Journey to the Edge of Reason
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
I have just read Stephen Budiansky’s Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (OUP 2021). And no, I’m not immediately breaking my self-denying resolution to concentrate on finishing the Study Guide — I wanted to know if this biography should get a recommendation in the historical notes of the relevant chapter! I’ll be brisk. Budiansky’s book comes much praised. But, to be honest, I’m not really sure why. You’ll certainly learn much more about Gödel’s ideas and intellectual circles from John Dawson’s reliable and thoughtful Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt ..read more
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Back to the Study Guide …
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
So August was the first full month for Logic Matters with its snappy new web host, and with its sparse new look. Everything seems to have settled down to be working pretty satisfactorily (though some further minor tinkering remains to be done when I am in the mood). The stats are pretty much in line with the previous averages — just under 40K unique visitors in the first month. Or so they say. I’m never sure quite what to read into such absolute numbers. Relative numbers are more reliable, no doubt. And one consistency is that — month by month — the Study Guide gets downloaded more than the Th ..read more
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Occasional newsletters
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
There used to be a little subscription form in the sidepanel of the old-look Logic Matters where you could subscribe to get email notifications whenever there was an update here. I’ve decided against replicating this. Instead of auto-generated mailings, I’ll just send out occasional short Newsletters to alert people to the more interesting new postings or series of postings. Here’s the first Newsletter, as sent out to previous subscribers. If you want to get future such mailings — and I promise your email box will not be cluttered! — then you can subscribe by following the link you get to by s ..read more
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Big Red Logic Book, no. 2 — a year on
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
And it is now exactly a year since the self-published version of the second edition of An Introduction to Formal Logic was published as a paperback. This sells about 80 copies a month, very steadily. Again, the figure strikes me as surprisingly high, given that the PDF has also been freely available all along — and that’s downloaded about 850 times a month. Some of the online support materials, like the answers to exercises, are quite well used too. All in all, pretty pleasing. I occasionally get friendly feedback about the book: and it will be interesting to see if sales/downloads jump a ..read more
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An Introduction to Proof Theory, Ch. 1
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
It’s arrived! Ever since it was announced, I’ve been very much looking forward to seeing this new book by Paolo Mancosu, Sergio Galvan and Richard Zach. As they note in their preface, most proof theory books are written at a fairly demanding level. So there is certainly a gap in the market for a book that presents some basic proof theory taking up themes from Gentzen in a more widely accessible way, covering e.g. proof normalization, cut-elimination, and a proof of the consistency of arithmetic using ordinal induction. An Introduction to Proof Theory (OUP, newly published) aims to be that book ..read more
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The Chiaroscuro Quartet play Schubert’s Rosamunde
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
I hadn’t noticed before that there is a video of the Chiaroscuro Quartet playing Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet from a concert in Gstaad a couple of years ago. Their earlier CD including this piece is wonderful, it goes without saying, but it is terrific to be able to watch them playing in a live performance. (To see the whole recording, you need to register, for free, for the Gstaad Digital Festival.) The post The Chiaroscuro Quartet play Schubert’s Rosamunde appeared first on Logic Matters ..read more
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The Many and the One, Ch. 5 & Ch. 6
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
I confess that I have never been able to work up much enthusiasm for mereology. And Florio and Linnebo’s Chapter 5, in which they compare ‘Plurals and Mereology’, doesn’t come near to persuading me that there is anything of very serious interest here for logicians. I’m therefore quite cheerfully going to allow myself to ignore it here. So let’s move on to Chapter 6, ‘Plurals and Second-Order Logic’. The broad topic  is a familiar one ever since Boolos’s classic papers of — ye gods! — almost forty years ago: though oddly enough F&L do not directly discuss Boolos’s arguments here ..read more
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The Many and the One, Ch. 4
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
In the next part of their book, ‘Comparisons’, F&L discuss ‘Plurals and Set Theory’ (Chapter 4) and ‘Plurals and Second-order Logic’ (Chapter 6). In between, they also compare ‘Plurals and Mereology’ (Chapter 5). But I confess that I have never been able to work up much enthusiasm for mereology, and F&L’s chapter doesn’t come near to persuading me that there is anything of very serious interest here for logicians; so I’m cheerfully going to allow myself to ignore it. Here, in bald outline, is what happens in Chapter 4.  §4.1 describes a ‘simple set theory’ framed in a two-sorted f ..read more
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“The truest thing that I know in this world”
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
Portrait by Felix Broede “Mozart’s music is, for me, the truest thing that I know in this world. And playing his music has truly changed me, and I believe it can change anyone who is open to miracles.” Moving words from the young German pianist Elisabeth Brauss, and very moving playing of Mozart’s No. 23 in A major, K488 at her Proms debut. You can listen here (from 37 minutes in). The post “The truest thing that I know in this world” appeared first on Logic Matters ..read more
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The Many and the One, Ch. 3/ii
Logic Matters -Blog
by Peter Smith
2y ago
In Chapter 3, recall, Florio and Linnebo are discussing various familiar arguments against singularism, aiming to show that “the prospects for regimentation singularism are not nearly as bleak as many philosophers make them out to be”. Now, it has always struck me that the most pressing challenge to singularism is actually that the story seems to fall apart when it moves from programmatic generalities and gets down to particulars. If the plan is, for example, to substitute a plural term referring to some Xs by a singular term referring to the set of those Xs, then how does work out in practice ..read more
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