ЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ФОРМЫ

Logical Forms

Ways of constructing, expressing, and connecting ideas (and partial ideas) in the process of cognition, irrespective of their concrete meaning. These forms have taken shape in the course of man's socio-historical development and have a universally human character; they are forms of the reflection of reality in thought and themselves reflect the most general features of reality (e.g., the fact that every object has certain qualities, exists in certain relations to other objects, that objects form classes, that certain phenomena cause other phenomena, etc.).

Logical Forms, such as concepts, judgements, inferences, proofs and definitions, are studied in formal logic. In cognition, the use of one or another Logical Form is determined by the character of the content reflected in thought. In language, Logical Forms are expressed by the grammatical structure of the expressions involved and also by the use of particular words ("all", "no", "certain", "or", "if ... then", "only", etc.), which indicate a corresponding logical structure of thought.

In mathematical logic, Logical Forms are expressed by constructing logical calculi whose formulas correspond to expressions in the natural language; the structure formulas and the rules for operating them in a calculus reproduce Logical Forms, so that these calculi act as special logical, or formalized languages (see Formalization, Logical Syntax). In dialectical logic, Logical Forms are studied from the point of view of how the changing and developing reality and the development of cognition itself are reflected in thought.