We have a fun (and free, as always) event tonight at 7:00 PM at Black Spring Books in Williamsburg! It’s a discussion of the life of the mind in fiction and philosophy with the philosopher Skye Cleary (How to Be Authentic), the novelist Christine Smallwood (The Life of the Mind), and the novelist-physician-neurologist Melodie Winawer (Anticipation). If you’re interested in what intellectual life means, the drama of ideas, and the relationship between philosophy and literature, this one’s for you. If you can’t make it in person, it will also be livestreamed here.
The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that James Walsh (Assistant Professor, Philosophy, NYU) will deliver a talk on Friday, May 10th, 2024, from 4:15 to 6:15 pm at the CUNY Graduate Center (Room 9207). The talk is free and open to all.
Title: Modal definability and Kripke’s theory of truth
Abstract: In Outline of a Theory of Truth, Kripke introduces some of the central concepts of the logical study of truth and paradox. He informally defines some of these–such as groundedness and paradoxicality–using modal locutions. We introduce a modal language for regimenting Kripke’s informal definitions and characterize the modally definable sets. Though groundedness and paradoxicality are expressible in the modal language, we prove that intrinsicality–which Kripke emphasizes but does not define modally–is not.