Deductive Logic, Second Edition

Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1976. NOT a library discard. Very Good condition with only light shelfwear to the rear cover. Sharp corners. Square and tight. NO owner's name or bookplate. NOT a library discard. NOT a remainder. College bookstore ink stamp to the front free endpaper. Pages are otherwise crisp, clean and appear unmarked. NO underlining. NO highlighting. Answers to Selected Exercises (pages 359-433). Index of Symbols, Abbreviations and Tables. Index of Subjects. Bound in the original white-stamped black boards. From a 2012 review by Daryl Close: "5 stars. Best in Class. Disclaimer: I was a student of Drs. Leblanc and Wisdom in graduate school and came to this textbook with an undergrad Symbolic Logic course in hand. I've taught both symbolic logic and metalogic for over 35 years. The Leblanc and Wisdom is, in my view, the best guide to basic metalogic on the market. The book is divided into three chapters: sentential logic, predicate logic, and metalogic. The last chapter is really the point of the book. It has precise, but thoroughly explained proofs of the completeness and soundness of first-order predicate logic. Leblanc and Wisdom present arguably the best accounts of weak and strong mathematical induction for the student. There is a very useful section on model-theoretic semantics. There is a section on the axiomatic approach to logic. A student who completes the book is well-prepared for Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem, Godel's incompleteness theorems, and the Church-Turing Theorem ("halting problem"). Of course, Leblanc and Wisdom show the issue of the undecidability of first-order predicate logic in the consistency tree method, as do other texts that teach consistency trees. Caveat: the introduction-elimination rule set developed in Chapters 1 and 2 is very congenial to proving the completeness and soundness of first-order predicate logic. That said, so-called "int-elim" rule sets are not very intuitive for doing proofs. There is no modus tollens, disjunctive syllogism, DeMorgan's Law, hypothetical syllogism, contraposition, or other basic principles of reasoning. Proofs in Leblanc and Wisdom require using subordinate proofs immediately, viz., conditional and reductio ad absurdum methods. In most undergraduate symbolic logic courses, those two methods are not introduced until students have mastered straight, direct proofs. Students just beginning in symbolic logic should consider a text such as Hausman, Kahane, and Tidman's venerable _Logic and Philosophy_, Copi's _Symbolic Logic_, and other texts that use so-called 'Copi' rule sets. A special benefit to the student of logic is Leblanc and Wisdom's keen sense of the history of logic revealed in the footnotes. Not all logic instructors will agree with my preference for Copi-style rule sets when teaching "baby" logic. If one wants a careful version of the int-elim approach to natural deduction instead, Leblanc and Wisdom is an excellent choice.". Second Edition. Hardcover. Very Good condition/No dust jacket. Illus. by NOT a library discard. 8vo. xiv, 443pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.