Talmudic Reasoning

The development of explicit legal concepts and principles in rabbinic literature reflects rabbinic legal thought at its most creative and sophisticated, as many of these concepts and principles deal with abstract, metaphysical entities. In this study Leib Moscovitz systematically surveys the development and impact of abstraction and conceptualization in the various legal corpora of rabbinic literature, illustrating the critical and unique role that conceptualization plays in talmudic reasoning. He demonstrates how the analysis of rabbinic conceptualization can shed light on numerous important aspects of rabbinic scholarship, such as the character and development of rabbinic legal thought, techniques of rabbinic legal exegesis, rabbinic jurisprudence, and various philological and historical issues in rabbinics, such as the chronology of the anonymous stratum of the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbinic conceptualization, though unique in many respects, shares certain features with cognate disciplines, and this study utilizes these disciplines (mainly jurisprudence, cognitive psychology, and philosophy) to illuminate rabbinic conceptualization wherever relevant. The themes addressed in this study include the use of casuistics, generalization, and implicit conceptualization in the earlier strata of rabbinic literature, classification and legal definition, legal fictions, legal explanation, analogy and association, and the development and use of explicit legal concepts and principles in the later strata of rabbinic literature.

Drawing extensively on examples from the Gemara, this work bridges Talmudic analysis and the principles of logic. With Hebrew and facing English, detailed chapter outlines, indices and charts.

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.

Logic in the Talmud is a ‘thematic compilation’ by Avi Sion. It collects in one volume essays that he has written on this subject in Judaic Logic (1995) and A Fortiori Logic (2013), in which traces of logic in the Talmud (the Mishna and Gemara) are identified and analyzed. While this book does not constitute an exhaustive study of logic in the Talmud, it is a ground-breaking and extensive study.

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 examines in detail a number of typical lengthy passages with a view to showing how Talmudic reasoning operates and how the Talmud was compiled by its final editors.

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.

An introduction to the Talmud describes such topics as its contents, the relationship between science and medicine and Talmudic philosophy, the Talmudic lifestyle, and blessings found in the Talmud