Formal Languages in Logic

Catarina Dutilh Novaes is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is the author of Formalizing Medieval Logical Theories (2007).

• Introduction; 1. Two notions of formality; 2. On the very notion of a formal language; 3. The history, purposes and limitations of formal languages; 4. How we do reason, and the need for counterbalance in science; 5. Formal languages and extended cognition; 6. De-semantification; 7. The debiasing effect of formalization; Conclusion.

'Since the rise of logical empiricism, formal languages have become essential tools of doing philosophy. But why does formalization work? And what are its limitations? This book fills a crucial gap in the literature by addressing these questions from a cognitive, historical, and logical point of view. I recommend it to formal philosophers, critics of formal philosophy, and everyone with an interest in the techniques of conceptual engineering per se.' Hannes Leitgeb, Ludwig Maximilians Universität Munich