Customer Reviews

Beginning Logic

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While there is currently a variety of logical systems about, Lemmon's is well balanced and fairly intuitive. His approach is to limit his formal system to a few simple rules. The advantage is that it makes his meta-logic much easier, and the reader can grasp the whole system very quickly. The downside it that the system becomes cumbersome when trying to prove more difficult problems. To help simplify the longer proofs, Lemmon provides a list of already proven theorems, which one can substitute into the proof. His approach is elegant, and in my view, successful. While the text tends to be dense, his liberal use of examples clarifies many of the finer points. Still, the reader does have to work at it so I cannot recommend this text to beginning logic students. Davis' "Introduction to Logic" is much more straightforward, and much simpler. However, for serious students of logic, with a solid analytical background, or a good foundation in mathematics, this text provides a very good logical system.

I used this book as part of an independent study of logic. It is dense, so unless you are willing to sit down and study it exhaustively or you have an experienced teacher (as I did), start with something lighter. That said, once I gained some knowledge in the area, the book was a pleasure to use, as Lemmon's precise language made it easier to clarify certain points. The largest drawback to this book is that it doesn't have solutions to its exercises, and these methods are not mechanical-you must know or learn how to make intuitive leaps or you will not be able to solve the problems. davewitt@technologist.com

This is an older book, so it is a little wordy. The wording of explanations for rules is a bit strange, but its okay because Lemmon follows all explanations with examples.

I obtained this book for a college course I am taking, Introduction to Logic. The book is well written and I think it does what it's meant to do, but it does have its flaws.

On the one hand, I believe that the book does a great job of introducing the basic of Logic and all of its symbols and syntax. It makes a great complement to my class. However, it often becomes very heady and can be hard to understand unless you are fully committed and make sure you have a grasp of one topic completely before moving on to the next.

One of my largest complaints about the book is that it provides practice problems with no answers. This means that the problems are basically worthless to me in the sense that even if I feel that I know how to do all the problems in the chapter I have no way of knowing if I truly understand the more complicated subject matter through private study.

I would still recommend this book to anyone who is genuinely interested in the subject AND has a competent mentor/teacher to guide them. If you're going it alone though, it may be a little rough.

A great book of predicate and simple quantifier logic. VERY complete, includes nice examples in English translation and in logic. It also has practice problems after each section. However, it is dense, and unless you have someone who can help clarify concepts for you, this book can become confusing and difficult. Overall, a very good logic book.

I have got to admit, this is a very difficult book to follow. It is higher order logic--very difficult material for most people to grasp--hard for me and I tutored it. This book may have been impossible for me to learn from on my own--I bought it for use in a class, and used it with assistance from a logician. There are a few out there who will be able to learn it on their own with this book--but not many. For most, this will be torture! But if you love logic and get it, then this book will be great for you!

I read the Italian translation of this book, and it was really great experience. It helps me a lot in my daily work and is really a good book. One could expect that a new edition of this useful booklet would include the programs used for the Appendix, theorem proofs.

For those who are interested in learning the basics of propositional calculus, this is a fantastic book. It's a little difficult to understand however once you master the concepts, the text becomes much easier to read. I recomend this book to anyone interested in learning how to think.

Okay. This book is cheap which is nice. BUT it is NOT HELPFUL. Even for someone with a background in logic this book is worthless, but especially for a beginner. There are hardly any practice problems, the explanations are terrible, and for the few problems in the book there are not any answers. So, it is very difficult to use this book and know what (if anything) you are doing right or doing wrong.