First-Order Modal Logic

This revised edition of the highly recommended book First-Order Modal Logic originally published in 1998 contains both new and modified chapters reflecting the latest scientific developments. Fitting and Mendelsohn present a thorough treatment of first-order modal logic together with some propositional background. They adopt throughout a threefold approach. Semantically they use possible world models; the formal proof machinery is tableaus; and full philosophical discussions are provided of the way that technical developments bear on well-known philosophical problems. The book covers quantification itself including the difference between actualist and possibilist quantifiers; equality leading to a treatment of Frege's morning star/evening star puzzle; the notion of existence and the logical problems surrounding it; non-rigid constants and function symbols; predicate abstraction which abstracts a predicate from a formula in effect providing a scoping function for constants andfunction symbols leading to a clarification of ambiguous readings at the heart of several philosophical problems; the distinction between nonexistence and nondesignation; and definite descriptions borrowing from both Fregean and Russellian paradigms.<div><div><br></div><div>Review of the First Edition: </div><div>This Text is an excellent and most useful volume. It is pitched correctly: the exercises are just right... It sets a high standard for anything following. It is to be highly recommended. <br><em>(Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 8:3)</em><br></div></div>