8 Comments
User's avatar
Adam's avatar

Memoria Press has a great logic book/course that utilizes these trees. It's fun to teach!

Expand full comment
Jacob Allee's avatar

The M.P. text is great, the workbook leaves something to be desired. I don’t dig the mere copy work. They need to rework it and have actual exercises in my opinion. Love Martin Cothran though, he’s a good man and very insightful.

Expand full comment
Adam's avatar

Oh, I agree. When I taught from it, I had to discard a fair percentage of the work. But the ideas were great.

Expand full comment
Shawn White's avatar

Very interesting. I hadn’t come across this before, but it is helpful.

Expand full comment
Lux_Dividat's avatar

The “trees” makes me think of Ramon Llull.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Science_(Ramon_Llull)

Expand full comment
Le Master's avatar

Out of the hundreds I've seen in commentaries and texts I've only ever seen Porphyrian Trees made for Substance. But Porphyry implies they can be done for all ten categories of Being. I've taken a stab at one for Quantity in the past. I'd also like to see attempts at the other side of the tree for incorporeal Substance (from an Aristotelian perspective).

Expand full comment
Jacob Allee's avatar

I agree, there is greater potential here. For instance, immaterial substances can be living or non-living if we assume a Realist Philosophy concerning immaterial substances (e.g. numbers versus angels).

Expand full comment
Le Master's avatar

Yeah, he has quantity (discrete number and continuous/geometry) as being predicated of intelligible matter. So I would assume intelligible matter would exist on the incorporeal side. And also the immobile, first mover and secondary movers ("angels").

Expand full comment