Excerpt from A History of Formal Logic In this edition of the most considerable history Of formal logic yet published, the Opportunity has Of course been taken to make some adjustments seen to be necessary in the original, with the author's full concurrence. Only in 36, however, has the numeration of cited passages been altered owing to the introduction of new matter. Those changes are as follows. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. (...) Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Professor Bochenski, as he himself points out in the prologue, is a logician; he is best known in England and the United States for his work in the history of logic, and more recently in Soviet and East European philosophy. But he has taught philosophy for many years - in Rome, in Switzerland, and on a number of visits to the United States - and in this book provides an elementary introduction to contemporary work in the field. As a (...) means to this end he has chosen to deal with four alternative methods employed by philosophers in the twentieth century. Philosophical methodology has not attracted much attention, in English speaking circles, as a distinct branch of the discipline of philosophy; the term "methodologist", if used at all, would ordinarily be taken to refer to somebody concerned with scientific rather than philosophical method. When, therefore, Professor Bochenski refers, as he frequently does, to "contemporary methodologists", meaning people who debate the re spective merits of phenomenology and mathematical logic as ways of approaching the world, the phrase has an odd ring. But philosophical methodology really makes a great deal more sense than scientific method ology. In science methodology is almost superfluous; given all the avail able information and a reasonably clear idea of what is wanted, there is usually not much ambiguity as to the means of getting it, or not much that could be resolved by mere argument. (shrink)

The work of which this is an English translation appeared originally in French as Precis de logique mathematique. In 1954 Dr. Albert Menne brought out a revised and somewhat enlarged edition in German. In making my translation I have used both editions. For the most part I have followed the original French edition, since I thought there was some advantage in keeping the work as short as possible. However, I have included the more extensive historical notes of Dr. Menne, his (...) bibliography, and the two sections on modal logic and the syntactical categories, which were not in the original. I have endeavored to correct the typo graphical errors that appeared in the original editions and have made a few additions to the bibliography. In making the translation I have profited more than words can tell from the ever-generous help of Fr. Bochenski while he was teaching at the University of Notre Dame during 1955-56. OTTO BIRD Notre Dame, 1959 I GENERAL PRINCIPLES § O. INTRODUCTION 0. 1. Notion and history. Mathematical logic, also called 'logistic', ·symbolic logic', the 'algebra of logic', and, more recently, simply 'formal logic', is the set of logical theories elaborated in the course of the last century with the aid of an artificial notation and a rigorously deductive method. (shrink)

This work provides a general guide to the domain of contemporary philosophy for the nonspecialist.

With the passing of S. A. Janovskaja, contemporary Soviet philosophy has lost one of its leading experts in logic and in combining creativity with survival.

One of the most interesting aspects of Józef Bocheński’s philosophy was its relation to Henri Bergson’s thought, particularly to his philosophy of religion. Unlike the majority of the Catholic philosophers at that time, Bocheński did not stress the significance of dynamic religion, but rather focused on the role of static religion in human life. In his view, what was of particular interest within this religion was its fabulation function. This direction of the philosopher’s research stemmed from the realism and (...) empiricism proper to the analytic philosophy developed by Bocheński and became increasingly visible as the years passed. In this text the author shows how Bocheński’s analyses of religion, referring to both daily human experiences and logic, moved towards Bergsonian static religion, while diverging from dynamic religion and its key notion of mysticism. (shrink)

In his Logic of Religion (1965) Bocheński presumed that: (1) ‘religion’ denotes a system of propositions of religious contents, (2) man becomes an advocate of a certain religion through an acceptance of its meta-dogma, i.e. a statement that the creed of this religion is true. In his article Religious Hypothesis Revised [in: P. Weingartner (ed.), Scientific and Religious Belief, Dordrecht 1994, 142-160] Bocheński writes that the concept of religion assumed in the Logic is wrong. Our experience shows that the conversion (...) of a man who previously was an unbeliever may occur in two steps: first, he accepts several elementary propositions about God. They constitute ‘basic faith’ (that God exists that He governs the events in the world, etc.). Then we have a collection of propositions that compose “the confession of faith” of a given religion. The religious hypothesis is applied, above all, when we accept a system. It is doubtful whether it can be used in the basic faith. In this paper, the author discusses first various forms of religious experience that inspires the basic faith: (1) a religious interpretation of secular phenomena; (2) an experience of sacrum in the world; (3) an ‘encounter’ of Transcendence. Then he presents a new version of this hypothesis: what kind of experience that some persons have accounts for religion and whether it permits to predict their new experiences or even new events. (shrink)

Józef M. Bocheński began his philosophical career as an eclectic philosopher, then switched to Thomism and finally became a representative of the analytic school. As a Thomist he wanted to reform this orientation by the resources of modern formal logic. This tendency culminated in the establishment of the Cracow Circle (established in 1936) whose members were Bocheński, Jan F. Drewnowski, Jan Salamucha, and Bolesław Sobociński. However, the program of the Cracow Circle was rejected by most Thomists who considered traditional (...) logic as an entirely sufficient device of philosophy. Bocheński was very disappointed by this attitude of his Thomist fellows. His evolution toward analytic philosophy, free of any ideological pressure, can be regarded as his reaction to the conservatism of Thomism. (shrink)

Bocheński claims that it would be very useful to apply logical tools to philosophical and theological investigations. His viewpoint can be ascribed to the fact that during Bocheński’s youth logic and reflections on the foundations of mathematics flourished. His seminal work on these issues is the book Gottes Dasein und Wesen. Logische Studien zur Summa Theologiae I, qq. 2–11 (2003). Due to the fact that it was necessary to introduce numerous corrections to it, the book was published over a decade (...) after submitting the manuscript to the publishing house in 1989 (according to certain sources, in 1991). There exist two manuscripts: one German (1989b) and one Polish (1993b). The latter contains also Bocheński’s unpublished works, including the analyses of Question 1 from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. In this Question, Aquinas focuses on the ways of understanding the term sacra doctrina. Bocheński’s text, which is a logical analysis of that Question, seems to be almost completed. With reference to the topic and the method of analysis, the text constitutes a whole together with the analyses of Questions 2–11, published in Bocheński (2003). (shrink)

J.M. Bocheński together with J. Salamucha, B. Sobociński, and J.F. Drewnowski formed the so-called Cracow Circle in the 30s of the previous century. Its main aim was to utilize contemporary logic in theology and philosophy of God. The first work in this area was Salamucha’s formal analysis of the prima via, published in 1934. The article was reviewed by Bocheński, who provided a number of remarks concerning Salamucha’s analysis. At that time he did not decide to conduct a holistic research (...) into the prima via. That was done by him only at the end of his life as part of the logical analysis of the quinque viae. This paper aims at presenting Bocheński’s unpublished formal analysis of the prima via from 1953 and proving that it constitutes a valuable completion of his published formal analyses, which come from the 1980s and 1990s. Above all, they provide a more insightful analysis of the notion of movement in the prima via, as well as the form of axiom expressing the lack of regress into infinity. In the formalizations of 1953 there are also interesting analyses concerning the ancestral closure of three-argument relations. (shrink)

In this article, Józef M. Bocheński is presented as a representative of the methodological tendencies of the Lvov–Warsaw School. Special attention is given to the reconstructive analysis of concepts, the categorial trait of this procedure, and examples of its application by Bocheński. First, some historical and substantial arguments are presented for including Bocheński in the LWS. Secondly, the procedure of the reconstruction of concepts applied in the LWS is characterized. Then the attention turns to the categorial trait of the (...) analysis as indicated by Bocheński. Finally, two examples of Bocheński’s categorial reconstruction of concepts are presented. The article ends with a recapitulation and general remarks. (shrink)

Section 11 of Józef Bocheński’s The Logic of religion (1965), is devoted to the question of divine ineffability: Is it possible to speak of God? Bocheński shows that even if the assertion of God’s ineffability is not contradictory, it can be contested. Bocheński seems to think ineffabilism is based primarily on a confusion, viz., on the claim that faith is dependent on an extraordinary experience, and it is this extraordinary experience which is supposed to be ineffable. The ineffabilist is (...) unable to say who he is addressing in his prayers and praises so long as he maintains that nothing can be said of Him to whom they are addressed. Any meaningful language is minimally referential, whether the ineffabilist likes it or not. This could be the basis for a critique of Jean-Luc Marion’s account of apophatism. This criticism shows the fecundity of Bocheński’s account of ineffability. (shrink)