An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, Second Edition: From If to Is (Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy)

Beautiful book. I learned in hours what I had been trying to learn for months. The only bad thing is now I'm spoiled and feel like any presentation of a logical system not done by Priest isn't clear enough for me.

no comment

very easy to understand and extremely clear, that was unexpected!

If you are like me and find the tableaux method, alternatively referred to as "truth trees," annoying preferring the axiom approach then this is not the book for you. If you are indifferent or enjoy the tableaux method then this is an excellent book that would be a five star rating for you. It depends on your logical proclivities.

It totally did. Actually, the books is way better than I was expecting.

Priest does a wonderful job in explaining a surprisingly wide spectrum of non-classical logics, with a crystal-clear style, from both the mathematical and the philosophical point of views.For those who are only used to classical logic, this book is simply illuminating.Some points need to be improved though : the list of symbols is missing and the index is far from complete...The difficulty of part II is not due so much to the intrinsic intricacies but mostly to the constant need to review the corresponding chapters of part I... But this is unavoidable if one wants to include quantifiers and identity... And, here again, Priest does a terrific job in unifying the underlying concepts of possible-worlds semantics.This book now stands in my list of outstanding books on logic :1. A. Tarski's "Introduction to Logic", a jewel, followed by P. Smith's superb entry-point "An introduction to Formal logic" and the lovely "Logic, a very short introduction" by Graham Priest2. D. Goldrei's "Propositional and Predicate calculus"3. Wilfrid Hodges' "Logic", followed by Smullyan's "First-order logic".4. P. Smith's "An introduction to Gödel's theorems".5. Kleene's "Introduction to metamathematics" & "Mathematical Logic".6. G. Priest's " Introduction to non-classical logic".Hence forgetting altogether Van Dalen's indigestible "Logic & Stucture" as well asthe even more indigestible Enderton, Mendelson & al...

I've had this book on my shelf for a while, and I'm glad I finally read it. It is clear, organized, and well-written. Each chapter covers a different system of logic and has: some background motivation, the definitions and explanation of the semantics, worked examples using tableaux to visualize the logic, and some philosophical discussion. There is a lot of material, but it is not at all overwhelming.

The author has apparently never heard of free-prose, as every paragraph is numbered! Odd style aside, its a fairly complete compendium of non-classical logics.