Customer Reviews

Symbolic Logic

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

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 The symbolic language that is used and the mode of problem-solving demonstrated by Copi in this work is long since outdated and using this text will only confuse a logic amateur when they move on to more current and complicated logic.

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.

This was my first textbook on logic and it has a warm place in my heart. It is not very current or modern, and it's probably not appropriate for teaching logic in the math or computer science departments, but otherwise, it's a lovely book. The two nicest features of this book are the wealth of interesting exercises and the emphasis on language: The correspondence between sentences in English and propositions in logic.

Re the logical structure of English sentences, I would like to note that I used many of the exercises from this book in a logic class I taught a few years ago, and was stunned to see the difficulties students were having: Difficulties in comprehending the logical structure of a sentence in English and then expressing this structure using Boolean connectives and quantifiers. I found this discovery both alarming and curious.

Copi's textbook lays out all of the basic concepts in symbolic logic necessary for more advanced work as well as many of the fundamentals of discrete mathematics. Some people have commented that his treatment is outdated, but a thorough understanding of chapters 6, 8, and 10 should equip anyone to understand the newer forms of notation. Chapter 7 is notably excellent but seemed out of place. As the most advanced of the whole book, it relates more than later chapters to the "further reading" topics. Proof of the redundancy of "indirect proof" (chapter 3?) and multi-modal logic were other very notable highlights.

A few criticisms: Copi explains the quantification rules of first order predicate logic rather tersely for a primer, and I was glad to have used Virginia Klenk's book originally when encountering these concepts. (Although Klenk's explanation of EI and UG are non-standard and will make transitioning very confusing if you cannot grasp the validity of her methods.) The index only provides a step by step answer key for selected exercises, which leaves stuck if Copi has solved only one problem to demonstrate some concept which still isn't clear. Finally, the binding on this book is just cheap. On all copies that I have encountered, the glued pages were breaking away from the spine after only a few months of regular use. Perhaps the newer edition is better, but I haven't had experience with it.

Despite these rather minor shortcomings, Copi's work unfolds almost as systematically as the content it teaches. This is an excellent introduction.

Anyone who is looking for reassurance and confirmation for what they have picked up from different logic books will eventually come across Copi's Symbolic Logic. True, the explanations can be a bit ungenerous for some of the exercises - aren't they always in any textbook for a recreational logic student - but the clarity of style and the selection of examples motivate the reader to push themselves harder. The examples themselves are neither modern nor outdated. They appeal to the basic building blocks of language, shorn of pretence and ornament. In the treatment of the matter Copi heads off the reader and asks the vexing questions himself. The notation is user friendly and will not deter a non-maths graduate. Where the book comes short is a cheap cover and sparse answers to the exercises - kind of understandable given the scope of some answers in logic. Help is at hand from Peter Suber's website where there are more copious translation tips from English into symbolic logic and answers to the exercises which Copi doesn't give. Symbolic Logic is a classic - a book for a discerning student.

Irving Copi's Symbolic Logic is a classic text book. My comments refer to an earlier edition.

I had been looking for a rigorous and well laid out reference text on logical notation. This book has been tremendous in this regard, it is comprehensive (in a classic overview sense), and extremely well written. In addition to the discussion of symbolic notation that I was seeking, I also greatly enjoyed Copi's discussion of the relationships between meta and object languages. One minor drawback (later editions may have addressed this point) is the absence of answers at the back of the text.

I highly recommend this book to anyone like my self that is looking for either a reference or a review of symbolic logic. Copi also has an excellent introductory text on logic that provides a more basic and holistic look at the subject.

i too have a warm place in my heart for this classic textbook. it's true that its methods of symbolization and proofs are a bit dated nowadays, but its explanations are crystal clear, and that's nothing to sneeze at. overall, though, if you are just starting out in symbolic logic, you might find howard pospesel's books more useful and perhaps a bit cheaper. but you can't go wrong with either author.

This was the book I used when I took symbolic logic in college. Very self explanitory - the book can be used to learn symbolic logic on your own. Why? Simply because it's fun!

This book should be required reading for all young teens. Although Copi's method of teaching logic is not the most modern, it is the most useful for developing critical thinking and language skills in people who do not intend to be logicians. Mastering this material will give children a foundation that will help them in unexpected ways in all walks of life.