Core Reading List in Philosophical Logic

We distinguish between philosophical logic, technical work in logic that is motivated by or influential on philosophy and the philosophy of logic, philosophical work of a more standard kind that has logic as its subject matter. Both kinds of work are done in philosophy departments, though work in philosophical logic is perhaps just as likely to be done in mathematics, linguistics, and computer science departments, and there are works that don't fall clearly on one side or the other of the divide. There are separate reading lists for exams in the two areas (see CoreReadingListinthePhilosophyofLogic), though each requires some core reading from the other. We expect that some students may wish not to take either exam, but to take some amalgam of them focused on some core group of interests. That is fine, but the mixed reading list must be approved by your committee.

You may not take one of these exams as the major and the other as the minor—they count, for the purposes of the graduate requirements, as a single area.

Final agreement on a reading list is to be made with your committee.

Many of the readings in philosophical logic are survey papers, since, for mathematical matters, the details of the original presentations are frequently not important. Many of those readings are in Goble01b.

Basics and Survey

Second- and Higher-order Logic

Completeness, Compactness, Incompleteness, Independence Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem

You may skip %$\S\S$%3.6–3.10.

You may skip %$\S$%4.2.2.

Truth

Tarski's theory

Disquotational theories

Truth and meaning

Frege

Davidson

Dummett

Consequence

Predicativity

Paradoxes

Semantic, set-theoretic, Yablo

Vicious circle principle, types, ramified types, axiom of reducibility, Ramsey

Kripke, Burge, Gupta, Herzberger, McGee

Traditional Quantifiers

Substitutional and referential interpretations of the quantifiers

Unrestricted quantification

Natural Language

The ter Meulen chapter gives a good overview, but it is weak on the details of the theories it mentions. If you choose the topic, you should select two of the types of theories mentioned, and read an additional article on each. The chapter includes good suggestions, but you should consult with your committee to be sure.

Such that

Definite descriptions: Russell, Strawson, Quine

Existence claims

Conditionals

Indicative Conditionals

Identity

Vagueness

Demarcation

Analyticity and Convention

A very useful secondary reference:

Alternatives and Expansions

Intuitionism

Free Logics

Modal and Related Logics

• Add something about belief revision.

You may skip %$\S$%13.8.

Many-Valued Logics

Probability Logic

Newer Quantifiers

Monotone induction

Montague semantics

Miscellaneous

Mass and count nouns

Truth bearers

-- ShaughanLavine - 09 May 2007

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Geach on relative identity, definitely. Hintikka"knowledge and belief: an introduction to the logic of the two notions", probably not. I'll have to take a look, but his treatment is pretty eccentric. I'm not sure what I'll use instead.

My current thinking is Frege, Russell (types, ramified types, axiom of reducibility), the elimination of definite descriptions and presuppositions (Russell, Strawson), Tarski (truth, consequence), Geach, Dummett on intuitionism, something (Sher?) on what is logical, Barwise (or maybe something more recent) on generalized quantifiers, Haack's Philosophical Logics (for its encyclopedic nature?it includes mention of everything I've omitted), Skolem plus something more about first- vs. second-order logic (probably Shapiro), something on nonmonotonic reasoning, Hintikka's independence friendly logic, something on monotone inductive definition, something (a survey?) on solutions to the paradoxes (Kripke, Herzberger, Gupta, ?), a bit on modal logic and entailment, tense logic, epistemic logic, paraconsistent logics (Graham Priest), and Quine on whether logic is conventional, schemes, and variables explained away.

Since that is already too much, I thought I'd omit quantum logic, history of logic, the botany of conditionals, the nature of truth bearers (sentences, statements, propositions, ?), nonmonotonic reasoning, anaphora, plural quantification.

Yes, Hintikka's book is strange, but epistemic logic in general is weird. I actually just found an article by Chisholm (who was an early commentator on Hintikka's book) from 1972 called "A System of Epistemic Logic." I have no idea what it will be like, but I ordered. Dretske's "Epistemic Operators" might suffice. I'll peruse the SEP entry.

A nice addition might be something by von Wright on the logical similarities between modal terms and deontic terms.

Maybe something from or on the Tractatus? Hmmm. That might be sadistic, come to think of it!

What about some of the stuff on propositional attitude ascriptions (I'm thinking of "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes," "On Saying That," and "Quantifying In")? Maybe that's too far on the philosophy of language side of things. Speaking of language, I'd actually like some stuff on truth-bearers. Some Salmon on structured propositions would be cool. And "On the Logic of Demonstratives."

I'm glad you want to put Haack on there--I just ordered that book last night. Looks very useful.

There look to be some nice papers on epistemic logic in a new book called "New Waves in Epistemology," hopefully to be released soon (it's been delayed a number of times). Abstracts here: http://www.philosophy.stir.ac.uk/css/NewWavesInEpistemology.php