The Road to Paradox
A Guide to Syntax, Truth and Modality
Published on 31. October 2024
Book
Hardback
418 pages
978-1-108-84101-6 (ISBN)
Description
Truth, provability, necessity, and other concepts are fundamental to many branches of philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Their study has led to some of the most celebrated achievements in logic, such as Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Tarski's theorem on the undefinability of truth, and numerous accounts of the paradoxes associated with these concepts. This book provides a clear and direct introduction to the theory of paradoxes and the Goedel incompleteness theorems. It offers new analyses of the ideas of self-reference, circularity, and the semantic paradoxes, and helps readers to see both how paradoxes arise and what their common features are. It will be valuable for students and researchers with a minimal background in logic and will equip them to understand and discuss a wide variety of topics in philosophical logic.
Reviews / Votes
'This book provides a gentle introduction to contemporary discussions and results on truth and paradox, making these important topics accessible to a wider audience. In particular, the authors develop a theory of syntax independently of any arithmetical considerations, which makes the book intelligible also to readers without an extensive mathematical background. Strongly recommended to anyone interested in the traditional philosophical issues of epistemology and metaphysics.' Cezary Cieslinski, University of WarsawMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
900 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-108-84101-6 (9781108841016)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Volker Halbach is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a fellow of New College, Oxford. He is the author of The Logic Manual (2010) and Axiomatic Theories of Truth (Cambridge, 2011). Graham E. Leigh is Associate Professor of Logic at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has published a number of influential articles on the concepts of truth, reflection, and computation.
Content
Preface; 1. Aims and Ends; 2. Technical Preliminaries; 3. Predicates and Conceptual Analysis; 4. Paradoxes over Logic; 5. A Theory of Expressions; 6. The Paradoxes; 7. Possible-Worlds Semantics; 8. An Expressive Theory of Expressions; 9. Consistency, Denotation, and Arithmetic; 10. Formal Language; 11. Formal Truth; 12. Generalizations and Intensionality; Bibliography.