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In 1962 a mimeographed sheet of paper fell into my possession. It had been prepared by Ernest Adams of the Philosophy Department at Berkeley as a handout for a colloquim. Headed 'SOME FALLACIES OF FORMAL LOGIC' it simply listed eleven little pieces of reasoning, all in ordinary English, and all absurd. I still have the sheet, and quote a couple of the arguments here to give the idea. • If you throw switch S and switch T, the motor will start. There fore, either if you throw switch S the motor will start, or, if you throw switch T the motor will start . • It is not the case that if John passes history he will graduate. Therefore, John will pass history. The disconcerting thing about these inferences is, of course, that under the customary truth-functional interpretation of and, or, not, and if-then, they are supposed to be valid. What, if anything, is wrong? At first I was not disturbed by the examples. Having at that time consider able personal commitment to rationality in general and formal logic in par ticular, I felt it my duty and found myself easily able (or so I thought) to explain away most of them. But on reflection I had to admit that my expla nations had an ad hoc character, varying suspiciously from example to example.
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Foundations of Logico-Linguistics
Book Subtitle: A Unified Theory of Information, Language, and Logic
Authors: William S. Cooper
Series Title: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9820-9
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
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eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland 1978
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-277-0876-2Published: 30 April 1978
eBook ISBN: 978-94-009-9820-9Published: 06 December 2012
Series ISSN: 0924-4662
Series E-ISSN: 2215-034X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 250
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Semantics, Philosophy of Language