Dewey’s Chicago-Functionalist Conception of Logic

Author(s):  
F. Thomas Burke

Both Dewey and Russell were Hegelians in their early careers. Acquaintance with Hegel left permanent deposits in their respective thinking about logic. Russell’s atomistic logicism aspired to achieve a foundationalist unity characteristic of his Tiergarten Programme. Dewey’s instrumentalism was rooted in an inside-out inversion and naturalization of Hegel’s dialectical schematism, replacing Hegel’s grand sweep of human history with a down-to-earth pattern of inquiry. Russell’s structuralist approach to deductive logic greatly influenced the development of mathematical logic and linguistics in the twentieth century, some highpoints of which are surveyed here. Dewey’s functionalist approach to logic as a normative theory of inquiry had little influence on this development. Dewey viewed logic more broadly as a study of how abductive, deductive, and inductive forms of inference best work together in the course of inquiry. This approach is spelled out, addressing points of consistency and conflict with contemporary mainstream views of logic.

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-317
Author(s):  
Vladimir Feshchenko

The article analyzes one of the forms of nomadism in the intellectual world, which is called cultural transfers. One of the directions in the study of cultural transfers is the migration of concepts and notions between scientific knowledge (in this case linguistic) and literary experience (mainly experimental). The article is devoted to one of such migration trajectory from the perspective of interdiscourse methodology. We discuss the works of one of the agents of cultural transfer in the field of linguistics – R. Jakobson. The task of the article is to draw a trajectory according to which the linguistic concepts of Jakobson intertwine with parallel processes in literary (mainly poetic) experiments. The analysis concludes that precisely in connection with close contexts and transfers between poetry and linguistics, the Russian science of language represented by Jakobson develops a view of literature as a special language and a special communicative system. This trend is not typical for the Anglo-American linguistic tradition of the twentieth century, the quintessence of which in the middle of the century was represented in the theories of N. Chomsky and his circle.


The first half of the twentieth century was marked by the simultaneous development of logic and mathematics. Logic offered the necessary means to justify the foundations of mathematics and to solve the crisis that arose in mathematics in the early twentieth century. In European science in the late nineteenth century, the ideas of symbolic logic, based on the works of J. Bull, S. Jevons and continued by C. Pierce in the United States and E. Schroeder in Germany were getting popular. The works by G. Frege and B. Russell should be considered more progressive towards the development of mathematical logic. The perspective of mathematical logic in solving the crisis of mathematics in Ukraine was noticed by Professor of Mathematics of Novorossiysk (Odesa) University Ivan Vladislavovich Sleshynsky. Sleshynsky (1854 –1931) is a Doctor of Mathematical Sciences (1893), Professor (1898) of Novorossiysk (Odesa) University. After studying at the University for two years he was a Fellow at the Department of Mathematics of Novorossiysk University, defended his master’s thesis and was sent to a scientific internship in Berlin (1881–1882), where he listened to the lectures by K. Weierstrass, L. Kronecker, E. Kummer, G. Bruns. Under the direction of K. Weierstrass he prepared a doctoral dissertation for defense. He returned to his native university in 1882, and at the same time he was a teacher of mathematics in the seminary (1882–1886), Odesa high schools (1882–1892), and taught mathematics at the Odesa Higher Women’s Courses. Having considerable achievements in the field of mathematics, in particular, Pringsheim’s Theorem (1889) proved by Sleshinsky on the conditions of convergence of continuous fractions, I. Sleshynsky drew attention to a new direction of logical science. The most significant work for the development of national mathematical logic is the translation by I. Sleshynsky from the French language “Algebra of Logic” by L. Couturat (1909). Among the most famous students of I. Sleshynsky, who studied and worked at Novorossiysk University and influenced the development of mathematical logic, one should mention E. Bunitsky and S. Shatunovsky. The second period of scientific work of I. Sleshynsky is connected with Poland. In 1911 he was invited to teach mathematical disciplines at Jagiellonian University and focused on mathematical logic. I. Sleshynsky’s report “On Traditional Logic”, delivered at the meeting of the Philosophical Society in Krakow. He developed the common belief among mathematicians that logic was not necessary for mathematics. His own experience of teaching one of the most difficult topics in higher mathematics – differential calculus, pushed him to explore logic, since the requirement of perfect mathematical proof required this. In one of his further works of this period, he noted the promising development of mathematical logic and its importance for mathematics. He claimed that for the mathematics of future he needed a new logic, which he saw in the “Principles of Mathematics” by A. Whitehead and B. Russell. Works on mathematical logic by I. Sleszynski prompted many of his students in Poland to undertake in-depth studies in this field, including T. Kotarbiński, S. Jaśkowski, V. Boreyko, and S. Zaremba. Thanks to S. Zaremba, I. Sleshynsky managed to complete the long-planned concept, a two-volume work “Theory of Proof” (1925–1929), the basis of which were lectures of Professor. The crisis period in mathematics of the early twentieth century, marked by the search for greater clarity in the very foundations of mathematical reasoning, led to the transition from the study of mathematical objects to the study of structures. The most successful means of doing this were proposed by mathematical logic. Thanks to Professor I. Sleshynsky, who succeeded in making Novorossiysk (Odesa) University a center of popularization of mathematical logic in the beginning of the twentieth century the ideas of mathematical logic in scientific environment became more popular. However, historical events prevented the ideas of mathematical logic in the domestic scientific space from the further development.


Author(s):  
John Stillwell

This chapter prepares the reader's mind for reverse mathematics. As its name suggests, reverse mathematics seeks not theorems but the right axioms to prove theorems already known. Reverse mathematics began as a technical field of mathematical logic, but its main ideas have precedents in the ancient field of geometry and the early twentieth-century field of set theory. In geometry, the parallel axiom is the right axiom to prove many theorems of Euclidean geometry, such as the Pythagorean theorem. Set theory offers a more modern example: base theory called ZF, a theorem that ZF cannot prove (the well-ordering theorem) and the “right axiom” for proving it—the axiom of choice. From these and similar examples one can guess at a base theory for analysis, and the “right axioms” for proving some of its well-known theorems.


Author(s):  
Vincent Chiao

This chapter sketches the gradual emergence of criminal law as public law over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as public institutions gradually asserted control over most aspects of the criminal process. The emergence of criminal law as public law is compared to the development of the welfare state in the early decades of the twentieth century. Public institutions collectively manage the risk of crime, in part by mobilizing practices of policing, prosecution, and punishment. They represent a social commitment to treating crime as a publicly shared burden rather than merely a privately borne tragedy. The emergence of criminal law as public law suggests that, rather than understanding crime and punishment by reference to the rights of individual persons in the state of nature, a normative theory of criminal law should be appropriately sensitive to the institutional morality and political legitimacy of public institutions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Miguel Serrano Ruiz-Calderón

La ecología y la bioética como disciplinas nuevas aparecen durante el siglo XX como consecuencia del horror producido por los abusos técnico-industriales. Tienen pues un origen común y positivo, como está generalmente admitido. Sin embargo, autores críticos han observado que principalmente la bioética ha derivado en una actitud complaciente que, en definitiva, ha servido como coartada moral a buena parte de los abusos realizados en nombre de la Ciencia. Todo lo que es técnicamente posible hacer se acaba haciendo y además encuentra una justificación bioética construida por los expertos de forma analítica. Se puede sospechar que lo mismo sucede con la ecología. Esto constituye en definitiva una traición a las pretensiones de los fundadores de las nuevas ciencias. No se trata de algo nuevo en la Historia humana donde los hallazgos más valiosos o los valores más altos han sido habitualmente manipulados. Parte del problema actual radica en la divinización del hombre, ya sea en su aspecto individual o bajo el concepto de Humanidad. Paradójicamente esta divinización causa la perdida de la noción de dignidad y favorece la conversión del hombre concreto en mero instrumento de la acción técnica. Nuestra época alberga, sin embargo, motivos para el optimismo. La respuesta fundamental se encuentra en la noción de “límite” o si se prefiere de marco que sitúa al hombre en su lugar en el universo, distinto del puro mundo natural y relacionado con la divinidad. La Humanae Vitae es un ejemplo claro de esta concepción globalizadora. ---------- Ecology and bioethics as new disciplines appear during the twentieth century as a result of horror produced by industrial technical abuses. Therefore they have a common and positive origin, as is generally admitted. However, critics mainly authors have observed that bioethics has led to a complacent attitude that ultimately served as a moral alibi for much of the abuses made in the name of science possible. All that is technically possible is just doing and also finds a justification built by bioethics experts analytically. You may suspect that the same is true in the field of ecology. This is definitely a betrayal of the claims of the founders of the new sciences. This is not something new in human history where the most valuable findings or higher values have been routinely manipulated. Part of the current problem is the deification of man, either in its individual aspect or under the concept of humanity. Paradoxically, this deification causes the loss of the notion of dignity and promotes the conversion of concrete man into a mere instrument of technical action. Our era houses, however, grounds for optimism. The fundamental answer lies in the notion of “limit” or “frame” which puts man in his place in the universe, other than pure natural world and related to divinity. Humanae Vitae is a clear example of this globalizing conception.


Author(s):  
Patrick J. Deneen

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded? Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As this book argues, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. The book offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.


1959 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. S. Hayward

The survival of a concept is generally only secured at the price of an intellectual odyssey in the course of which it is transformed out of all recognition. The nineteenth century fortunes of the idea of solidarity exemplify this axiom only too strictly. It became the victim of a multiplicity of ingenious puns and metaphors as well as outright malicious distortions that rendered a simple, technical word, drawn from the sphere of jurisprudence, at once emotive and obscure, influential and diffuse. As the eminent and caustic critic of the twentieth century, Julien Benda, formulated this vital problem of the fate of concepts, “pour l'historien des idées des hommes, la réalité ce n'est point ce qu'ont été les idées dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont inventées, mais ce qu'elles ont été dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont trahies… car il est clair qu'une doctrine se propage d'autant plus largement qu'elle est apte à satisfaire un plus grand nombre de sentiments divers.” This pessimistic view has been all too frequently verified in human history.


1992 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir A. Uspensky

There are human beings whose intellectual power exceeds that of ordinary men. In my life, in my personal experience, there were three such men, and one of them was Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov. I was lucky enough to be his immediate pupil. He invited me to be his pupil at the third year of my being student at the Moscow University. This talk is my tribute, my homage to my great teacher.Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was born on April 25, 1903. He graduated from Moscow University in 1925, finished his post-graduate education at the same University in 1929, and since then without any interruption worked at Moscow University till his death on October 20, 1987, at the age 84½.Kolmogorov was not only one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. By the width of his scientific interests and results he reminds one of the titans of the Renaissance. Indeed, he made prominent contributions to various fields from the theory of shooting to the theory of versification, from hydrodynamics to set theory. In this talk I should like to expound his contributions to mathematical logic.Here the term “mathematical logic” is understood in a broad sense. In this sense it, like Gallia in Caesarian times, is divided into three parts:(1) mathematical logic in the strict sense, i.e. the theory of formalized languages including deduction theory,(2) the foundations of mathematics, and(3) the theory of algorithms.


1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Buckmaster ◽  
Kok-Foo Theang

Little or nothing is said of empiricism in U.S. accounting literature during the first half of the twentieth century in accounting history literature. The objectives of this study are threefold: (1) to determine if an empirical accounting literature existed prior to 1950; (2) to determine if pre-1950 empiricism was extensive enough and substantive enough to have influenced the development of accounting thought; and (3) to compare pre-1950 empirical work with contemporary academic research. It is concluded that empirics were common prior to 1950 from examining a sample (approximately forty percent) of volumes (clusters) of The Accounting Review, The Journal of Accountancy, Michigan Business Review, The American Accountant and the N.A.C.A. Bulletin. One hundred eighteen articles and eleven books and monographs are classified as “empirical” in this study. A sample was drawn from the books and monographs and classified using several recently developed taxonomies of accounting literature. This sample included works in several accounting specializations and also included works by both academic and non-academic authors from all of the journals. The empirics found in most of the studies were essential to the studies and not peripheral. However, inferential statistics were rarely used and the designs of the studies were very primitive. The sample yielded no evidence of a transition to a contemporary hypothetico-deductive paradigm. While not common, there were attempts at “positivism.” However, the authors of most financial accounting studies were concerned with normative theory. Empiricism was extensive enough and substantive enough to have had considerable influence on normative theorists and the development of the accounting literature of the period.


Author(s):  
Linda M. Rupert

This essay reflects on how the author’s wide-ranging experiences in the Peruvian Andes and the Caribbean shaped both her indirect path to the academy and her research interests. Her own and her family’s migrations throughout the twentieth century, coupled with the current world refugee crisis, have especially influenced her historical perspective on her current project. As she traces the routes and experiences of runaway Caribbean slaves who crossed political borders in search of freedom, she has come to see fugitive slaves as belonging to a wider story of refugees and asylum seekers throughout human history—one in which women have played a central and often under-recognized role.


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