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Ideas for '', 'A Tour through Mathematical Logic' and 'Sets, Aggregates and Numbers'

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3 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 1. Overview of Logic
If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation.
     From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II)
     A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts.
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 5. First-Order Logic
In first-order logic syntactic and semantic consequence (|- and |=) nicely coincide [Wolf,RS]
     Full Idea: One of the most appealing features of first-order logic is that the two 'turnstiles' (the syntactic single |-, and the semantic double |=), which are the two reasonable notions of logical consequence, actually coincide.
     From: Robert S. Wolf (A Tour through Mathematical Logic [2005], 5.3)
     A reaction: In the excitement about the possibility of second-order logic, plural quantification etc., it seems easy to forget the virtues of the basic system that is the target of the rebellion. The issue is how much can be 'expressed' in first-order logic.
First-order logic is weakly complete (valid sentences are provable); we can't prove every sentence or its negation [Wolf,RS]
     Full Idea: The 'completeness' of first order-logic does not mean that every sentence or its negation is provable in first-order logic. We have instead the weaker result that every valid sentence is provable.
     From: Robert S. Wolf (A Tour through Mathematical Logic [2005], 5.3)
     A reaction: Peter Smith calls the stronger version 'negation completeness'.