Studies in Universal Logic

Journal: Studies in Universal Logic

Birkhäuser

2297-0290
2297-0282

Publications1 - 1 of 1

Boole’s Untruth Tables
Gastaldi, Juan Luis (2022)
Studies in Universal Logic ~ Logic in Question: Talks from the Annual Sorbonne Logic Workshop (2011–2019)
This paper looks into what can reasonably be regarded as truth-table devices in one of Boole’s late manuscripts, as a way of ad- dressing Boole’s relation to modern propositional logic. A careful in- vestigation of the divergences between those table devices and our cur- rent conception of truth tables offers an opportunity to reassess the singularity of Boole’s logical system, especially concerning the relation between its linguistic and mathematical aspects. The paper explores Boole’s conception of the compositional structure of symbolic expres- sions, the genesis of table devices from his method of development into normal forms, and the non-logical origin of the constants 0 and 1 as dual terms. Boole’s system of logic is in this way shown to be chiefly concerned with the problem of the formal interpretability conditions of symbolic expressions, rather than with the truth conditions of logical propositions.

Publications1 - 1 of 1