Anything Goes

This paper consider Prior's connective Tonk from a particular bilateralist perspective. I show that there is a natural perspective from which we can see Tonk and its ilk as perfectly well-defined pieces of vocabulary; there is no need for restrictions to bar things like Tonk

The Meaning of Tonk

Màster en Filosofia Analítica (APhil), Facultat Filosofía, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2021-2022, Director/Tutor: José MartínezThe present article follows on a line of research proposed by Ripley in his 2015 article ‘Anything goes’, where he proposes a conception of logical consequence bearing the peculiar characteristic of discarding the cut rule entirely, and transitivity with it. This is, of course, a bold step to take, given transitivity’s usefulness. It still bears some fruitful advantages for an inferential theory of meaning nonetheless, as it allows entrance into the inferential realm of meaning to many previously problematic entities -such as connectives like Prior’s infamous tonk. As the title of Ripley’s article suggests, it seems that in this interpretation of the turnstile (almost) anything goes. But how exactly does it go, we may ask ourselves. And indeed, this shall be the question we will try to sketch an answer for presently. What exactly could the meaning of tonk be in a framework which accounts for it, i.e. Ripley’s? We believe Ripley’s intuition to be mainly right, and that connectives like tonk do indeed possess a meaning, so we will try to delve deeper into what the meaning of these faulty connectives could be about. We will also briefly consider a side issue, which has to do with the fact that, even if everything goes, it does not seem to be the case that everything goes in the same way. Indeed, thanks to the many responses to Prior’s article numerous differences have been spotted between regular, ‘healthy’ connectives like conjunction and problematic ones like tonk

Harmony and modality

It is argued that the meaning of the modal connectives must be given inferentially, by the rules for the assertion of formulae containing them, and not semantically by reference to possible worlds. Further, harmony confers transparency on the inferentialist account of meaning, when the introduction-rule specifies both necessary and sufficient conditions for assertion, and the elimination-rule does no more than exhibit the consequences of the meaning so conferred. Hence, harmony is not to be identified with normalization, since the standard modal natural deduction rules, though normalizable, are not in this sense harmonious. Harmonious rules for modality have lately been formulated, using labelled deductive systems

Tonk and the model-theoretic conception of meaning

En este trabajo retomo la discusión en torno a la conectiva tonk y reseño brevemente las respuestas que se han ofrecido al desafío que ella plantea. Discuto críticamente el supuesto generalizado de que tonk representa un problema únicamente para el inferencialismo lógico; exploro y propongo contrapartes de tonk para aquellas teorías semánticas que dan cuenta del significado de las expresiones lógicas en términos de condiciones de verdad. In this paper I recall de discussion around tonk and summarize the answers that have been offered to it. I critically discuss the idea that tonk is a problem exclusive for an inferentilst approach to the meaning of logical constants and explore what would tonk look like for a truth-conditional approach.

Different degrees of aqueous alteration in sulphides within the CI1 chondrites

Sulphides in four different CI1 chondrites were analysed, to evaluate their composition, texture and morphology. The results reinforce the view that CI1 chondrites could be divided into two subgroups, based on their level of aqueous alteration

Content and Meaning Constitutive Inferences

A priori theories of justification of logic based on meaning often lead to trouble, in particular to issues concerning circularity. First, I present Boghossian’s a prioriview. Boghossian maintains the rule-circular justifications from a conceptual role semantics. However, rule-circular justifications are problematic. Recently, Boghossian (Boghossian, 2015) has claimed that rules should be thought of as contents and contents as abstract objects. In this paper, I discuss Boghossian’s view. My argumentation consists of three main parts. First, I analyse several arguments to show that in fact, Boghossian’s inferentialist solution is not fully satisfying. Second, I discuss the matter further, if one accepts that basic logical rules are constitutive of meaning, that is, they constitute the logical concepts and the content of a rule is an abstract object, then abstract objects — like, for example, rules — could be constitutive of meaning. The question is whether conceptual priority is in the judgment or in the object and what theory of content is pursued. Grasping content as a matter of knowing how a word or concept behaves in inferences is not completely explicative. Finally, I contend that rules come to exist as a result of certain kinds of mental action. These actions function as constitutive norms. Logical rules are not abstract objects but ideal. What one construes as norms or rules of content may involve idealization, but this is because we share a language

Inferentialism

This article offers an overview of inferential role semantics. We aim to provide a map of the terrain as well as challenging some of the inferentialist’s standard commitments. We begin by introducing inferentialism and placing it into the wider context of contemporary philosophy of language. §2 focuses on what is standardly considered both the most important test case for and the most natural application of inferential role semantics: the case of the logical constants. We discuss some of the (alleged) benefits of logical inferentialism, chiefly with regards to the epistemology of logic, and consider a number of objections. §3 introduces and critically examines the most influential and most fully developed form of global inferentialism: Robert Brandom’s inferentialism about linguistic and conceptual content in general. Finally, in §4 we consider a number of general objections to IRS and consider possible responses on the inferentialist’s behalf

Tonk Strikes Back∗

What is a logical constant? In which terms should we characterize the meaning of logical words like “and”, “or”, “implies”? An attractive answer is: in terms of their inferential roles, i.e. in terms of the role they play in building inferences. More precisely, we favor an approach, going back to Dosen and Sambin, in which the inferential role of a logical constant is captured by a double line rule which introduces it as reflecting structural links (for example, multiplicative conjunction reflects comma on the right of the turnstyle). Rule-based characterizations of logical constants are subject to the well known objection of Prior’s fake connective, tonk. We show that some double line rules also give rise to such pseudo logical constants. But then, we are able to find a property of a double line rules which guarantee that it defines a genuine logical constant. Thus we provide an alternative answer to Belnap’s requirement of conservatity in terms of a local requirement on double line rules

Tonk Sándor Emlékkonferencia Kolozsváron

Memorial Conference for Sándor Tonk at Kolozsvár/Cluj. On 5th and 6th of October 2018 colleagues, friends and admirers remembered for the early died Mr. Sándor Tonk who was an excellent representative of the Transylvanian Hungarian histography. The memorial conference was organized by the Research Institute of the Transylvanian Museum Society, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, and Department of the Hungarian History of Babeş-Bolyai University. Those researchers of the above mentioned institutes and Hungarian historians took part at the conference whose research matter was close to the activity of Sándor Tonk or to the Transylvanian histography. The essay below reflects the summarized lectures of the conference and states that in Transylvania a new generation of historians has grown up which continues the work of Sándor Tonk and other historians and develops the Hungarian histography with their new conclusions