blog.kennypearce.net

Congratulations, Kenny! Your posts here have certainly been of the standard of those at the Prosblogion...

Which leads me to my outright plea to you: I have been reading you and the Prosblog folk, Brandon, James Chastek and others. But...I have been struggling to get to the point where the argot, including the symbolism, the notation really, is transparent enough that I can follow your arguments. And it's been a struggle that's issued in defeat more often than even a draw. Could you recommend a source, a book or even a website, that would take someone like me, able to learn, not intimidated by notational systems, with some philosophy background, and get me up to speed as quickly as possible?

I really think that the rigorous guys out there, like you, have a lot to offer guys like, well, me for instance. I'd appreciate any pointers you could give that would let me "de-hieroglyphicize" your posts, if you catch my drift.

Thanks for any help you can give. And congratulations again. Richly deserved.

Patrick

Thanks, Patrick.

I'm not sure exactly what you need, in terms of 'de-hieroglyphicizing.' If what you need is a basic primer in symbolic logic, just to know what the symbols mean and how they work, The Logic Book by Bergmannn, Moor, and Nelson is a commonly used introductory textbook. Given that you have had some philosophy background and don't mind formal notation, you might find that this book babys you a little. A shorter primer is the article "Classical Logic" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). If you have a very strong mathematical background, then you might prefer Enderton's A Mathematical Introduction to Logic, but that one is pretty intense, and stops to prove the Incompleteness Theorem along the way!

None of these covers modal logic, but the SEP article on that is quite complete.

So if what you need is a primer on logical notation, then I recommend you start with the SEP classical logic article. If you find that too dense/difficult, then pick up The Logic Book, then, either way, check out at least sections 1 and 2 of the SEP article on modal logic. That should give you most of the commonly used notation. You'll find that different authors sometimes use slightly different notation (just like in math), but once you've picked up one system then you'll probably only see one or two unfamiliar symbols at a time, so you can probably figure out what they stand for.

Hope that helps!

You're right that it's largely a result of your series, but I want to make it clear that it's not merely because you're doing the series. It's how you're interacting with these arguments. It's top-notch in terms of philosophical quality, but it doesn't seem to me to be along traditional lines within mainstream analytic philosophy of religion, and part of that is from how steeped you are in the early moderns, which is a weakness in specialties among Prosblogion contributors, so I think you'll complement the contributors already there in several ways.

Be prepared for a lot higher concentration of difficult comment threads, and there might be pretty high volume of comments there too. Every time I post there I have to worry about whether I'll have the time to respond to comments if it blows up, but often the long comment threads come from debates among commenters that don't touch the original post's arguments as closely.