First-Order Logic - Research Article from Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This encyclopedia article consists of approximately 52 pages of information about First-Order Logic.

First-Order Logic - Research Article from Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This encyclopedia article consists of approximately 52 pages of information about First-Order Logic.
This section contains 5,648 words
(approx. 19 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the First-Order Logic Encyclopedia Article

First-order logic is a bag of tools for studying the validity of arguments. At base it consists of a family of mathematically defined languages called first-order languages. Because these languages are constructed to be "logically perfect" (in Gottlob Frege's phrase), we can guarantee from their grammatical form that certain arguments written in these languages are valid. Separately from this we can study how arguments in English or any other natural language can be translated into an appropriate first-order language. It was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who in the 1680s first proposed to divide the study of arguments into a mathematical part and a translational part, though his notion of mathematical languages was barely adequate for the purpose. First-order languages first came to light in the work of Charles S. Peirce in the 1880s; his name for them was "first-intentional logic of relatives." It took some time to...

(read more)

This section contains 5,648 words
(approx. 19 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the First-Order Logic Encyclopedia Article
Copyrights
Macmillan
First-Order Logic from Macmillan. Copyright © 2001-2006 by Macmillan Reference USA, an imprint of the Gale Group. All rights reserved.