Research Catalog

Title

Plural logic / Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley.

Author

Oliver, Alex

Publication

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Smiley, T. J. (Timothy John)

Description

xiv, 383 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide the natural point of entry to what for most readers will be a new subject. Plural logic deals with plural terms, plural predicates, and plural quantification. Current logic is singularist: its terms stand for at most one thing. By contrast, the foundational thesis of this book is that a particular term may legitimately stand for several things at once; in other words, there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation. The authors argue that plural phenomena need to be taken seriously and that the only viable response is to adopt a plural logic, a logic based on plural denotation. They expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists. A formal system of plural logic is presented in three stages. This second edition includes a greatly expanded treatment of the paradigm empty term zilch, a much strengthened treatment of Cantorian set theory, and a new chapter on higher-level plural logic."

Subject

Logic

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-356) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The project -- History -- Changing the subject -- Predicative analyses -- Terms - singular and plural -- The indeterminacy of plural denotation -- Some basic ideas of plural logic -- Plural descriptions -- Multivalued functions -- Lists -- Singular logic -- Mid-plural logic -- Full plural logic -- Cantorian set theory -- Higher-level plural logic -- Postscript: unfinished business.

ISBN

• 9780198744382
• 0198744382
• 9780199570423 (canceled/invalid)

OCLC

965118067

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library