-
5An Introduction to Logic (edited book)Hackett Publishing Company. 1993.Written for independent study and suitable for an introductory course in logic, this classic text combines a sound presentation of logic with effective pedagogy and illustrates the role of logic in many areas of humanistic and scientific thought. Cohen and Nagel's elegant integration of the history of philosophy, natural science, and mathematics helps earn this work its distinguished reputation.
-
4Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938Journal of Symbolic Logic 54 (1): 281-282. 1956.
-
18Information Recovery ProblemsTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 10 (3): 55-78. 1995.An information recovery problem is the problem of constructing a proposition containing the information dropped in going from a given premise to a given conclusion that folIows. The proposition(s) to beconstructed can be required to satisfy other conditions as well, e.g. being independent of the conclusion, or being “informationally unconnected” with the conclusion, or some other condition dictated by the context. This paper discusses various types of such problems, it presents techniques and pr…Read more
-
12Future Research on Ancient Theories of Communication and ReasoningIn Ancient logic and its modern interpretations, Reidel. pp. 185--187. 1974.
-
Dept. of Philosophy University of California at San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093 USALinguistics and Philosophy 13 423-475. 1990.
-
76The principle of wholistic referenceManuscrito 27 (1): 159-171. 2004.In its strongest, unqualified form the principle of wholistic reference is that each and every proposition refers to the whole universe of discourse as such, regardless how limited the referents of its non-logical or content terms. Even though Boole changed from a monistic fixed-universe framework in his earlier works of 1847 and 1848 to a pluralistic multiple-universe framework in his mature treatise of 1854, he never wavered in his frank avowal of the principle of wholistic reference, possibly…Read more
-
Axiomatic methodIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 57--58. 1995.
-
94This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications devoted at least in part to Aristotle’s logic. Sections I–IV list 20 articles, 43 abstracts, 3 books, and 10 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article that antedates Corcoran’s Aristotle’s studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are anno…Read more
-
12La lógica de Aristóteles en el departamento de filosofía de la Universidad de BúfaloIdeas y Valores: Revista Colombiana de Filosofía 140 5. 2009.
-
107Meanings of ImplicationDiálogos. Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 9 (24): 59-76. 1973.Thirteen meanings of 'implication' are described and compared. Among them are relations that have been called: logical implication, material implication,deductive implication, formal implication, enthymemic implication, and factual implication. In a given context, implication is the homogeneous two-place relation expressed by the relation verb 'implies'. For heuristic and expository reasons this article skirts many crucial issues including use-mention, the nature of the entities that imply and a…Read more
-
19Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Boole's Laws of ThoughtHistory and Philosophy of Logic 24 (4): 261-288. 2003.Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle's system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article does not discuss many othe…Read more
-
65Iffication, Preiffication, Qualiffication, Reiffication, and Deiffication.Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (4): 435-6. 2008.Iffication, Preiffication, Qualiffication, Reiffication, and Deiffication. Roughly, iffication is the speech-act in which—by appending a suitable if-clause—the speaker qualifies a previous statement. The clause following if is called the qualiffication. In many cases, the intention is to retract part of the previous statement—called the preiffication. I can retract part of “I will buy three” by appending “if I have money”. This initial study focuses on logical relations among propositional cont…Read more
-
161The Contemporary Relevance of Ancient Logical TheoryPhilosophical Quarterly 32 (126): 76. 1982.This interesting and imaginative monograph is based on the author’s PhD dissertation supervised by Saul Kripke. It is dedicated to Timothy Smiley, whose interpretation of PRIOR ANALYTICS informs its approach. As suggested by its title, this short work demonstrates conclusively that Aristotle’s syllogistic is a suitable vehicle for fruitful discussion of contemporary issues in logical theory. Aristotle’s syllogistic is represented by Corcoran’s 1972 reconstruction. The review studies Lear’s trea…Read more
-
52Subregular tetrahedraBulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (3): 411-2. 2008.This largely expository lecture deals with aspects of traditional solid geometry suitable for applications in logic courses. Polygons are plane or two-dimensional; the simplest are triangles. Polyhedra [or polyhedrons] are solid or three-dimensional; the simplest are tetrahedra [or triangular pyramids, made of four triangles]. A regular polygon has equal sides and equal angles. A polyhedron having congruent faces and congruent [polyhedral] angles is not called regular, as some might expect; rat…Read more
-
21Logical Consequence in Modal LogicNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 10 (4): 370-384. 1969.This paper develops a modal, Sentential logic having "not", "if...Then" and necessity as logical constants. The semantics (system of meanings) of the logic is the most obvious generalization of the usual truth-Functional semantics for sentential logic and its deductive system (system of demonstrations) is an obvious generalization of a suitable (jaskowski-Type) natural deductive system for sentential logic. Let a be a set of sentences and p a sentence. "p is a logical consequence of a" is define…Read more
-
26Deducción/DeducibilidadIn Luis Vega and Paula Olmos (ed.), Compendio de Lógica, Argumentación y Retórica, Editorial Trotta. pp. 168--169. 2011.Following Quine [] and others we take deductions to produce knowledge of implications: a person gains knowledge that a given premise-set implies a given conclusion by deducing—producing a deduction of—the conclusion from those premises. How does this happen? How does a person recognize their desire for that knowledge of a certain implication, or that they lack it? How do they produce a suitable deduction? And most importantly, how does their production of that deduction provide them with knowled…Read more
-
52Disbelief Logic Complements Belief Logic.Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 14 (3): 436. 2008.JOHN CORCORAN AND WAGNER SANZ, Disbelief Logic Complements Belief Logic. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150 USA E-mail: [email protected] Filosofia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiás, GO 74001-970 Brazil E-mail: [email protected] Consider two doxastic states belief and disbelief. Belief is taking a proposition to be true and disbelief taking it to be false. Judging also dichotomizes: accepting a proposition results in belief and rejecting in disbelief. Stating follow…Read more
-
82Semantic Arithmetic: A PrefaceAgora 14 (1): 149-156. 1995.SEMANTIC ARITHMETIC: A PREFACE John Corcoran Abstract Number theory, or pure arithmetic, concerns the natural numbers themselves, not the notation used, and in particular not the numerals. String theory, or pure syntax, concems the numerals as strings of «uninterpreted» characters without regard to the numbe~s they may be used to denote. Number theory is purely arithmetic; string theory is purely syntactical... in so far as the universe of discourse alone is considered. Semantic arithmetic is a …Read more
-
376C. I. Lewis: History and philosophy of logicTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (1): 1-9. 2006.C. I. Lewis (I883-I964) was the first major figure in history and philosophy of logic—-a field that has come to be recognized as a separate specialty after years of work by Ivor Grattan-Guinness and others (Dawson 2003, 257).Lewis was among the earliest to accept the challenges offered by this field; he was the first who had the philosophical and mathematical talent, the philosophical, logical, and historical background, and the patience and dedication to objectivity needed to excel. He was bles…Read more
-
40Complete enumerative inductionsBulletin of Symbolic Logic 12 465-6. 2006.Consider the following. The first is a one-premise argument; the second has two premises. The question sign marks the conclusions as such. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote Greek. ? Every evangelist wrote Greek. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote Greek. Every evangelist is Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. ? Every evangelist wrote Greek. The above pair of premise-conclusion arguments is of a sort familiar to logicians and philosophers of science. In each case the first premise is logically equiva…Read more
-
7Review: Elliott Mendelson, Introduction to Mathematical Logic (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 54 (2): 618-619. 1989.
-
167REVIEW OF Alfred Tarski, Collected Papers, vols. 1-4 (1986) edited by Steven Givant and Ralph McKenzie (review)MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS 91 (h): 01101-4. 1991.Alfred Tarski (1901--1983) is widely regarded as one of the two giants of twentieth-century logic and also as one of the four greatest logicians of all time (Aristotle, Frege and Gödel being the other three). Of the four, Tarski was the most prolific as a logician. The four volumes of his collected papers, which exclude most of his 19 monographs, span over 2500 pages. Aristotle's writings are comparable in volume, but most of the Aristotelian corpus is not about logic, whereas virtually everythi…Read more
-
286Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Boole's Laws of thoughtHistory and Philosophy of Logic. 24 (4): 261-288. 2003.Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole (1815 – 1864) are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle’s system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this arti…Read more
-
64Aristotle’s semiotic triangles and pyramids.Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 21 (1): 198-9. 2015.Imagine an equilateral triangle “pointing upward”—its horizontal base under its apex angle. A semiotic triangle has the following three “vertexes”: (apex) an expression, (lower-left) one of the expression’s conceptual meanings or senses, and (lower-right) the referent or denotation determined by the sense [1, pp. 88ff]. One example: the eight-letter string ‘coleslaw’ (apex), the concept “coleslaw” (lower-left), and the salad coleslaw (lower-right) [1, p. 84f]. Using Church’s terminology …Read more
Buffalo, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |