On the Object and the Objective Foundation of Formal Logic (A Discussion with Comrade Wang Fang-ming)

Abstract

In the Discussion column of Teaching and Research, 1957, Nos. 1-5, Comrade Wang Fang-ming (under the pen name of Ch'iu Shih [Search for Truth]) successively contributed five articles: Concerning 'Preliminary Laws and Forms of Correct Thought,' On the State of Relative Stability and Qualitative Specificity of Objective Entities, and others. In these articles he discusses a series of problems on formal logic and makes some critical comments on some popular current views in studies of logic. In the No. 6 issue of the same journal, Comrade Wang also has a paper, On Classical Formal Logic and Inductive Logic, in which he systematically and positively presents what he had offered in the previous papers. While we believe that all these papers present some beneficial points (for example, regarding problems of the relations between formal logic and philosophy and between formal logic and inductive logic), at the same time we think that they contain quite a few mistakes and even include poisonous elements o...