In this challenging and provocative analysis, Dale Jacquette argues that contemporary philosophy labours under a number of historically inherited delusions about the nature of logic and the philosophical significance of certain formal properties of specific types of logical constructions. Exposing some of the key misconceptions about formal symbolic logic and its relation to thought, language and the world, Jacquette clears the ground of some very well-entrenched philosophical doctrines about the nature of logic, including some of the most fundamental seldom-questioned parts of elementary propositional and predicate-quantificational logic. Having presented difficulties for conventional ways of thinking about truth functionality, the metaphysics of reference and predication, the role of a concept of truth in a theory of meaning, among others, Jacquette proceeds to reshape the network of ideas about traditional logic that philosophy has acquired along with modern logic itself. In so doing Jacquette is able to offer a new perspective on a number of existing problems in logic and philosophy of logic.
Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.
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.
A comprehensive examination of the interfaces of logic, computer science, and game theory, drawing on twenty years of research on logic and games. This book draws on ideas from philosophical logic, computational logic, multi-agent systems, and game theory to offer a comprehensive account of logic and games viewed in two complementary ways. It examines the logic of games: the development of sophisticated modern dynamic logics that model information flow, communication, and interactive structures in games. It also examines logic as games: the idea that logical activities of reasoning and many related tasks can be viewed in the form of games. In doing so, the book takes up the “intelligent interaction” of agents engaging in competitive or cooperative activities and examines the patterns of strategic behavior that arise. It develops modern logical systems that can analyze information-driven changes in players' knowledge and beliefs, and introduces the “Theory of Play” that emerges from the combination of logic and game theory. This results in a new view of logic itself as an interactive rational activity based on reasoning, perception, and communication that has particular relevance for games. Logic in Games, based on a course taught by the author at Stanford University, the University of Amsterdam, and elsewhere, can be used in advanced seminars and as a resource for researchers.