This is My Brain on Logic

The quotes below are directly from the referenced book

This is My Brain on Logic

After years of rehabilitation and hard earned abstinence the writer had a slight relapse to the addictive habit of logic, at approximately 4:38 this am. I sought out my dealer, in his usual abode, and there squeezed between the Bible and Plato’s Republic, was “The Logic Book,” by Bergman, Moore and Nelson. My hands shook, and my teeth chattered for I knew better, but the pull was more than a mere mortal could resist, and it called out, I swear it did, “I think, therefore I am.” And I am, god-damn-it, I am! So I sniffed its pages and sucked its juice, oh, God, Why! Why!

My Brain:
“Emma has a dangerous rattlesnake in the box.”

My Brain on Logic:
“If the only thing in the box on the table is Emma’s pet rattlesnake and we add, Rx: x is a rattlesnake, to the symbolization key, we can truly say, (Aw)(Rx & Dw), for everything in the specified universe of discourse is both a rattlesnake and (presumably) dangerous. The point here is that about the only time we shall want to assert a universally quantified sentence in which either there is no binary connective or the only binary connective is ‘&’ is when the universe of discourse is restricted, for there are rather few interpretations for the predicates of PL that make, for example ‘(Ax)Dx’ and ‘(Aw)(Rx & Dw) true in an unrestricted universe of discourse. When the universe of discourse is unrestricted, we generally want to say, not that everything is thus-and-so, but rather that each thing of a certain sort is thus-and-so.”

So, there you go! Oh, there’s more…

“It is also well to note that we shall virtually never have occasion to assert a sentence in the form, (Ex)(P>Q),”

Thank God for that – if you can prove God.



This has been a Public Service announcement sponsored by Brothers Against Legalizing Logic Students.


So, I put the book back, with great caution, so as not to awaken Plato from the depths of his dark cave, and, as for the Disciples, well, they are awake and staring at me in disbelief– don’t these guys ever sleep?




PRD 1/25/05.