Symbolic Logic [Paperback]

Irving M. Copi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 1979 | ISBN-10: 0023249803 | ISBN-13: 978-0023249808 | Edition: 5th

For courses in Formal Logic. The general approach of this book to logic remains the same as in earlier editions. Following Aristotle, we regard logic from two different points of view: on the one hand, logic is an instrument or organon for appraising the correctness of reasoning; on the other hand, the principles and methods of logic used as organon are interesting and important topics to be themselves systematically investigated.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The general approach of this book to logic remains the same as in earlier editions. Following Aristotle, we regard logic from two different points of view: on the one hand, logic is an instrument or organon for appraising the correctness of reasoning; on the other hand, the principles and methods of logic used as organon are interesting and important topics to be themselves systematically investigated.

Product Details

• Paperback: 411 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 5th edition (April 11, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0023249803
• ISBN-13: 978-0023249808
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #529,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent text dealing with 2nd order predicate calculus., July 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Symbolic Logic (Paperback)

My Background: Graduate Computer Science student, emphasis in complex programming.

Most programmers never get beyond the first-order (unquantified) predicate calculus introduced in the standard finite math course. This text goes to the next level in formal logic, teaching how to prove or disprove that a quantified expression follows logically from a group of premises.

Copi's notation is concise, leads to elegant proofs, and to proofs which are much shorter than many of the tree methods.

Even if you don't feel that you have the stamina to take on quantified logic, the book is an excellent text to unquantified rules of inference. But the real wealth here is the treatment of UI, UG, EI, and EG. To become fluent with this notation requires diligently working the host of example problems in each chapter, but the result will be problem-solving abilities that are much more flexible than the abilities of mathematics alone. You may find yourself becoming addicted to formal logic! Steve

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, But Outdated, June 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Symbolic Logic (Paperback)

I thourougly enjoyed learning from this book, and it became the foundation of my analytic philosophy knowledge.

That said, I do not recommend this book as a text for those attempting to learn logic today. The symbolic language that is used and the mode of problem-solving demonstrated by Copi in this work is long since outdated and using this text will only confuse a logic amateur when they move on to more current and complicated logic.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classical Foundations of Formal Logic, October 5, 2005

By 

S. Wuest (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Symbolic Logic (Paperback)

S. Wuest, M.S. in Computer Science, AI, Data Fusion

Caveats to the Rating:
1. You had better be willing to work at this book
2. This is a classical, analytical approach
3. The terminology is not the easiest

Strengths of this book:
1. Serial proof notation
2. Much emphasis on the accurate representation of ideas
3. The approach to formal logic is analytical (as opposed
to brute force, "sub-logical" algorithms such as
resolution). This provides a theoretical background for
sound algorithm design that is lacking in programmers only
familiar with resolution
4. The quantified exercises given begin to develop intuition
as to the most efficient ways to combine multiple
operations--such heuristics are key to designing automated
proof generators.
5. I have only found about 1 error in the answers.

I agree with the comment of Mayer: many technical people do not
know how to accurately represent English statements in a formal
logic notation. I work with engineers, and have observed the
confusion of cause and effect in their rule writing, and the
confusion of abductive pattern matching with deductive reasoning
(abductive pattern matching is not covered in the book).
Exercises in representing English sentences in symbolic logic
notation would soon fix this confusion.

I rate one of the strengths of Copi's notation to be the serial
proof (as opposed to tree). Tree notations blows up
combinatorially, and become useless for anything but toy
problems. Tree notations may be more intuitive, but have too low
a glass ceiling.