A few weeks ago Jeff Bell had a post with the suggestive title ‘What is philosophy?’, referring to the eponymous work by Deleuze and Guattari. Now, as it turns out, a similar question, ‘What is logic?’, has preoccupied David Marans, a lecturer in logic at St. Thomas University in Miami, for quite some time. He thus created the Logic Gallery, a compilation of statements by philosophers and logicians across the centuries (starting with Aristotle and ending with Tim Williamson) on the nature of logic (or else comments from which one can infer the author’s conception of logic). It is a useful glimpse at the different views on logic held across time, and as such well worth spending some time on. In particular, it illustrates the early influence of the conception of logic as pertaining to debating and discussing, and the later predominance of the conception of logic as pertaining to thought and mental processes.
Marans welcomes suggestions for improvement and additional submissions. (I should perhaps add the proviso that there are no exact references to the original location of the quotes, and also that there may be some issues of translation.)
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