Related papers: The Informal Logic of Mathematical Proof
Formal logic has often been seen as uniquely placed to analyze mathematical argumentation. While formal logic is certainly necessary for a complete understanding of mathematical practice, it is not sufficient. Important aspects of…
Stephen Toulmin once observed that `it has never been customary for philosophers to pay much attention to the rhetoric of mathematical debate'. Might the application of Toulmin's layout of arguments to mathematics remedy this oversight?…
Informal mathematical text underpins real-world quantitative reasoning and communication. Developing sophisticated methods of retrieval and abstraction from this dual modality is crucial in the pursuit of the vision of automating discovery…
Douglas Walton's multitudinous contributions to the study of argumentation seldom, if ever, directly engage with argumentation in mathematics. Nonetheless, several of the innovations with which he is most closely associated lend themselves…
Although most of the automated theorem-proving approaches depend on formal proof systems, informal theorem proving can align better with large language models' (LLMs) strength in natural language processing. In this work, we identify a…
Formal mathematics is mathematics done within the framework of a formal logic. It offers major benefits to mathematicians as well as to computing professionals, engineers, and scientists who use mathematics in their work. The standard…
This essay considers the special character of mathematical reasoning, and draws on observations from interactive theorem proving and the history of mathematics to clarify the nature of formal and informal mathematical language. It proposes…
Artificial intelligence assisted mathematical proof has become a highly focused area nowadays. One key problem in this field is to generate formal mathematical proofs from natural language proofs. Due to historical reasons, the formal proof…
We address the problem of translating informal mathematical proofs expressed in natural language into formal proofs in Lean4 under a constrained computational budget. Our approach is grounded in two key insights. First, informal proofs tend…
We develop a model of abduction in abstract argumentation, where changes to an argumentation framework act as hypotheses to explain the support of an observation. We present dialogical proof theories for the main decision problems (i.e.,…
The use of logical systems for problem-solving may be as diverse as in proving theorems in mathematics or in figuring out how to meet up with a friend. In either case, the problem solving activity is captured by the search for an…
Debates concerning philosophical grounds for the validity of classical and intuitionistic logics often have the very nature of logical proofs as one of the main points of controversy. The intuitionist advocates for a strict notion of…
Real-life conjectures do not come with instructions saying whether they they should be proven or, instead, refuted. Yet, as we now know, in either case the final argument produced had better be not just convincing but actually verifiable in…
The concept of informal mathematical proof considered in intuitionism is apparently vulnerable to a version of the liar paradox. However, a careful reevaluation of this concept reveals a subtle error whose correction blocks the…
In order to work with mathematical content in computer systems, it is necessary to represent it in formal languages. Ideally, these are supported by tools that verify the correctness of the content, allow computing with it, and produce…
Logic has proved essential for formally modeling software based systems. Such formal descriptions, frequently called specifications, have served not only as requirements documentation and formalisation, but also for providing the…
Computational Logic is the use of computers to establish facts in a logical formalism. Originating in 19th-century attempts to understand the nature of mathematical reasoning, the subject now comprises a wide variety of formalisms,…
The present paper provides an analysis of the existing proof systems for dynamic epistemic logic from the viewpoint of proof-theoretic semantics. Dynamic epistemic logic is one of the best known members of a family of logical systems which…
To adequately model mathematical arguments the analyst must be able to represent the mathematical objects under discussion and the relationships between them, as well as inferences drawn about these objects and relationships as the…
The persisting gap between the formal and the informal mathematics is due to an inadequate notion of mathematical theory behind the current formalization techniques. I mean the (informal) notion of axiomatic theory according to which a…