THE LOGIC OF IMPLICATION

The principles that AN INSTANCE OF A CLASS IS THE CLASS and A CLASS IS AN INSTANCE OF ITSELF allow for the so called LAWS OF THOUGHT 1. IDENTITY - WHAT IS, IS. 2. CONTRADICTION - NOTHING BOTH IS and IS NOT. 3. EXCLUDED MIDDLE - EVERYTHING IS or IS NOT. and allow us to adopt a bivalent system. Everything essential for primary logic is provided. Though this is not the place to discuss it, it should be noted that the development of general logic with its current theories of class, identity and natural numbers could take a very different course from the one it currently pursues. Human thought would have had to evolve to a high level of development before any systematic attempt to analyse it could have been made. It seems it was in the floruit of the Greek civilisation that this attempt was first made. The issues in this paper were of prime concern to those ancient thinkers and their achievements were considerable. Since those times further developments have occurred, many of which they would not have dreamed, but to this day there are still great issues that have not been resolved. The state of the art leaves much to be desired and it is my hope that this paper will contribute to its progress. If the ideas in this paper are true, then it seems we have come across the very origins of human rationality. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.