4,300 research outputs found
G\"odel's Notre Dame Course
This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled "G\"odel's natural
deduction", which presented and made comments about the natural deduction
system in G\"odel's unpublished notes for the elementary logic course he gave
at the University of Notre Dame in 1939. In that earlier paper, which was
itself a companion to a paper that examined the links between some
philosophical views ascribed to G\"odel and general proof theory, one can find
a brief summary of G\"odel's notes for the Notre Dame course. In order to put
the earlier paper in proper perspective, a more complete summary of these
interesting notes, with comments concerning them, is given here.Comment: 18 pages. minor additions, arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1604.0307
LOGICAL ANALYSIS AND LATER MOHIST LOGIC: SOME COMPARATIVE REFLECTIONS [abstract]
Any philosophical method that treats the analysis of the meaning of a sentence or expression in terms of a decomposition into a set of conceptually basic constituent parts must do some theoretical work to explain the puzzles of intensionality. This is because intensional phenomena appear to violate the principle of compositionality, and the assumption of compositionality is the principal justification for thinking that an analysis will reveal the real semantical import of a sentence or expression through a method of decomposition. Accordingly, a natural strategy for dealing with intensionality is to argue that it is really just an isolable, aberrant class of linguistic phenomena that poses no general threat to the thesis that meaning is basically compositional. On the other hand, the later Mohists give us good reason to reject this view. What we learn from them is that there may be basic limitations in any analytical technique that presupposes that meaning is perspicuously represented only when it has been fully decomposed into its constituent parts. The purpose of this paper is to (a) explain why the Mohists found the issue of intensionality to be so important in their investigations of language, and (b) defend the view that Mohist insights reveal basic limitations in any technique of analysis that is uncritically applied with a decompositional approach in mind, as are those that are often pursued in the West in the context of more general epistemological and metaphysical programs
Topic-Sensitive Epistemic 2D Truthmaker ZFC and Absolute Decidability
This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the nature of mathematical modality, and to the applications of the latter to unrestricted quantification and absolute decidability. Rather than countenancing the interpretational type of mathematical modality as a primitive, I argue that the interpretational type of mathematical modality is a species of epistemic modality. I argue, then, that the framework of two-dimensional semantics ought to be applied to the mathematical setting. The framework permits of a formally precise account of the priority and relation between epistemic mathematical modality and metaphysical mathematical modality. The discrepancy between the modal systems governing the parameters in the two-dimensional intensional setting provides an explanation of the difference between the metaphysical possibility of absolute decidability and our knowledge thereof. I also advance an epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, if hyperintenisonal approaches are to be preferred to possible worlds semantics. I examine the relation between epistemic truthmakers and epistemic set theory
Constrained Query Answering
Traditional answering methods evaluate queries only against positive
and definite knowledge expressed by means of facts and deduction rules. They do
not make use of negative, disjunctive or existential information. Negative or indefinite
knowledge is however often available in knowledge base systems, either as
design requirements, or as observed properties. Such knowledge can serve to rule out
unproductive subexpressions during query answering. In this article, we propose an
approach for constraining any conventional query answering procedure with general,
possibly negative or indefinite formulas, so as to discard impossible cases and to
avoid redundant evaluations. This approach does not impose additional conditions
on the positive and definite knowledge, nor does it assume any particular semantics
for negation. It adopts that of the conventional query answering procedure it
constrains. This is achieved by relying on meta-interpretation for specifying the
constraining process. The soundness, completeness, and termination of the underlying
query answering procedure are not compromised. Constrained query answering
can be applied for answering queries more efficiently as well as for generating more
informative, intensional answers
Intensional Models for the Theory of Types
In this paper we define intensional models for the classical theory of types,
thus arriving at an intensional type logic ITL. Intensional models generalize
Henkin's general models and have a natural definition. As a class they do not
validate the axiom of Extensionality. We give a cut-free sequent calculus for
type theory and show completeness of this calculus with respect to the class of
intensional models via a model existence theorem. After this we turn our
attention to applications. Firstly, it is argued that, since ITL is truly
intensional, it can be used to model ascriptions of propositional attitude
without predicting logical omniscience. In order to illustrate this a small
fragment of English is defined and provided with an ITL semantics. Secondly, it
is shown that ITL models contain certain objects that can be identified with
possible worlds. Essential elements of modal logic become available within
classical type theory once the axiom of Extensionality is given up.Comment: 25 page
Hyperintensional semantics: a Fregean approach
In this paper, we present a new semantic framework designed to capture a distinctly cognitive or epistemic notion of meaning akin to Fregean senses. Traditional Carnapian intensions are too coarse-grained for this purpose: they fail to draw semantic distinctions between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, differ in meaning. This has led some philosophers to introduce more fine-grained hyperintensions that allow us to draw semantic distinctions among co-intensional sentences. But the hyperintensional strategy has a flip-side: it risks drawing semantic distinctions between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, do not differ in meaning. This is what we call the ânew problemâ of hyperintensionality to distinguish it from the âold problemâ that faced the intensional theory. We show that our semantic framework offers a joint solution to both these problems by virtue of satisfying a version of Fregeâs so-called âequipollence principleâ for sense individuation. Fregeâs principle, we argue, not only captures the semantic intuitions that give rise to the old and the new problem of hyperintensionality, but also points the way to an independently motivated solution to both problems
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