345 research outputs found
Intuitionism and the Modal Logic of Vagueness
Intuitionistic logic provides an elegant solution to the Sorites Paradox. Its acceptance has been hampered by two factors. First, the lack of an accepted semantics for languages containing vague terms has led even philosophers sympathetic to intuitionism to complain that no explanation has been given of why intuitionistic logic is the correct logic for such languages. Second, switching from classical to intuitionistic logic, while it may help with the Sorites, does not appear to offer any advantages when dealing with the so-called paradoxes of higher-order vagueness. We offer a proposal that makes strides on both issues. We argue that the intuitionistâs characteristic rejection of any third alethic value alongside true and false is best elaborated by taking the normal modal system S4M to be the sentential logic of the operator âit is clearly the case thatâ. S4M opens the way to an account of higher-order vagueness which avoids the paradoxes that have been thought to infect the notion. S4M is one of the modal counterparts of the intuitionistic sentential calculus and we use this fact to explain why IPC is the correct sentential logic to use when reasoning with vague statements. We also show that our key results go through in an intuitionistic version of S4M. Finally, we deploy our analysis to reply to Timothy Williamsonâs objections to intuitionistic treatments of vagueness
An Objection to Naturalism and Atheism from Logic
I proffer a success argument for classical logical consequence. I articulate in what sense that notion of consequence should be regarded as the privileged notion for metaphysical inquiry aimed at uncovering the fundamental nature of the world. Classical logic breeds necessitism. I use necessitism to produce problems for both ontological naturalism and atheism
Ecumenical modal logic
The discussion about how to put together Gentzen's systems for classical and
intuitionistic logic in a single unified system is back in fashion. Indeed,
recently Prawitz and others have been discussing the so called Ecumenical
Systems, where connectives from these logics can co-exist in peace. In Prawitz'
system, the classical logician and the intuitionistic logician would share the
universal quantifier, conjunction, negation, and the constant for the absurd,
but they would each have their own existential quantifier, disjunction, and
implication, with different meanings. Prawitz' main idea is that these
different meanings are given by a semantical framework that can be accepted by
both parties. In a recent work, Ecumenical sequent calculi and a nested system
were presented, and some very interesting proof theoretical properties of the
systems were established. In this work we extend Prawitz' Ecumenical idea to
alethic K-modalities
Noncomparabilities & Non Standard Logics
Many normative theories set forth in the welfare economics, distributive justice and cognate literatures posit noncomparabilities or incommensurabilities between magnitudes of various kinds. In some cases these gaps are predicated on metaphysical claims, in others upon epistemic claims, and in still others upon political-moral claims. I show that in all such cases they are best given formal expression in nonstandard logics that reject bivalence, excluded middle, or both. I do so by reference to an illustrative case study: a contradiction known to beset John Rawls\u27s selection and characterization of primary goods as the proper distribuendum in any distributively just society. The contradiction is avoided only by reformulating Rawls\u27s claims in a nonstandard form, which form happens also to cohere quite attractively with Rawls\u27s intuitive argumentation on behalf of his claims
Noncomparabilities & Non Standard Logics
Many normative theories set forth in the welfare economics, distributive justice and cognate literatures posit noncomparabilities or incommensurabilities between magnitudes of various kinds. In some cases these gaps are predicated on metaphysical claims, in others upon epistemic claims, and in still others upon political-moral claims. I show that in all such cases they are best given formal expression in nonstandard logics that reject bivalence, excluded middle, or both. I do so by reference to an illustrative case study: a contradiction known to beset John Rawls\u27s selection and characterization of primary goods as the proper distribuendum in any distributively just society. The contradiction is avoided only by reformulating Rawls\u27s claims in a nonstandard form, which form happens also to cohere quite attractively with Rawls\u27s intuitive argumentation on behalf of his claims
Overview of Results Presented in "Trends in Logic XIII"
Book Reviews: Andrzej Indrzejczak, Janusz Kaczmarek, and MichaĹ Zawidzki (editors), âTrends in Logic XIII. Gentzenâs and JaĹkowskiâs Heritage. 80 Years of Natural Deduction and Sequent Calculiâ, Wydawnictwo UĹ, ĹĂłdĹş (Poland), 2014, 269 pages, ISBN 978-83-7969-161-6
Evaluating Logical Pluralism
Recently some philosophers, in particular J. C. Beall and Greg Restall, have defended a view they refer to as âlogical pluralismâ. This is the position that there are, in fact, several equally good but distinct logical systems according to which different arguments come out valid and invalid. No one system, they claim, is any more âcorrectâ than any other. I will have several criticisms of this view. I first argue that the phenomena of logical recapture causes problems for the pluralist. Somewhat roughly a logic is recaptured if, though all its argument forms were not valid in the full language, a restriction on the formulas of the language can render all those argument forms valid. I argue that once we recognize that this is possible the pluralist will require further argument if she is to contend that her account of the validity of the logic in question is superior to the logician who embraces recapture. My second criticism casts doubt on Beall and Restallâs view that any time one specifies a set of truth conditions one has established a type of case in which claims may be true as well as a corresponding type of necessity. I will also make some methodological points about how to decide whether logical pluralism is true and which logic or logics are correct. And finally I will concede that a form of logical pluralism slightly different from the one endorsed by Beall and Restall may indeed be true. But ultimately I will have to leave the question of whether this alternative is indeed a legitimate form of logical pluralism to be settled on another occasion
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
Fitch's knowability axioms are incompatible with quantum theory
How can we consistently model the knowledge of the natural world provided by
physical theories? Philosophers frequently use epistemic logic to model
reasoning and knowledge abstractly, and to formally study the ramifications of
epistemic assumptions. One famous example is Fitch's paradox, which begins with
minimal knowledge axioms and derives the counter-intuitive result that "every
agent knows every true statement." Accounting for knowledge that arises from
physical theories complicates matters further. For example, quantum mechanics
allows observers to model other agents as quantum systems themselves, and to
make predictions about measurements performed on each others' memories.
Moreover, complex thought experiments in which agents' memories are modelled as
quantum systems show that multi-agent reasoning chains can yield paradoxical
results.
Here, we bridge the gap between quantum paradoxes and foundational problems
in epistemic logic, by relating the assumptions behind the recent
Frauchiger-Renner quantum thought experiment and the axioms for knowledge used
in Fitch's knowability paradox. Our results indicate that agents' knowledge of
quantum systems must violate at least one of the following assumptions: it
cannot be distributive over conjunction, have a kind of internal continuity,
and yield a constructive interpretation all at once. Indeed, knowledge provided
by quantum mechanics apparently contradicts traditional notions of how
knowledge behaves; for instance, it may not be possible to universally assign
objective truth values to claims about agent knowledge. We discuss the
relations of this work to results in quantum contextuality and explore possible
modifications to standard epistemic logic that could make it consistent with
quantum theory.Comment: 22 + 7 page
A Galois connection between classical and intuitionistic logics. I: Syntax
In a 1985 commentary to his collected works, Kolmogorov remarked that his
1932 paper "was written in hope that with time, the logic of solution of
problems [i.e., intuitionistic logic] will become a permanent part of a
[standard] course of logic. A unified logical apparatus was intended to be
created, which would deal with objects of two types - propositions and
problems." We construct such a formal system QHC, which is a conservative
extension of both the intuitionistic predicate calculus QH and the classical
predicate calculus QC.
The only new connectives ? and ! of QHC induce a Galois connection (i.e., a
pair of adjoint functors) between the Lindenbaum posets (i.e. the underlying
posets of the Lindenbaum algebras) of QH and QC. Kolmogorov's double negation
translation of propositions into problems extends to a retraction of QHC onto
QH; whereas Goedel's provability translation of problems into modal
propositions extends to a retraction of QHC onto its QC+(?!) fragment,
identified with the modal logic QS4. The QH+(!?) fragment is an intuitionistic
modal logic, whose modality !? is a strict lax modality in the sense of Aczel -
and thus resembles the squash/bracket operation in intuitionistic type
theories.
The axioms of QHC attempt to give a fuller formalization (with respect to the
axioms of intuitionistic logic) to the two best known contentual
interpretations of intiuitionistic logic: Kolmogorov's problem interpretation
(incorporating standard refinements by Heyting and Kreisel) and the proof
interpretation by Orlov and Heyting (as clarified by G\"odel). While these two
interpretations are often conflated, from the viewpoint of the axioms of QHC
neither of them reduces to the other one, although they do overlap.Comment: 47 pages. The paper is rewritten in terms of a formal meta-logic (a
simplified version of Isabelle's meta-logic
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