Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, George Boolos and Sarah Sawyer

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5 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
Boolos reinterprets second-order logic as plural logic [Boolos, by Oliver/Smiley]
     Full Idea: Boolos's conception of plural logic is as a reinterpretation of second-order logic.
     From: report of George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975]) by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? n5
     A reaction: Oliver and Smiley don't accept this view, and champion plural reference differently (as, I think, some kind of metalinguistic device?).
Monadic second-order logic might be understood in terms of plural quantifiers [Boolos, by Shapiro]
     Full Idea: Boolos has proposed an alternative understanding of monadic, second-order logic, in terms of plural quantifiers, which many philosophers have found attractive.
     From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 3.5
Second-order logic metatheory is set-theoretic, and second-order validity has set-theoretic problems [Boolos]
     Full Idea: The metatheory of second-order logic is hopelessly set-theoretic, and the notion of second-order validity possesses many if not all of the epistemic debilities of the notion of set-theoretic truth.
     From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.45)
     A reaction: Epistemic problems arise when a logic is incomplete, because some of the so-called truths cannot be proved, and hence may be unreachable. This idea indicates Boolos's motivation for developing a theory of plural quantification.
Boolos showed how plural quantifiers can interpret monadic second-order logic [Boolos, by Linnebo]
     Full Idea: In an indisputable technical result, Boolos showed how plural quantifiers can be used to interpret monadic second-order logic.
     From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], Intro) by Øystein Linnebo - Plural Quantification Exposed Intro
Any sentence of monadic second-order logic can be translated into plural first-order logic [Boolos, by Linnebo]
     Full Idea: Boolos discovered that any sentence of monadic second-order logic can be translated into plural first-order logic.
     From: report of George Boolos (To be is to be the value of a variable.. [1984], §1) by Øystein Linnebo - Plural Quantification Exposed p.74