Question I aced a basic logic class in college that covered both sentential and predicate logic. I am interested in furthering my skills in symbolic logic, but I don't know how. My school doesn't offer any upper-level logic courses. I'm thinking I would like to buy a simple textbook for a more in-depth study of the more advanced concepts (I've heard the term "modal logic" thrown around, but I don't know what that is). Can you suggest a good text or author I should investigate?

Accepted:
August 19, 2010

Comments

Shame on your school! :-)After a basic logic you can either go deeper (more of the same, but pursued to greater depth), or go wider (look at logics that deal with more than do sentential and predicate logic -- modal logic, for example, which has primitive operators for "necessarily" and "possibly" -- and also look at rivals to classical logic.

Going a bit deeper: try David Bostock Intermediate Logic, OUP; Ian Chiswell & Wilfrid Hodges, Mathematical Logic, OUP (not as advanced as its title might suggest).

Going a bit wider: try Rod Girle, Modal Logics and Philosophy, Acumen; Graham Priest, An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic (2nd edn: CUP).

Some of each: John Bell, David DeVidi, Graham Solomon, Logical Options (Broadview Press).

Peter might also have mentioned his book, An Introduction to Gödel's Theorems, and the similarly targeted book by George Boolos, John Burgess, and Richard Jeffrey, Computability and Logic. Both are standard texts used in intermediate logic courses.