display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
13235 | Logic studies consequence; logical truths are consequences of everything, or nothing [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: Nowadays we think of the consequence relation itself as the primary subject of logic, and view logical truths as degenerate instances of this relation. Logical truths follow from any set of assumptions, or from no assumptions at all. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
A reaction: This seems exactly right; the alternative is the study of necessities, but that may not involve logic. |
13238 | Syllogisms are only logic when they use variables, and not concrete terms [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: According to the Peripatetics (Aristotelians), only syllogistic laws stated in variables belong to logic, and not their applications to concrete terms. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
A reaction: [from Lukasiewicz] Seems wrong. I take it there are logical relations between concrete things, and the variables are merely used to describe these relations. Variables lack the internal powers to drive logical necessities. Variables lack essence! |
13234 | The view of logic as knowing a body of truths looks out-of-date [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: Through much of the 20th century the conception of logic was inherited from Frege and Russell, as knowledge of a body of logical truths, as arithmetic or geometry was a knowledge of truths. This is odd, and a historical anomaly. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Interesting. I have always taken this idea to be false. I presume logic has minimal subject matter and truths, and preferably none at all. |
13232 | Logic studies arguments, not formal languages; this involves interpretations [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: Logic does not study formal languages for their own sake, which is formal grammar. Logic evaluates arguments, and primarily considers formal languages as interpreted. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
A reaction: Hodges seems to think logic just studies formal languages. The current idea strikes me as a much more sensible view. |
13241 | The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics if anything is. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 4.2.1) | |
A reaction: This is an interesting contrast to the claim of logicism, that mathematics reduces to logic. This idea explains why students of logic are surprised to find themselves involved in mathematics. |
13253 | There are several different consequence relations [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: We are pluralists about logical consequence because we take there to be a number of different consequence relations, each reflecting different precisifications of the pre-theoretic notion of deductive logical consequence. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
A reaction: I don't see how you avoid the slippery slope that leads to daft logical rules like Prior's 'tonk' (from which you can infer anything you like). I say that nature imposes logical conquence on us - but don't ask me to prove it. |
13240 | A sentence follows from others if they always model it [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: The sentence X follows logically from the sentences of the class K if and only if every model of the class K is also a model of the sentence X. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 3.2) | |
A reaction: This why the symbol |= is often referred to as 'models'. |
9725 | 'Predicate abstraction' abstracts predicates from formulae, giving scope for constants and functions [Fitting/Mendelsohn] |
Full Idea: 'Predicate abstraction' is a key idea. It is a syntactic mechanism for abstracting a predicate from a formula, providing a scoping mechanism for constants and function symbols similar to that provided for variables by quantifiers. | |
From: M Fitting/R Mendelsohn (First-Order Modal Logic [1998], Pref) |
13236 | Logical truth is much more important if mathematics rests on it, as logicism claims [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: If mathematical truth reduces to logical truth then it is important what counts as logically true, …but if logicism is not a going concern, then the body of purely logical truths will be less interesting. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Logicism would only be one motivation for pursuing logical truths. Maybe my new 'Necessitism' will derive the Peano Axioms from broad necessary truths, rather than from logic. |
13237 | Preface Paradox affirms and denies the conjunction of propositions in the book [Beall/Restall] |
Full Idea: The Paradox of the Preface is an apology, that you are committed to each proposition in the book, but admit that collectively they probably contain a mistake. There is a contradiction, of affirming and denying the conjunction of propositions. | |
From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.4) | |
A reaction: This seems similar to the Lottery Paradox - its inverse perhaps. Affirm all and then deny one, or deny all and then affirm one? |