Calendar

I shall discuss some of the issues concerning a notorious doctrine of Frege that sentences are names of truth-values. I am interested in a problem raised by Kripke that the doctrine obscures the distinction between judgeable and unjudgeable contents. I shall present what I take to be Frege’s account of judgeable content. A proper expression of a judgeable content, for Frege, is susceptible to an analysis into a predicate and an argument-word, where a predicate is understood as a concept-word used to attribute a certain property to the referent of the argument-word. In the light of this analysis, I shall argue that the doctrine does not obscure the distinction. The problem will also be discussed within the formal context of Grundgesetze. A new light will be shed on his rather peculiar conception of the symbol ‘|-’.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that Dongwoo Kim (PhD student, Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center) will deliver the third Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Thursday, March 7, 2019, from 4:30 to 6:30 in room 6495 of the CUNY Graduate Center.

Two proof-systems P and P* are said to be complementary when one proves exactly the non-theorems of the other. Complementary systems come as a particular kind of refutation calculi whose patterns of inference always work by inferring unprovable conclusions form unprovable premises. In the first part of my talk, I will focus on LK*, the sequent system complementing Gentzen’s system LK for classical logic. I will show, then, how to enrich LK* with two admissible (unary) cut rules, which allow for a simple and efficient cut-elimination algorithm. In particular, two facts will be highlighted: 1) for any given provable sequent, complementary cut-elimination always returns one of its simplest proofs, and 2) provable LK* sequents turn out to be “deductively polarized” by the empty sequent. In the second part, I will observe how an alternative complementary sequent system can be obtained by slightly modifying the Gentzen-Schütte system G3. I will finally show how this move could pave the way for a novel approach to multi-valuedness and proof-theoretic semantics for classical logic.

Russell proved over a century ago that a naive conception of structured propositions is inconsistent. Hodes (2015), Dorr (2016), and Goodman (2017) have recently reformulated Russell’s argument in the language of higher-order logic, and concluded from it that distinctions in reality cannot always reflect all the syntactic structure of the language in which we draw those distinctions. But they also float the idea that such distinctions might nevertheless have sentence-like structure, so long as this structure fails to neatly correspond to the syntactic structure of the sentences we use to draw those distinction. Perhaps, that is, the popular metaphor of facts being like sentences written in God’s “book of the world” is tenable after all. In this talk I’ll give a way of making this metaphor precise, and prove a new limitative result showing that, given natural assumptions, it too is inconsistent.

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

Two ways of giving an epistemic justification of basic logical principles will be introduced, intuition-based accounts and concept or meaning constitution-based accounts. We will briefly consider different versions of these views and argue that they face parallel dilemmas. While ‘robust’ accounts are subject to what I call the ‘adoption problem,’ ‘weak’ accounts fail to ground our basic inferential dispositions. Either way, intuitions and meaning-constituting rules turn out to be irrelevant. A more general moral for the epistemology of logic and its priorities will be drawn from the discussion.

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

Abstract: I provide a truth-maker semantics for the conditional and consider the application to imperative and deontic conditionals.

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

AY 2018 – 19 Workshop Schedule

Propositional dynamic logic (PDL) is a framework for reasoning about nondeterministic program executions (or, more generally, nondeterministic actions). In this setting, nondeterminism is taken as a primitive: a program is nondeterministic iff it has multiple possible outcomes. But what is the sense of “possibility” at play here? This talk explores an epistemic interpretation: working in an enriched logical setting, we represent nondeterminism as a relationship between a program and an agent deriving from the agent’s (in)ability to adequately measure the dynamics of the program execution. More precisely, using topology to capture the observational powers of an agent, we define the nondeterministic outcomes of a given program execution to be those outcomes that the agent is unable to rule out in advance. In this framework, determinism coincides exactly with continuity: that is, determinism is continuity in the observation topology. This allows us to embed PDL into (dynamic) topological (subset space) logic, laying the groundwork for a deeper investigation into the epistemology (and topology) of nondeterminism.

The seminar is concerned with applying formal methods to fundamental issues, with an emphasis on probabilistic reasoning, decision theory and games. In this context “logic” is broadly interpreted as covering applications that involve formal representations. The topics of interest have been researched within a very broad spectrum of different disciplines, including philosophy (logic and epistemology), statistics, economics, and computer science. The seminar is intended to bring together scholars from different fields of research so as to illuminate problems of common interest from different perspectives. Throughout each academic year, meetings are regularly presented by the members of the seminar and distinguished guest speakers.

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02/08/2019 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM

03/29/2019 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM

04/19/2018 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM

In my talk I argue for the thesis CT: contradiction is the norm of truth, and ask about its relevance for contemporary philosophical logic. I first present three positions in the history of philosophy that have advocated some versions of CT, namely Plato’s idea of the “dialectical gymnastics” in the Parmenides (Plato, Parmenides 136 B-E), Aristotle’s notion of dialectics in the Topics (Aristotle, Topics I, 2-3) and Metaphysics (Aristotle, Met III 1, 995 a 24-29), and Hegel’s contradictio est regula veri (Hegel Werke 2, 533), then derive from them some answers to the questions:

What is meant by “contradiction” in CT?

What is meant by “truth” in CT?

What is meant by “norm” in CT?

I will show that to examine the meaning of CT in historical perspective is useful to understand the seeds of genuine glut theories.

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

In this talk I will do three things. First: I will present the central results from Barrio, Pailos and Szmuc’s recent paper “A hierarchy of classical and paraconsistent logics” (forthcoming in the JPL) along with some generalizations derived by observing certain symmetries; second, I will discuss the relation between the strict tolerant logics and classical logic, K3 and LP; third, I will try to convey the exact state of uncertainty about the philosophical significance of the foregoing I find myself in on the day.

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY