Modern Logic: A Text in Elementary Symbolic Logic

Filling the need for an accessible, carefully structured introductory text in symbolic logic, Modern Logic has many features designed to improve students' comprehension of the subject, including a proof system that is the same as the award-winning computer program MacLogic, and a special appendix that shows how to use MacLogic as a teaching aid. There are graded exercises at the end of each chapter--more than 900 in all--with selected answers at the end of the book. Unlike competing texts, Modern Logic gives equal weight to semantics and proof theory and explains their relationship, and develops in detail techniques for symbolizing natural language in first-order logic. After a general introduction featuring the notion of logical form, the book offers sections on classical sentential logic, monadic predicate logic, and full first-order logic with identity. A concluding section deals with extensions of and alternatives to classical logic, including modal logic, intuitionistic logic, and fuzzy logic. For students of philosophy, mathematics, computer science, or linguistics, Modern Logic provides a thorough understanding of basic concepts and a sound basis for more advanced work.

Graeme Forbes is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Attitude Problems (Oxford, 2006), Languages of Possibility (1989), and The Metaphysics of Modality (Oxford, 1985). He has held research fellowships at New College, Oxford, and Edinburgh University, and has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and at Riverside.