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Nov 15 Logic Colloquium: Steven Dalglish (OSU) 1:30pm

Logic Colloquium: Steven Dalglish (OSU)

Friday, November 15th, 2019

01:30 PM - 03:00 PM

Storrs Campus
Humantities Institute, 4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library

Join us in the Logic Colloquium:

Steven Dalglish (OSU)

"How to Deal with Semantic Paradox (Hint: Accept Defeat)"

Abstract:

I contend that semantic paradox shows we should regard the rules of inference for semantic notions as defeasible. Truth is a prominent semantic notion for which semantic paradox poses a problem, and so a first step in solving semantic paradox is handling a semantic notion of truth. This talk investigates how defeasible rules of inference for a semantic notion of truth can form the basis for a successful truth-conditional theory of meaning. I start by using Default Logic for representing the rules of inference for a truth predicate as defeasible, before adding preferences over rules and modifying the criteria for defeat.

All welcome!

https://logic.uconn.edu/calendar/

Contact Information: https://logic.uconn.edu/about/
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Nov 22 Logic Colloquium: Martin Pleitz (Muenster)1:30pm

Logic Colloquium: Martin Pleitz (Muenster)

Friday, November 22nd, 2019

01:30 PM - 03:00 PM

Storrs Campus
tba

Join us for a talk by Martin Pleitz (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany).

Martin Pleitz:

"A Dynamic Solution to the Liar Paradox"

The Liar paradox arises when we combine the assumption that a sentence can refer to itself with our naïve notion of truth and apply our unrevised logic. Most current approaches to the Liar paradox focus on revising our notion of truth and logic because nowadays almost everyone is convinced that there are self-referential sentences. I will argue against this conviction. My argument starts from observations about the metaphysics of expressions: A meaningful expression is based in a syntactic expression which in turn is based in a non-semiotic object, and these are pairwise distinct. As all objects of this three-fold ontology exist only relative to contexts, we can import ideas from tense logic about how existence and reference can interact in a contextualist metaphysics. Semantico-metaphysical reasoning then shows that in this dynamic setting, an object can be referred to only after it has started to exist. Hence the self-reference needed in the Liar paradox cannot occur, after all. As this solution is contextualist, it evades the expressibility problems of other proposals.

All welcome!

https://logic.uconn.edu/

Contact Information: https://logic.uconn.edu/about/
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May 1 Abstractionism Conference12:00am

Abstractionism Conference

Friday, May 1st, 2020

12:00 AM - 11:59 PM

Storrs Campus
tba

Abstractionism Conference

May 1–3, 2020

Keynote: Crispin Wright (NYU/Stirling)

Details t.b.a.

Contact Information: Marcus Rossberg, marcus.rossberg@uconn.edu
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