Comments on: JC’s Column

By: Steve Thompson

Steve Thompson — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 20:09:16 +0000

The basic problem with any attempt to sort out what counts as logic, philosophy of logic, etc., is that the author presumably has something in mind that they think they’re up to: is “On denoting” a contribution to understanding how descriptions in natural language work (then it’s philosophy of language, I would say)? or is it an application of quantificational devices to some data (philosophical logic maybe)? is it about the contact between natural language and formal specifications of some of their correlates (philosophy of logic, sort of)? And what if Russell boiled the whole thing down to the familiar cluster of “there is at least blah-blah-blah” form in, like, two pages, and sent it off to the Annals of Mathematics—-would that paper be philosophical mathematics? And then would “On denoting” look more like less-formal philosophical mathematics? Very tangled.

I suspect we are inclined to sort older work in terms of the impact they had, so “On denoting” counts as philosophy of language and not epistemology, going by who reads the paper today. Which suggests that the right sorting of current work will have to await impact, influence, and history. (Maybe if philosophers come to have the influence in the academy mathematicians have, we can take logic back, and start to describe work more properly: set theory, metalogic, quantification theory, etc.)

By the way, my first post. Hello.

By: jrgwilliams

jrgwilliams — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:58:41 +0000

These sound fine. But how to understand people who list AOS/AOC’s in “formal logic” or “logic” simpliciter? Should we just stop using those terms in that context (though actually JC mentions them in describing what philosophical/formal logic is)? Or is there a natural understanding of those within an extended JC standard?

By the way, now I’m puzzling over which bits of my work are philosophy of logic, and which bits are philosophical logic. I guess one issue I’m having is that philosophical logic strikes me as a tool to be used within broader projects (metaphysics, philosophy of logic/language, etc). If you like, philosophical logic is what you might typically use to do formal philosophy of logic (as JC mentions, you can also do non-formal philosophy of logic).

By: Ole Hjortland

Ole Hjortland — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:17:42 +0000

Following the title of Grayling’s book (An introduction to Philosophical Logic), there seems to be a use of ‘philosophical logic’ which is broader than any of the above. In fact, Grayling’s subject matter seems to inflate JC’s C. But, as JC, I’m not at all comfortable with that use.

On the other hand, the three classic “textbooks” on philosophy of logic (Quine, Putnam, Haack) all appear to confirm more or less with C. In addition, I think it’s important that JC’s C captures contemporary use of formal methods to philosophical problems (e.g., forcing techniques in epistemology, category theory in foundations of math (structuralism), proof-theory in semantics, etc.).

By: Gary Ostertag

Gary Ostertag — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:26:16 +0000

The usage suggested here doesn’t seem fully consistent with what David Lewis meant by “Philosophical Logic”. The essays in his Papers in Philosophical Logic are not exclusively concerned with providing a formal account of consequence—the essence of philosophical logic according to C. Since Lewis was Lewis, his usage carries considerable authority—both in terms of reflecting actual usage and in recommending how the expression ought to be used. So I’d hesitate before revising the meaning of the label in the way JC suggests.

By: Gillian Russell

Gillian Russell — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:17:01 +0000

In his comment over at logicandlangauge.net Ole Thomassen Hjortland has suggested calling these nomenclature conventions "the JC standard". Incidentally, I see from his website that Ole's supervisor is my old logic teacher from when I was an undergraduate - Stephen Read.

By: Aidan McGlynn

Aidan McGlynn — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:01:00 +0000

At a guess, us Brits are trying to stay somewhat true to Russell’s intentions when he introduced the term ‘philosophical logic’, and Russell’s notion doesn’t seem to fit neatly into either JC’s B or C (though both B and C both outstrip Russell’s notion greatly).