Intended for a course for students in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, or computer science, and excellent for self-study. Motivation is given for each formal concept and each step in building a formal logic in terms of formalizing reasoning.  Summaries are given at important junctures in the book to keep students aware of what they are doing and where they are going. Criteria of formalization are developed and applied to formalizing ordinary language reasoning in an example-analysis format. More than 300 worked examples. More than 500 exercises with answers available on the web.

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 held a post-doctoral fellowship in mathematics and philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and was a Fulbright Fellow to Brazil and a National Academy of Sciences Scholar to Poland. He is the author of textbook "Critical Thinking" as well as "Propositional Logics" and, with Walter Carnielli, "Computability". He is now the Head of the Advanced Reasoning Forum.

1 The Basics of Logic 2 Reasoning with Compound Propositions 3 Classical Propositional Logic: Form 4 Classical Propositional Logic: Meaning 5 Using Classical Propositional Logic 6 Proofs Summary of Chapters 16 7 Reasoning about Things 8 The Grammar of Things 9 A Formal Language for Predicate Logic 10 A Predicate Applies to an Object or Objects 11 Models for Classical Predicate Logic 12 Substitution of Variables and Distribution of Quantifiers 13 An Axiom System for Classical Predicate Logic 14 Formalizing in Classical Predicate Logic 15 Identity 16 Formalizing with the Equality Predicate 17 Possibilities Appendix 1 Proof by Induction Appendix 2 Set-Theory Notation Appendix 3 Naming, Pointing, and What There Is Appendix 4 Completeness Proofs Appendix 5 Other Interpretations of the Quantifiers and Variables Appendix 6 Mathematical Semantics Appendix 7 Aristotelian Logic Index of Symbols Index of Examples Index