I am very grateful to the Association for Symbolic Logic for inviting me to give this address—an honor which I am conscious of having done very little to deserve. My efforts during the last fifteen years (seconded by those of a number of younger collaborators, whose devoted help has meant more to me than I can adequately express) have been directed wholly towards a unified exposition of all the basic branches of mathematics, resting on as solid foundations as I could hope to provide. I have been working on this as a practical mathematician; in matters pertaining to pure logic, I must confess to being self-taught, and laboring under all the handicaps that this implies; and if, after no little self-questioning, I am speaking here today, I am doing so chiefly in order to enjoy the benefit of your professional advice and criticism, by which I hope to correct my views before I venture into print with them.

A demonstrably consistent theory of real numbers has been outlined by the writer in An extension of basic logic1 (hereafter referred to as EBL). This theory deals with non-negative real numbers, but it could be easily modified to deal with negative real numbers also. It was shown that the theory was adequate for proving a form of the fundamental theorem on least upper bounds and greatest lower bounds. More precisely, the following results were obtained in the terminology of EBL: If С is a class of U-reals and is completely represented in Κ′ and if some U-real is an upper bound of С, then there is a U-real which is a least upper bound of С. If D is a class of (U-reals and is completely represented in Κ′, then there is a U-real which is a greatest lower bound of D.

The present note introduces a constructible interpretation for the logical connectives of number theory which is divergent from that of the intuitionists. Under the intuitionistic interpretation, the principle of excluded middle and certain other classically acceptable principles of logic must be rejected. Under the present interpretation, while some classical principles may be reinstated, other principles, acceptable both classically and intuitionistically, may be shown to be invalid. Among these is the principle of contradiction.

The purpose of this note is (i) to point out an important similarity between the nominalistic system discussed by Quine in his recent paper On universals and the system of logic (the system н) developed by the author in A homogeneous system for formal logic, (ii) to offer certain corrections to the latter, and (iii) to show that that system (н) is adequate for the general theory of ancestrale and for the definition of any general recursive function of natural numbers.

Nominalism as a thesis in the philosophy of science, according to Quine, is the view that it is possible to construct a language adequate for the purposes of science, which in no wise admits classes, properties, relations, or other abstract objects as values for variables.

In an earlier article, I proposed a way of determining the relative simplicity of different sets of extralogical primitives. The calculations assumed a fully platonistic logic, committed to an indefinite hierarchy of classes, with sequences and relations defined as classes. Recently it has been shown that a nominalistic logic, countenancing no entities other than individuals, can be made to serve many of the purposes for which a platonistic logic had been thought necessary. The question naturally arises how we are to determine the simplicity of extralogical bases of systems founded upon a nominalistic logic. In such bases, the only extralogical predicates will be predicates (of one or more places) of individuals. The present paper offers a general method of measuring the simplicity of such bases.

Of the several methods for proving the completeness of sets of axioms for the prepositional calculus perhaps the simplest is due to Kalmár, although it does not appear to be widely known. In this paper we generalize Kalmár's method to indicate how to obtain a complete axiomatization of any fragment of the propositional calculus which includes material implication. We shall carry through the description and proofs for the case where, in addition to a symbol for implication, there is just one other primitive truth-function symbol. For systems in which there are no other function symbols, or more than one other such symbol, notational changes but not conceptual changes will be required.