Workshop: Formal Philosophy

Glasgow - Melbourne Formal Philosophy Workshop

A joint event of the Glasgow - Melbourne Formal Philosophy Forum and the Whole Truth Project.AHRC logo

10-11 November 2017, University of Glasgow

Everyone is welcome to attend; registration is free, but to help us with arranging catering, please email adam.rieger@glasgow.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

All talks are in the Reid Room, 67 Oakfield Avenue, except for those at 15:00 and 17:00 on Friday, which are in the Hutcheson Room, 67 Oakfield Avenue. 

 

Friday 10 November

 

11:30 – 12:00                        Tea/coffee (common room)

12:00 – 13:30                        Gareth Young (Glasgow): ‘Revenge: it’s almost too easy’

13:30 – 15:00                        Lunch

15:00 – 16:30                        Stephan Krämer (Glasgow): ‘Relevance and Minimality: The Whole Truth’ (Hutcheson Room)

16:30 – 17:00                        Tea/coffee

17:00 – 18:30                        Bruno Whittle (Texas Tech): `Skolem meets Totality' (Hutcheson Room)

19:30                                     Dinner at Wudon, 535 Great Western Road

 

 

Saturday 11 November

 

9:30 – 11:00                           Greg Restall (Melbourne): `Proof Identity, Aboutness and Meaning'

 11:00 – 11:30                        Tea/coffee

 11:30 – 13:00                        Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow) & Martin Smith (Edinburgh): Epistemic Logic without Closure

 13:00 – 14:00                        Lunch

 14:00 – 15:30                        Berta Grimau (Melbourne): `In defence of higher-level plurals'

 15:30 – 16:00                        Tea/coffee

 16:00 – 17:30                        Shawn Standefer (Melbourne): Non-classical justification logic

 19:00                                     Dinner at Cafe Andaluz, 2 Cresswell Lane

 

Abstracts

 

Bruno Whittle: `Skolem meets Totality'

Totality statements—i.e. those of the form ‘P and that’s all’—and the operators that are used to regiment them, play an important role in metaphysics. This talk will trace a connection between these and an apparently unexpected problem: Skolem’s paradox. That is, the problem of how our mathematical language can be determinate, in light of limitative results to the effect that almost any theory has non-isomorphic models. I will explore the possibility of a novel solution to this paradox in terms of totality operators, and others of the same family. 

 

 

 

Stephan Krämer: ‘Relevance and Minimality: The Whole Truth’

 

A truth is a correct, but typically partial account of the world. A whole truth is a correct account of the world that is not partial. It leaves out no part or aspect of the world. Some important metaphysical hypotheses can be seen as claims concerning what kind of truth might be a whole truth. According to physicalism, for instance, some purely physical truth is a whole truth. But what does it take, in more precise terms, for a truth to be a whole truth? On an account proposed by Chalmers and Jackson and developed by Leuenberger, a proposition P is a whole truth with respect to some world w iff w is a /minimal/ P-verifying world. I argue that this account is mistaken. I claim instead that a proposition P is a whole truth with respect to some world w iff w is the only P-world /wholly relevant/ to the truth of P ; (3), and suggest that where Chalmers, Jackson, and Leuenberger go wrong is in taking relevance to require minimality. Time permitting, I end with some suggestions on how to develop my proposal formally within a form of truthmaker semantics.

 

 

 

Shawn Standefer: Non-classical justification logic

 

Abstract: Justification logic, developed by Artemov, Fitting, and others, is a logical formalism for reasoning about justification and evidence. We point out some features of general justification models that are in tension with the philosophical motivations of justification logic. We then motivate a particular class of models that better fit with the philosophical motivations. This class is defined using some techniques from the study of non-classical logics. We highlight the ways in which the resulting models and logic are respond to the initial problems as well as some nice features they have. (This is joint work with Ted Shear and Rohan French.)

 

 

Stephan Leuenberger & Martin Smith: Epistemic Logic without Closure

 

All standard epistemic logics legitimate something akin to the principle of closure. And yet the principle of closure, particularly in its multiple premise guise, has a somewhat ambivalent status within epistemology. In this paper we describe a family of weak epistemic logics in which closure fails, and describe two alternative semantic frameworks in which these logics can be modelled. One of these – which we term plurality semantics – is relatively unfamiliar and unexplored. What makes this framework significant is that it can be interpreted in a very natural way in light of one motivation for rejecting closure.