Syllogism Finder Credits
Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes.
("Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants", more popularly stated: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.")
As with all projects, the Syllogism Finder is the result of my work in addition to the efforts of others. Since other people's efforts were so significant to this project's completion, it seems only fair for me to laud their work below.
To avoid solving (via brute force) all 256 syllogisms, I largely relied upon Vaughn's 1-Page Logic Summary (link opens in new window). He listed the fallacies committed by all syllogisms with figures 1-3. I extensively used his layout and built on his hard work to get ¾ of the syllogisms into the Syllogism Finder. Vaughn, thanks so much!
For the remaining ¼ of the syllogisms (that is, the syllogisms in the fourth figure), I consulted Wikipedia user Adaptron's Sandbox Page (link opens in new window). Although the layout of his data was not as visually pleasing, Adaptron's hard work saved me from having to discover the fourth-figure fallacies via brute force. Thanks Adaptron!
Even once the data was in the spreadsheet, I still needed an out-of-the-box way to display the data in a website. For this, Romain Vialard's "Awesome Table" (link opens in new window) was invaluable. His documentation could not have been any clearer and the gadget worked exactly as advertised. Plus, it gives me a way to iteratively improve the Syllogism Finder as I find errors to correct and further improvements to make. Romain, thanks for your contribution to this website and all the students it will help!
My own efforts, then, are roughly as follows. Once I conceived of the idea I searched for and obtained the requisite syllogistic fallacy information. After collating Vaughn's and Adaptron's data I entered it all into a Google Drive spreadsheet. Neither Vaughn nor Adaptron separated syllogisms which commit Illicit Minor from syllogisms which commit Illicit Major, so I separated those syllogisms into two separate categories. Then I set up the website, used Awesome Table to feed the spreadsheet data into the website, and put it online. Needless to say any errors which occurred in the process of designing and implementing the Syllogism Finder are solely my responsibility.