logic
TagSchock Prize Awarded to Prawitz and Martin-Löf
The 2020 Rolf Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy has been awarded to two philosophers from Stockholm University, Dag Prawitz and Per Martin-Löf. (more…)
World Logic Day
Today is World Logic Day. Created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), it was first celebrated in 2019. (more…)
Formal Methods in Philosophy: Initial Thoughts and an Interactive Event (guest post by Liam Kofi Bright)
Plausible answers as to the nature of our mission as philosophy educators gives us no unique reason to focus on logic as the mathematical tool of interest to philosophers.
New Open Access Text On Probability & Decision
Jonathan Weisberg, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, has created a new open-access book on probability and decision-making. It has the brilliant title Odds & Ends. (more…)
The Logic of Mueller’s Statement
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.” (more…)
A New Kind of Critical Thinking Text (guest post by David Manley)
“What would it look like if we taught only the most useful skills from the toolkits of philosophy, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics?” (more…)
A Philosophy Comics Substitute
I’m filling in for one of my esteemed philosophy comic strip artists this week. This is probably a mistake. (more…)
“Step aside and let philosophers do their job”
Elizabeth Oljar and David Koukal (University of Detroit Mercy) have penned a spirited case for universities entrusting the teaching of critical thinking to departments of philosophy in The Chronicle of Higher Education (may be paywalled). (more…)
To φ Or Not To φ
When Scientists Read Philosophy, Are They Reading The “Wrong Philosophers”?
“The trouble with physicists who denigrate philosophy is that they read the wrong philosophers, which sad to say is most philosophers.”
That’s Clark Glymour (Carnegie Mellon) in an interview with Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine. (more…)
New Free Open-Source Multi-Purpose Multi-System Logic Software
Graham Leach-Krouse, assistant professor of philosophy at Kansas State University, has created some remarkable new logic software and has made it free for everyone to use and develop. He has named the software Carnap and describes it in the guest post* below. (more…)
A Game for Gaining Logical Fluency
Matthias Jenny, who recently received his PhD in philosophy from MIT, has started working in the tech industry. He wrote to share with Daily Nous readers a game he created to help people develop basic logical fluency. (more…)
Schock Prize Awarded to Saharon Shelah
Logician Saharon Shelah has won the 2018 Rolf Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy. (more…)
Skepticism About Philosophy’s Capacity To Improve Thinking
Philosophy departments often include in their pitch to undergraduates the claim that studying philosophy can improve one’s thinking skills. But does it? (more…)
The Benefits of Pre-College Exposure to Philosophy: Data Needed
Occasionally philosophers make claims about the benefits of teaching elementary and high school students philosophy. (more…)
Randomly Generated and Self-Correcting Logic Exercises Site
Ariel Roffé, a philosophy PhD student at the University of Buenos Aires has created a website that features the random generation and automatic correction of logic exercises. (more…)
Remixing the Open Logic Text
Have you checked out the Open Logic Project recently? Created a few years ago, it’s an open-source, collaborative logic text that has several nice features. One is that the material is modular: it can be “remixed” into individual open-source texts on specialized subjects. There are now a few examples of this. (more…)
What Should Philosophers Teach in Quantitative Reasoning Courses? (guest post by Landon D.C. Elkind)
The following is a guest post* by Landon D.C. Elkind (University of Iowa) about the content of philosophy courses that satisfy general education requirements in quantitative or formal reasoning. It originally appeared on his blog. (more…)
A Logic Prize In Every Country
Logic Problem Goes Viral (updated)
Perhaps you saw this logic problem, purported to have been given to fifth graders in Singapore, flying around social media yesterday:
That’s right: a logic problem has gone viral.
It turns out that the problem was from a math olympiad test for high-school students, but perhaps the “are you smarter than a fifth grader from Singapore” framing helped propel t..
Visualizing The Logical Structure of Arguments: A New Platform (guest post by Simon Cullen)
The following is a guest post* by Simon Cullen (Princeton), which continues an earlier discussion of his work teaching with argument mapping techniques and software.
Ruth Millikan Wins 2017 Schock Prize
Ruth Millikan, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, is the winner of the 2017 Rolf Shock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. The prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (the same organization that awards the Nobel prizes), is 500,000 Swedish krona, or approximately $55,000. (more…)
Philosophers: Disappointingly Normal
Philosophers are sometimes thought of as expert thinkers, more rational and less prone to errors in reasoning than others. Whether this is true, though, is an empirical question, and it is one that several researchers have taken up over the past decade or so. Their findings regularly show that philosophers, like the ordinary folk, are susceptible to various cognitiv..
Teaching Students Logic Improves Their Logical Reasoning Skills
Newflash: teaching students logic improves their logical reasoning skills—at least according to some new research. You may be thinking, “duh,” but that would be a mistake. After all, “teach” isn’t a success term. And as it turns out, “there is little evidence that studying logic itself improves one’s logical thinking.” (more…)
Pre-Grad School Logic Preparation
An undergraduate who is interested in pursuing graduate studies in philosophy writes in seeking advice about making up for deficits in his logic background:
I’m a student at a small liberal arts college. I have a double major in Philosophy and Literature. My school’s Philosophy program is very good at what it does, but it is limited. Among other things, there are..
Texas Higher Ed Board v. Logic
With just a few days before the start of the school year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has removed from the curriculum a number of courses meant to fulfill the “Language, Philosophy, & Culture” core requirement at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). Among the struck courses are several in philosophy, including a number of ethics cours..
The Enduring Evolution of Logic (guest post by Thomas Ferguson & Graham Priest)
The following guest post* is by Thomas Ferguson and Graham Priest (both of CUNY) and appears here via a special arrangement with Oxford University Press and the OUP Blog, at which it is also posted. (more…)
Mathematical Logic & Foundations Chart (w/ further updates)
The above photo is a detail from a large, hand drawn chart entitled “Mathematical Logic and Foundations, 1847-1947.” It was made in 1976 by Joel Friedman (I believe this Joel Friedman, emeritus at UC Davis). A print of it has been hanging up in the University of South Carolina Department of Philosophy for as long as anyone here can remember. I do not know whether it..