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HISTORY
The historical roots of logic go back to the work of Aristotle (384322 BCE), whose syllogistic reasoning was the standard account of
the validity of arguments. Syllogistic reasoning treats arguments of a limited form: They have two premises and a single conclusion,
and each judgment has a form like all people are mortal, some Australian is poor, or no politician is popular.
The discipline of symbolic logic exploded in complexity as techniques of algebra were applied to issues of logic in the work of George
Boole (18151864), Augustus de Morgan (18061871), Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914), and Ernst Schrder (18411902) in
the nineteenth century1. They applied the techniques of mathematics to represent propositions in arguments algebraically, treating
the validity of arguments like equations in applied mathematics. This tradition survives in the work of contemporary algebraic
logicians.
Connections between mathematics and logic developed into the twentieth century with the work of Gottlob Frege (18481925) and
Bertrand Russell (18721970), who used techniques in logic to study mathematics. Their goals were to use the newfound precision
in logical vocabulary to give detailed accounts of the structure of mathematical reasoning, in such a way as to clarify the definitions
that are used, and to make fully explicit the commitments of mathematical reasoning. Russell and Alfred North Whiteheads (1861
1947) Principia Mathematica (1912) is the apogee of this project of logicism.
1 Ewald, William, ed. 1996. From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
With the development of these logical tools came the desire to use them in different fields. In the early part of the twentieth century,
the logical positivists attempted to put all of science on a firm foundation by formalizing it: by showing how rich theoretical claims bear
on the simple observations of experience. The best example of this is the project of Rudolf Carnap (18911970), who attempted to
show how the logical structure of experience and physical, psychological, and social theory could be built up out of an elementary
field of perception2. This revival of empiricism was made possible by developments in logic, which allowed a richer repertoire of
modes of construction or composition of conceptual content. On an Aristotelian picture, all judgments have a particularly simple form.
The new logic of Frege and Russell was able to encompass much more complex kinds of logical structure, and so with it, theorists
were able to attempt much more3.
However, the work of the logical positivists is not the enduring success of the work in logic in the twentieth century. The radical
empiricism of the logical positivists failed, not because of external criticism, but because logic itself is more subtle than the positivists
had expected. We see this in the work of the two great logicians of the mid-twentieth century. Alfred Tarski (19021983) clarified our
view of logic by showing that we can understand logic by means of describing the language of logic and the valid arguments by
giving an account of proofs. However, we view logic by viewing the models of a logical language, and taking a valid argument as one
for which there is no model in which the premises are true and the conclusion false. Tarski clarified the notion of a model and he
showed how one could rigorously define the notion of truth in a language, relative to these models4. The other great logician of the
twentieth century, Kurt Gdel (19061978), showed that these two views of logic (proof theory and model theory) can agree. He
2 Carnap, Rudolf. 1967. The Logical Structure of the World, and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy. Trans. Rolf A. George.
New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
3 Coffa, J. Alberto. 1991. The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station, ed. Linda Wessels.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
4 Tarski, Alfred. 1956. Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938. Trans. J. H. Woodger. Oxford:
Clarendon.
showed that in the standard picture of logic, validity defined with proofs and validity defined by models agree5. Gdels most famous
and most misunderstood result is his incompleteness theorem: This result showed that any account of proof for mathematical
theories, such as arithmetic, must either be completely intractable (we can never list all of the rules of proof) or incomplete (it does
not provide an answer for every mathematical proposition in the domain of a theory), or the theory is inconsistent. This result brought
an end of the logicist program as applied to mathematics and the other sciences. We cannot view the truths of mathematics as the
consequences of a particular theory, and the same holds for the other sciences6
Regardless, logic thrives. Proof theory and model theory are rich mathematical traditions, their techniques have been applied to
many different domains of reasoning, and connections with linguistics and computer science have strengthened the discipline and
brought it new applications.
Logical techniques are tools that may be used whenever it is important to understand the structure of the claims we make and the
ways they bear upon each other. These tools have been applied in clarifying arguments and analyzing reasoning, and they feature
centrally in the development of allied tools, such as statistical reasoning.
One contemporary debate over our understanding of logic also bears on the social sciences. We grant that using languages is a
social phenomenon. How does the socially mediated fact of language-use relate to the structure of the information we are able to
present with that use of language? Should we understand language as primarily representational, with inference valid when what is
represented by the premises includes the representation of the conclusion, or should we see the social role of assertion in terms of
its inferential relations? We may think of assertion as a social practice in which the logical relations of compatibility and reason-
5 von Heijenhoort, Jan. 1967. From Frege to Gdel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 18791931. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
6 Ibid
giving are fundamental. Once we can speak with each other, my assertions have a bearing on yours, and so logic finds its home in
the social practice of expressing thought in word7
Logical Symbols
The following table presents several logical symbols, their name and meaning, and any relevant notes. The name of the symbol
(under meaning links to a page explaining the symbol or term and its use). Note that different symbols have been used by different
logicians and systems of logic. For the sake of clarity, this site consistently uses the symbols in the left column, while the Notes
column may indicate other commonly-used symbols.
Operators (Connectives)
conjunction (AND) The ampersand ( & ) or dot ( ) are also often used.
7 Brandom, Robert. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
disjunction (XOR)
alternative
| Means not both. Sometimes written as
denial (NAND)
Means if and only if is sometimes used, but this site reserves that
biconditional (iff)
symbol for equivalence.
Quantifiers
universal quantifier Means for all, so xPx means that Px is true for every x.
existential quantifier Means there exists, so xPx means that Px is true for at least one x.
Relations
Truth-Values
Parentheses
The overlap between sets. If S and T are sets of formula, S Tis a set
intersection
containing those elemenets that are members of both.
proper subset A proper subset contains some, but not all, elements of another set.
= set equality Two sets are equal if they contain exactly the same elements.
(S) is the set of all things that are not in the set S. Sometimes written
absolute complement
as C(S), S or SC.
The use of variables in logic varies depending on the system and the author of the logic being presented. However, some common
uses have emerged. For the sake of clarity, this site will use the system defined below.
Uppercase Roman letters signify individual propositions. For example, P may symbolize the proposition
A, B, C Z propositions
Pat is ridiculous. P and Q are traditionally used in most examples.
Lowercase Greek letters signify formulae, which may be themselves a proposition (P), a formula (P
, , formulae
Q) or several connected formulae ( ).
x, y, z variables Lowercase Roman letters towards the end of the alphabet are used to signify variables. In logical
systems, these are usually coupled with a quantifier, or , in order to signify some or all of some
unspecified subject or object. By convention, these begin with x, but any other letter may be used if
needed, so long as they are defined as a variable by a quantifier.
Lowercase Roman letters, when not assigned by a quantifier, signifiy a constant, usually a proper
a, b, c, z constants noun. For instance, the letter j may be used to signify Jerry. Constants are given a meaning before
they are used in logical expressions.
Uppercase Roman letters appear again to indicate predicate relationships between variables and/or
constants, coupled with one or more variable places which may be filled by variables or constants. For
Ax, Bx instance, we may definite the relation x is green as Gx, and x likes y as Lxy. To differentiate them
predicate symbols
Zx from propositions, they are often presented in italics, so while P may be a proposition, Px is a predicate
relation for x. Predicate symbols are non-logical they describe relations but have neither operational
function nor truth value in themselves.
Uppercase Greek letters are used, by convention, to refer to sets of formulae. is usually used to
, , sets of formulae represent the first site, since it is the first that does not look like Roman letters. (For instance, the
uppercase Alpha () looks identical to the Roman letter A)
In modal logic, uppercase greek letters are also used to represent possible worlds. Alternatively, an
, , possible worlds
uppercase W with a subscript numeral is sometimes used, representing worlds as W0, W1, and so on.
Curly brackets are generally used when detailing the contents of a set, such as a set of formulae, or a
{} sets
set of possible worlds in modal logic. For instance, = { , , , }