The final project will take the form of a website, probably a GitHub page, tentatively called 'Our expanding logical world(s)'. The website will mostly contain an essay that asks the question 'What is logic?', explores various threads in relation to the question, but makes no attempt to provide an answer.1 The multifarious topics I explore include: logical pluralism vs. monism, Tarski's accounts of logical consequence and truth, Van Heijenoort's historical reconstruction of two conceptions of logic, the role of form and presentation in formal logic, its normative status, and the expansion of logic overtime by the introduction of new logics that reject principles of classical logic, which was the first modern system, such as bivalence and substitutionality. Consequently, the project will have an unavoidable historical bent. I will also include some technical presentations of the non-classical logics where suitable. A note on feasibility: I am aware this might seem to include too much for a single project, however I stress that I will be exploring these issues. I will not be treating each topic seriously or very deeply, as I rightly should if I were writing a proper academic piece. My aim is more so to weave a mixed and multi-colored thread in creating a story of 'what is logic'.
More specifically on form, the project will be brutalist and almost certainly avant-garde. Brutalist mostly because the website will be hand-coded in HTML and will inevitably look jarring, coincidentally in keeping with brutalist web design. But also because its written style is 'anti-bourgeois' in the sense that I deliberately avoid adopting usual academic convention.2 The essay is semi-confessional and appropriates modernist literary style, which historically coincides with the development of modern logic. In my view, these aspects of the project are also vital and is my resistance to the over-excessive tendency of contemporary academic philosophers to focus on abstract ideas and content with overall disregard for form and presentation, a pernicious effect of Cartesian dualism, Plato's hierarchy that places ideal forms above bodily forms, and the marginalization of aesthetics.3I also place great emphasis on the manner of presentation because I simultaneously explore the role of logical presentation, a role which has not yet been sufficiently developed in the literature. Here, I am inspired by work on mathematical style and the role of diagrammatic reasoning. (Note: I include a sample of the writing to give a sense of what it's like and to have the opportunity for a friendly warning if the writing is so appallingly odious, too self-indulging, or too Wittgensteinian somehow.)
If I can explore the question of 'what is logic' so that it is interesting, insightful, or playful to someone else, I will consider myself successful in my overall aim. Ideally, I can share some of my fascination to someone who has never been exposed to logic, or if they have been exposed, I can renew or add to their perspective.
I've already completed a significant portion of research and writing for the project. All that's left to do is (1) complete writing and (2) deploy the project onto GitHub.
My deadline to complete the written portion is November 25, 2020. My deadline to fix the styling and deploy onto GitHub is November 28, 2020. It should not take so long to do this last step as the website is basic HTML and CSS and pushing projects onto GitHub is not complicated. But I give myself three extra days after the writing deadline, just in case.
Van Heijenoort, Jean. “Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language.” Synthese 17, no. 3 (1967): 324–30. (Along with Hintikka's response: Hintikka, Jaakko. “On the Development of the Model-Theoretic Viewpoint in Logical Theory.” Synthese 77, no. 1 (1988): 1–36.)
Tarski, Alfred. “On the Concept of Following Logically.” History and Philosophy of Logic 23, no. 3 (September 2002): 155–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144534021000036683.
What If? An Open Introduction to Non-Classical Logics.
Home References About What is logic? A Spare Page