Investigations on a Pedagogical Calculus of Constructions

In the last few years appeared pedagogical propositional natural deduction systems. In these systems, one must satisfy the pedagogical constraint: the user must give an example of any introduced notion. First we expose the reasons of such a constraint and properties of these "pedagogical" calculi: the absence of negation at logical side, and the "usefulness" feature of terms at computational side (through the Curry-Howard correspondence). Then we construct a simple pedagogical restriction of the calculus of constructions (CC) called CCr. We establish logical limitations of this system, and compare its computational expressiveness to Godel system T. Finally, guided by the logical limitations of CCr, we propose a formal and general definition of what a pedagogical calculus of constructions should be.Comment: 18 page

Negation in context

The present essay includes six thematically connected papers on negation in the areas of the philosophy of logic, philosophical logic and metaphysics. Each of the chapters besides the first, which puts each the chapters to follow into context, highlights a central problem negation poses to a certain area of philosophy. Chapter 2 discusses the problem of logical revisionism and whether there is any room for genuine disagreement, and hence shared meaning, between the classicist and deviant's respective uses of 'not'. If there is not, revision is impossible. I argue that revision is indeed possible and provide an account of negation as contradictoriness according to which a number of alleged negations are declared genuine. Among them are the negations of FDE (First-Degree Entailment) and a wide family of other relevant logics, LP (Priest's dialetheic "Logic of Paradox"), Kleene weak and strong 3-valued logics with either "exclusion" or "choice" negation, and intuitionistic logic. Chapter 3 discusses the problem of furnishing intuitionistic logic with an empirical negation for adequately expressing claims of the form 'A is undecided at present' or 'A may never be decided' the latter of which has been argued to be intuitionistically inconsistent. Chapter 4 highlights the importance of various notions of consequence-as-s-preservation where s may be falsity (versus untruth), indeterminacy or some other semantic (or "algebraic") value, in formulating rationality constraints on speech acts and propositional attitudes such as rejection, denial and dubitability. Chapter 5 provides an account of the nature of truth values regarded as objects. It is argued that only truth exists as the maximal truthmaker. The consequences this has for semantics representationally construed are considered and it is argued that every logic, from classical to non-classical, is gappy. Moreover, a truthmaker theory is developed whereby only positive truths, an account of which is also developed therein, have truthmakers. Chapter 6 investigates the definability of negation as "absolute" impossibility, i.e. where the notion of necessity or possibility in question corresponds to the global modality. The modality is not readily definable in the usual Kripkean languages and so neither is impossibility taken in the broadest sense. The languages considered here include one with counterfactual operators and propositional quantification and another bimodal language with a modality and its complementary. Among the definability results we give some preservation and translation results as well

Semantic and Mathematical Foundations for Intuitionism

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Philosophy, 2013My dissertation concerns the proper foundation for the intuitionistic mathematics whose development began with L.E.J. Brouwer's work in the first half of the 20th Century. It is taken for granted by most philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians interested in foundational questions that intuitionistic mathematics presupposes a special, proof-conditional theory of meaning for mathematical statements. I challenge this commonplace. Classical mathematics is very successful as a coherent body of theories and a tool for practical application. Given this success, a view like Dummett's that attributes a systematic unintelligibility to the statements of classical mathematicians fails to save the relevant phenomena. Furthermore, Dummett's program assumes that his proposed semantics for mathematical language validates all and only the logical truths of intuitionistic logic. In fact, it validates some intuitionistically invalid principles, and given the lack of intuitionistic completeness proofs, there is little reason to think that every intuitionistic logical truth is valid according to his semantics. In light of the failure of Dummett's foundation for intuitionism, I propose and carry out a reexamination of Brouwer's own writings. Brouwer is frequently interpreted as a proto-Dummettian about his own mathematics. This is due to excessive emphasis on some of his more polemical writings and idiosyncratic philosophical views at the expense of his distinctively mathematical work. These polemical writings do not concern mathematical language, and their principal targets are Russell and Hilbert's foundational programs, not the semantic principle of bivalence. The failures of these foundational programs has diminished the importance of Brouwer's philosophical writings, but his work on reconstructing mathematics itself from intuitionistic principles continues to be worth studying. When one studies this work relieved of its philosophical burden, it becomes clear that an intuitionistic mathematician can make sense of her mathematical work and activity without relying on special philosophical or linguistic doctrines. Core intuitionistic results, especially the invalidity of the logical principle tertium non datur, can be demonstrated from basic mathematical principles; these principles, in turn, can be defended in ways akin to the basic axioms of other mathematical theories. I discuss three such principles: Brouwer's Continuity Principle, the Principle of Uniformity, and Constructive Church's Thesis

Pedagogical lambda-cube: the λ² case

38 pagesIn pedagogical formal systems one needs to systematically give examples of hypotheses made. This main characteristic is not the only one needed, and a formal definition of pedagogical sub-systems of the Calculus of Constructions (CC) has already been stated. Here we give such a pedagogical sub-system of CC corresponding to the second-order pedagogical λ-calculus of Colson and Michel. It thus illustrates the appropriateness of the formal definition, and opens the study to stronger systems of the λ-cube, for which CC is the most expressive representative. In addition we study the type-checking problem for the formalisms of those pedagogical calculi of second-order

Infinite Singletons and the Logic of Freudian Theory

The aim of this paper is to advance a formal description of the implicit logic grounding of the psychoanalytic theory. We therefore propose a new interpretation of the logical features of the Freudian unconscious process, starting from the Bi-logic formulation put forward by the Chilean psychoanalyst Matte Blanco. We conceive the universal undifferentiated state of the deep psychoanalytic Unconscious in terms of particular sets named infinite singletons, and we show how they can represent the logical foundations for a formal description of the Primary process. We first disclose some implicit assumptions underlying the common logical language. In doing so, we discover an unexpected presence of symmetry even in the most basic of logical and verbal structures. In the approach derived, we show that infiniteness, not finiteness, is the primary mode of sets, and therefore, of thinking. The pivotal consequence of this model is that the unconscious elements cannot be characterised in the absence of external reality, which produces the collapse of infinite sets and allows for the emergence of linguistic representations. Finally, we discuss how the model could represent a platform to formalise further developments of psychoanalytic theory, in particular with respect to the shift from the First to the Second Topics in Freudian theory

Relational Semantics for the Paraconsistent and Paracomplete 4-valued Logic PŁ4

The paraconsistent and paracomplete 4-valued logic PŁ4 is originally interpreted with a two-valued Belnap-Dunn semantics. In the present paper, PŁ4 is endowed with both a ternary Routley-Meyer semantics and a binary Routley semantics together with their respective restriction to the 2 set-up cases

Inference Rules and the Meaning of the Logical Constants

The dissertation provides an analysis and elaboration of Michael Dummett's proof-theoretic notions of validity. Dummett's notions of validity are contrasted with standard proof-theoretic notions and formally evaluated with respect to their adequacy to propositional intuitionistic logic