Philosophy And History Of Talmudic Logic

The Talmud introduces a specific logical hermeneutics, completely different from the Ancient Greek logic. This hermeneutics first appeared within the Babylonian legal tradition established by the Sumerians and Akkadians to interpret the first legal codes in the world and to deduce trial decisions from the codes by logical inference rules. The purpose of this book is (i) to examine the Talmudic hermeneutics from the point of view of its meaning for contemporary philosophy and logic as well as (ii) to evaluate the genesis of Talmudic hermeneutics which began with the Sumerian/Akkadian legal tradition. The logical hermeneutics of the Talmud is a part of the Oral Torah that was well expressed by the Tannaim, the first Judaic commentators of the Bible, for inferring Judaic laws from the Holy Book. The authors who have contributed to this volume were asked, first of all, to consider the Talmudic hermeneutics from the standpoint of modern philosophy: symbolic logic, rhetoric, analytic philosophy, pragmatics and so on. On the one hand, the authors are interested in possibilities to import some modern philosophical and logical methods into the Talmudic study, and on the other, are interested in possibilities to export new logical principles from the Talmud which are innovative to contemporary philosophy and logic.

This is a new presentation of the philosophy of the Talmud. The Talmud is not a work of formal philosophy, but much of what it says is relevant to philosophical enquiry, including issues explored in contemporary debates. In particular, the Talmud has original ideas about the relation between universal ethics and the ethics of a particular community. This leads into a discussion on the relation between morality and ritual, and also about the epistemological role of tradition. The book explains the paradoxes of Talmudic Judaism as arising from a philosophy of revolution, stemming from Jewish origins as a band of escaped slaves, determined not to reproduce the slave-society of Egypt. From this arises a daring humanism, and an emphasis on justice in this world rather than on other-worldly spirituality. A strong emphasis on education and the cultivation of rationality also stems from this. Governing the discussion is a theory of logic that differs significantly from Greek logic. Talmudic logic is one of analogy, not classification and is peculiarly suited to discussions of moral and legal human situations. This book will be of interest to those in the fields of philosophy, religion and the history of ideas, whether students, teachers and academics, or the interested general reader.

This book puts forward new logical systems suitable for modelling Talmudic and Biblical reasoning and argumentation. The Talmud is very logical. It is said that when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, He also gave him additional laws and rules of logic to enable human beings to derive more laws. Together with colleagues the authors have already written 8 books on the logic of the Talmud and the project will involve 15-20 volumes. The authors have discovered principles which can be exported to current research in scientific communities, as well as human common sense reasoning and laws as tackled by religious thinking. Topics in this book include: 1 Non-deductive Inference in the Talmud: The book includes a new topological matrix method for analogical reasoning, completely new to existing AI methods which rely on metric distances. 2 The Textual Inference Rules Klal uPrat. How the Bible Defines Sets: Traditional set theoretic methods for defining sets are either by enumeration of its elements or by a predicate formula. The biblical way is a common sense combination of the two, approximating the set from above and from below by predicates, supplemented by a small number of typical members of the set. 3 Talmudic Deontic Logic: The Talmud has its own Deontic Logic, free of the traditional paradoxes. 4 Temporal Logic in the Talmud: The Talmud allows for special conditionals with antecedents depending on the future and consequents valid in the present. This new type of logic allows for backwards causality and connects with aspects of Quantum Logic. 5 Resolution of Conflicts and Normative Loops in the Talmud: The book deals with Talmudic loop checking methods that can be widely applied to handling loops in AI and logic. 6 Delegation and Representation in Talmudic Logic: Talmudic systems of delegation are innovative and apply to modern day to day computer delegation and access control. This book is of great interest to researchers in AI and Law, in Argumentation theory, and in Pure and Applied logical systems, as well as students of Talmudic reasoning and debate.

Judaic logic: A Formal Analysis of Biblical, Talmudic and Rabbinic Logic is an original inquiry into the forms of thought determining Jewish law and belief, from the impartial perspective of a logician. Judaic Logic attempts to honestly estimate the extent to which the logic employed within Judaism fits into the general norms, and whether it has any contributions to make to them.

The question arises whether logic was given to us by God or whether it is the result of human evolution. I believe that at least the modus ponens rule ( A and if A then B implies B) is inherent in humans, but probably many other modern systems (e.g., resource logic, non - monotonic logic etc.) are the result of humans adapating to the environment. It is therefore of interest to study and compare the way logic is used in ancient cultures as well as the way logic is going to be used in our 21st century. This welcome book studies and compares the way formation of logic in three cultures: Ancient Greek (4th century B.C.), Judaic (1st century B.C. – 1st century A.D.) and Indo-Buddhist (2nd century A.D.) The book notes that logic became especially popular during the period of late antiquity in countries covered by the international trade of the Silk Road. This study makes a valuable contribution to the history of logic and to the very understanding of the origions and nature of logical thinking. -Prof. Dov Gabbay, King's College London, UK Andrew Schumann in his book demonsrates that logic step-by-step arose in different places and cultural circles. He argues that if we apply a structural-genealogical method, as well as turn to various sources, particularly, religious, philosophical, linguistic, etc., then we can obtain a more general and more adequate picture of emengence and development of logic. This book is a new and very valuable contribution to the history of logic as a manifestation of the human mind. - Prof. Jan Wolenski, Jagiellonian University, Poland The author of the Archaeology of Logic defends the claim, calling it "logic is aftter all", which sees logical competence as a practical skill that people began to learn in antiquity, as soom as they realized that avoiding cognitive biases in their reasoning would make their daily activities more successful. The in-depth reading of the book with its diving into the comparative quotations in the long dead or hardly known to most of us languages like Sumerian-Akkadian, Aramatic, Hebrew and etc, will be rewarded by the response that the logical competence is diverse and it can be trained, despite the inevitabilitiy of the reasoning fallacies; and that critical discussions and agaonal character of the social lide are the necessary tools for that. - Prof. Elena Lisanyuk

A FORTIORI LOGIC: INNOVATIONS, HISTORY AND ASSESSMENTS, by Avi Sion, is a wide-ranging and in-depth study of a fortiori reasoning, comprising a great many new theoretical insights into such argument, a history of its use and discussion from antiquity to the present day, and critical analyses of the main attempts at its elucidation. Its purpose is nothing less than to lay the foundations for a new branch of logic, and greatly develop it; and thus to once and for all dispel the many fallacious ideas circulating regarding the nature of a fortiori reasoning.

Wide-ranging and astutely argued, Talmud and Philosophy examines the intersections, partitions, and mutual illuminations and problematizations of Western philosophy and the Talmud. Among many philosophers, the Talmud has been at best an idealized and remote object and, at worst, if noticed at all, an object of curiosity. The contributors to this volume collectively ignite and probe a new mode of inquiry by approaching the very question of partitions, conjunctions, and disjunctions between the Talmud and philosophy as the guiding question of their inquiry. Rather than using the Talmud and its modes of argumentation to develop existing philosophical themes, these essays probe the question of how the Talmud as an intellectual discipline sheds new light on the unfolding of philosophy in the history of thought.

The Talmud - the Mishnah, a philosophical law code, and the Gemara, a dialectical commentary upon the Mishnah - works by translating principal modes of Western philosophy and science into the analysis of the rules of rationality governing the rules of humble, everyday reality. Science, in particular the method of hierarchical classification characteristic of natural history, supplies the method of making connections and drawing conclusions to the Mishnah, the law-code that forms the foundation-document of the Talmud, as Neusner demonstrated in his Judaism as Philosophy. The Method and Message of the Mishnah. Here he proceeds to show how philosophy, specifically dialectical analysis, defines the logic of the Gemara and guides the writers of the Gemara's compositions and the compilers of its composites in their analysis and amplification of some of the topical presentations, or tractates, of the Mishnah.