Abstract

"Philosophical logic" describes two distinct areas: the investigation of the fundamental concepts of logic, the formal investigation of alternatives and extensions to classical logic. The first is a philosophical discipline, concerned with notions like truth, propositions, necessity, logical consequence, vagueness, and reasoning. The second is a technical discipline, devoted to developing formal logical systems-modal logics, second-order logics, intuitionistic logics, relevance logics, logics of vagueness and conditionals-and proving things about them. Most texts in philosophical logic focus on one of these areas, but in this book John MacFarlane treats them together in an integrated way, showing how philosophical considerations motivate the technical projects, and how the constraints revealed by the technical projects illuminate the philosophical issues. Topics covered include quantifiers, modal logic, indicative conditionals, model-theoretic and proof-theoretic characterizations of logical consequence, intuitionistic logic, fundamental logical disagreement, relevance logic, the relation of logic and reasoning, and vagueness. Each chapter is organized around suggested readings and includes exercises. Key Features: An integrated treatment of the technical and philosophical issues comprising philosophical logic Written by a leading authority on logicism and logical form and a successful expositor and teacher Designed to serve students taking only one course in logic beyond the introductory level Provides tools and concepts necessary to understand work in many areas of analytic philosophy Includes exercises, suggested readings, and suggestions for further exploration in each chapter.