Arthur N. Prior on 'Unquestionably the best logical symbolism for most purposes'

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Philosophy

Document Type

Article

Source Title

History and Philosophy of Logic

Volume

43

Issue

2

First Page

158

Last Page

174

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

In his Formal Logic, Arthur N. Prior (1914–1969) declared that Jan Łukasiewicz’s logical notation is ‘unques- tionably the best logical symbolism for most purposes’. Whether he had a substantive, and not only practical, reason for this notational preference is unclear. Through an investigation of his philosophical outlook towards the nature of logic and representation in general, and the nature of logical ‘operators’ in particular, this paper suggests that there might be a substantive argument for this declaration. This argument is premised on Prior’s own metaphysical view that an adequate notation must represent the functional nature of these operators.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1080/01445340.2021.1927325

Disciplines

Philosophy

Keywords

A. N. (Arthur N.) Prior, 1914-1969; Logic, Symbolic and mathematical

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