Prior’s Turn to Medieval Logic

The peculiar aspect of medieval logic, that the truth-value of propositions changes with time, gradually disappeared as Europe exited the Renaissance. In modern logic, it was assumed by W.V.O. Quine that one cannot appreciate modern symbolic logic if one does not take it to be tenseless. A.N. Prior’s invention of tense-logic challenged Quine’s view and can be seen as a turn to medieval logic. However, Prior’s discussion of the philosophical problems related to quantified tense-logic led him to reject essential aspects of medieval logic. This invites an evaluation of Prior’s formalisation of tense-logic as, in part, an argument in favour of the medieval view of propositions. This article argues that Prior’s turn to medieval logic is hampered by his unwillingness to accept essential medieval assumptions regarding facts about objects that do not exist. Furthermore, it is argued that presentists should learn an important lesson from Prior’s struggle with accepting the implications of quantified tense-logic and reject theories that purport to be presentism as unorthodox if they also affirm Quine’s view on ontic commitment. In the widest sense: philosophers who, like Prior, turn to the medieval view of propositions must accept a worldview with facts about individuals that, in principle, do not supervene (present tense) on being, for they do not yet exist.

Contextual restrictions on cumulativity

This paper revisits the semantic variability of sentences with simple plural (in)definites in English and German, which permit distributive, cumulative and paired-cover construals. I argue that this variability reflects context-dependency rather than LF ambiguity (Schwarzschild 1996) and that the selection of a particular construal in context is driven by the QUD in the same way as the choice between maximal and non-maximal construals of plural definites (Malamud 2012; Križ 2015; Križ & Spector 2020). I then develop a new semantics for plural predication on which non-distributive and non-maximal construals form a natural class. The system extends the idea that non-maximality involves truth-value gaps (e.g. Križ 2015) to non-distributive construals by making use of Schmitt’s (2019) ‘plural projection’ framework, in which plural sentences involve special composition rules.

Q-particles in embedded declaratives, mood, and clausal complementation

Q-particles are functional items that are used to form alternative-related constructions. This paper investigates a hitherto understudied use of the Japanese Q-particle ka in which it occurs immediately below the declarative complementizer and imposes constraints on the doxastic state of the attitude holder. I show that this use of ka is licensed only under a limited range of attitude predicates, and once licensed, it encodes the presupposition that the attitude holder is 'uncertain' regarding the truth value of the proposition denoted by the embedded sentence.

Transreal Numbers and Sentient Logic

This chapter introduces the basic concepts of Total Semantics based on transreal numbers, a new field of mathematics in which division of zero is allowed. In the logic created from the transreals, it is possible to evaluate non-propositional objects such as sensations or feelings as having truth value. By covering all semantical possibility, transreal semantics enables a “poetical discourse” based on images and an immediate intuition of reality, an intuition that is both sensory and mental. This describes, and defines, a new type of epistemic operation—a sentient one—and leads to the possibility of developing a formal epistemic logic that assesses how we obtain or acquire knowledge from the perspective of sentient agents.

Diskursus Pluralisme Agama dalam Perspektif Aksi Komunikatif

Discourse on religious pluralism emerged in the west along with the demands of globalization. Where the owner of power over the modern world wants an order that can bring together the various inhabitants of the world by removing various religious barriers and a single claim to the truth. But this current of view becomes problematic when it collides with the truth by various existing religions. The rejection is very strong, especially from within the Islamic religion. Although the concept of pluralism meets equality in Islam which means diversity, but the fundamental paradigm on which pluralism is built is very different, Western Pluralism departs from the value of secularism while Pluralism in Islam's view is built on the truth value of the revelation of the Qur'an and Hadith. Diversity according to Islam does not require that there is a truth that must be recognized together, but the truth of each religion must be defended. Furthermore, even though humans have different religions and views of life, according to Islam, fellow human beings must be able to work together within the boundaries of worldly affairs to create a just and compassionate life together with fellow human beings, while still holding fast to their respective religions. Although the atmosphere of interfaith dialogue does not need to be prevented and hindered each other, all in an atmosphere of freedom and harmony.

The Presheaf of Conditional Expectations, a Bridge Between Probability and Intuitionistic Truth Value

Research for a theory of quantum gravity has recently led to the use of presheaf topos. Quantum uncertainty is linked to the truth values of intuitionistic logic. This paper proposes transposing this model into a classic probability context, that of conditional mathematical expectations. A simulation of Brownian motion is offered for illustrative purposes.

Titus 1,12: Epimenides, Ancient Christian Scholars, Zeus’s Death, and the Cretan Paradox

Many logicians and exegetes have read Titus 1,12 as an example of the Liar’s Paradox without paying sufficient attention to the nature of ancient oracular utterance. Instead of reading the verse as a logical puzzle, it should be read from its ancient context in the history of religions—a context of which ancient Christian scholars were aware. The Syriac scholars preserved a shocking Cretan tradition about Zeus’s death that probably goes back to Theodore of Mopsuestia. The god responsible for Epimenides’ oracle presumably rejected the Cretan tradition of Zeus’s death and tomb. The truth value of 1,12 consequently depends on the oracle and not the human being (i. e., Epimenides) who delivers the oracle. A reading sensitive to the history of religions preserves the Pauline author’s perspective in Titus 1,13: ἡ μαρτυρία αὕτη ἐστὶν ἀληθής. There is, consequently, a strong analogy between Caiaphas’s words in John 11:49–50 and those of Epimenides in Titus 1,12.

What Is Fake News: A New Definition

Fake news is one of the most debated social phenomena of recent years. It has been the subject not only of several attempts at defining it, but also of numerous comparative analyses of prevalent definitions. Nonetheless, the present article fosters the ambition of offering a new definition. The innovation of my definition stems from the fact that it departs from the dominant “hybrid view” on fake news, which considers the defining traits of the phenomenon to be its truth value (i.e., its falseness) and the intention of its author (i.e., to mislead its public). Opposing this view, the present article argues that the producer’s intent is irrelevant in regard to classifying news as fake news. On the contrary, the defining trait of fake news is, alongside the falsehood of its content, the discourse’s perlocutionary force, which invariably entails a call to action addressed to the text’s recipient.

Indexical Relativism?

The particular behavior exhibited by sentences featuring predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” may drive us to claim that their truth depends on the context of assessment, as MacFarlane does. MacFarlane considers two ways in which the truth of a sentence can depend on the context of assessment. On the one hand, we can say that the sentence expresses a proposition whose truth-value depends on the context of assessment. This is MacFarlane’s position, which he calls “truth relativism” and, following Weatherson, I rebrand as “nonindexical relativism”. On the other hand, we can say that what proposition a sentence expresses depends on the context of assessment. MacFarlane calls this position “content relativism” and rejects it on the grounds that it leads to implausible readings of certain sentences and is unable to account for the speaker’s authority over the content of her assertions. In this paper, I too argue against content relativism, which, again following Weatherson, I rebrand as “indexical relativism”. However, my arguments against the theory are different from MacFarlane’s, which I prove unsound. In particular, I show that any version of indexical relativism will be unable to account for at least one of the phenomena that have been standardly used to motivate nonindexical relativism—faultless disagreement and retraction—in most of the ways in which it has been proposed to understand them.