User talk:Chalst/WikiProject Logic proposal

Dean's message
Hi Charles.

1. Could you take a look at the note on Paul August's discusson page I've put together on the removed link? Paul had said he has no objection to replacing the link but I am still unclear about the principle involved.

2. On the idea of improving the sections on logic before Frege, I agree. I wrote the "Term Logic" page some time ago, but it now overlaps with several others.

3. On the expression "Term Logic", I used this because it has the advantage of being a common name for Aristotelian logic, medieval/scholastic logic, traditional logic and neo-scholastic logic.

4. Suggested improvements

(A) incorporate "Term Logic" into "Aristotelian Logic and tidy up. Incorporate the "Syllogism" piece into AL, plus anything else that is genuinely Aristotelian.

(B) A new piece on "Medieval" or "Scholastic" Logic. This would include (i) a brief history of the subject 1050 to 1400, perhaps a bit on 1400-1600 to include Suarez and others (ii) something on what makes ML distinctive, such as supposition theorym, and particularly the problem of universals.

Perhaps also the square of opposition, as this is not specifically Aristotelian, but more an (early) medieval accretion.

(C) A new piece on Traditional Logic from Arnauld to the late nineteenth century.

Note I have just completely edited the 1911 Britannica article on Logic, here. http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/cantor/Logic1911.htm

Can't link it to Wiki until we are clear about the criterion for linking!!

Also
Also (D) a page on "revisionist logic", i.e logic of the post 1880 era but which is backward looking in some way. This

Sommers logic neo-scholastic (i.e. neo-Thomist) logic Perhaps analytical Thomism, on which there is a very scrappy page which I started but never finished

E.

Folk who have expressed an interest in this project
Please feel free to add your name to the above list. --- Charles Stewart 20:06, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) User:Philogo
 * 2) User:Paul August
 * 3) User:Paolo Liberatore
 * 4) User:Dbuckner
 * 5) User:Charles Matthews
 * 6) User:CSTAR
 * 7) User:KSchutte
 * 8) User:Jiy
 * 9) User:Nahaj
 * 10) User:PWilkinson
 * 11) User:Jon Awbrey
 * 12) User:Dbtfz
 * 13) User:Porcher
 * 14) User:Stevekimcomcastnet
 * 15) User:Trovatore
 * 16) User:Michael Campbell
 * 17) User:Gregbard

Logic as an exercise in character building
I caught that comment in the article... Thought you might be interested in a related view: "Logic is the hygiene of Mathmatics." "Mais, si la logique est l'hygie`ne du mathe'maticien, ce n'est pas elle qui lui fournit sa nourriture; le pain quotidien dont il vit, ce sont les grands proble`mes. "Une branche de la science est pleine de vie, disait Hilbert, tant qu'elle offre des proble`mes en abondance; le manque de proble`mes est signe de mort." -Andre Weil Just a personal option... I think Andre Weil is right...  although I'd phrase it that that the job of logic (other then the most fun game on the block) is keeping the other fields honest (clean). Nahaj 18:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

What's the charter?
Is the project to be aimed at philosophical logic, mathematical logic, or both? Of the four traditional branches of math logic, namely set theory, model theory, recursion theory, and proof theory, only the last is really what I think of as logic in the strict sense (and it's also the least interesting, aihmé). --Trovatore 15:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Both. The project will overlap with the wikiprojects in mathematics, philosophy, computer science, and WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics.  It's important to cover all of the areas, since there are lots of parallelisms between philosophical and mathematical logic.
 * Proof theory is very interesting, at least to me, being a proof theorist.  Computer scientists interested in logic are rather more likely to be interested in proof theory than set theory, and proof theory has better links to algebraic logic than the other three traditional branches.   Model theory is also core logic; recursion theory and set theory are better seen as mathematical structures for logic than logic proper, but truly logical questions arise in each. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 21:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Obviously interest is a subjective matter; no offense intended. I had just one course on proof theory in grad school; could be it was just the particular selection of topics covered that struck me as tedious. --Trovatore 21:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the topics covered in the Proof theory article: most of the interest is in structural proof theory, though the coverage in that article is pretty sketchy. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 22:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

What next, Charles: Why not a Logic Portal instead?
There do not appear to have been many recent contributions to the discussion of your proposal. It seems to me (a new-comer) that there are some good articles on Logic and some quite indifferent ones. What there does not appear to be is a structured "directory" with links to Logic articles. If this is what would be called a portal then I think we need a Logic portal.Philogo 20:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't find portals very useful, but in any case the question is completely orthogonal to that of a WikiProject Logic. Portals are navigational aids aimed at readers, whereas WikiProjects are ways of organizing the efforts of editors. So you can have a portal with or without a project, and a project with or without a portal. --Trovatore 21:58, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Logical operators
I've been working independently on the logical connectives recently. I had not seen this project proposal until now. I made a proposal to expand the set of 16 operators and the logical connective page. I'd like to support the creation of WikiProject:Logic as much as possible.

Gregbard 01:48, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Notation, et. al.
Concerning the issue of standardized notation. There doesn't seem to be one format that has all of what is needed. I'm pretty sure we could make a list of what we need and get Wikipedia to install it as part of the notation. (Perhaps a notation can be had?) That way it will look and behave in a standard way. I suggest using the one that appears the biggest (for most normal browser settings) which is the fourth from the bottom:


 * $$P \to Q$$

However, it won't get bigger and smaller if people up the font size. I also suggest:


 * using lowercase for sentential atomic formulae
 * using & for 'and' because it is more widely understandable than the $$\land$$ symbol
 * using the arrow for implication rather than the cup for the same reason
 * the equal sign with two bars means 'same numerical value as,'
 * the equal sign with three bars means 'same truth value as,'
 * the equal sign with four bars means 'same set as'

P.S. Is there anything stopping us from going ahead and just making the WikiProject:Logic at this point? We have 17 people in support. Be well,

Gregbard 11:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


 * As a philosophical concern, there is wisdom in having an understanding of history, and on the Wikipedia, that would be the history of the Wikipedia. The standardization of logical connective symbols in the rendering of functions of propositions has an analog in the standardization of Wikipedia English as either American English or British English (this was merely an alphabetic listing, NOT to be construed as an endorsement of the first mentioned over the second), and because philosophers and mathematicians will be involved, the settling of matters concerning the adoption and usage of standard symbols will be quite costly in terms of obviously foreseeable edit wars, WP:CIVIL violations and lives ultimately lost into the limbo of endless debate on what most mortals will view as rather boring trivia. In any case, the publication of a standard here that is not previously published elsewhere will be viewed as an original research violation, so if there is to be a debate, one should know where to find the off-wiki source of the proposed standard as a burden of identification that is clearly on the maker of the proposal. Personally, as long as arguments are parsable and presentable by and to both carbon-based and silicon-based automata, I am open to whatever variation or dialect of symbolism in which a given human automaton chooses to write or edit. Hotfeba 19:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)