the.com/modus ponens
the logic move where you can't believe the conclusion without dumping a premise
means A valid rule of inference in logic: if 'P' is true, and 'if P then Q' is true, then 'Q' must be true.
from Straight from Latin: modus ponens means 'the method of affirming' (or 'the mood that posits'), from ponere, 'to place or put forward.' Medieval logicians paired it with its mirror twin, modus tollens, 'the method of denying,' building a tidy Latin grammar of valid argument that scholars still recite today.
- latin name
- means mode that affirms by affirming
- ancient roots
- Stoics catalogued it around 300 BC
- the form
- if P then Q, P, therefore Q
- escape hatch
- deny a premise to dodge any conclusion
- machine logic
- underpins automated theorem provers and AI inference