Logical Consequence
Logical consequence (also entailment) is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically ''follows from'' one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises?Beall, JC and Restall, Greg, Logical Consequence' The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). All of philosophical logic is meant to provide accounts of the nature of logical consequence and the nature of logical truth. Logical consequence is necessary and formal, by way of examples that explain with formal proof and models of interpretation. A sentence is said to be a logical conse ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by several disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is: * Concepts as mental representations, where concepts are entities that exist in the mind (mental objects) * Concepts as abilities, where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Concepts as Fregean senses, where concepts are abstract objects, as opposed to mental ob ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Formal Language
In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules. The alphabet of a formal language consists of symbols, letters, or tokens that concatenate into strings of the language. Each string concatenated from symbols of this alphabet is called a word, and the words that belong to a particular formal language are sometimes called ''well-formed words'' or ''well-formed formulas''. A formal language is often defined by means of a formal grammar such as a regular grammar or context-free grammar, which consists of its formation rules. In computer science, formal languages are used among others as the basis for defining the grammar of programming languages and formalized versions of subsets of natural languages in which the words of the language represent concepts that are associated with particular meanings or semantics. In computational complexity ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Proof Theory
Proof theory is a major branchAccording to Wang (1981), pp. 3–4, proof theory is one of four domains mathematical logic, together with model theory, axiomatic set theory, and recursion theory. Jon Barwise, Barwise (1978) consists of four corresponding parts, with part D being about "Proof Theory and Constructive Mathematics". of mathematical logic that represents Mathematical proof, proofs as formal mathematical objects, facilitating their analysis by mathematical techniques. Proofs are typically presented as Recursive data type, inductively-defined data structures such as list (computer science), lists, boxed lists, or Tree (data structure), trees, which are constructed according to the axioms and rule of inference, rules of inference of the logical system. Consequently, proof theory is syntax (logic), syntactic in nature, in contrast to model theory, which is Formal semantics (logic), semantic in nature. Some of the major areas of proof theory include structural proof theory, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A Priori And A Posteriori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current experience (e.g., as part of a new study). Examples include mathematics,Some associationist philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any a priori knowledge () tautologies, and deduction from pure reason.Galen Strawson has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." () knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in ''Organon'', a collection of works by Aristotle. Prior analytic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Material Conditional
The material conditional (also known as material implication) is an operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol \rightarrow is interpreted as material implication, a formula P \rightarrow Q is true unless P is true and Q is false. Material implication can also be characterized inferentially by modus ponens, modus tollens, conditional proof, and classical reductio ad absurdum. Material implication is used in all the basic systems of classical logic as well as some nonclassical logics. It is assumed as a model of correct conditional reasoning within mathematics and serves as the basis for commands in many programming languages. However, many logics replace material implication with other operators such as the strict conditional and the variably strict conditional. Due to the paradoxes of material implication and related problems, material implication is not generally considered a viable analysis of conditional sentences in natural language. Notation In l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Substitution (logic)
Substitution is a fundamental concept in logic. A substitution is a syntactic transformation on formal expressions. To apply a substitution to an expression means to consistently replace its variable, or placeholder, symbols by other expressions. The resulting expression is called a substitution instance, or instance for short, of the original expression. Propositional logic Definition Where ''ψ'' and ''φ'' represent formulas of propositional logic, ''ψ'' is a substitution instance of ''φ'' if and only if ''ψ'' may be obtained from ''φ'' by substituting formulas for symbols in ''φ'', replacing each occurrence of the same symbol by an occurrence of the same formula. For example: ::(R → S) & (T → S) is a substitution instance of: ::P & Q and ::(A ↔ A) ↔ (A ↔ A) is a substitution instance of: ::(A ↔ A) In some deduction systems for propositional logic, a new expression (a proposition) may be entered on a line of a derivation if it is a substitution instanc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inference Rule
In the philosophy of logic, a rule of inference, inference rule or transformation rule is a logical form consisting of a function which takes premises, analyzes their syntax, and returns a conclusion (or conclusions). For example, the rule of inference called ''modus ponens'' takes two premises, one in the form "If p then q" and another in the form "p", and returns the conclusion "q". The rule is valid with respect to the semantics of classical logic (as well as the semantics of many other non-classical logics), in the sense that if the premises are true (under an interpretation), then so is the conclusion. Typically, a rule of inference preserves truth, a semantic property. In many-valued logic, it preserves a general designation. But a rule of inference's action is purely syntactic, and does not need to preserve any semantic property: any function from sets of formulae to formulae counts as a rule of inference. Usually only rules that are recursive are important; i.e. rules suc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Schema (logic)
In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unambiguous logical interpretation with respect to a formal system. In an ideal formal language, the meaning of a logical form can be determined unambiguously from syntax alone. Logical forms are semantic, not syntactic constructs; therefore, there may be more than one string that represents the same logical form in a given language. The logical form of an argument is called the argument form of the argument. History The importance of the concept of form to logic was already recognized in ancient times. Aristotle, in the '' Prior Analytics'', was probably the first to employ variable letters to represent valid inferences. Therefore, Jan Łukasiewicz claims that the introduction of variables was "one of Aristotle's greatest inventions." According ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Modal Logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other systems by adding unary operators \Diamond and \Box, representing possibility and necessity respectively. For instance the modal formula \Diamond P can be read as "possibly P" while \Box P can be read as "necessarily P". Modal logics can be used to represent different phenomena depending on what kind of necessity and possibility is under consideration. When \Box is used to represent epistemic necessity, \Box P states that P is epistemically necessary, or in other words that it is known. When \Box is used to represent deontic necessity, \Box P states that P is a moral or legal obligation. In the standard relational semantics for modal logic, formulas are assigned truth values relative to a ''possible world''. A formula's truth value at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Empirical Evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, it is important that ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A Priori And A Posteriori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current experience (e.g., as part of a new study). Examples include mathematics,Some associationist philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any a priori knowledge () tautologies, and deduction from pure reason.Galen Strawson has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." () knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in ''Organon'', a collection of works by Aristotle. Prior analytic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Logical Form
In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unambiguous logical interpretation with respect to a formal system. In an ideal formal language, the meaning of a logical form can be determined unambiguously from syntax alone. Logical forms are semantic, not syntactic constructs; therefore, there may be more than one string that represents the same logical form in a given language. The logical form of an argument is called the argument form of the argument. History The importance of the concept of form to logic was already recognized in ancient times. Aristotle, in the ''Prior Analytics'', was probably the first to employ variable letters to represent valid inferences. Therefore, Jan Łukasiewicz claims that the introduction of variables was "one of Aristotle's greatest inventions." According ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |