58吃瓜

Abstract: This talk clarifies and reassesses the scope of logical pluralism. I first argue that philosophers of logic often overlook an important distinction between the word聽鈥榲alid鈥�, the concept聽validity,聽and the property聽validity. As a result, it is often unclear what the subject matter of logical theories is, and what exactly logical pluralists are pluralist about. With this…

In Todd 2021 (The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False) I defended a kind of pragmatic “error-theory” regarding ordinary judgments about the interaction of ‘will’ and negation.聽 On the view I defended, ‘will’ involves an essentially modal component, in the form of a universal quantifier over the “available” histories.聽 But this view faces…

Abstract: Contemporary metaphysics is a multi-faceted enterprise, enriched by a plurality of approaches that often lead to methodological conflicts. A central conundrum concerns the boundaries of realist metaphysics when the social world is the focus of theorising. The traditional definition of realism precludes social reality from having the relevant kind of objective joints that social…

Abstract:聽Semantic theories are supposed to be theories of meaning, so ascriptions of meaning should play a role in guiding and constraining our semantic theories. To play this role, however, we need to know the meaning of “means” itself. In this paper I develop a semantics for the verb “means,” as it is used to specify…

Belnap-Dunn logic (BD), sometimes also known as First Degree Entailment, is a four-valued propositional logic that complements the classical truth values of聽True聽and聽False聽with two non-classical truth values聽Neither聽and聽Both. The latter two are to account for the possibility of the available information being incomplete or providing contradictory evidence. We present a probabilistic extension of BD that permits agents…

I think Hegel鈥檚 dialectic is, in Brandomian fashion, a very inferentialist theory of concepts.聽There鈥檚 conspicuous textual evidence that the majority of theoretical claims in the聽Phenomenology, the聽Science of Logic,聽the聽Encyclopaedia,聽are about conceptual connections.聽Conceptual contents聽are individuated by the connections with the concepts they entail and which entail them. Since theoretical as well as ordinary language expressions can be…

Quine, in 鈥極n What There Is鈥�, discusses a problem that he calls the 鈥楶latonic riddle of nonbeing鈥�. The riddle is this: 鈥楴onbeing must in some sense be; otherwise what is it that there is not?鈥� (Quine 1948, 21). Take Pegasus, the flying stallion of Bellerophon, and the statement, 鈥楶egasus does not exist鈥�. On the one…

This week Viviane will be leading a discussion on a paper about Val Plumwood’s feminist critique of classical negation. This will be a ‘pre-read’ discussion. The paper will be sent out with the weekly M&L email on Monday. Towards a Feminist Logic: Val Plumwood鈥檚 Legacy and Beyond By Maureen Eckert & Charlie Donahue 2020. In…

Abstract: Plato and Pegasus do not exist, but otherwise they have so much going for them. They are nameable, in range of quantifiers, and able to stand in some relations. These familiar points lead to a range of puzzles (including what Quine famously called 鈥淧lato鈥檚 beard鈥�), as to how we can name, quantifier over, and…

Abstract: Connexive logics form a heterodox family of systems characterized by contra-classical principles of conditionality and negation including so-called Aristotle’s and Boethius’ theses. In this talk, I survey the origins of connexive logic, focusing on figures including Aristotle, Chrysippus, and Boethius, as well as some more recent approaches, and examine relations between them. I will…

This is the second of three sessions, on inferentialist semantics. Greg will be in Taiwan delivering the 2025 Wendy Huang Lectures, and these three sessions in the M&L seminar are his opportunity to give the lectures a preliminary outing. I have three aims for this set of lectures. Two are central, and the third is…

This is the first of three sessions, on inferentialist semantics. Greg will be in Taiwan delivering the 2025聽Wendy Huang Lectures, and these three sessions in the M&L seminar are his opportunity to give the lectures a preliminary outing. I have three aims for this set of lectures. Two are central, and the third is incidental:…