{{Short description|Specific type of declaratory statement}} In [[logic]], '''Apophantic''' ({{langx|el|ἀποφαντικός}}, "declaratory", from ἀποφαίνειν ''apophainein'', "to show, to make known") statements are declaratory statements whose truth-value can be determined by examining whether its predicate can be logically attributed to its [[Subject (grammar)|subject]].
For example, consider the two sentences "All [[penguins]] are [[birds]]" and "All [[bachelors]] are unhappy". In the first sentence, the set of all birds is a [[Theory of Categories|category]] which penguins can or cannot [[Necessity and sufficiency|necessarily]] be placed into. In the second sentence, "unhappy" is not a category that all bachelors must necessarily be placed into; it is [[Contingency (philosophy)|contingent]] on the happiness of the individual bachelors. However, because no penguins need to be consulted or examined to determine that all penguins are birds, the conclusion that the first statement must be true is apophantic.
The term "apophantic" first appeared in the works of [[Aristotle]].{{cn|date=January 2025}} The concept appears in the Arabic Aristotelian tradition as ''jâzim''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Street |first=Tony |title=Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/arabic-islamic-language/ |access-date=2024-05-31 |website=plato.stanford.edu |language=en}}</ref> In [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Glossary of Terms in Heidegger's Being and Time |url=http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/b_and_t_glossary.html#a |access-date=2024-05-31 |website=www.visual-memory.co.uk}}</ref> [[Edmund Husserl]] considered apophantic judgment central to his 'transcendental logic',<ref>See course lectures on passive synthesis in the mid 1920s.</ref> but his student [[Martin Heidegger]] argued later that apophantic judgements are the ''least'' reliable means of obtaining truth because they are cut from the original interpretive framework of relations to the subject.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Glossary of Terms in Heidegger's Being and Time |url=http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/b_and_t_glossary.html#a |access-date=2024-05-31 |website=www.visual-memory.co.uk}}</ref>
==See also== *{{annotated link|Analytic–synthetic distinction}} *{{annotated link|Diairesis}} *{{annotated link|Heideggerian terminology}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20061001085713/http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8asth10.txt "Benedetto Croce, ''Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic''"]
[[Category:Aristotelianism]] [[Category:Phenomenology]] [[Category:Statements]] [[Category:Concepts in logic]]
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