Page 18 - Future Logic

16 FUTURE LOGIC

d. Tactics.
I try to be brief. But I also try and touch on all relevant topics. Every issue is of course
many-faceted, and capable of interminable treatment, with every layer uncovered seemingly
more crucial than the previous. I still have great quantities of unused manuscript, and
therefore know how much more remains to be said. But the reader may find that his questions
at any stage, are readily answered in a later stage, in a wider context. One cannot do
everything at once.
Often I am obliged to stop the further development of ideas. If I feel that an idea is
already drawn clearly enough, and there would be boring repetitions of previously encountered
patterns, I merely indicate the expected changes in pattern, and call on the reader to explore
further on his or her own. This may be likened to the use of perspective and shading in
artwork. Knowledge is infinite anyway, and as the saying goes ‘there is no end to words’.
The informed reader may find that there is too much elementary logic — but I am
forced to include some at first, to make the discussion comprehensible to all, and to show the
more advanced developments in their proper context. In any case, even in a discussion of
traditional logic, an expert may find novel details or viewpoints, as the various aspects of a
topic are unraveled.
I apologize to the novice for my failure to give many examples, but this disadvantage
seems to me outweighed by the advantage of brevity. I assume the reader capable of searching
for appropriate examples, and it is a good exercise. The neophyte reader is warned to beware
of our use of many words in selective, specialized senses, which may be based on common
connotations or even be neologisms; the context hopefully always makes the intention clear.
I also keep historical notes to a minimum in the course of the text, more intent on
being a logician than a historian of logic. However, an effort to attribute authorship of the
main lines of thought, is made towards the end, when I seek to place my own contributions in
their historical context. My critical evaluations of modern trends in logic are also included at
that stage.
My style of writing is no doubt not uniformly good. Repeated editing is bound to
sometimes result in obscure discontinuities in the text. Little errors may creep in. I hope the
reader will nevertheless be tolerant, because the substance is well worth it.

4. Scope.

The book is divided into 7 parts, with a total of 68 chapters; each of the chapters is
split into on average 4 sections.
Part I starts with the three ‘laws of thought’, then presents the logic of actual
categoricals (propositions of the form ‘X is Y’), including their features, their oppositions and
immediate inferences, and syllogistic argument. Most of the credit for this seminal work can
be attributed to Aristotle, although many later logicians were involved in the further
development and systematization of his findings.
Part II defines the modalities called ‘de re’, and develops the logic of modal
categoricals, following the same pattern as was established in the previous part. Although
Aristotle wrote a great deal about concepts like potentiality, and described some modal
arguments, he did not investigate this area of logic with the same thoroughness as the
previous; nor have logicians since done much more, in my opinion. I introduce some new
techniques, and arrive at some original results.
This part also, for the sake of completeness, analyses other forms of categorical
proposition (among which, those concerning change) and other logical processes (such as
‘substitution’), some of which seem to have been previously ignored or underrated.
Part III defines logical modality, and analyses logical conditioning. This concerns ‘if-
then’ (and ‘either-or’) propositions, which have been dealt with in great detail by modern
logicians. While my own results concur with theirs on the whole, my approach differs in many
respects; especially different are the definitions of logical modalities, but there are many
significant technical innovations too (such as ‘production’).
Part IV introduces ‘de re’ conditioning, whose properties are found to be very distinct
from those of logical conditioning. This is (to my knowledge) an entirely new class of