The Handling of Loops in Talmudic Logic, with Application to Odd and Even Loops in Argumentation

Abstract

The Talmud is a body of arguments and discussions about all aspects of the human agent’s social, legal and religious life. It was completed over 1500 years ago and its argumentation and debates contain many logical principles and examples very much relevant to today’s research in logic, artificial intelligence, law and argumentation. In a series of books on Talmudic Logic, the authors have studied the logical prinicples involved in the Talmud, one by one, devoting a volume to each major principle We have just finished writing Volume 5, entitled Resolution of Conflicts and Normative Loops in the Talmud, and the present paper describes how the Talmud deals with even and odd loops and compares the results with open issues in argumentation. For other English papers corresponding to previous books, see [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. We start by looking at two typical loops, as in Figures 1 and 2.