Graham Priest：Logic as Applied Mathematics

Graham Priest, a world-renowned logician and philosopher, is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Boyce Gibson Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne, and International Research Fellow at the Ruhr University of Bochum. He is known for his work on non-classical logic, metaphysics, the history of philosophy, and Buddhist philosophy.  He has published over 300 articles—in nearly every major philosophy and logic journal—and eight books—mostly with Oxford University Press.

The word ‘logic’ has many senses. Here I will understand it as meaning an account of what follows from what and why. With contemporary methodology, logic in this sense—though it may not always have been thought of in this way—is a branch of applied mathematics. This has various implications for how one understands a number of epistemological issues concerning logic. In this talk I will explain this perspective of logic, and explore some of its consequences.