Plurals had a slow start in the history of formal semantics; a significant explosion of innovations didn’t come until the 1980s. In this paper, I offer a picture of developments by noting not only important achievements but also reflecting on the state of thinking about plurals at various periods—what issues or phenomena were not even noticed, what puzzles had started to get attention, and what innovations made the biggest changes in how people thought about plurals. I divide (...) the epochs roughly into decades: before formal semantics ; the first decade of formal semantics—the 1970s, with early work by Montague and Bennett and landmark work on bare plurals by Carlson; the 1980s, when work by Link, Scha, Krifka, Landman, Roberts, and others significantly changed the landscape; and the 1990s, where I mention some key work by Lasersohn and Schwarzschild and stop there, although there was much more work in the 1990s. I don’t discuss the twenty-first century at all because it’s not very historical yet. (shrink)

The chapter looks at an aspect of David Lewis’s work on language that has been important for the foundation and history of formal semantics as a discipline practiced by both linguists and philosophers of language: a referential semantics over possible worlds that is connected to linguistically plausible syntactic structures. Lewis’s original contributions are placed within their historical context: Church’s typed lambda calculus, Carnapian intensions, the categorial grammars of Ajdukiewicz, and Chomsky’s theories of the relation between syntax (...) and semantics. Relying on Lewis’s letters, the chapter identifies the works of Stenius, Davidson, and Katz as triggering Lewis’s interest in formal theories of natural language semantics and clarifies the relation between his and Montague’s contributions to the foundation of the discipline. (shrink)

In the history of formal semantics, the successful joining of linguistic and philosophical work brought with it some difficult foundational questions concerning the nature of meaning and the nature of knowledge of language in the domain of semantics: questions in part about “what’s in the head” of a competent language-user. This paper, part of a project on the history of formal semantics, revisits the central issues of (Partee, 1979) in a historical context, as (...) a clash between two traditions, Fregean and Chomskyan, a clash that accompanied early work combining Montague’s semantics with Chomskyan syntax. Recent advances in philosophy of mind (from, e.g., Stalnaker and Burge) go a long way towards changing the framework of arguments about “psychological reality” and “competence”, challenging the suppositions on which the original dichotomy rested, thus largely defusing the tension. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are three reasons why we should regard Wittgenstein's Tractatus as a forerunner of formal semantics: Wittgenstein is convinced that we can apply formal notions to natur...

With a few notable exceptions formal semantics, as it originated from the seminal work of Richard Montague, Donald Davidson, Max Cresswell, David Lewis and others, in the late sixties and early seventies of the previous century, does not consider Wittgenstein as one of its ancestors. That honour is bestowed on Frege, Tarski, Carnap. And so it has been in later developments. Most introductions to the subject will refer to Frege and Tarski (Carnap less frequently) —in addition to the (...) pioneers just mentioned, of course— , and discuss the main elements of their work that helped shape formal semantics in some detail. But Wittgenstein is conspicuously absent whenever the history of the subject is mentioned (usually briefly, if at all). Of course, if one thinks of Wittgenstein’s later work, this is obvious: nothing, it seems, could be more antithetic to what formal semantics aims for and to how it pursues those aims than the views on meaning and language that Wittgenstein expounds in, e.g., Philosophical Investigations, with its insistence on particularity and diversity, and its rejection of explanation and formal modelling. But what about his earlier work, the Tractatus (henceforth )? At first sight, that seems much more congenial, as it develops a conception of language and meaning that is both general and uniform, explanatory.. (shrink)

Even those generally skeptical of propensity interpretations of probability must now grant the following two points. First, the above single-case propensity interpretation meets recognized formal conditions for being a genuine interpretation of probability. Second, this interpretation is not logically reducible to a hypothetical relative frequency interpretation, nor is it only vacuously different from such an interpretation.The main objection to this propensity interpretation must be not that it is too vague or vacuous, but that it is metaphysically too extravagant. It (...) asserts not only that there are physical possibilities in nature, but further that nature itself contains innate tendencies toward these possibilities, tendencies which have the logical structure of probabilities. Thus the basic dispute between advocates of an actualist relative frequency interpretation and a single-case propensity interpretation is not a matter of epistemology, but metaphysics. The frequency theorist wishes to maintain that claims about physical probabilities are nothing more than claims about relative frequencies that will occur in the actual history of the world, be it infinite or no. It is a substantial, though hardly conclusive, argument for the propensity view that the mathematical structures commonly employed in studies of stochastic processes and statistical inference are richer than can be accommodated by a relative frequency interpretation. Whether it is possible to bridge this gap without going beyond an actualist metaphysics remains to be seen.38. (shrink)

With a few notable exceptions formal semantics, as it originated from the seminal work of Richard Montague, Donald Davidson, Max Cresswell, David Lewis and others, in the late sixties and early seventies of the previous century, does not consider Wittgenstein as one of its ancestors. That honour is bestowed on Frege, Tarski, Carnap. And so it has been in later developments. Most introductions to the subject will refer to Frege and Tarski (Carnap less frequently) —in addition to the (...) pioneers just mentioned, of course— , and discuss the main elements of their work that helped shape formal semantics in some detail. But Wittgenstein is conspicuously absent whenever the history of the subject is mentioned (usually briefly, if at all). (shrink)

I explore a strand of reception history that follows Rudolf Carnap’s shift from a purely syntactical analysis of constructed languages to his conception of pure semantics. My exploration focuses on Gustav Bergmann’s and Everett Hall’s interpretation of pure semantics, their understanding of what constitutes a ’formal’ investigation of language, and their arguments concerning the relationship between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents. I argue that Bergmann and Hall strongly misread Carnap’s semantic project and, subsequently, their misunderstanding is (...) passed down through colleagues and students. (shrink)

Like Spanish moss on a live oak tree, the scientific study of meaning in language has expanded in the last 100 years, and continues to expand steadily. In this essay I want to chart some central themes in that expansion, including their histories and their important figures. Our attention will be directed toward what is called 'formal semantics', which is the adaptation to natural language of analytical techniques from logic.[1] The first, background, section of the paper will survey (...) the changing attitudes of linguists toward semantics into the last third of the century. The second and third sections will examine current formal approaches to meaning. In the final section I will summarize some of the common assumptions of the approaches examined in the middle sections of the paper, sketch a few alternatives, and make some daring predictions. (shrink)

When in 1980, on the Third Amsterdam Colloquium, Johan van Benthem read a paper with the title ‘Why is Semantics What?’ (cf. [1]), I was puzzled: Wasn’t it obvious what semantics is? Why did our concept of it stand in need of justification? Later, much later, I came to appreciate what Van Benthem was doing in this paper (and in some others). Questioning the ‘standard model’, the assumptions on which the working semanticists silently agree, Van Benthem opened up (...) a space of issues to be discussed, questions to be asked, routes to be explored, that had been hidden from view by the unreflective endorsement of just one possible, albeit fruitful way of doing semantics. History, by the way, has proven him right on many points: the monolithic approach that dominated formal semantics of natural language in the seventies, and which relied heavily on Montague’s seminal papers, has given way to a multitude of different ways of tackling semantic issues, using different formal techniques. Some limitations, in particular the almost exclusive focus on sentences as the primary units of analysis, have been overcome. In another respect, however, I feel that the message of Van Benthem’s paper has not caught on sufficiently. He urges semanticists to take more interest in the properties of their tools, arguing that such questions are important if we are to come to a real, deep understanding of what semantics is. Such ‘meta-level’ considerations, although certainly less scarce than they used to be, are still not an everyday concern of the working semanticist. (shrink)

“The Craft of Formal Logic” is Arthur Prior’s unpublished textbook, written in 1950–51, in which he developed a theory of modality as quantification over possible worlds-like objects. This theory predates most of the prominent pioneering texts in possible worlds semantics and anticipates the significance of its basic concept in modal logic. Prior explicitly defines modal operators as quantifiers of ‘entities’ with modal character. Although he talks about these ‘entities’ only informally, and hesitates how to name them, using alternately (...) the phrases ‘possible states of affairs’, ‘chances’, ‘cases’ or ‘peculiar objects’, he is nevertheless very clear that they should be the fundamental concept of any theory of modality as a form of quantity. Without the assumption that modal operators quantify over such modal objects, the modal system will be incapable of distinguishing an actually true proposition from a necessarily true one. Due to the fact that Prior never made any direct reference to this theory in his subsequently published papers, it remained largely unknown. The comparison of “The Craft” with some of his papers on tense logic suggests that this early theory of modality underlies his later work on temporality. (shrink)

There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we present quantitative evidence to evaluate the standard (...) story of the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy, building on the topic model of over 30,000 philosophy articles in Weatherson (2022). Using a combination of qualitative judgment and a topic-model-based measurement of similarity between individual articles, we find evidence that supports the first part of the standard story, according to which ordinary language philosophy arises in the 1940s, peaks between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and then rapidly declines. But we argue that there is also evidence of a "new wave" of ordinary language philosophy in the early 21st century that defies the second part of the standard story. (shrink)

In formal semantics, structure is treated as the essential ingredient in the creation of sentence meaning from individual word meaning. This book introduces some of the foundational concepts, principles and techniques in the formal semantics of natural language and outlines the mathematical principles that underlie linguistics meaning. Using English examples, Yoad Winter presents the most useful tools and concepts of formal semantics in an accessible style and includes a variety of practical exercises so that (...) readers can learn to utilize these tools effectively. For readers with an elementary background in set theory and linguistics or with an interest in mathematical modelling, this fascinating study is an ideal introduction to natural language semantics. Designed as a quick yet thorough introduction to one of the most vibrant areas of research in modern linguistics today this volume reveals the beauty and elegance of the mathematical study of meaning. (shrink)

Linguistic choices have different attributions beyond their literal meaning according to their contexts. This paper looks at the variations in the discourses seen in the written colonial agreements and treaties during the Malabar conquest. The study employs the archived documents of various discourses during this period as a part of power shifting from the local elites to the colonial power. It explores how power is intertwined in the linguistic choices of different communication files. The study employs a hybrid methodology of (...) forensic linguistics and legal history. The analysis progresses in two phases: i) the linguistic attributions of power in the communications between the local elites and the colonial authorities and ii) the comparative analysis of variations in the linguistic choices by the colonial authorities correlating their varying power positions over the given period. It explores the dynamics of the linguistic choices of the local elites initially as a powerful entity in communication with the colonial authorities. The analysis shows a variation in the linguistic choices of the colonial authorities that suggests how they are used to reflect the power positions on a scale from weaker to powerful along the timeline. The paper argues that the linguistic choices of the colonial communication files aided them in projecting their power to society and assisted as one of the tools for reiterating their power position in various contexts. (shrink)

Excerpt from A History of Formal Logic In this edition of the most considerable history Of formal logic yet published, the Opportunity has Of course been taken to make some adjustments seen to be necessary in the original, with the author's full concurrence. Only in 36, however, has the numeration of cited passages been altered owing to the introduction of new matter. Those changes are as follows. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of (...) rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Current textbooks in formal semantics are all versions of, or introductions to, the same paradigm in semantic theory: Montague Grammar. Knowledge of Meaning is based on different assumptions and a different history. It provides the only introduction to truth- theoretic semantics for natural languages, fully integrating semantic theory into the modern Chomskyan program in linguistic theory and connecting linguistic semantics to research elsewhere in cognitive psychology and philosophy. As such, it better fits into a modern (...) graduate or undergraduate program in linguistics, cognitive science, or philosophy. Furthermore, since the technical tools it employs are much simpler to teach and to master, Knowledge of Meaning can be taught by someone who is not primarily a semanticist. Linguistic semantics cannot be studied as a stand-alone subject but only as part of cognitive psychology, the authors assert. It is the study of a particular human cognitive competence governing the meanings of words and phrases. Larson and Segal argue that speakers have unconscious knowledge of the semantic rules of their language, and they present concrete, empirically motivated proposals about a formal theory of this competence based on the work of Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson. The theory is extended to a wide range of constructions occurring in natural language, including predicates, proper nouns, pronouns and demonstratives, quantifiers, definite descriptions, anaphoric expressions, clausal complements, and adverbs. Knowledge of Meaning gives equal weight to philosophical, empirical, and formal discussions. It addresses not only the empirical issues of linguistic semantics but also its fundamental conceptual questions, including the relation of truth to meaning and the methodology of semantic theorizing. Numerous exercises are included in the book. (shrink)

Broadly, the subject of this paper is the relation between logic and linguistics. More narrowly, it concentrates on formal semantics. The first part of the text discusses the topics and methods of formal semantics, and the second part the history of formal semantics. Formal semantic analysis has not been widely known and applied in our research community, and formal methods have been applied extremely rarely in linguistic analyses. This is why it (...) is useful to point out the significant achievements of formal semantics. This inspiring interdisciplinary field of research has been successfully connecting research in linguistics, logic and philosophy since the early 1970s. (shrink)

The abstract status of Kant's account of his ‘general logic’ is explained in comparison with Gödel's general definition of a formal logical system and reflections on ‘abstract’ (‘absolute’) concepts. Thereafter, an informal reconstruction of Kant's general logic is given from the aspect of the principles of contradiction, of sufficient reason, and of excluded middle. It is shown that Kant's composition of logic consists in a gradual strengthening of logical principles, starting from a weak principle of contradiction that tolerates a (...) sort of contradictions in predication, and then proceeding to the (constructive) principle of sufficient reason, and to a classical-like logic, which includes the principle of excluded middle. A first-order formalisation is applied to this reconstruction, which reveals implicit modalities in Kant's account of logic, and confirms the implementability of Kant's logic into a sound and complete formal system. (shrink)

Is medieval logic formal? And if yes, in what sense? There are striking affinities between medieval and contemporary theories of language. Authors from the two periods share formal ambitions and maintain complex, and at time uneasy, relations with natural language. However, modern scholars became careful not to overlook the specificities of theories developed more than five hundred years apart, in particular with respect to their 'formal' character. In 1972, Alfonso Maieru noted that the efforts of medieval logicians (...) to identify logical structures in language formal enough to become objects of scientific consideration. He also stressed that the language investigated is a historical one, Latin, so that one can legitimately wonder to which extent... one is allowed to speak of 'formal logic' in the middle ages. In other words, medieval logic is characterized by a tension between 'formalist ambitions' and constraints proper to natural language. Today, our knowledge of the field has considerably expanded, calling for a new assessment of the question. (shrink)

Is logic masculine? Is women's lack of interest in the "hard core" philosophical disciplines of formal logic and semantics symptomatic of an inadequacy linked to sex? Is the failure of women to excel in pure mathematics and mathematical science a function of their inability to think rationally? Andrea Nye undermines the assumptions that inform these questions, assumptions such as: logic is unitary, logic is independenet of concrete human relations, and logic transcends historical circumstances as well as gender. In (...) a series of studies of the logics of historical figures--Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Abelard, Ockham, and Frege--she traces the changing interrelationships between logical innovation and oppressive speech strategies, showing that logic is not transcendent truth but abstract forms of language spoken by men, whether Greek ruling citizens, or scientists. (shrink)

This thesis is on the history and philosophy of logic and semantics. Logic can be described as the ‘science of reasoning’, as it deals primarily with correct patterns of reasoning. However, logic as a discipline has undergone dramatic changes in the last two centuries: while for ancient and medieval philosophers it belonged essentially to the realm of language studies, it has currently become a sub-branch of mathematics. This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the (...) medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations. One of its conclusions is that, when properly understood within their own framework, the interest of medieval logical theories for modern investigations go beyond mere historical interest, but that a thorough conceptual analysis of such theories must be undertaken in order to avoid conceptual misprojections. While such translations of medieval into modern logic have been attempted before, the approach presented here is innovative in that attention is paid to the similarities as well as to the dissimilarities between the two traditions, and to what can be learned from the medieval masters for modern investigations in logic and semantics. (shrink)

What is Meaning? Fundamentals of Formal Semantics is a concise introduction to the field of semantics as it is actually practiced. Through simple examples, pictures, and metaphors, Paul Portner presents the field’s key ideas about how language works. Explains the fundamental ideas and some of the most significant results of modern semantic theory Combines foundational discussion with simplified analyses of complex phenomena to provide readers with a sense of the fascination to be found in the details of (...) the human language Includes exercises and thought-provoking questions to facilitate learning. (shrink)

Some Generalizations of Categorical Grammars Emmon Bach 0. INTRODUCTION The last decade of work in syntax has seen a marked demotion in the importance of ...

Formal semantics - the scientific study of meaning in natural language - is one of the most fundamental and long-established areas of linguistics. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, yet compact guide to the field, bringing together research from a wide range of world-leading experts. Chapters include coverage of the historical context and foundation of contemporary formal semantics, a survey of the variety of formal/logical approaches to linguistic meaning and an overview of the major areas of (...) research within current semantic theory, broadly conceived. The Handbook also explores the interfaces between semantics and neighbouring disciplines, including research in cognition and computation. This work will be essential reading for students and researchers working in linguistics, philosophy, psychology and computer science. (shrink)

The Principle of Semantic Compositionality (sometimes called Frege''s Principle) is the principle that the meaning of a (syntactically complex) whole is a function only of the meanings of its (syntactic) parts together with the manner in which these parts were combined. This principle has been extremely influential throughout the history of formal semantics; it has had a tremendous impact upon modern linguistics ever since Montague Grammars became known; and it has more recently shown up as a guiding (...) principle for a certain direction in cognitive science.Despite the fact that The Principle is vague or underspecified at a number of points — such as what meaning is, what counts as a part, what counts as a syntactic complex, what counts as combination — this has not stopped some people from viewing The Principle as obviously true, true almost by definition. And it has not stopped other people from viewing The Principle as false, almost pernicious in its effect. And some of these latter theorists think that it is an empirically false principle while others think of it as a methodologically wrong-headed way to proceed. (shrink)

Formal semantics - the scientific study of meaning in natural language - is one of the most fundamental and long-established areas of linguistics. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, yet compact guide to the field, bringing together research from a wide range of world-leading experts. Chapters include coverage of the historical context and foundation of contemporary formal semantics, a survey of the variety of formal/logical approaches to linguistic meaning and an overview of the major areas of (...) research within current semantic theory, broadly conceived. The Handbook also explores the interfaces between semantics and neighbouring disciplines, including research in cognition and computation. This work will be essential reading for students and researchers working in linguistics, philosophy, psychology and computer science. (shrink)

The syllogistic figures and moods can be taken to be argument schemata as can the rules of the Stoic propositional logic. Sentence schemata have been used in axiomatizations of logic only since the landmark 1927 von Neumann paper [31]. Modern philosophers know the role of schemata in explications of the semantic conception of truth through Tarski’s 1933 Convention T [42]. Mathematical logicians recognize the role of schemata in first-order number theory where Peano’s second-order Induction Axiom is approximated by Herbrand’s Induction-Axiom (...) Schema [23]. Similarly, in first-order set theory, Zermelo’s second-order Separation Axiom is approximated by Fraenkel’s first-order Separation Schema [17]. In some of several closely related senses, a schema is a complex system having multiple components one of which is a template-text or scheme-template, a syntactic string composed of one or more “blanks” and also possibly significant words and/or symbols. In accordance with a side condition the template-text of a schema is used as a “template” to specify a multitude, often infinite, of linguistic expressions such as phrases, sentences, or argument-texts, called instances of the schema. The side condition is a second component. The collection of instances may but need not be regarded as a third component. The instances are almost always considered to come from a previously identified language (whether formal or natural), which is often considered to be another component. This article reviews the often-conflicting uses of the expressions ‘schema’ and ‘scheme’ in the literature of logic. It discusses the different definitions presupposed by those uses. And it examines the ontological and epistemic presuppositions circumvented or mooted by the use of schemata, as well as the ontological and epistemic presuppositions engendered by their use. In short, this paper is an introduction to the history and philosophy of schemata. (shrink)

This book offers a metaphysical development of the notion of perspective. By explaining the functional nature of point of view, and by providing a concrete definition of point of view as a window through which to see the world, it offers a scientific realist theory that explains that points of view are real structures that ground properties and objects as well as perspectives. The notion of point of view has been of key importance in the history of philosophy, and (...) different philosophical schools have used this notion to conduct analyses from the external reality to the inner phenomenal status, or even to construct an entire philosophical system. However, there has been a lack of systematic analysis of what a point of view is and what its structure is; this book fills the gap in the literature and makes the transition between semantics and epistemology, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This book offers a metaphysical development of the notion of perspective. By explaining the functional nature of point of view, and by providing a concrete definition of point of view as a window through which to see the world, it offers a scientific realist theory that explains that points of view are real structures that ground properties and objects as well as perspectives. The notion of point of view has been of key importance in the history of philosophy, and (...) different philosophical schools have used this notion to conduct analyses from the external reality to the inner phenomenal status, or even to construct an entire philosophical system. However, there has been a lack of systematic analysis of what a point of view is and what its structure is; this book fills the gap in the literature and makes the transition between semantics and epistemology, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

What is it that semanticists think they are doing when using formalisation? What kind of endeavour is the formal semantics of natural language: scientific; linguistic; philosophical; logical; mathematical? If formal semantics is a scientific endeavour, then there ought to be empirical criteria for determining whether such a theory is correct, or an improvement on an alternative account. The question then arises as to the nature of the evidence that is being accounted for. It could be argued (...) that the empirical questions are little different in kind to other aspects of linguistic analysis, involving questions of performance and competence (Chomsky 1965; Saussure 1916). But there are aspects of formal accounts of meaning that appear to sit outside this scientific realm. One key issue concerns the precise nature of the formalisation that is adopted; what criteria are to be used to decide between accounts that are founded on different formal systems, with different ontological assumptions? Indeed, is it necessary to judge semantic frameworks on such grounds? In other words, are two theoretical accounts to be treated as equivalent for all relevant purposes if they account for exactly the same linguistic data? Broadly speaking, there are two related perspectives on the analysis of propositional statements, one “truth conditional” — reducing sentence meaning to the conditions under which the sentence is judged to be true (e.g. Montague 1973) — the other “proof theoretic” — reducing sentence meanings to patterns of entailments that are supported (e.g. Ranta 1994, Fox & Lappin 2005 ,Fox 2000). Variations of these perspectives might be required in the case of non-assertoric utterances. We may wonder what critieria might be used to decide between these approaches. This brings us back to the nature of the data itself. If the data is (merely) about which arguments, or truth conditions, subjects agree with, and which they disagree with, then the terms in which the theory is expressed may be irrelevant. But it may also be legitimate to be concerned with either (a) the intuitions that people have when reasoning with language, or (b) some technical or philosophical issues relating to the chosen formalism. The truth-conditional vs proof-theoretic dichotomy might broadly be characterised as model-theoretic vs axiomatic, where the model-theoretic tend to be built around a pre-existing formal theory, and the axiomatic involves formulating rules of behaviour “from scratch”. In some sense, fitting an analysis of a new problem into an existing framework could be described as providing some kind of “explanatory” power, assuming that the existing framework has some salient motivation that is independent of the specific details of the phenomena in question. In contrast, building a new theory that captures the behaviour might then be characterised as “descriptive”, as — superficially at least — it does not show how an existing theory “already” accounts for the data in some sense. Here we observe instead that the argument can be run in the other direction. that a reductive model-theoretic account merely “describes” how some aspects of a problem can be reduced to some formalisation, but may fail to capture a subject’s understanding or intuitions about meaning. It is surely appropriate for the formal theory itself to be at least sympathetic to the ontological concerns and intuitions of its subjects — if not inform them (Dummett 1991). The alternative amounts to little more than carving out otherwise arbitrary aspects of a system that mimics the required behaviour, without a coherent explanation of why some aspects of a formal theory characterise, or capture, the intended meaning, but not others (cf. Benacerraf 1965). That seems an impoverished approach, weakening any claim to “explain”. Any constraint this imposes on what is it to be an explanatory account of meaning then faces the same problem as naive notions of compositionality (Zadrozny 1994) — that is, what appears to be a meaningful restriction is, in reality, a mirage. (shrink)

Elements of Formal Semantics has already been reviewed twice :42, 2016; Erlewine in Comput Linguist 42:837–839, 2017). As well, the website for the work is accompanied by evaluative quotes by noted scholars. All are very positive concerning its clarity and its utility as an introduction to formal semantics for natural language. As I agree with these evaluations my interest in reiterating them in slightly different words is limited. So my reviews of the content chapters will be (...) accompanied by a Reflections section consisting of my own reflections on the foundations of model theoretic semantics for natural language as laid out in EFS. The issues I address—alternate ways of accomplishing the tasks Winter treats—should not be included in an introductory work but they may be helpful for those who teach classes for which EFS is an appropriate text. They might also help with queries about the content of the text by those using it. I note that a mark of a clear text is that it allows the reader to reflect on its content not its presentation. (shrink)

Not focusing on the history of classical logic, this book provides discussions and quotes central passages on its origins and development, namely from a philosophical perspective. Not being a book in mathematical logic, it takes formal logic from an essentially mathematical perspective. Biased towards a computational approach, with SAT and VAL as its backbone, this is an introduction to logic that covers essential aspects of the three branches of logic, to wit, philosophical, mathematical, and computational.

This paper argues for two principal conclusions about natural language semantics based on John Buridan's considerations concerning the notion of formal consequence, that is, formally valid inference. (1) Natural languages are essentially semantically closed, yet they do not have to be on that account inconsistent. (2) Natural language semantics has to be token based, as a matter of principle. The paper investigates the Buridanian considerations leading to these conclusions, and considers some obviously emerging objections to the Buridanian (...) approach. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the relationship between the object of formal logic and the object of ontology. The history of logic and philosophy shows a kinship and overlapping between the two sciences. The analyses were conducted on the basis of three approaches to formal logic, i.e. Aristotle’s logic Rus­sell’s and Whitehead’s logic, and Leśniewski’s logic. At the same time, it sought to grasp its material and formal object. Now with regard to ontology mainly Aristotelian (...) and Leibnizean understanding of ontology was taken into account as an instance of philosophical ontology and set theory ontology as an example of ontology constructed with a view to play the role of a semantic background for the formulas of logical calculi. The considerations under study allow us to state that even if material objects in the two sciences overlap, especially in the case when the formulas of logic are interpreted by way of ontology, their formal objects seem to be different. Logic does not focus on the question of the cate­gorisation of reality; the essences belonging to respective ontological categories are only “truth-making” factors for the statements formulated by formal logic. (shrink)

We undeniably live in an information age—as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: ‘every age was an age of information, each in its own way’ (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. Natural (...) history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their ‘preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology… [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science’ (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed to appreciate how principles and practices that can be traced to Linnaeus constituted ‘a change in the nature of taxonomy from a local or limited folk communication system and later a codified folk taxonomy to a formal system of information science [that] marked a watershed in the history of biology’ (ibid.). A similar observation could be made about twentieth-century philosophy of biology, which mostly skipped over practical and epistemic questions about information management in taxonomy. The taxonomic themes that featured in the emerging philosophy of biology literature in the second half of the twentieth century were predominantly metaphysical in orientation. This is illustrated by what has become known as the ‘essentialism story’: an account about the essentialist nature of pre- Darwinian taxonomy that used to be accepted by many historians and philosophers, and which stimulated efforts to document and interpret shifts in the metaphysical understanding of species and (natural) classification (Richards 2010; Winsor 2003; Wilkins 2009). Although contemporary debates in the philosophy of taxonomy have moved on, much discussion continues to focus on conceptual and metaphysical issues surrounding the nature of species and the principles of classification. Discussions centring on whether species are individuals, classes, or kinds have sprung up as predictably as perennials. Raucous debates have arisen even with the aim of accommodating the diversity of views: is monism, pluralism, or eliminativism about the species category the best position to take? In addition to these, our disciplines continue to interrogate what is the nature of these different approaches to classification: are they representational or inferential roles of different approaches to classification (evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics, phylogenetic systematics)? While there is still much to learn from these discussions—in which we both actively participate—our aim with this topical collection has been to seek different entrypoints and address underexposed themes in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. We believe that approaching taxonomy as an information science prompts new questions and can open up new philosophical vistas worth exploring. A twenty-first century information science turn in the history and philosophy of taxonomy is already underway. In scientific practice and in daily life it is hard to escape the imaginaries of Big Data and the constant threats of being ‘flooded with data’. In the life sciences, these developments are often associated with the socalled bioinformatics crisis that can hopefully be contained by a new, interdisciplinary breed of bioinformaticians. These new concepts, narratives, and developments surrounding the centrality of data and information systems in the biological and biomedical sciences have raised important philosophical questions about their challenges and implications. But historical perspectives are just as necessary to judge what makes our information age different from those that preceded us. Indeed, as the British zoologist Charles Godfray has often pointed out, the piles of data that are being generated in contemporary systematic biology have led to a second bioinformatics crisis, the first being the one that confronted Linnaeus in the mid-18th century (Godfray 2007). Although our aim is to clear a path for new discussions of taxonomy from an information science-informed point of view, we continue where others in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science have already trod. We believe that an appreciation of biological taxonomy as an information science raises many questions about the philosophical, theoretical, material, and practical aspects of the use and revision of biological nomenclatures in different local and global communities of scientists and citizen scientists. In particular, conceiving of taxonomy as an information science directs attention to the temporalities of managing an accumulating data about classified entities that are themselves subject to revision, to the means by which revision is accomplished, and to the semantic, material, and collaborative contexts that mediate the execution of revisions. (shrink)

What makes our utterances mean what they do? In this work I formulate and justify a structural constraint on possible answers to this key question in the philosophy of language, and I show that accepting this constraint leads naturally to the adoption of an algebraic formalization of truth-theoretic semantics. I develop such a formalization, and show that applying algebraic methodology to the theory of meaning yields important insights into the nature of language. ;The constraint I propose is, roughly, this: (...) the meaning of an utterance of a natural language sentence is derived from the place of that sentence within a system that includes other sentences, and is structured in virtue of primitive semantic facts about complete sentences. This constraint calls for a formal semantics program where the meaning of natural language sentences is represented by an appropriate assignment of the elements of an algebraic structure to sentences, an assignment that represents facts concerning complete sentences. I call the above constraint 'The Algebraic Thesis', and the corresponding formal semantics program 'Algebraic Semantics.' ;I introduce AT by carving it out of the holistic views of language of Quine and Davidson, and I show that it is independent of other important features of these philosophers' views. I then argue for AT, taking into account recent work by Brandom, Dummett, Fodor and Lepore, Gaifman and Perry. In developing Algebraic Semantics I present structures of two basic types: Boolean algebras and cylindric algebras; these structures are construed in the context of AT in a novel way: they are treated as applying to classes of sentences as numbers apply to physical objects in measurement. Applying algebraic methodology to formal semantics and to the theory of meaning, I develop these results: ; An account of the semantics of necessity and possibility that avoids both Quine's dismissal of these notions and their reduction by David Lewis to quantification over possible worlds; ; The application of the model-theoretic notion of expansion to capture the process of our learning progressively more of the meaning of expressions in our first languages. (shrink)

In contrast to many other scholarly continental works, Bochenski's monumental survey waited only five years for its English translation. The translator has made some minor emendations and has appended a few pages concerning Abélard's contribution to logic. A great contribution to the scholarship of this exciting field. -D. D. O.