The work is the presentation of a logical theory - Logic in Reality (LIR) - and of applications of that theory in natural science and philosophy, including ...

The conjunction of process and reality is familiar from the original theory of A. N. Whitehead and the subsequent development of process philosophy and metaphysics by Nicholas Rescher. Classical logic, however, is either ignored or stated to be inappropriate to a discussion of process. In this paper, I will show that the value of a process view of reality can be enhanced by reference to a new, transconsistent logic of reality that is grounded in the (...) physical properties of energy in its various forms. These properties justify a principle of dynamic antagonism or opposition that explicates the phenomena of change at all levels of reality. It can be, accordingly, a preferred logic for understanding the dynamics of real processes. (shrink)

'Nobody reads Mill today,' wrote a reviewer in Time magazine a few years ago.! One could scarcely praise Mr Melvin Maddocks, who penned that remark, for his awareness of the present state of Mill studies, for of all nineteenth century philosophers who wrote in English, it is 1. S. Mill who remains the most read today. Yet it would not be so far from the truth to say that very few people pay much serious attention nowadays to Mill's writings about (...) logic and metaphysics (as distinct from those on ethical and social issues), despite the fact that Mill put enormous effort into their composition and through them exerted a considerable influen ce on the course of European philosophy for the rest of his century. But the only sections of A System of Logic (1843) and An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) to which much reference is now made comprise only a small proportion of those very large books, and the prevailing assumption is that Mill's theories about logical and meta physical questions are, with few exceptions, of merely antiquarian in terest. Bertrand Russell once said that Mill's misfortune was to be born at the wrong time (Russell (1951), p. 2). It can certainly appear that Mill chose an inauspicious time to attempt a major work on logic. (shrink)

Joseph E. Brenner, "Logic in Reality", Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4020-8374-7.

Logic and Reality is a collection of essays by philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists, celebrating the work of the late distinguished philosopher Arthur Prior on the eightieth anniversary of his birth. Topics range from philosophical discussions of the nature of time and of the nature of logic itself, to descriptions of computer systems that can reason and take account of the fact that they exist in a temporal world.

From the beginnings of philosophical investigation, there has been widespread recognition that reason must be autonomous to think the truth and that philosophy must be the freest of all disciplines. Nonetheless, conceiving how self-determination can be in thought and reality seems to pose insurmountable challenges. The essay shows how these challenges can be met, explaining how the nature of the concept enables reason to be autonomous, how nature can give rise to animal life, providing the enabling conditions for linguistic (...) intelligence, how the psychological and cultural conditions of discourse leave it free, and how conduct can achieve self-determination in the intersubjective exercise of institutionalized rights. (shrink)

0.1 Logic, in particular the modern symbolic logic, is not accused of being deficient in precision and accuracy, but one does sometimes hear that it is unrealistic, that it cannot be applied to reality, that it is utopian.

Epistemic Logic is our basic universal science, the method of our cognitive confrontation in reality to prove the truth of our basic cognitions and theories. Hence, by proving their true representation of reality we can self-control ourselves in it, and thus refuting the Berkeleyian solipsism and Kantian a priorism. The conception of epistemic logic is that only by proving our true representation of reality we achieve our knowledge of it, and thus we can prove our (...) cognitions to be either true or rather false, and otherwise they are doubtful. Therefore, truth cannot be separated from being proved and we cannot hold anymore the principle of excluded middle, as it is with formal semantics of metaphysical realism. In distinction, the intuitionistic logic is based on subjective intellectual feeling of correctness in constructing proofs, and thus it is epistemologically encapsulated in the metaphysical subject. However, epistemic logic is our basic science which enable us to prove the truth of our cognitions, including the epistemic logic itself. (shrink)

The great charge against ontologies, according to Bergmann, is that they are senseless: they are paradoxical or absurd because they deny what is surely true or claim to say what can't be told. The answer to this charge, or Bergmann's answer, is that it con fuses appearance and reality. Ontological claims seem to us senseless when we fail to see that one or several of the words in them is used philosophically. To have their sense be clear, we have (...) only to talk commonsensically about the philosophical words, to set out and understand their patterns, and then to see how the patterns interlock to account for what there is. (shrink)

Arthur Prior was a truly philosophical logician. Though he believed formal logic to be worthy of study in its own right, of course, the source of Prior’s great passion for logic was his faith in its capacity for clarifying philosophical issues, untangling philosophical puzzles, and solving philosophical problems. Despite the fact that he has received far less attention than he deserves, Prior has had a profound influence on the development of philosophical and formal logic over the past (...) forty years, a fact to which the present volume bears eloquent witness. The genesis of the volume was the 1989 Arthur Prior Memorial Conference, held appropriately enough at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where Prior had his first appointment in philosophy. However, this is not a volume of proceedings. Only eight of the twenty-two essays were actually presented at the conference. The rest were solicited by the editor specially for the volume. The subtitle—Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior—is an appropriate one. Few of the essays devote much space to Prior’s work per se. Rather, most address issues that, if not first raised by Prior, were revisited by him and subjected to his typically keen and distinctively original analysis. The papers themselves divide pretty evenly into the technical and the less technical. In this short review I will focus on the latter. (shrink)

This special issue of Journal of Indian Philosophy results from a thematic session on “Logic in the Religions of South Asia”, a separate section of the 2nd World Congress on Logic and Religion (held at the University of Warsaw, Poland, June 18–22 June, 2017). The papers address questions, discussed in philosophical thought in classical India, such as how religious practice could shape philosophical reflection on the relation between language and reality, whether there are necessary truths and whether (...) a priori knowledge is possible, the nature of some arguments for the existence of God, especially the argument from the causality of the universe, the problem of the validity of religious authority, the relation between logic and religious belief as well as language-related topics such as a theory of interrogatives expressing doubts and of declaratives expressing certitudes, both regarded as the verbal expression of cognitions. (shrink)

Arthur Prior was a truly philosophical logician. Though he believed formal logic to be worthy of study in its own right, of course, the source of Prior’s great passion for logic was his faith in its capacity for clarifying philosophical issues, untangling philosophical puzzles, and solving philosophical problems. Despite the fact that he has received far less attention than he deserves, Prior has had a profound influence on the development of philosophical and formal logic over the past (...) forty years, a fact to which the present volume bears eloquent witness. The genesis of the volume was the 1989 Arthur Prior Memorial Conference, held appropriately enough at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where Prior had his first appointment in philosophy. However, this is not a volume of proceedings. Only eight of the twenty-two essays were actually presented at the conference. The rest were solicited by the editor specially for the volume. The subtitle—Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior—is an appropriate one. Few of the essays devote much space to Prior’s work per se. Rather, most address issues that, if not first raised by Prior, were revisited by him and subjected to his typically keen and distinctively original analysis. The papers themselves divide pretty evenly into the technical and the less technical. In this short review I will focus on the latter. (shrink)

Leslie Armour argues for the rules of a dialectical logic which can account for the metaphysical problems of stability and change. He proposes a specific/general exclusion reference, a variation of the polar opposites contrast, which will make possible a rigorous development of the core structural concepts necessary for systematic explanation. His initial move is significantly different from Hegel’s being-nothing-becoming triad. The opposite of "pure being," Armour contends, is "pure disjunction." "Being" unifies, "disjunction" makes distinctions possible. Seven more categories are (...) developed, each at lower levels of abstraction, to introduce actual specificity and change. Armour’s main contention is that Hegel erred in introducing concrete "becoming" at a high level of logical abstraction. The ordering of his concepts is straightforward. "Pure being" contrasted with "pure disjunction" necessitates "determinate being." "Systematic unity" unifies the opposing elements in and. "Pure process" establishes the possibility of ongoing experience. Particularity is accounted for by the concepts of "determinate process" instantiated in the contrast of "ideal" and "objective universality" realized in the "dialectical individual." The final concept maintains the tension between structure and actualization without resulting in mere vacillation. This is done by arguing that self-identity is not a matter of bodily and dispositional consistency, but, rather, the pursuit of reasonableness. Armour contends that we identify people by the coherence of their actions which is understood in the context of an overall structure, such as the one he proposes. Some will be bothered by Armour’s admission that the development of the concepts of specificity cannot exemplify the necessity of the more general initial dialectical concepts. Others will be attracted to the degree of freedom for the subject in his concept of individuality which is supported by a clear systematic account.—P. G. W. S. (shrink)

This volume provides analyses of the logic-reality relationship from different approaches and perspectives. The point of convergence lies in the exploration of the connections between reality – social, natural or ideal – and logical structures employed in describing or discovering it. Moreover, the book connects logical theory with more concrete issues of rationality, normativity and understanding, thus pointing to a wide range of potential applications. -/- -/- The papers collected in this volume address cutting-edge topics in contemporary (...) discussions amongst specialists. Some essays focus on the role of indispensability considerations in the justification of logical competence, and the wide range of challenges within the philosophy of mathematics. Others present advances in dynamic logical analysis such as extension of game semantics to non-logical part of vocabulary and development of models of contractive speech act. -/- Table of Contents: Introduction: Majda Trobok, Nenad Miščević and Berislav Žarnić.- I. Logical and Mathematical Structures.- Life on the Ship of Neurath: Mathematics in the Philosophy of Mathematics: Stewart Shapiro.- Applied Mathemathics in the Sciences: Dale Jacquette.- The Philosophical Impact of the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem: Miloš Arsenijević.- Debating (Neo)logicism: Frege and the neo-Fregeans: Majda Trobok.- II. Epistemology and Logic.- Informal Logic and Informal Consequence: Danilo Šuster.- Logical Consequence and Rationality: Nenad Smokrović.- Logic, Indispensability and Aposteriority: Nenad Miščević.- III . Dynamic Logical Models of Meaning.- Extended Game-Theoretical Semantics: Manuel Rebuschi.- Dynamic Logic of Propositional Commitments: Tomoyuki Yamada.- Is Unsaying Polite?: Berislav Žarnić.- IV Logical Methods in Ontological and Linguistic Analyses.- Towards a Formal Account of Identity Criteria: Massimiliano Carrara and Silvia Gaio.- A Mereology for the Change of Parts: Pierdaniele Giaretta and Giuseppe Spolaore.- Russell versus Frege: Imre Rusza.- Goodman’s OnlyWorld: Vladan Djordjević.-. (shrink)

In addition to essays which have appeared before, this collection includes two new works, "Synthetic a Priori" and "Realistic Postscript." Clearing away the last remnants of his former phenomenalism, Bergmann explicitly proclaims a realistic ontology. Characters are things just as truly as individuals are. Non-obtaining facts exist in a mode of possibility. Bergmann extends his analysis of the act, which he acknowledges to be central to his philosophy, to acts with physical or non-mental intentions. In the light of his own (...) views, he examines the ontologies of Frege, Husserl, Moore, Wittgenstein and Strawson. The confrontation with Husserl, who moved in the opposite direction, from realism to idealism, is particularly interesting.—J. B. B. (shrink)

The sub-title of this paper is not an apology, but is an “apologia”: the paper is an “essay” in the etymological sense, because, so far as I know, nothing better is possible in the present state of inquiry into the no-man's-land lying between official logic and official linguistics. In trying to write on logico-linguistics for years I have been saved from despair many times by the confession of an eminent mathematician: Professor E. T. Bell, in his little book The (...) Queen of the Sciences, after a particularly difficult passage blurts out: “This sentence is riddled with inconsistencies. It is a fair sample of the difficulties of talking sense about the foundations of reasoning,—mathematical or other.” The present essay is emphatically concerned with ‘the foundations of reasoning’. (shrink)

Since Kazimierz Twardowski introduced the notions of “symbolomania” and “pragmatophobia,” the relationship between logic and reality was the focus of the philosophers from the Lvov-Warsaw School — inter alia two prominent logicians of the group, Stanisław Leśniewski and Jan Łukasiewicz. Bolesław Sobociński has pointed out, however, that there was a contrast between their approach to logic and reality. Despite being members of the same philosophical group and even colleagues from the same department, their philosophical views on (...) the position of logic in reality differed considerably. Yet they both agreed that reality has a certain importance for logic and that logic could be valuable for reality. The aim of this paper is to introduce their divergent positions and describe in more detail how Leśniewski and Łukasiewicz understood the relationship between logic and the real world. (shrink)