This book provides a rigorous introduction to the basic concepts and results of contemporary logic. It also presents, in two unhurried chapters, the mathematical tools (mainly from set theory) that are needed to master the technical aspects of the subject. Methods of definition and proof are also discussed at length, with special emphasis on inductive definitions and proofs and recursive definitions. The book is ideally suited for readers who want to undertake a serious study of logic but lack the mathematical background that other texts at this level presuppose. It can be used as a textbook...

This volume comprises nine lively and insightful essays by leading scholars on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing mainly on his early work. The essays are written from a range of perspectives and do not belong to any one exegetical school; they approach Wittgenstein's work directly, seeking to understand it in its own terms and by reference to the context in which it was produced. The contributors cover a wide range of aspects of Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but three central themes emerge: the relationship between Wittgenstein's account of representation and Russell's...

Jose L. Zalabardo puts forward a new interpretation of central ideas in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus concerning the structure of reality and our representations of it in thought and language. He shows the origins of Wittgenstein's picture theory of propositional representation in Russell's theories of judgment, arguing that the picture theory is Wittgenstein's solution to some of the problems that he found in Russell's position. Zalabardo defends the view that, for Wittgenstein, facts in general, and the facts that play the role of propositions in particular, are not...