Abstract

The first third of this book is a schematic presentation of modern logic on an intermediate level, culminating in a brief introduction to model theory for first-order predicate calculus with identity and operations. In the second third, formal languages are studied from the perspectives of several different philosophies of language, including Saussurian structuralism, Peirce’s theory of signs, and Frege’s theory of sense and denotation. By stressing the importance of pragmatics and the act of interpreting formal systems the author builds a case for the thesis which he develops at length in the final third of the book: that formalization, while extremely valuable for solving many particular philosophical problems, is best regarded as an often necessary but never sufficient condition or moment within the broader activity of philosophical reason. Mathematical logic, in other words, gets subsumed under Hegelian logic. But while the author is a follower of Hegel he is an unusual one. He roundly criticizes those present-day Hegelians who contemptuously dismiss the value of mathematical logic without taking the trouble to understand it, and it is to them primarily that he addresses this book.—J.D.