Précis of Signs of Logic

Signs of Logic is about several topics in logic, widely conceived under Peircean themes, as well as about their contemporary applications to language, semantics, pragmatics and computation. The title Signs of Logic is meant to be interpreted via Peirce’s logical notions and his thinking in two ways: first, in terms of what we know today about logic, language and formal philosophy (and this requires occasionally making some one-and-a-half truths about Peirce) and second, in terms of their systematic historical emergence and development. Accordingly, as the title is not “Logic of Signs ” it is not intended to be very much about signs or semiotics. I take seriously Peirce’s assertion that logic is semeiotic, and that semeiotic is to be studied as formal semantics and formal pragmatics. In assessing this assertion, I take the order of interest for Peirce to have been first logic, then mathematics, then special sciences, and then philosophy (Philosophy of course merges with the others). The theory of signs, let alone their classification, was in a sense pastime for him. The mere classification of signs does not yield any interesting insights into deep questions in logic or philosophy, though I admit that Peirce may have occasionally thought otherwise; so muc