Language, Truth and Logic

Language, Truth and Logic PDF Author: Alfred Jules Ayer
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486113094
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
"A delightful book … I should like to have written it myself." — Bertrand Russell First published in 1936, this first full-length presentation in English of the Logical Positivism of Carnap, Neurath, and others has gone through many printings to become a classic of thought and communication. It not only surveys one of the most important areas of modern thought; it also shows the confusion that arises from imperfect understanding of the uses of language. A first-rate antidote for fuzzy thought and muddled writing, this remarkable book has helped philosophers, writers, speakers, teachers, students, and general readers alike. Mr. Ayers sets up specific tests by which you can easily evaluate statements of ideas. You will also learn how to distinguish ideas that cannot be verified by experience — those expressing religious, moral, or aesthetic experience, those expounding theological or metaphysical doctrine, and those dealing with a priori truth. The basic thesis of this work is that philosophy should not squander its energies upon the unknowable, but should perform its proper function in criticism and analysis.

Language, Truth and Logic

Language, Truth and Logic PDF Author: Alfred Jules Ayer
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486113094
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A delightful book … I should like to have written it myself." — Bertrand Russell First published in 1936, this first full-length presentation in English of the Logical Positivism of Carnap, Neurath, and others has gone through many printings to become a classic of thought and communication. It not only surveys one of the most important areas of modern thought; it also shows the confusion that arises from imperfect understanding of the uses of language. A first-rate antidote for fuzzy thought and muddled writing, this remarkable book has helped philosophers, writers, speakers, teachers, students, and general readers alike. Mr. Ayers sets up specific tests by which you can easily evaluate statements of ideas. You will also learn how to distinguish ideas that cannot be verified by experience — those expressing religious, moral, or aesthetic experience, those expounding theological or metaphysical doctrine, and those dealing with a priori truth. The basic thesis of this work is that philosophy should not squander its energies upon the unknowable, but should perform its proper function in criticism and analysis.

Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics

Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics PDF Author: Jaakko Hintikka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401720452
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
One can distinguish, roughly speaking, two different approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. On the one hand, some philosophers (and some mathematicians) take the nature and the results of mathematicians' activities as given, and go on to ask what philosophical morals one might perhaps find in their story. On the other hand, some philosophers, logicians and mathematicians have tried or are trying to subject the very concepts which mathematicians are using in their work to critical scrutiny. In practice this usually means scrutinizing the logical and linguistic tools mathematicians wield. Such scrutiny can scarcely help relying on philosophical ideas and principles. In other words it can scarcely help being literally a study of language, truth and logic in mathematics, albeit not necessarily in the spirit of AJ. Ayer. As its title indicates, the essays included in the present volume represent the latter approach. In most of them one of the fundamental concepts in the foundations of mathematics and logic is subjected to a scrutiny from a largely novel point of view. Typically, it turns out that the concept in question is in need of a revision or reconsideration or at least can be given a new twist. The results of such a re-examination are not primarily critical, however, but typically open up new constructive possibilities. The consequences of such deconstructions and reconstructions are often quite sweeping, and are explored in the same paper or in others.

An Introduction to Mathematical Logic and Type Theory

An Introduction to Mathematical Logic and Type Theory PDF Author: Peter B. Andrews
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402007637
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In case you are considering to adopt this book for courses with over 50 students, please contact [email protected] for more information. This introduction to mathematical logic starts with propositional calculus and first-order logic. Topics covered include syntax, semantics, soundness, completeness, independence, normal forms, vertical paths through negation normal formulas, compactness, Smullyan's Unifying Principle, natural deduction, cut-elimination, semantic tableaux, Skolemization, Herbrand's Theorem, unification, duality, interpolation, and definability. The last three chapters of the book provide an introduction to type theory (higher-order logic). It is shown how various mathematical concepts can be formalized in this very expressive formal language. This expressive notation facilitates proofs of the classical incompleteness and undecidability theorems which are very elegant and easy to understand. The discussion of semantics makes clear the important distinction between standard and nonstandard models which is so important in understanding puzzling phenomena such as the incompleteness theorems and Skolem's Paradox about countable models of set theory. Some of the numerous exercises require giving formal proofs. A computer program called ETPS which is available from the web facilitates doing and checking such exercises. Audience: This volume will be of interest to mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers in universities, as well as to computer scientists in industry who wish to use higher-order logic for hardware and software specification and verification.

The Significance of the New Logic

The Significance of the New Logic PDF Author: Willard Van Orman Quine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316836320
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
W. V. Quine was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century American analytic philosophy. Although he wrote predominantly in English, in Brazil in 1942 he gave a series of lectures on logic and its philosophy in Portuguese, subsequently published as the book O Sentido da Nova Lógica. The book has never before been fully translated into English, and this volume is the first to make its content accessible to Anglophone philosophers. Quine would go on to develop revolutionary ideas about semantic holism and ontology, and this book provides a snapshot of his views on logic and language at a pivotal stage of his intellectual development. The volume also includes an essay on logic which Quine also published in Portuguese, together with an extensive historical-philosophical essay by Frederique Janssen-Lauret. The valuable and previously neglected works first translated in this volume will be essential for scholars of twentieth-century philosophy.

Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard

Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard PDF Author: Greg Frost-Arnold
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 0812698304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A reconstruction of the lines of argument used by Carnap, Tarski, and Quine, highlighting their historical significance and contemporary relevance based on Carnap's own notes from his conversations of the time.During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard, holding regular private meetings, with Carnap, Tarski, and Quine. 'Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard' allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall for their conversations. Carnap took detailed notes during his year at Harvard. This book includes both a German transcription of these shorthand notes and an English translation in the appendix section. Carnap's notes cover a wide range of topics, but surprisingly, the most prominent question is: If the number of physical items in the universe is finite, what form should scientific discourse take? This question is closely connected to anabiding philosophical problem: What is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the material realm? Carnap, Tarski, and Quine's attempts to answer this question involve issues central to philosophy today.This book focuses on three such issues: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. In short, the book reconstructs the lines of argument represented in these Harvard discussions, discusses their historical significance (especially Quine's break from Carnap),and relates them when possible to contemporary treatments of these issues.

Mathematical Logic

Mathematical Logic PDF Author: Stephen Cole Kleene
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486317072
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Contents include an elementary but thorough overview of mathematical logic of 1st order; formal number theory; surveys of the work by Church, Turing, and others, including Gödel's completeness theorem, Gentzen's theorem, more.

Principia Mathematica

Principia Mathematica PDF Author: Alfred North Whitehead
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Logic, Symbolic and mathematical
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description


The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic

The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic PDF Author: Adam Tamas Tuboly
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030508869
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on A. J. Ayer’s 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and philosophical significance of Ayer’s work, examining its place in the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy. Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language. Among the questions discussed are: How did Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact? The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind.

Logic for Philosophy

Logic for Philosophy PDF Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192658816
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Logic for Philosophy is an introduction to logic for students of contemporary philosophy. It is suitable both for advanced undergraduates and for beginning graduate students in philosophy. It covers (i) basic approaches to logic, including proof theory and especially model theory, (ii) extensions of standard logic that are important in philosophy, and (iii) some elementary philosophy of logic. It emphasizes breadth rather than depth. For example, it discusses modal logic and counterfactuals, but does not prove the central metalogical results for predicate logic (completeness, undecidability, etc.) Its goal is to introduce students to the logic they need to know in order to read contemporary philosophical work. It is very user-friendly for students without an extensive background in mathematics. In short, this book gives you the understanding of logic that you need to do philosophy.

Shadows of Syntax

Shadows of Syntax PDF Author: Jared Warren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190086165
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
What is the source of logical and mathematical truth? This volume revitalizes conventionalism as an answer to this question. Conventionalism takes logical and mathematical truth to have their source in linguistic conventions. This was an extremely popular view in the early 20th century, but it was never worked out in detail and is now almost universally rejected in mainstream philosophical circles. In Shadows of Syntax, Jared Warren offers the first book-length treatment and defense of a combined conventionalist theory of logic and mathematics. He argues that our conventions, in the form of syntactic rules of language use, are perfectly suited to explain the truth, necessity, and a priority of logical and mathematical claims. In Part I, Warren explains exactly what conventionalism amounts to and what linguistic conventions are. Part II develops an unrestricted inferentialist theory of the meanings of logical constants that leads to logical conventionalism. This conventionalist theory is elaborated in discussions of logical pluralism, the epistemology of logic, and of the influential objections that led to the historical demise of conventionalism. Part III aims to extend conventionalism from logic to mathematics. Unlike logic, mathematics involves both ontological commitments and a rich notion of truth that cannot be generated by any algorithmic process. To address these issues Warren develops conventionalist-friendly but independently plausible theories of both metaontology and mathematical truth. Finally, Part IV steps back to address big picture worries and meta-worries about conventionalism. This book develops and defends a unified theory of logic and mathematics according to which logical and mathematical truths are reflections of our linguistic rules, mere shadows of syntax.