Mathematical Logic

Chapter 1. MISSION OF MATHEMATICAL LOGIC

Module 1.1 ABOUT LOGIC
Welcome to the course! My name is Valentin Zyuzkov. We are beginning our
study of a most interesting science – mathematical logic.
As the name suggests, we will be dealing both with mathematics and logic.
That is why we first need to briefly talk about these two sciences. Let us focus on
logic fist. And first of all we need to define logic.
Let us begin with a humorous definition given by Ambrose Bierce. Ambrose
Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, and author of short humorous and
horror stories. In his book The Devil’s Dictionary he offers a definition of logic. Here
you can see the brief definition. Bierce is quite skeptical about human abilities in his
definition. The basis of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor
premise and a conclusion. Ambrose Bierce offers the following example of a
syllogism: “Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man”,
which is the major premise. The minor premise is that “One man can dig a post-hole
in sixty seconds; therefore — ”the conclusion is that “Sixty men can dig a post-hole in
one second”. Something about this syllogism doesn’t feel right, does it? It seems
wrong, and we are unlikely to agree with the conclusion. Why is it so? Give it a
thought.
The following definition was given by Nikolai Nepeivoda, a Russian
mathematician, logician and IT expert. He offers a more formal definition. He says
that logic is a science that studies the formal notions, methods of definition and
transformation, related inferences and structures of demonstrative inferences. Logic is
only dealing with the form of our thoughts, but not with their substance. The
multitude of substances can be fitted into a limited number of forms. Putting it imply,
logic is concerned with vessels: bottles, buckets, barrels, but not with whatever they
contain. In that respect, logic is not unlike grammar which also studies linguistic
forms while abstracting from semantics.
As an example of the way grammar works, which is similar to how logic
works, let us look at an abstract from Jabberwocky, a poem by the English writer,
mathematician, logician and deacon Lewis Carroll. He is best known for his novels
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The following
abstract is a piece of the poem Jabberwocky that is found in Through the Looking-
Glass: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy
were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe”. Our knowledge of grammar
allows us to identify the subject and predicate in the text, we can tell which words are
prepositions and which are nouns, what their case is, even though we have no idea
what these words mean. As Alice says, the poem seems to fill our heads with ideas,
only we don't exactly know what they are. And just like the poem, logic gives us the
idea about the forms of thoughts. Unlike art or crafts, science cannot operate without
proof. Simply put, proof is the bricks that make up scientific knowledge, and logic is
the cement that binds the bricks. A good idea has no merit if it cannot be supported by
proof. That is why it has to be rationally justified, which is impossible to do without a
sound and reliable logical foundation. Proof offers rational transition from premise
that we consider to be true, but we have to justify or prove such premise, in other
words, to produce a conclusion, and the premise is a fundamental assumption which
we need to accept, even if temporarily, to prove it. The premise can be established in a
variety of ways: logically, experimentally - based on observation or experiments, or
based on some preexisting, already proven ideas. Transition from premise to
conclusion is facilitated by reasoning. Reliability of proof in general is determined by
the reliability, truthfulness of premise.
There are two forms of demonstrative argumentation: deduction and induction.
Ambrose Bierce offers demonstrative reasoning when he proposes a syllogism, and
that syllogism is an example of deduction. When we follow deductive reasoning, we
infer the conclusion from the premise, and, if done properly, deduction guarantees that
our conclusion will be true, provided that our premise was true. A classic example of
a syllogism that has been known since the times of the Ancient Greeks and will be
found in all textbooks on mathematical logic: “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man,
therefore Socrates is mortal.” But the laws of logic will apply equally to situations
where the premise is true and where the premise is false. As an example, consider the
following syllogism: “All Martians have wooden legs. Heracles is a Martian;
therefore, Heracles has wooden legs.” In this example, the initial assumption, the
premise is false, the conclusion is false, but the reasoning itself, the syllogism itself is
true. The conclusion of a deductive reasoning is already included in the premise, and
when applying deduction, we do not produce any new information. It is therefore
impossible to accept the premise and reject the conclusion - that would lead to self-
contradiction.
An alternative type of reasoning is called induction. Typical inductive
reasoning derives the general law or principle from specific observation. As an
example, let us consider the following inductive premise: “Ample observation has
shown that mammals give birth to their offspring.” And that premise appears to be
true, and we can make an inductive conclusion that apparently all mammals give birth
to their offspring. But that seemingly true premise turned out to be false when in 1606
platypus and echidna - the egg-laying mammals - were discovered in Australia.
Inductive reasoning always reaches outside the premise, and in this case the premise
does not guarantee that the conclusion will be true, it only assumes that such
conclusion can be made. Inductive reasoning involves generalizations and
extrapolations of various kinds, transitions from the general to the particular, from the
observable to the non-observable, from the past to the present and the future.
Thank you for attention!