Logic

How Fundamental is the Fundamental Assumption?

by Nils Kürbis

published in Teorema XXXI/2 (2012), pp.5-19.

The fundamental assumption of Dummett’s and Prawitz’ proof-theoretic justification of deduction is that ‘if we have a... more The fundamental assumption of Dummett’s and Prawitz’ proof-theoretic justification of deduction is that ‘if we have a valid argument for a complex statement, we can construct a valid argument for it which finishes with an application of one of the introduction rules governing its principal operator’. I argue that the assumption is flawed in this general version, but should be restricted, not to apply to arguments in general, but only to proofs. I also argue that Dummett’s and Prawitz’ project of providing a logical basis for metaphysics only relies on the restricted assumption.

The Stoic Anomaly: An Inquiry into Some Possible Semitic Components in Stoic Logic and Physics (Spanish)

by Carlos Segovia

"La anomalía estoica: En torno a los posibles componentes semíticos de la lógica y la física estoicas," Paideia 89 (2010) 295-307.

1. Introducción
2. La anomalía lingüístico-temporal (sobre la relativa indistinción del presente y el futuro en... more 1. Introducción
2. La anomalía lingüístico-temporal (sobre la relativa indistinción del presente y el futuro en el estoicismo)
3. La anomalía ontológica (sobre la supresión del verbo "ser" en la física estoica)
4. La anomalía lógica (sobre la supresión de la cópula verbal en la lógica estoica)
5. A modo de conclusión

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

Making Choices in Social Situations

by Jeremy Seligman

This is work in progress, to be included in the present state in the 2011 Logic and Interactive Rationality (LIRa) yearbook, Amsterdam:
http://www.illc.uva.nl/lgc/seminar/?page_id=727

Comments very welcome

We propose a general account of decision making in social situations based on an analysis of the role of three... more We propose a general account of decision making in social situations based on an analysis of the role of three concepts: knowledge, preference and freedom of choice. The normative aspect of decision making is sharply contrasted with the descriptive aspect, as is the distinction between a priori and a posteriori rationality. As a partial validation of the analysis, we apply our account to the theory of strategic games with both pure and mixed (probabilistic) strategies, showing that the concept of a dominated strategy and Nash equilibrium are correctly predicted by more general norms. Our account is purely model-theoretic but uses discrete relational structures that are well-suited for future application of the techniques of modal logic.

T-EQUIVALENCES FOR POSITIVE SENTENCES

by Cezary Cieslinski

published The Review of Symbolic Logic 2011, volume 4, issue 02, pp. 319-325. Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 2011

Answering a question formulated by Halbach (2009), I show that a disquotational truth theory, which takes as axioms... more Answering a question formulated by Halbach (2009), I show that a disquotational truth theory, which takes as axioms all positive substitutions of the sentential T-schema, together with all instances of induction in the language with the truth predicate, is conservative over its syntactical base.

Schroyens, W., Braem, S. (2010). The initial representation in reasoning towards an interpretation of conditional sentences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology .64 (2), 339-362.

by Walter Schroyens

On the Possibility of a Proof-Theoretical Solution to the Categoricity Problem for Logical Inferentialism

by James Kirkpatrick

BA Dissertation

The RHIZOME Project

by Martin E. Rosenberg

_The RHIZOME Project_ (1988-91; @1991), co-authored with Tom I. Ellis, and created in Hypercard. _RHIZOME_ was a critical thinking hypertext which offered creative as well as rhetorical and logical heuristics for the writing of a range of undergraduate essays. It was available at numerous writing programs in the early 1990's, and several articles were generated to explain its theoretical as well as pedagogical implications. Two other programmers, Stuart Selber, and Johndan Johnson-Eiola, worked briefly on the interface in 1991.

The RHIZOME Project was an experiment in instructional software to use the decision-tree environment of hypertext to... more The RHIZOME Project was an experiment in instructional software to use the decision-tree environment of hypertext to model specific sequential (as in narrative and logic) and non-sequential (as in creative and associative) thought strategies to help students write academic and creative essays. It was available at numerous writing programs in the early 1990's, including U Michigan, UC Berkeley, ASU, University of Illinois and Carnegie Mellon U. Comprised of separate "stacks" each modeling a specific heuristic, these stacks included:
1. Jazzwriting--a non-linear and recursive environment for generating and then exfoliating ideas in response to an automated or self-initiated prompt. Designed with the composing practices of BeBop jazz musicians in mind (improvisation/composition/improvisation), it offered recursive access to strategies for the improvisation of thoughts, and guided students to explore their more formal elaboration according to the rules of rhetoric, which was then linked to another "stack called:
2. Brainstorming--a non-linear, yet also sequential cluster of rhetorical heuristics: "Narrative," "Description," "Definition," "Comparison/Contrast," "Argument,"--each of which consitituted a "stack" which contained a sequence of prompts (often based on challenging heuristics such as Kenneth Burke's Pentad, for Narrative) to help expand the range of implications of ideas generated spontaneously in Jazzwriting. It was also possible to "jump" randomly or deliberately from one to the other of these heuristics, so that five separate threads of thought might be developed from the initial Jazzwriting responses. All five of these stacks then were projected into the next stack:
3. Arguprompt--which guided students through a series of prompts that would generate positions, assumptions, arguments and evidence, objections and replies to those objections, in such a way that each prompt generated a paragraph in sequence. At any point in the process of "inventing" and "arranging" an argument, the user could highlight and then export a particular assertion into another "stack" called:
4. Enthymemes--which would, through the use of dialog boxes, center that assertion into the form of an Enthymeme, which would then prompt the student to respond to a few questions. Answering these additional questions would then trigger the hypertext program to translate the Enthymeme into a formal syllogism; and then offer the opportunity to translate that socratic syllogism into a Toulmin unit of logic, with assumptions and grounds for those assumptions. Furthermore, from Arguprompt, the students could access another stack called:
5. Style--which would offer students exercises to work on semantics, grammar and syntax.
As the student progressed through the sequence of four distinct environments, or worked exclusively with just one of them, the student could export generated text to a word processing program for further engagement with the processes of invention, arrangement and style.

Informed by the specific practices of jazz musicians and composers, the behavior of bifurcating systems in non-equilibrium thermodynamics described by Ilya Prigogine, as well as the non-linear models from philosophy exemplified by the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their concept of the rhizome, the project was an application of the theories explored in my theoretical dissertation: _Being and Becoming: Physics, Hegemony, Art and the Nomad in the Works of Ezra Pound, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, John Cage and Thomas Pynchon_ (1989). This project was followed by an online real-time text-based virtual reality classroom of multiple rooms with functional tools at the Media Lab MOO called _MER's Fungal Palace_ (1996), with which I taught several graduate seminars linked to seminars at other universities (1996-8); and _Chess RHIZOME_, an exploratory hypermedia database to explore the contradictory epistemological implications of the metaphor of chess across all disciplinary formations (1998).

Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel: The Irresolvability of the Gadamer-Habermas Debate

by William J. Urban

class paper written Good Friday, April 6, 2012

Logic Acquisition, Usage and Semantic Realism (Reprinted in Callaway 2008, Meaning Without Analyticity). Erkenntnis 37 (1):65 - 92.

by H.G. Callaway

A chief aim of this paper is to provide common ground for discussion of outstanding issues between defenders of... more A chief aim of this paper is to provide common ground for discussion of outstanding issues between defenders of classical logic and contemporary advocates of intuitionistic logic. In this spirit, I draw upon (and reconstruct) here the relationship between dialogue and evidence as emphasized in German constructivist authors. My approach depends upon developments in the methodology of empirical linguistics. As a preliminary to saying how one might decide between these two versions of logic (this issue is most closely approached in Section V. discussing the constructivist approach), it is well worth the effort to look closely at how logic is (or might be) learned and at questions concerning logic in translation, i.e., the question of how we might detect the variety of logic actually employed in a given speech community. (shrink)

Variable types for meaning assembly: a logical syntax for generic noun phrases introduced by "most"

by Christian Retoré

To appear in Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes

We propose a model which computes semantic representations viewed as formulae of higher order multisorted logic by... more We propose a model which computes semantic representations viewed as formulae of higher order multisorted logic by assembling them in type theory (second order lambda calculus), in particular for sentences involving generics introduced by “most”.

An Interpretive Independence-Friendly Quantified Modal Logic

by Alessandro Torza

In Michal Pelis (ed.), The LOGICA Yearbook 2007. Filosofia. Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

L'éclat de la dialectique dans les courts-circuits de la syntaxe: Hegel, Miller, Petersen, Girard

by Zachary Luke Fraser

Any sum of parts which are water is water

by henry laycock

HUMANA.MENTE
International Journal of Philosophical Studies founded in Florence in 2007. Official journal of the Italian Philosophical Society

Issue 19 - December 2011
COMPOSITION, COUNTERFACTUALS AND CAUSATION
The idea behind this issue is to offer a representation of the most recent theories and position which are emerging in the debate and take David Lewis as their main theoretical source, critical target, or point of departure

ABSTRACT. Mereological entities often seem to violate ‘ordinary’ ideas of what a concrete object can be like, behaving... more ABSTRACT. Mereological entities often seem to violate ‘ordinary’ ideas of what a concrete object can be like, behaving more like sets than like Aristotelian substances. However, the mereological notions of ‘part’, ‘composition’, and ‘sum’ or ‘fusion’ appear to find concrete realisation in the actual semantics of mass nouns. Quine notes that ‘any sum of parts which are water is water’; and the wine from a single barrel can be bottled and distributed around the globe without affecting its identity. Is there here, as some have claimed, a ‘natural’ or ‘innocent’ form of mereology? The claim rests on the assumption that what a mass noun such as ‘wine’ denotes – the wine from a single barrel , for example – is indeed a unit of a special type, the sum or fusion of its many ‘parts’. The assumption is, however, open to question on semantic grounds.

Mass nouns, count nouns and non-count nouns: philosophical aspects

by henry laycock

The online Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (below, ScribD) provides access to an accurate, edited version of the article.

THE CENTRAL THESIS OF THIS ARTICLE IS THAT - CONTRARY TO A BELIEF WHICH IS WIDESPREAD AMONG BOTH LINGUISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS - (SO-CALLED) 'MASS' NOUNS ARE SEMANTICALLY NON-SINGULAR: THEY DO NOT DENOTE INDIVIDUAL THINGS OR OBJECTS.

Linguists often distinguish count and non-count nouns (count+ and count-- nouns; CNs and NCNs, for short). The... more Linguists often distinguish count and non-count nouns (count+ and count-- nouns; CNs and NCNs, for short). The distinction, though hardly simple, is both exhaustive and entirely natural. In philosophical writings, by contrast, it is more usual to posit a
dichotomy of count nouns and mass nouns (CNs and MNs) — a dichotomy which is very commonly (and however vaguely) supposed to be of metaphysical or ontological significance. But this dichotomy, unlike that of CNs and NCNs, is deeply problematic; here in consequence I speak only of a supposed dichotomy of CNs and MNs, and by the same token, of a putative category of MNs.

Words without Objects (journal article, part one)

by henry laycock

Paper published in PRINCIPIA (Brazil) in 1998

Resolution of the problem of mass nouns depends on an expansion of our semantic/ontological taxonomy. Semantically,... more Resolution of the problem of mass nouns depends on an expansion of our semantic/ontological taxonomy. Semantically, mass nouns are neither singular nor plural; they apply to neither just one object, nor to many objects, at a time. But their deepest kinship links them to the plural. A plural phrase — 'the cats in Kingston' — does not denote a single plural thing, but merely many distinct things. Just so, 'the water in the lake' does not denote a single aggregate — it is not ONE, but rather MUCH. The world is not the totality of singular objects, plural objects, and mass objects; for there are no plural or mass objects. It is the totality of single objects and (just) stuff.

‘Aristotle on Begging the Question Between Dialectic, Logic and Epistemology’, Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy, XV (2012), forthcoming.

by Luca Castagnoli

KEMS-Um Demonstrador De Teoremas Multi-Estratégia

by Adolfo Neto

Note on Induction

by Ted Parent

Forthcoming in _Think_ [Cambridge UP]

I provide a counterexample to the view (common in logic textbooks) that induction is partly defined by the reasoner's... more I provide a counterexample to the view (common in logic textbooks) that induction is partly defined by the reasoner's intentions. Also, an alternative definition is offered, where induction is tentatively seen as a type of argument by analogy.

"El uso aristotélico de variables en lógica y sus supuestos ontológicos"

by Lucas Díaz López

Philosophica (Lisboa) 38 (2011), pp. 33-57.

Una lectura lógica del Organon aristotélico descubre ciertas incoherencias en el texto que debe resolver reduciéndolas... more Una lectura lógica del Organon aristotélico descubre ciertas incoherencias en el texto que debe resolver reduciéndolas a decisiones metafísicas del autor cuando no señalándolas como deficiencias en la exposición que es preciso corregir. El presente artículo trata de desplegar una línea de lectura que atienda más bien a esas «incoherencias», tratando de entenderlas como pasos específicos de la investigación aristotélica. Para ello se centra en el procedimiento de exposición de las figuras aristotélicas, el uso de variables, cuya «invención» por parte de Aristóteles ha sido encomiada a lo largo de la tradición lógica. Un análisis de los rasgos propios e internos de este procedimiento permitirá enlazar la investigación aristotélica del lógos con la investigación de «el ser en cuanto ser», así como determinar, si bien de modo negativo, la relación entre esta lectura y la lógico-tradicional del Organon.