The Talmudic Logic Project, Ongoing Since 2008

Abstract

We describe the state of the Talmudic Logic project as of end of 2019. The Talmud is the most comprehensive and fundamental work of Jewish religious law, employing a large number of logical components centuries ahead of their time. In many cases the basic principles are not explicitly formulated, which makes it difficult to formalize and make available to the modern student of Logic. This project on Talmudic Logic, aims to present logical analysis of Talmudic reasoning using modern logical tools. We investigate principles of Talmudic Logic and publish a series of books, one book or more for each principle. http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/stl/ The series begins with the systematic analysis of Talmudic inference rules. The first book shows that we can present Talmudic reasoning intuitions as a systematic logical system basic to modern non-deductive reasoning, such as Argumentum A Fortiori, Abduction and Analogy. The second book offers a systematic common sense method for intuitively defining sets and claims that this method adequately models the Talmudic use of the rules Klal uPrat. These books also criticize modern Talmudic research methodology. Later books deal with additional topics like Deontic logic, and Temporal logic, Agency and processes in the Talmud and more. The aims of the project are two fold:To import into the Talmudic study modern logical methods with a view to help understand complicated Talmudic passages, which otherwise cannot be addressed.To export from the Talmud new logical principles which are innovative and useful to modern contemporary logic.