Logic and How it Gets That Way

Description

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 Content: Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Preface Introduction: Logic, philosophy, analysis 1 Logical form Concepts of logic Logical units and reasoning chains Deductively valid inference forms Pragmatic formalization rationale Formal semantics and logical metatheory 2 Monkey raisins An expressive limitation Surprisingly problematic quantifications Monkeys and raisins, craisins and kmonkeys Implications of the paradox Classical alternatives Intensional solution to the expressibility problem The monkey's tale. 3 The secret life of truth- functionsTruth- functions Cornerstone of extensional logic Truth- tables for all and sundry Truth- function mysteries Constant truth- functions Counter- examples to extensionalism Objections anticipated Expanding the counter- example family Formal standards of (non- )truth- functionality Extensionalism beyond reason and repair 4 Reference and identity Identity relata Cognitive significance of non-trivially true identity statements Objections to Frege's identity thesis Self- identity and designation What's in a name? Idea, sense and reference. Linsky's critique of FregeIdentical sense and the extensional criterion Intentionality of meaning Semantics as a theory of the expression of thought Reference's debt to identity 5 Intensional versus extensional logic and semantics Against the semantic grain Referring and attributing properties to objects Disguised definite descriptions Problems in extensionalist reference models Semantic oppositions idealized Poverty of purely formal semantics Davidson's T-schema Purely formal semantics Formalizing intentional meaning relations Explanatory advantages of intensional semantics. Slingshot arguments6 Truth What is truth? Truth and meaning, meaning and truth Constitutive versus regulative truth Frege's theory of reified truth and falsehood Tarski's analysis of truth-conditions in formal languages Regulative alternative to constitutive truth concepts Positive correspondence Truth-makers, truth-breakers Negative states of affairs True and false sentences Conceivability of a null universe 7 Logical and semantic paradoxes Why paradoxes matter Philosophical legacy of inconsistency Precarious logical integrity A. Paradoxes of conditionals. B. Self-non-applicationsC. Grelling's paradox contra type theory D. Inductive paradoxes in a deductive logical framework Conclusion: Moral lessons of logic Notes References Index.