The Subject and Prospects of Development of Logic

Abstract

The article discusses a subject of logic and some prospects for its development. It is argued that logic is the science of thinking. That is, thinking is an object of the science of logic. The subject of logic is a special structure of thoughts and thinking processes which is called (quite unsuccessfully, according to the author of the article) forms of thoughts and processes of thinking. These structures are discovered by partial abstraction from both semantic and substantive meanings of non-logical terms which are included in the language expressions that represent thoughts and processes of thinking. The modern logic differs from the traditional logic in using methods which are similar to mathematical methods — methods of symbolic logic. However, it preserves all achievements of traditional logic which are important for both scientific and everyday knowledge. The logic that is described in some textbooks published in the forties of the last century in the USSR is called surrogate. There are said to be empirical and theoretical levels of research in logic, as well as logic and “as-if-logic”, classical and nonclassical logics. The prospects for the development of “as-if-logic” and the logic itself are under discussion. The usefulness of research in the field of “as-if-logic” is highlighted — there can be created a range of “as-if-logical” systems with some of them being interpreted as actual logical systems itself afterwards. There can be developed new methods for proving metatheorems, which will be applied in proving some results concerning actual logical systems. Two directions are indicated to be prospects for the development of logic — empirical and theoretical researches. Possible applications of quasi-matrix logic in the field of logic as well as in the other areas of cognition are identified. DOI: 10.21146/2074-1472-2018-24-1-115-128