History of Informal Logic

► JOHN CORCORAN AND SRIRAM NAMBIAR, Five Goldfarb implications.
  Expanding Corcoran’s “Meanings of implication” , we discuss five implication relations in Goldfarb’s Deductive logic , an important logic textbook that contains the latest articulation of approaches rooted in Quine’s 1940 masterpiece Mathematical logic, whose basic ideas were taught to generations of Harvard students, many now influential logicians, philosophers, and mathematicians.

A new approach to the problem of defining 'critical thinking' is needed. We argue that a meta-level approach is called for. By this, we mean something predicated on the view that the problem of defining 'critical thinking' is a second-order problem that has improperly been treated as if it were a straightforward first-order problem. To present a definition of the sort we envisage, the proposer must first of all identify the type of definition that it is being offered. Next the proposer must provide the definition. Then it must be shown that the proposed definition satisfies the criteria for a good definition of that sort. Here we come up against an unacknowledged dimension of the problem. For the inquiry to which one might turn for some guidance—what used to be called the logic of definition—has lain fallow for many years. We attempt to remedy this defect by " resurrecting " it: we will present a typology of definitions, and propose, for certain types, the criteria for a successful definition of that type. We conclude by offering some reflections on dangers to be avoided in defining 'critical thinking'.

Logic is applied both consciously and unconsciously in our daily decision making • It helps us to understand reasoning behind issues which could be applied in other issues as well. For instance; Throughout our conscious lives each of us is always aimlessly adrift or pursuing a path. In both cases, where we are and where we're going is the result of most or all of the choices we've made up to that point in time and space, and where we'll end up will be the result of the choices we make from the here and now to the there and then, wherever and whenever that turns out to be. Every one of those choices past, present, and future is a decision made on the basis of some good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong logic. If we make no conscious decision but "just do it" then our logic is immediate intuition or spontaneous will. If we make no decision and take no action at all, then our logic is pure passivity and indifference. Inaction is no less a decision than action. If we make decisions based on our purposes, plans, and promises, relative to our values, beliefs, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, however, then we reason about our options and make decisions based on rules or principles inference for weighing, assessing, and evaluating options and alternatives and their outcomes. • It also help an individual to adapt and make appropriate decisions.

Download for free here: https://academic.oup.com/past/issue/230/suppl_11

This Supplement builds on a burgeoning body of research that approaches the archive not merely as the object, but as the subject of enquiry. It explores the phenomenon of record keeping in the early modern period in the context of significant ecclesiastical, political, intellectual and cultural developments that served as a stimulus to it: state formation, religious reformation, and economic transformation; the advent of the mechanical press, the spread of educational opportunity, and the expansion of literacy; changing epistemological conventions, shifting attitudes towards history and memory, and new modes of self-representation. The essays that comprise it focus attention on the impulses behind the surge in public and private documentation in Europe between 1500 and 1800 and place the process by which individual, collective and institutional records were created, compiled, authorised, and used under the microscope. They examine the activities of curators and scribes and analyse the issues of credibility and authenticity to which their endeavours gave rise, alongside the role of textual, pictorial, material and financial records in managing knowledge and giving expression to senses of identity. Stretching traditional, technical definitions of the record and archive, they investigate how writing and document-making of various kinds was shaped by dynamic interactions between ordinary people and by the quotidian circumstances and politics of everyday life. They also illuminate some of the multiple ways in which archives mediate and construct the past, preserving some traces of it for posterity while consigning others to permanent oblivion.

Künye: VII. Mantık Çalıştayı Kitabı, Ed: Vedat Kamer, Şafak Ural, Mantık Derneği Yayınları, İstanbul, Aralık 2017, ss. 804.
ISBN: 978-605-66311-2-2
PDF (Yüksek Çözünürlük: 24 Mb): https://goo.gl/W6fujf
PDF (Düşük Çözünürlük: 5 Mb): https://goo.gl/ckjCGt

Decoding syllogistic mnemonics: Barbara, Baroco, and Bocardo.

This is the first of a series of lecture abstracts about decoding syllogistic mnemonics.
The next four are tentatively titled as follows.
Decoding syllogistic mnemonics: Celarent, Cesare, and Camestres.
Decoding syllogistic mnemonics: Darii, Datisi, and Darapti.
Decoding syllogistic mnemonics: Ferio, Festino, and Felapton.
Decoding syllogistic mnemonics: Bramantip, Camemes, and Dimaris.

CORCORAN ON C I LEWIS LOGICIAN
2006. C. I. Lewis: History and Philosophy of Logic. Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society. 42, 1–9

https://www.academia.edu/s/92a6edb07f?source=link
Arabic translation by Layth Yousef [Draft please suggest improvements to Layth]

C. I. Lewis (1883-1964) was the first major figure in history and philosophy of logic – a field that now recognized as a separate specialty after years of work by Ivor Grattan-Guinness and others. The publication of Murray Murphey’s masterful intellectual biography C. I. Lewis: the Last Great Pragmatist (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005) is occasion to reexamine Lewis’s contribution to the field. This commentary discusses Murphey’s excellent treatment of Lewis’s logic and contribution to history and philosophy of logic. It also complements Murphey’s book by interrelating Lewis’s ideas and connecting them with those of others. 
TEXT https://www.academia.edu/26417165/CORCORAN_ON_C_I_LEWIS

CORCORAN IN ITALIAN AND ENGLISH
Ex falso quodlibet, EFQ, an absurdity.

Traduzione italiana:by Mauro Allegranza
►JOHN CORCORAN, Ex falso quodlibet, EFQ, an absurdity.
Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA
E-mail: corcoran@buffalo.edu
  Classicamente  una proposizione dalla quale segue ogni altra proposizione è una proposizione che implica la propria negazione. Pertanto, una proposizione siffatta è auto-contraddittoria. Chiaramente, quindi, dal punto di vista classico, chiunque asserisca “dal falso qualsiasi cosa segue”, (Ex Falso (sequitur) Quodlibet, From False Everything (follows)), sottintende, intenzionalmente o meno, che ogni proposizione falsa è una contraddizione.
  Questo curioso punta di vista, nonché punti di vista ad esso collegati, compaiono nella letteratura popolare. Aristotele implicitamente contraddice EFQ, in particolare quando afferma che l’esistenziale negativa non segue dalla sua conversa: ad esempio, la verità di “Qualche animale non è umano” non segue dalla falsità di “Qualche umano non è un animale”
  Boole rafforza i risultati di indipendenza di Aristotele osservando che nessuna delle premesse di un sillogismo categorico segue dalla sua conclusione – neppure aggiungendo l’altra premessa.
Si consideri il seguente esempio.

Ogni quadrangolo è un pentagono.
Ogni triangolo è un quadrangolo
Ogni triangolo è un pentagono.

Il risultato di Boole implica che nessuna delle premesse segue dalla conclusione – palesemente falsa.
  Nella tradizione classica, nessun logico rispettabile ha mai abbracciato Ex Falso Quodlibet.
  Tuttavia, EFQ è stato verbalmente sostenuto da logici classici quali C. I. Lewis [1]. Alcuni hanno interpretato l’affermazione come esprimente una legge delle logica proposizionale quantificata, corrispondente al fatto che, date due proposizioni, la negazione della prima implica materialmente il condizionale avente la prima come antecedente e la seconda come conseguente
Ma ciò vuol dire confondere la negazione di una proposizione del linguaggio-oggetto con l’affermazione nel meta-linguaggio che la suddetta proposizione è falsa. Vuol dire inoltre confondere un condizionale del linguaggio-oggetto con l’asserzione nel meta-linguaggio che il conseguente è conseguenza logica dell’antecedente. Quest’ultimo errore, naturalmente, va di pari passo con la confusione tra conseguenza logica e materiale.
  Passeremo in rassegna esempi storici di affermazione del principio, classicamente errato, Ex Falso Quodlibet e suoi correlati, incluso il principio corretto Ex Contradictione Quodlibet. Identificheremo le rispettive interpretazioni, analizzandone l’uso fatto e le considerazioni relative.
[1] JOHN CORCORAN, C. I. Lewis: History and Philosophy of Logic, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society, vol. 42 (2006), pp.1–9.

 
Original English version:

►JOHN CORCORAN, Ex falso quodlibet, EFQ, an absurdity.
Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA
E-mail: corcoran@buffalo.edu
  Classically, any proposition from which every proposition follows is one from which its own negation follows. Thus every such proposition is self-contradictory. Ostensibly, therefore, in a classical context, whoever states “from a falsehood everything follows”, FFE, implies, intentionally or not, that every falsehood is a contradiction.
  Such strange views and views implying them have appeared in the popular literature. Aristotle implicitly contradicted FFE by stating, in particular, that the existential negative does not follow from its converse, for example, the truth “Some animal is not a human” does not follow from the falsehood “Some human is not an animal”.
  Boole sharpened Aristotle’s independence results by observing, in effect, that neither premise of a categorical syllogism follows from its conclusion—even if the other premise is added. Consider the following example.

Every quadrangle is a pentagon.
Every triangle is a quadrangle.
Every triangle is a pentagon.

Boole’s result implies that neither premise follows from the conclusion—here chosen to be false.
  No respectable classical logician has ever espoused ex falso quodlibet.
  However, FFE has been verbally endorsed by classical logicians such as C. I. Lewis [1]. Some took the sentence to express a quantified-propositional-logic law corresponding to the fact that given any two propositions, the negation of first materially implies the conditional having the first as antecedent and the second as consequent. This requires conflating the object-language negation of a given proposition with the meta-language proposition that the given proposition is false. It also requires conflating an object-language conditional with the meta-language proposition that the consequent follows logically from the antecedent. The latter mistake, of course, goes hand-in-hand with conflating logical and material consequence.
  We review occurrences throughout history of the classically incorrect ex falso quodlibet and related slogans including the classically correct ex contradictione quodlibet. We identify their various interpretations and analyze statements made with them or about them.
[1] JOHN CORCORAN, C. I. Lewis: History and Philosophy of Logic, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society, vol. 42 (2006), pp.1–9.