John Woods (1937-2024)
Research Area
Education
Ph.D., University of Michigan, with BA (Hons), MA. University of Toronto
Teaching
Research
Director, The Abductive Systems Group. Errors of reasoning: naturalizing the logic of inference. Models, distortion and paradigm-creep: getting the best out of falsity. A phantom-quantificatier semantics for fiction. Neuro-fuzzy argumentation networks. Aristotle’s early logic. For most of its 2400-year life, logic has been a humanities discipline. From the late 19th century onwards, logic has become a mathematical discipline, and more recently is in process of being absorbed by computer science. One of my central purposes is to investigate and, where possible promote, a grand reconciliation in logic, one in which its mathematical and computational powers would be retained and its relevance for the reasoning of actual people in the circumstances of real life be regained. Over the years, I have been drawn to two of philosophy’s oldest problems. One is how is it possible for beings like us to bear relations of any kind to nothing whatever? The other is, given the constant possibility of error, how is it possible for beings like us to achieve knowledge of the world. My goal is to help chart solutions for these problems by marshalling the resources of a humanized reconciliation in logic.
Publications
- Truth in Fiction: Rethinking its Logic, volume 391 in Synthese Library (Springer, 2018)
- Is Legal Reasoning Irrational? An introduction to the Epistemology of Law, 2nd edition revised and expanded, volume 2 of Logic and Law, (College Publications, 2018).
- Errors of Reasoning: Naturalizing the Logic of Inference (College Publications 2013)
- The Logic of Fiction A Philosophical Sounding of Deviant Logic (Mouton 1974; 2nd ed. College Publications 2009)
- A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems (with Dov M. Gabbay, two volumes, Amsterdam: North-Holland 2003, 2005.)
- The Death Of Argument Fallacies in Agent-Based Reasoning (Kluwer 2004)
- Paradox and Paraconsistency Conflict Resolution in the Abstract Sciences (Cambridge University Press 2003)
Presentation
- “The virtues and otherwise of Peircean abduction: Bias, fabrication, and deductive overindulgence”, The 2022 Presidential Address to the Charles Sanders Peirce Society, January 2022, online; available on a personal website.
- Book Symposium, Author Meets Critics, Truth in Logic: Rethinking its Logic, APA Pacific Division, Vancouver 2019.
- “Can introductory mathematical logic be accurately taught without telling fibs?” presented to the Mexican Academy of Logic, Tepic, November 2019.
- “Mathematical Logic as Mathematics, Not Logic: How it Got That Way”, the Inaugural Address to the Mexican Academy of Logic, Tepic, November 2019.
- A short course of lectures on “A naturalized semantics for fiction”, UNILOG15, a conference on Universal Logic, Istanbul, June 2015.
- A paper on “New developments in the semantics of fiction”, to be delivered to the Canadian Philosophical Association, Victoria, June 2013.
- Three lectures on “The logic of the fallacies”, to the Institute for Logic and Cognition, Sun Yat-sen University, November 2012.
- Two lectures on “The logic of abduction”, to the Institute for Logic and Cognition, Sun Yat-sen University, November 2012.
- A lecture on “The fragility of argument” to the University at large, Sun Yat-sen University November 2012.
- A lecture on “The present condition and future prospects for logic in the 21st century”, to the Logic Group, South East China Normal University, November 20