Webinar Lectures on Aboutness and Subject Matter (Stephen Yablo, MIT, Cambridge MA) presso l'LLC Torino
Il gruppo di ricerca MUMBLE interno al Centro di Logica, Linguaggio e Cognizione dell'Università di Torino (LLC) presenta il Webinar su "Aboutness and Subject Matter" tenuto dal prof. Stephen Yablo (MIT, Cambridge MA). Il programma prevede i tre incontri sotto descritti.
Gli incontri si terranno ogni venerdì alle 17.00 su https://unito.webex.com/meet/matteo.plebani
Friday, 20 November: "Aboutness: the Basics"
Aboutness is supposed to be the relation sentences bear to their subject matters. But what is S's subject matter? It is made up of S's ways of being true or false. Why believe in ways, when our toolkit already contains possible worlds? An "inference to the best explanation" is sketched. Reviewing a number of would-be analyses in terms of worlds, we find that (i) though tempting, they fail, and (ii) every one can be fixed, or anyway improved, by putting ways in where the worlds were.
Friday, 27 November: "Ways: the Basics"
Unfortunately none of this tells us what a "way for S to be true" really is. They can't be minimal sufficient conditions of truth, for minimal conditions are unavailable in many cases ("There are infinitely many stars" is Kratzer's example). Following Lewis on "world where S is true," we dodge the problem by splitting it inj two: (i) determining which set-of-ways proposition S expresses, and (ii) counting s a way for S to be true if s belongs to the set. (ii) is trivial, and (i) is a job for someone else (the metasemanticist). In effect then we treat the notion as primitive. Still something needs to be said about which primitive is intended. An exceedingly subtle four-part checklist is suggested.
Friday, 4 December: "Insolubilia"
Ways and subject matter are unleashed on a bunch of puzzles and paradoxes: the Sorites, the Liar, Hempel's paradox of the ravens, Kripke's dogmatism paradox, Makinson's paradox of the preface, and the puzzle of logical omniscience.