# Are all symbolic logic questions on-topic?

I realise that Math SE $\neq$ Philosophy SE, but what questions of logic can be posed? Particularly, can any question of logic involving symbols be asked here? (This is what I mean by 'symbolic logic' in the question title; please advise if I've erred).

Logic in Philosophy vs. Mathematical Logic inspired this question. I'm unversed in logic or philosophy, but am confused by the allowance of

contrary to the closures of the following, NOT by reason of being duplicates:

6. https://math.stackexchange.com/a/867804/53259 (cp the answer which does employ symbols)
7. https://math.stackexchange.com/q/1038895/53259

• If you are looking for consistency in the closure of questions on math se, you are in for a rude awakening. – Gerry Myerson Mar 8 '15 at 6:00
• Your first example of closed question doesn't contain any symbol, so I'm not sure how it can be classified as "symbolic logic". It seems rather to be a problem of interpreting a natural language sentence... Agree or disagree with the closure, but that's much more of a gray area. Your second example wasn't closed because of topicness, it was closed because it was "not a real question". And I agree, "do anyone here post any comments" is hardly a focused question that can be reasonably answered with a definitive answer... – Najib Idrissi Mar 8 '15 at 8:52
• @NajibIdrissi Thank you for your elucidation; I've enumerated the questions for clarity. About 6 (which you commented on), I had meant to refer to the answer, which does use symbols. About 7, I changed the question because I admit that I don't fully understand the amterial of the original. – Accounting Mar 8 '15 at 19:25
• Note that the current #7 was not closed for being off-topic, but as "unclear what you're asking". Apparently the closevoters either couldn't recognize the kind of puzzle from the OP's description, or they felt it to be ill-defined what it was he was asking about those puzzles. If it's the latter, I tend to agree with them, even though I took a shot at answering -- while I was writing it turned out that the OP already seemed to know that the problem type corresponds to a SAT variant, so I'm wondering too which kind of answer he expected. – hmakholm left over Monica Mar 8 '15 at 23:11
• Symbolic logic $\neq$ "logic involving symbols". Symbolic logic to a mathematician is apt to mean the study of logic formalized with symbols. The first-order logic known as "predicate calculus" is a well-studied system of this kind. Philosophers now tend to adopt this "artificial language" approach in order to avoid ambiguity. Your example 7 seems more of a combinatorics problem. – hardmath Mar 9 '15 at 13:39

As far as subject matter goes, symbolic logic is certainly within the scope of Math.SE. However there are other criteria that could make a Question about symbolic logic off-topic here.

Community members are exercising judgement in each close vote cast; it's not an automated decision. So an element of subjective opinion on each vote is inevitable.

That granted, the most common situation I vote to close as off-topic Questions about math-related problems is that the post lacks a sufficient context. The poser may in the extreme merely have posted a cellphone image of a homework assignment before reading it in enough detail to understand what the problem is about.

In this regard I look for some indication that a Question reflects at least a first effort on the part of the OP to solve it themselves.