Logical Form
Edited by Brendan Balcerak Jackson (University of Miami)
About this topic
Summary | The logical form of a sentence (or class of sentences) is the way the sentence is constructed out of a stock of basic vocabulary items, including a stock of distinguished logical constants (such as the familiar sentential connectives and quantifiers). A sentence's logical form determines its formal inferential relations to other sentences, and it is often thought to be important for accounting for the way the meaning of the sentence is determined by the meanings of its parts. The logical form of a sentence is not always apparent from its surface form, and there is a tradition of thinking of the logical form of a sentence as reflecting the structure of the extra-linguistic fact or state of affairs to which it corresponds. Questions about the "true" or "underlying" logical forms of some relevant class of sentences are often taken to be important for deciding issues in metaphysics and (especially) ontology. The notion of logical form is sometimes applied to propositions or mental state contents, as well as to sentences. |
Key works | Classic works include Wittgenstein et al 2013, Russell 1905, Geach 1962, Evans 1976 and May 1985. Cargile 1979 contains an oft-overlooked but very good discussion of some of the philosophical difficulties about logical form. Parsons 1990, building on the proposal in Davidson 1967, has been extremely influential in stimulating recent work on logical form. Preyer & Peter 2002 is a valuable recent collection. |
Introductions | The introductory logic textbook Barwise & Etchemendy 1999 pays special attention to the relationship between logical form and meaning. |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Ambiguity and Polysemy (101)
- Compositionality (300)
- Context and Context-Dependence (1,005 | 290)
- Conventional Implicature (57)
- Intensionality and Opacity (124)
- Nonliteral Meaning (47)
- Scope (150)
- Semantic Values (54)
- Semantic Phenomena, Misc (57)
- Metaphor (901)
- Kant: Logical Form (76)
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David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Esa Diaz-Leon Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |