B.Phil.
Seminar Volker Halbach and Tim Williamson
Logic and Philosophy of Logic
Hilary term 2018, Monday (sorry I made a mistake in an earlier announcement), 2-4pm, Lecture Room in week 1, Ryle Room in weeks 2-8
At the beginning of each class we will introduce the topic by presenting an article or book chapter, which all participants will be expected to have read in advance. This will be followed by a discussion.
Week 1 (15 January): Kripke's Theory of Truth
We start with a classic in truth theory:
Kripke, Saul (1975), ‘Outline of a Theory of Truth’, Journal of Philosophy 72, 690–716, reprinted in Martin, Robert L., ed. (1984), Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox, Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.
If you intend to go deeper into the formal theory, I recommend:
McGee, Vann (1991), Truth, Vagueness, and Paradox: An Essay on the Logic of Truth, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis and Cambridge.
Week 2 (22 January): Axiomatizing Kripke's Theory of Truth
This week we look at axiomtaziations of Kripke's theory. Various systems have been suggested. We concentrate on:
Horsten, Leon (2009), ‘Levity’, Mind 118, 555–581.
The formal background is analyzed in
Halbach, Volker and Leon Horsten (2006), ‘Axiomatizing Kripke’s Theory of Truth’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 71, 677–712.
and
Halbach, Volker and Carlo Nicolai (2018), ‘On the costs of nonclassical logic’.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-017-9424-3
The account is at the basis of
Field, Hartry (2008), Saving Truth From Paradox, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Week 3 (29 January): Supervaluationism and Metarules I
This class has been rescheduled to Wednesday, 31 January 2-4pm in the Ryle Room. Accordingly, there is no class on Monday.
The main text will be the chapter on supervaluations of the following book:
Williamson, Timothy (1994), Vagueness, Routledge, chapter 5.
Week 4 (5 February): Supervaluationism and Metarules II
There was a confusion about the order of the papers. We apologize. Tim will do Supervaluationism and Metarules in weeks 3 and 4 first and then Mathematical consequences of non-classical logic in weeks 5 and 6.
The main text will be the following paper:
Williamson, Timothy: ‘Supervaluationism and Good Reasoning’
Week 5 (12 February): Mathematical consequences of non-classical logic I
The main paper is:
Tim Williamson: ‘Alternative Logics and Applied Mathematics’,http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/docs/people/williamson/appliedmaths.pdf
Week 6 (19 February): Mathematical consequences of non-classical logic II
The main paper is again:
Williamson, Tim: ‘Alternative Logics and Applied Mathematics’,http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/docs/people/williamson/appliedmaths.pdf
Week 7 (26 February): Logical Consequence
I will start with a sketch of Tarski's short paper:
Tarski, Alfred (1936), ‘Über
den Begriff der logischen Folgerung’, Actes du congres in-
ternational de philosophie scientifique 7, 1–11, translation “On the Concept of Logical
Consequence” in Tarski, Alfred, 1956, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: papers from 1923 to 1938, Translated by J. H. Woodger, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
I will then say something about section 4 of
Williamson, Timothy (2003), ‘Everything’, Philosophical Perspectives 17, 415–465.
Still a very important text is Etchemendy's book. We cannot cover it, but we'll discuss some points from it:
Etchemendy, John (1990), The Concept of Logical Consequence, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachussets.
Week 8 (5 February): The Substitutional Theory of Logical Consequence
The main text is:
There is also a formal version: