The forms and scope of logic rest on assumptions of how language and reasoning connect to experience. In this volume an analysis of meaning and truth provides a foundation for studying modern propositional and predicate logics. Chapters on propositional logic, parsing propositions, and meaning, truth, and reference give a basis for criteria that can be used to judge formalizations of ordinary language arguments. Over 120 worked examples of formalizations of propositions and arguments illustrate the scope and limitations of modern logic, as analyzed in chapters on identity, quantifiers, descriptive names, functions, and second-order logic. The chapter on second-order logic illustrates how different conceptions of predicates and propositions do not lead to a common basis for quantification over predicates, as they do for quantification over things. Notable for its clarity of presentation, and supplemented by many exercises, this volume is suitable for philosophers, linguists, mathematicians, and computer scientists who wish to better understand the tools they use in formalizing reasoning.

Richard L Epstein received his B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a post-doctoral fellow in mathematics and philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, a Fulbright Fellow to Brazil, and a National Academy of Sciences Scholar to Poland. He is the author of "Propositional Logics", "Classical Mathematical Logic", "The Internal Structure of Predicates and Names", and, with Walter Carnielli, "Computability". He is now the Head of the Advanced Reasoning Forum.

I Propositions and Propositional Logic II The Internal Structure of Predicates and Names III A Formal Language for Predicate Logic IV Semantics V The Logical Form of a Proposition VI Identity VII Quantifiers VIII Descriptive Names IX Functions X Quantifying Over Predicates: Second-Order Logic XI Language, the World, and Predicate Logic Appendices A The Notion of a Thing B What There Is: Restrictions on the Universe of a Realization C Primitives and Assumptions of Predicate Logic D Formalization: Criteria and Assumptions Bibliography Index of Examples Index of Notation Index