John Lane Bell FRSC (born March 25, 1945) is an Anglo-Canadian philosopher, mathematician and logician. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. His research includes such topics as set theory, model theory, lattice theory, modal logic, quantum logic, constructive mathematics, type theory, topos theory, infinitesimal analysis, spacetime theory, and the philosophy of mathematics. He is the author of more than 70 articles and of 13 books. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
John Bell was awarded a scholarship to Oxford University at the age of 15, and graduated with a D.Phil. in Mathematics: his dissertation supervisor was John Crossley. During 1968–89 he was Lecturer in Mathematics and Reader in Mathematical Logic at the London School of Economics. [1]
Bell's students include Graham Priest (Ph.D. Mathematics LSE, 1972), Michael Hallett (Ph.D. Philosophy LSE, 1979), David DeVidi (Ph.D. Philosophy UWO, 1994), Elaine Landry (Ph.D. Philosophy UWO, 1997) and Richard Feist (Ph.D. Philosophy UWO, 1999).
The propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called (first-order) propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. It deals with propositions and relations between propositions, including the construction of arguments based on them. Compound propositions are formed by connecting propositions by logical connectives representing the truth functions of conjunction, disjunction, implication, biconditional, and negation. Some sources include other connectives, as in the table below.
Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal systems of logic such as their expressive or deductive power. However, it can also include uses of logic to characterize correct mathematical reasoning or to establish foundations of mathematics.
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory — as a branch of mathematics — is mostly concerned with those that are relevant to mathematics as a whole.
The history of logic deals with the study of the development of the science of valid inference (logic). Formal logics developed in ancient times in India, China, and Greece. Greek methods, particularly Aristotelian logic as found in the Organon, found wide application and acceptance in Western science and mathematics for millennia. The Stoics, especially Chrysippus, began the development of predicate logic.
In mathematical logic, the compactness theorem states that a set of first-order sentences has a model if and only if every finite subset of it has a model. This theorem is an important tool in model theory, as it provides a useful method for constructing models of any set of sentences that is finitely consistent.
Dana Stewart Scott is an American logician who is the emeritus Hillman University Professor of Computer Science, Philosophy, and Mathematical Logic at Carnegie Mellon University; he is now retired and lives in Berkeley, California. His work on automata theory earned him the Turing Award in 1976, while his collaborative work with Christopher Strachey in the 1970s laid the foundations of modern approaches to the semantics of programming languages. He has also worked on modal logic, topology, and category theory.
Foundations of mathematics are the logical and mathematical framework that allows the development of mathematics without generating self-contradictory theories, and, in particular, to have reliable concepts of theorems, proofs, algorithms, etc. This may also include the philosophical study of the relation of this framework with reality.
In mathematical logic, propositional logic and predicate logic, a well-formed formula, abbreviated WFF or wff, often simply formula, is a finite sequence of symbols from a given alphabet that is part of a formal language.
In classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and similar logical systems, the principle of explosion is the law according to which any statement can be proven from a contradiction. That is, from a contradiction, any proposition can be inferred; this is known as deductive explosion.
Francis William Lawvere was an American mathematician known for his work in category theory, topos theory and the philosophy of mathematics.
Categorical logic is the branch of mathematics in which tools and concepts from category theory are applied to the study of mathematical logic. It is also notable for its connections to theoretical computer science. In broad terms, categorical logic represents both syntax and semantics by a category, and an interpretation by a functor. The categorical framework provides a rich conceptual background for logical and type-theoretic constructions. The subject has been recognisable in these terms since around 1970.
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities by George Boole, published in 1854, is the second of Boole's two monographs on algebraic logic. Boole was a professor of mathematics at what was then Queen's College, Cork, in Ireland.
Logic is the formal science of using reason and is considered a branch of both philosophy and mathematics and to a lesser extent computer science. Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and the study of arguments in natural language. The scope of logic can therefore be very large, ranging from core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, to specialized analyses of reasoning such as probability, correct reasoning, and arguments involving causality. One of the aims of logic is to identify the correct and incorrect inferences. Logicians study the criteria for the evaluation of arguments.
In mathematical logic, algebraic logic is the reasoning obtained by manipulating equations with free variables.
Howard Jerome Keisler is an American mathematician, currently professor emeritus at University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research has included model theory and non-standard analysis.
Izak "Ieke" Moerdijk is a Dutch mathematician, currently working at Utrecht University, who in 2012 won the Spinoza prize.
Logical consequence is a fundamental concept in logic which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically follows from one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises? All of philosophical logic is meant to provide accounts of the nature of logical consequence and the nature of logical truth.
In mathematics, a collapsing algebra is a type of Boolean algebra sometimes used in forcing to reduce ("collapse") the size of cardinals. The posets used to generate collapsing algebras were introduced by Azriel Lévy in 1963.
In logic, an infinite-valued logic is a many-valued logic in which truth values comprise a continuous range. Traditionally, in Aristotle's logic, logic other than bivalent logic was abnormal, as the law of the excluded middle precluded more than two possible values for any proposition. Modern three-valued logic allows for an additional possible truth value and is an example of finite-valued logic in which truth values are discrete, rather than continuous. Infinite-valued logic comprises continuous fuzzy logic, though fuzzy logic in some of its forms can further encompass finite-valued logic. For example, finite-valued logic can be applied in Boolean-valued modeling, description logics, and defuzzification of fuzzy logic.