Logic

One is often said to be reasoning well when they are reasoning logically. Many attempts to say what logical reasoning is have been proposed, but one commonly proposed system is first-order classical logic. This Element will examine the basics of...

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our...

This is a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of logic (both formal logic and critical reasoning), with exceptionally clear yet conversational explanations and a multitude of engaging examples and exercises. Herrick's examples are on-point and...

Giving Reasons prepares students to think independently, evaluate information, and reason clearly across disciplines. Accessible to students and effective for instructors, it provides plain-English exercises, helpful appendices, and a variety of online...

A comprehensive introduction to formal logic, Logic and Philosophy: A Modern Introduction is a rigorous yet accessible text, appropriate for students encountering the subject for the first time. Abundant, carefully crafted exercise sets accompanied by a...

This Element takes a deep dive into Goedel's 1931 paper giving the first presentation of the Incompleteness Theorems, opening up completely passages in it that might possibly puzzle the student, such as the mysterious footnote 48a. It considers the main...

Temporal Logics are a rich variety of logical systems designed for formalising reasoning about time, and about events and changes in the world over time. These systems differ by the ontological assumptions made about the nature of time in the associated...

Opposing a long-standing orthodoxy of the Western philosophical tradition running from ancient Greek thought until the late nineteenth century, Frege argued that psychological laws of thought-those that explicate how we in fact think-must be...

Although the two volumes of Logic, Language, and Meaning can be used independently of one another, together they provide a comprehensive overview of modern logic as it is used as a tool in the analysis of natural language. Both volumes provide exercises...

Saul Kripke is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His most celebrated work, Naming and Necessity, makes arguably the most important contribution to the philosophy of language and metaphysics in recent years. Asking...

Imre Lakatos's Proofs and Refutations is an enduring classic, which has never lost its relevance. Taking the form of a dialogue between a teacher and some students, the book considers various solutions to mathematical problems and, in the process, raises...

Sums up the many fields of study where ignorance can undermine our understanding, while showing how an awareness of ignorance can lead to exploration and the discovery of new knowledge. The flip side of knowledge is ignorance. This book explores the...

First published in 1969, The Logic of Empirical Theories by Marian Przelecki is a seminal work in the philosophy of science. It explores key themes such as formalism of empirical theories, semantics of formalized languages, interpretation of empirical...

William B. Irvine, author of the popular book "A Guide to the Good Life," offers much needed philosophical advice on how to become a more rational and critical thinker in today's emotionally-driven and complex world. Even the most reasonable of us can...

A barrier to entailment exists if you can't get conclusions of a certain kind from premises of another. One of the most famous barriers in philosophy is Hume's Law, which says that you can't get normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or in...

LOGIC: THE ESSENTIALS concentrates on the fundaments of introductory logic. Practical in orientation and content, Essentials is loaded with class-tested, proven practice exercises. This new text is based on the classic and bestselling textbook, A Concise...

Nonmonotonic logics serve as formal models of defeasible reasoning, a type of reasoning where conclusions are drawn absent absolute certainty. Defeasible reasoning takes place when scientists interpret experiments, in medical diagnosis, and in practical...

What is the nature of a conceptual scheme? Are there alternative conceptual schemes? If so, are some more justifiable or correct than others? The later Wittgenstein already addresses these fundamental philosophical questions under the general rubric of...

Past, Present and Future, first published in 1867, is the magnum opus of Arthur Norman Prior (1914-1969). Prior was the founding father of tense-logic: Past, Present, and Future presents his tense-logic as a powerful and precise formalism for the...

This first of a two-part volume (Book I) deals with a unit intellectual cultural history of science in the Renaissance within fundamental frameworks. An intellectual cultural history of science examines how human and their intellectual experiences have...

According to the semantic definition of logical consequence or validity, an argument is logically valid if, and only if, the conclusion is true under all interpretations under which also all premisses are true. The semantic definition is only a general...

First published in 1984, in Probability, Objectivity and Evidence the author claims that the theory of probability provides a single, correct, analysis of probability and that the concept of probability employed in science can best be understood as that...

First published in 1961, Inductive Probability is a dialectical analysis of probability as it occurs in inductions. The book elucidates on the various forms of inductive, the criteria for their validity, and the consequent probabilities. This survey is...

The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning About Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims is the #1 selling critical thinking textbook, primarily intended for the Critical Thinking, informal logic, Critical Thought and Reasoning courses. These courses,...

One of the fundamental theses of this book is that logical consequence and logical truth are not simply given, but arise as conventions among the users of logic. Thus Syverson explains convention within a game-theoretic framework, as a kind of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780824816582Author Kisor Kumar ChakrabartiFormat PaperbackPage Count 248Imprint University of Hawai'i PressPublisher University of Hawai'i...

The series, "Wittgenstein Studies", collects together many of the major texts of recent years, making available books that have proved relevant to the study of Wittgenstein. This title is from the second collection in the series. In this study of...

The rise of scientific (analytic) philosophy since the turn of the twentieth century is linked to the philosophical interaction between, on the one hand, Ernst Mach, the Vienna Circle around Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the Berlin Group (Hans...

Mathematical game theory has been embraced by a variety of scholars: social scientists, biologists, linguists, and now, increasingly, logicians. This volume illustrates the recent advances of game theory in the field. Logicians benefit from things like...

One True Logic is a major contribution to the philosophy of logic. It is the first monograph explicitly to articulate a version of logical monism, the view that there is a single correct foundational logic. Logical monism is opposed to logical pluralism,...

Since the ground-breaking work of Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and others in the 1960s and 70s, one dominant interest of analytic philosophers has been in modal truths, which concern the question what is possible and what is necessary. However, there is...

It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful...

In Foucault in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Foucault's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Foucault's writings;...

The concept of identity has been seen to lead to paradox: we cannot truly and usefully say that a thing is the same either as itself or as something else. This book is a full examination of this paradox in philosophical logic, and of its implications for...

The Liar paradox raises foundational questions about logic, language, and truth (and semantic notions in general). A simple Liar sentence like 'This sentence is false' appears to be both true and false if it is either true or false. For if the sentence...

What role, if any, does formal logic play in characterizing epistemically rational belief? Traditionally, belief is seen in a binary way - either one believes a proposition, or one doesn't. Given this picture, it is attractive to impose certain deductive...

Saving Truth from Paradox is an ambitious investigation into paradoxes of truth and related issues, with occasional forays into notions such as vagueness, the nature of validity, and the Goedel incompleteness theorems. Hartry Field presents a new...

Lewis Vaughn's Concise Guide to Critical Thinking, third Edition, offers a clear and compact introduction to critical thinking and argumentative writing. Based on his best-selling text, The Power of Critical Thinking, this affordable volume strikes a...

The Liar paradox raises foundational questions about logic, language, and truth (and semantic notions in general). A simple Liar sentence like 'This sentence is false' appears to be both true and false if it is either true or false. For if the sentence...

This volume brings together many of Terence Horgan's essays on paradoxes: Newcomb's problem, the Monty Hall problem, the two-envelope paradox, the sorites paradox, and the Sleeping Beauty problem. Newcomb's problem arises because the ordinary concept of...