What is "sophismata"

Sophismata (from the Greek word σόφισμα, 'sophisma', which also gave rise to the related term " sophism") in medieval philosophy are difficult or puzzling sentences presenting difficulties of logical analysis that must be solved. Sophismata-literature grew in importance during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and many important developments in philosophy (particularly in logic and natural philosophy) occurred as a result of investigation into their logical and semantic properties.

Sophismata are "ambiguous, puzzling or simply difficult sentences" that were used by Medieval logicians for educational purposes and for disputation about logic. Sophismata were written in Latin, and for many of them the meaning is lost, when they get translated to other languages. They can be divided into sentences that:

1. are odd or have odd consequences
2. are ambiguous, and can be true or false according to the interpretation we give it, or
3. have nothing special about them in itself, but become puzzling when they occur in definite contexts (or “cases”, casus).

When in the second half of the 19th century scholastic logic began to decline and be replaced by formal logic, discussions about sophismata and syncategoremata gradually became extinct as the problem posed by them disappeared with the formalisation of the language. Thus, except the Liar paradox sophismata in general are trivially solved by modern analytical philosophy.