About

Sun-Joo Shin is a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, with research interests that include logic, philosophy of logic, history of logic, philosophy of linguistics, and philosophy of language. Her scholarly work explores the foundational aspects of logic and its applications within linguistic and philosophical contexts. She has authored significant publications such as 'The Iconic Logic of Peirce’s Graphs' published by MIT Press in 2002 and 'The Logical Status of Diagrams' published by Cambridge University Press in 1995, which contribute to the understanding of logical systems and diagrammatic reasoning. Her academic career is dedicated to advancing the study of logical structures and their philosophical implications, making her a notable figure in her field.

Research topics

• Epistemology
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Logic of relations by De Morgan and Peirce: A case study for the refinement of syllogism

  Bloomsbury Academic eBooks · 2023 · 1 citations

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  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology
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• 2. The role of diagrams in abductive reasoning

  2016-07-09 · 4 citations

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• The Mystery of Deduction and Diagrammatic Aspects of Representation

  Review of Philosophy and Psychology · 2015-01-19 · 10 citations

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• Quantifiers Are Logical Constants, but Only Ambiguously

  Synthese Library/Synthese library · 2015-01-01

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• Visual Reasoning with Diagrams

  2013-01-01 · 59 citations

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• How Do Existential Graphs Show What They Show?

  Akademie Verlag eBooks · 2012-01-01

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• The forgotten individual: diagrammatic reasoning in mathematics

  Synthese · 2012-03-19 · 15 citations

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• A History of Logic Diagrams

  Handbook of the history of logic · 2012-01-01 · 53 citations

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• Existential Graphs as an Efficient, Formal, Representation System for Logic.

  Cybernetics & human knowing · 2011-01-01

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• Peirce's alpha graphs and propositional languages

  Semiotica · 2011-01-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Many do not doubt that Peirce's Existential Graphs are diagrammatic, as opposed to symbolic. However, when we are pressured to draw a distinction between the two different forms of representation, we find ourselves at a loss and our intuition quite vague. In this paper, I locate fundamental differences between two logically equivalent systems, Peirce's Alpha system and propositional languages. Suppose we have only two sentential connectives, ¬ and ̂. In spite of its truth-functional completeness, we don't want to use this language for the translation of English sentences or as a deductive calculus. We would adopt this language only when we intend to develop logical theories. That is, it is convenient to have fewer connectives for a meta-theory, but not for practical use. So, there seems to be a trade-off between a language with fewer connectives and a language with more connectives. This view has been accepted without question. In this paper, I will argue that this trade-off is limited to linear symbolic systems and that we could have a diagrammatic system with fewer operations but no need to suffer from problems like those of a sentential language with fewer connectives. How is that possible? A comparison between Peirce's Alpha system and a propositional language is presented to answer this question. The case study identifies the following unique property of a non-linear diagrammatic system as a main source of the discrepancy between two different types of representation: One and the same diagram can be read off in more than one way by carving it up in many ways, but without ambiguity.

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Frequent coauthors

• In-Jeong Ko

  Korean Academy of Science and Technology

  3 shared

• Eric Hammer

  3 shared

• John Howse

  University of Brighton

  2 shared

• Saul Kripke

  2 shared

• Emily Grosholz

  2 shared

• Dirk Schlimm

  2 shared

• William Ewald

  2 shared

• Janet Folina

  Macalester College

  2 shared