Irving Marmer Copi (;
né Copilovich or Copilowish; July 28, 1917 – August 19, 2002) was an
American philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
,
logician, and university textbook author.
Biography
Copi studied under
Bertrand Russell while at the
University of Chicago. In 1948 he contributed to the
calculus of relations with his article using
logical matrices.
Copi taught at the
University of Illinois, the
United States Air Force Academy,
Princeton University, and the
Georgetown University Logic Institute, before teaching
logic at the
University of Michigan, 1958–69, and at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1969–90.
Assigned to teach logic, Copi reviewed textbooks available and decided to write his own. The manuscript was split into ''Introduction to Logic'' and ''Symbolic Logic''. A reviewer noted that it had an "unusually comprehensive chapter on definition" and "The author accounts for the seductive nature of informal fallacies." The
textbooks proved popular, and a reviewer of the third edition noted over 100 new exercises added. Both textbooks are widely used, with the former currently in its 14th edition.
In 1941 Copi married Amelia Glaser. They had four children David, Thomas, William, and Margaret.
[David Ouse (2002]
Irving Copi
from Zenith City
, settlement_type = City
, nicknames = Twin Ports (with Superior), Zenith City
, motto =
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top: urban Duluth skyline; Minnesota ...
Online
Books
* 1953: ''Introduction to Logic''. Macmillan.
* 1954: ''Symbolic Logic''. Macmillan.
* 1958: ''Artificial Languages''.
* 1958: (with Elgot and Wright) ''Realization of Events with Logical Nets''.
* 1965: (edited with Paul Hente). ''Language, Thought and Culture''. The University of Michigan Press.
* 1966: (edited with Robert Beard) ''Essays on Wittgenstein's Tractatus''.
* 1967: (edited with James Gould) ''Contemporary Readings in Logical Theory''. Macmillan.
* 1971: ''The Theory of Logical Types'', Routledge and Kegan Paul.
* 1986: (with Keith Burgess-Jackson) ''Informal Logic'', Macmillan.
Articles
* 1953: "Analytical Philosophy and Analytical Propositions", ''
Philosophical Studies
''Philosophical Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition. The journal is devoted to the publication of papers in exclusively analytic philosophy and welcomes papers applying formal techniques to philo ...
'' 4(6): 87–93.
* 1954: "Essence and Accident", ''
Journal of Philosophy'' 51(23): 706–19.
* 1956: "Another variant of Natural Deduction", ''
Journal of Symbolic Logic'' 21(1): 52–5.
* 1956: (with
Arthur W. Burks) "The Logical Design of an Idealized General-Purpose Computer", ''
Journal of the Franklin Institute'' 261: 299–314, and 421–36.
* 1957: "Tractatus 5.542", ''
Analysis'' 18(5): 102–4.
* 1958: "The Burali-Forti Paradox", ''
Philosophy of Science'' 25(4): 281–6.
* 1963: (with Eric Stenius) "Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: A Critical Exposition of its Main Lines of Thought", ''
Philosophical Review'' 72(3): 382.
References
External links
*
*
Eliot Deutsch (2002)
"Irving Copi, 1917-2002"from
Bertrand Russell Society
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
(also in ''
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association'' 76(2): 125–6)
''Introduction to Logic''at
Goodreads
{{DEFAULTSORT:Copi, Irving
1917 births
2002 deaths
American logicians
20th-century American philosophers
University of Michigan faculty