Essentials of Logic [antikvár]

Preface Essentials of Logic is a basic text for an undergraduate course in logic. It aims to offer a clear and modern treatment of logic as it bears upon reasoning, argument, rational inquiry, and rational decision-making. Our text differs from some others in several respects. Although the topics in Part II, Deduction, are essentially the same as those treated in other standard texts, the discussion here seeks to avoid the impression that a command of the syllogism or other formal methods equips one to be preeminently logical. Consequently, the emphasis is not upon symbol manipulation but rather upon understanding the key concepts of deductive argument, such as entailment, proof, and inconsistency. Much attention is also paid to translating ordinary English into the symbolism of formal logic. In this way, we were able not only to keep formal logic in close touch with reality, but also to make the student aware of the subtleties and problems of ordinary English. The book departs from most introductory treatments though not from the more advanced texts in treating the logic of truth functions before the syllogism. Experience in the classroom indicates that this order is both pedagogically and logically sounder than the traditional one. Thus, although all deduction is concerned with the implicative relation, the term analysis of traditional logic tends to obscure this relationship, while modern logic treats it as fundamental. The logic of truth functions and the traditional logic have not been construed as different "logics" with one being more important than the other. Rather, the present treatment emphasizes their continuity and special usefulness, each with its own particular limitations. In many ways, traditional logic may be understood as an introduction to the modem quantification theory of Chapter 7. The much condemned notion of "distribution," for example, is rehabilitated by means of the concept of quantifiers, and the analysis of categorical statements in traditional logic is easily adapted to the modem notation. In keeping with the practical aim of the book, induction is treated