Meaning and Proscription in Formal Logic: Variations on the Propositional Logic of William T. Parry (Trends in Logic Book 49)

This book aids in the rehabilitation of the wrongfully deprecated work of William Parry, and is the only full-length investigation into Parry-type propositional logics. A central tenet of the monograph is that the sheer diversity of the contexts in which the mereological analogy emerges – its effervescence with respect to fields ranging from metaphysics to computer programming – provides compelling evidence that the study of logics of analytic implication can be instrumental in identifying connections between topics that would otherwise remain hidden. More concretely, the book identifies and discusses a host of cases in which analytic implication can play an important role in revealing distinct problems to be facets of a larger, cross-disciplinary problem. It introduces an element of constancy and cohesion that has previously been absent in a regrettably fractured field, shoring up those who are sympathetic to the worth of mereological analogy. Moreover, it generates new interest in the field by illustrating a wide range of interesting features present in such logics – and highlighting these features to appeal to researchers in many fields. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: The Proscriptive Principle (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 1-16 Nonsense and Proscription (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 17-39 Metaphysical Considerations on State Space Semantics (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 41-72 A Computational Interpretation of Conceptivism (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 73-105 Faulty Belnap Computers and Subsystems of \(\mathsf{E}_{\texttt {fde}}\) (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 107-131 Cut-Down Operations on Multilattices (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 133-161 Correia Semantics Revisited (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 163-183 Concluding Remarks (Thomas Macaulay Ferguson)....Pages 185-194 Back Matter ....Pages 195-198