The first logic seminar of Lent Term will be from 4 to 5.30pm on Thursday 21st January in the Graduate Common Room. Alex Paseau (Oxford) will speak on "Capturing Consequence". Undergraduates as well as graduate students are welcome to attend. Abstract below.
Michael Potter Capturing Consequence Consider the simple valid English argument 'Felix is a cat, therefore there is a cat'. Its propositional formalisation p \ q is not propositionally valid. In contrast, its formalisation in first-order logic Fa \ ExFx is first-order valid. This example illustrates an apparently well-established moral: first-order formalisations underwrite the validity of more natural-language arguments than propositional formalisations. Teachers of logic often invoke this moral when introducing first-order logic to students who know only propositional logic. My talk will show that this moral is false, at least if unqualified. As I will explain, there is a precise and important sense in which first-order logic does not improve on propositional logic so far as respecting natural-language validity is concerned. First-order logic captures natural-language validity facts better than propositional logic only if formalisations are constrained in some other way. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
