of a premiss in which two implicative propositions are conjunctively affirmed, and of a premiss in which either the implicants are alternatively affirmed or the implicates alternatively denied. A polysyllogism is a series of syllogisms in which the conclusion of one is a premiss of the next. An epicheirema is not a special form of argument but is an abbreviated mode of stating an argument.
