This Thursday's Logic Seminar, at 4.15pm in the graduate common room, will be Owen Griffiths on "Proof-theoretic semantics and natural language".
Abstract Since Etchemendy's well-known criticisms of model-theoretic approaches to logical consequence, many alternatives have been suggested, the most influential of which is proof-theoretic. Proponents of proof-theoretic semantics argue that logical consequences are analytically valid by virtue of following from the meanings of the logical constants, which are given by their inference rules. This puts proof-theoretic consequence on a much firmer footing, they claim, than model theory can achieve. I present a number of objections to the proof-theoretic approach to logical consequence, focusing on issues of higher-order incompleteness, and the ways in which the proof-theorist's formalism fails to capture natural language reasoning. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
