Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic: Why Make Things Simple When You Can Make Them Complicated?

[jean-yves beziau]

This coming Wednesday, October 13, at 4 pm CET,  one more session of the Logica Universalis Webinar (LUW).

It will be dedicated to Lewis Carroll’s logic. See details below. 

Everybody is welcome to join ! Register in advance here:

https://www.springer.com/journal/11787/updates/18988758

Also recently published "Lewis Carroll: Logic" by Fancine Abeles in the

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP)

https://iep.utm.edu/car-logi/

and a workshop on Lewis Carroll at UNILOG'2022:

https://sites.google.com/view/unilog-2022/workshops/lewis-carrolls-logic

Jean-Yves Beziau

Organizer of LUW, Logic Area Editor of IEP,  President of LUA

http://www.logica-universalis.org/LUAD

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Amirouche Moktefi
(Ragnar Nurkse Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia)

"Why Make Things Simple When You Can Make Them Complicated? An Appreciation of Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic"

Logica Universalis, volume 15, pages359–379 (2021)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11787-021-00286-1

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) published a system of logic in the symbolic tradition that developed in his time. Carroll’s readers may be puzzled by his system. On the one hand, it introduced innovations, such as his logic notation, his diagrams and his method of trees, that secure Carroll’s place on the path that shaped modern logic. On the other hand, Carroll maintained the existential import of universal affirmative Propositions, a feature that is rather characteristic of traditional logic. The object of this paper is to untangle this dilemma by exploring Carroll’s guidelines in the design of his logic, and in particular his theory of existential import. It will be argued that Carroll’s view reflected his belief in the social utility of symbolic logic.