4 (number) - in Logic and Philosophy

In Logic and Philosophy

• The symbolic meanings of the number four are linked to those of the cross and the square. "Almost from prehistoric times, the number four was employed to signify what was solid, what could be touched and felt. Its relationship to the cross (four points) made it an outstanding symbol of wholeness and universality, a symbol which drew all to itself". Where lines of latitude and longitude intersect, they divide the earth into four proportions. Throughout the world kings and chieftains have been called "lord of the four suns"..."lord of the four quarters of the earth"... by which is understood to the extent of their powers both territorially and in terms of total control of their subjects' doings.
• The Square of Opposition, in both its Aristotelian version and its Boolean version, consists of four forms: A ("All S is R"), I ("Some S is R"), E ("No S is R"), and O ("Some S is not R").
• In regard to whether two given propositions can have the same truth value, there are four separate logical possibilities: the propositions are subalterns (possibly both are true, and possibly both are false); subcontraries (it is possible that both are true, but not that both are false); contraries (it is possible that both are false, but not that both are true); or contradictories (it is not possible that both are true, and it is not possible that both are false).
• Aristotle held that there are basically four causes in nature: the efficient cause, the matter, the end, and the form.
• The Stoics held with four basic categories, all viewed as bodies (substantial and insubstantial): (1) substance in the sense of substrate, primary formless matter; (2) quality, matter's organization to differentiate and individualize something, and coming down to a physical ingredient such as pneuma, breath; (3) somehow holding (or disposed), as in a posture, state, shape, size, action, and (4) somehow holding (or disposed) toward something, as in relative location, familial relation, and so forth.
• Immanuel Kant expounded a table of judgments involving four three-way alternatives, in regard to (1) Quantity, (2) Quality, (3) Relation, (4) Modality, and, based thereupon, a table of four categories, named by the terms just listed, and each with three subcategories.
• Arthur Schopenhauer's doctoral thesis was On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
• Franz Brentano held that any major philosophical period has four phases: (1) Creative and rapidly progressing with scientific interest and results; then declining through the remaining phases, (2) practical, (3) increasingly skeptical, and (4) literary, mystical, and scientifically worthless – until philosophy is renewed through a new period's first phase. (See Brentano's essay "The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Current State" 1895, tr. by Mezei and Smith 1998.)
• C. S. Peirce, usually a trichotomist, discussed four methods for overcoming troublesome uncertainties and achieving secure beliefs: (1) the method of tenacity (policy of sticking to initial belief), (2) the method of authority, (3) the method of congruity (following a fashionable paradigm), and (4) the fallibilistic, self-correcting method of science (see "The Fixation of Belief", 1877); and four barriers to inquiry, barriers refused by the fallibilist: (1) assertion of absolute certainty; (2) maintaining that something is absolutely unknowable; (3) maintaining that something is absolutely inexplicable because absolutely basic or ultimate; (4) holding that perfect exactitude is possible, especially such as to quite preclude unusual and anomalous phenomena (see "F.R.L.", 1899).
• Paul Weiss built a system involving four modes of being: Actualities (substances in the sense of substantial, spatio-temporally finite beings), Ideality or Possibility (pure normative form), Existence (the dynamic field), and God (unity). (See Weiss's Modes of Being, 1958).
• Karl Popper outlined a tetradic schema to describe the growth of theories and, via generalization, also the emergence of new behaviors and living organisms: (1) problem, (2) tentative theory, (3) (attempted) error-elimination (especially by way of critical discussion), and (4) new problem(s). (See Popper's Objective Knowledge, 1972, revised 1979.)
• John Boyd (military strategist) made his key concept the decision cycle or OODA loop, consisting of four stages: (1) observation (data intake through the senses), (2) orientation (analysis and synthesis of data), (3) decision, and (4) action. Boyd held that his decision cycle has philosophical generality, though for strategists the point remains that, through swift decisions, one can disrupt an opponent's decision cycle.
• Richard McKeon outlined four classes (each with four subclasses) of modes of philosophical inquiry: (1) Modes of Being (Being); (2) Modes of Thought (That which is); (3) Modes of Fact (Existence); (4) Modes of Simplicity (Experience) – and, corresponding to them, four classes (each with four subclasses) of philosophical semantics: Principles, Methods, Interpretations, and Selections. (See McKeon's "Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic Inquiry" in Freedom and History and Other Essays, 1989.)
• Jonathan Lowe (E.J. Lowe) argues in The Four-Category Ontology, 2006, for four categories: kinds (substantial universals), attributes (relational universals and property-universals), objects (substantial particulars), and modes (relational particulars and property-particulars, also known as "tropes"). (See Lowe's "Recent Advances in Metaphysics," 2001, Eprint)