Once upon a time rhetoric was a vast and influential branch of learning, closely tied to Grammar and to Logic within the famous mediaeval Trivium. Nowadays it does not appear in research programmes nor in curricula, and historical studies alone mention it as a venerable monument of the past. On the other hand, the career of its sister disciplines Grammar and Logic has been a real success story.
Author(s): Witold Marciszewski
Series: Foundations of communication and cognition
Publisher: W. de Gruyter
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 312
City: Berlin
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: On the Rhetorical Point of View
1. Why rhetoric declined, and what remained of it
2. Descartes, Leibniz and Pascal facing a crisis in logic
Chapter Two: Mind-Philosophical Logic as a Theory of Intelligence
1. A terminological introduction
2. A case study and methodological comments
3. Conceptual potential and conceptual engineering
Chapter Three: Formalized versus Intuitive Arguments. The Historical Background
1. On how geometry and algebra influenced logic
2. The Renaissance reformism and intuitionism in logic
3. Leibniz on the mechanization of arguments
Chapter Four: Towards the Logic of General Names
1. From syllogistic to the calculus of classes
2. The existential import of general names
3. What names stand for: an exercise in Plato
Chapter Five: The Truth-Functional Calculus and the Ordinary Use of Connectives
1. The functional approach to logic
2. The truth-functional analysis of denial and conjunction
3. The truth-functional analysis of disjunction
4. The truth-functional analysis of conditionals
Chapter Six: The Predicate Calculus
1. Subject, predicate, quantifiers
2. Quantification rules, interpretation, formal systems
3. Predicate logic compared with natural logic
Chapter Seven: Reasoning, Logic, and Intelligence
1. Does a logical theory improve natural intelligence?
2. The internal logical code in human bodies
3. The problem of generalization in the internal code
4. What intelligent generalization depends on
5. The role of a theory for intelligent generalization
6. Logic and geography of mind: mental kinds of reasoning
7. Formal (‘blind’) reasoning and artificial intelligence
Chapter Eight: Defining, Logic, and Intelligence
1. The ostension procedure as a paradigm of definition
2. Normal definitions of predicates and names
3. The holistic doctrine of definition
4. Implicit definitions and conclusive conceptualization
Chapter Nine: Symbolic Logic and Objectual Reasoning. Case Studies
1. On the case study method
2. Cicero’s reasoning in the light of symbolic logic
3. Martha’s objectual reasoning matched by symbolic logic
4. Aspasia’s argument confronted with predicate logic
Chapter Ten: Implicit Definitions and Conceptual Networks. Case Studies
1. A connectivist approach
2. The contrastive background: a definition for computers
3. The case of a definition in the food market
4. The case of nonexistent Geist and similar cases
The Postscript as a Book-Network Interface Material versus Formal Arguments
References
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
Extended Table of Contents
