Description: Meaning and Argument shifts introductory logic from the traditional emphasis on proofs to the symbolization of arguments and shows how the need for expressive power and for drawing distinctions forces formal language development.

At each stage of system elaboration and development, the book answers metalogical questions: Why is a particular formalism needed? What must go into such a formalism and why? These questions engage students in a collective inquiry which allows them to see logical studies as a human enterprise aimed at achieving well-understood purposes -- clarity and good reasoning.

This book answers its main questions by proceeding from a simple formal language to increasingly complex formal languages and by explaining the reason for each complication. The move from propositional to property predicate logic, from property predicate logic to relational predicate logic, and finally from relational predicate logic to relational predicate logic with identity is made clear to the student at each step.

The volume is ideal as an introduction to formal logic, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language.

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