  Most Neoplatonists followed Alexander of Aphrodisias in regarding logic not as a separate philosophical discipline (that was the Stoic view) but rather as philosophy’s tool, its organon. In their commentaries on the Prior Analytics, both Philoponus and Ammonius side with that tradition and reject the Stoic view, but they add that in the case of Plato, dialectic may well be regarded as part of Platonic philosophy (witness dialogues such as Phaedrus and Phaedo) but also as an exercise in its own right serving as philosophical tool (witness the Parmenides; cf. Philoponus, In An.Pr. 6–9). The contemporary Athenian Neoplatonist Simplicius, who spent much acumen on repudiating and excoriating Philoponian cosmological ideas, denied altogether Philoponus’ competence as a logician, and modern scholars tend to agree with him. Historians of logic, however, acknowledge that Philoponus was the first to render a satisfactory account of the syllogism (subsequently the traditional one), stating that the major premise includes the predicate term of the conclusion, the minor premise the subject term (In An.Pr. 67). In Philoponus, too, one encounters for the first time a particular diagram that schematised what kind of conclusions (i.e. universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative, or particular negative) follow from what kind of premises. This diagram, later to be called by the schoolmen ‘asses’ bridge’ (pons asinorum), enabled students of logic more easily to construct valid syllogisms (In An.Pr. 274).