<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>The paper reviews some conceptions of logical form in the light of Andrea Iacona’s book <italic>Logical Form</italic>. I distinguish the following: logical form as schematization of natural language, provided by, for example, Aristotle’s syllogistic; the relevance to logical form of formal languages like those used by Frege and Russell to express and prove mathematical theorems; Russell’s mid-period conception of logical form as the structural cement binding propositions; the conceptions of logical form discussed by Iacona; and logical form regarded as an empirical hypothesis about the psychology of language processing, as in the Discourse Representation Theory tradition. Whereas neither schematization, nor the use of special languages for mathematics, raise general methodological or empirical difficulties, other conceptions of logical form raise at least apparent problems.</p></abstract>

The paper reviews some conceptions of logical form in the light of Andrea Iacona’s book Logical Form. I distinguish the following: logical form as schematization of natural language, provided by, for example, Aristotle’s syllogistic; the relevance to logical form of formal languages like those used by Frege and Russell to express and prove mathematical theorems; Russell’s mid-period conception of logical form as the structural cement binding propositions; the conceptions of logical form discussed by Iacona; and logical form regarded as an empirical hypothesis about the psychology of language processing, as in the Discourse Representation Theory tradition. Whereas neither schematization, nor the use of special languages for mathematics, raise general methodological or empirical difficulties, other conceptions of logical form raise at least apparent problems.

Varieties of Logical Form

Disputatio

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Varieties of Logical Form"}

The paper reviews some conceptions of logical form in the light of Andrea Iacona’s book Logical Form. I distinguish the following: logical form as...

Varieties of Logical Form

Published Online: Jan 29, 2021

Page range: 223 - 250

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2020-0011

Keywords
DRT, Frege, Iacona, logical form, Russell

© 2020 Mark Sainsbury, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Varieties of Logical Form

Published Online: Jan 29, 2021

Page range: 223 - 250

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2020-0011

KeywordsDRT, Frege, Iacona, logical form, Russell

© 2020 Mark Sainsbury, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
DRT, Frege, Iacona, logical form, Russell