Some bilateralists have suggested that some of our negative answers to yes-or-no questions are cases of rejection. Mark Textor (2011. Is ‘no’ a force-indicator? No! Analysis 71: 448–56) has recently argued that this suggestion falls prey to a version of the Frege-Geach problem. This note reviews Textor's objection and shows why it fails. We conclude with some brief remarks concerning where we think that future attacks on bilateralism should be directed.

The model-theoretic analysis of the concept of logical consequence has come under heavy criticism in the last couple of decades. The present work looks at an alternative approach to logical consequence where the notion of inference takes center stage. Formally, the model-theoretic framework is exchanged for a proof-theoretic framework. It is argued that contrary to the traditional view, proof-theoretic semantics is not revisionary, and should rather be seen as a formal semantics that can supplement model-theory. Specifically, there are formal resources (...) to provide a proof-theoretic semantics for both intuitionistic and classical logic. We develop a new perspective on proof-theoretic harmony for logical constants which incorporates elements from the substructural era of proof-theory. We show that there is a semantic lacuna in the traditional accounts of harmony. A new theory of how inference rules determine the semantic content of logical constants is developed. The theory weds proof-theoretic and model-theoretic semantics by showing how proof-theoretic rules can induce truth-conditional clauses in Boolean and many-valued settings. It is argued that such a new approach to how rules determine meaning will ultimately assist our understanding of the apriori nature of logic. (shrink)

This volume examines the notion of an analytic proof as a natural deduction, suggesting that the proof's value may be understood as its normal form--a concept with significant implications to proof-theoretic semantics.

Whether assent ("acceptance") and dissent ("rejection") are thought of as speech acts or as propositional attitudes, the leading idea of rejectivism is that a grasp of the distinction between them is prior to our understanding of negation as a sentence operator, this operator then being explicable as applying to A to yield something assent to which is tantamount to dissent from A. Widely thought to have been refuted by an argument of Frege's, rejectivism has undergone something of a revival in (...) recent years, especially in writings by Huw Price and Timothy Smiley. While agreeing that Frege's argument does not refute the position, we shall air some philosophical qualms about it in Section 5, after a thorough examination of the formal issues in Sections 1-4. This discussion draws on - and seeks to draw attention to - some pertinent work of Kent Bendall in the 1970s. (shrink)

The paper presents a proof-theoretic semantics (PTS) for a fragment of natural language, providing an alternative to the traditional model-theoretic (Montagovian) semantics (MTS), whereby meanings are truth-condition (in arbitrary models). Instead, meanings are taken as derivability-conditions in a dedicated natural-deduction (ND) proof-system. This semantics is effective (algorithmically decidable), adhering to the meaning as use paradigm, not suffering from several of the criticisms formulated by philosophers of language against MTS as a theory of meaning. In particular, Dummett’s manifestation argument does not (...) obtain, and assertions are always warranted, having grounds of assertion. The proof system is shown to satisfy Dummett’s harmony property, justifying the ND rules as meaning conferring. The semantics is suitable for incorporation into computational linguistics grammars, formulated in type-logical grammar. (shrink)

Our topic is the notion of logical consequence: the link between premises and conclusions, the glue that holds together deductively valid argument. How can we understand this relation between premises and conclusions? It seems that any account begs questions. Painting with very broad brushtrokes, we can sketch the landscape of disagreement like this: “Realists” prefer an analysis of logical consequence in terms of the preservation of truth [29]. “Anti-realists” take this to be unhelpful and o:er alternative analyses. Some, like Dummett, (...) look to preservation of warrant to assert [9, 36]. Others, like Brandom [5], take inference as primitive, and analyse other notions in terms of it. There is plenty of disagreement on the “realist” side of the fence too. It is one thing to argue that logical consequence involves preservation of truth. It is another to explain how far truth must be preserved. Is the preservation essentially modal (in all circumstances [25]) or analytic (vouchsafed by.. (shrink)

Such a conception, says Dummett, will form "a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base ...

The framework of natural deduction is extended by permitting rules as assumptions which may be discharged in the course of a derivation. this leads to the concept of rules of higher levels and to a general schema for introduction and elimination rules for arbitrary n-ary sentential operators. with respect to this schema, (functional) completeness "or", "if..then" and absurdity is proved.

In this paper I urge friends of truth-value gaps and truth-value gluts – proponents of paracomplete and paraconsistent logics – to consider theories not merely as sets of sentences, but as pairs of sets of sentences, or what I call ‘bitheories,’ which keep track not only of what holds according to the theory, but also what fails to hold according to the theory. I explain the connection between bitheories, sequents, and the speech acts of assertion and denial. I illustrate the (...) usefulness of bitheories by showing how they make available a technique for characterising different theories while abstracting away from logical vocabulary such as connectives or quanti- fiers, thereby making theoretical commitments independent of the choice of this or that particular non-classical logic. (shrink)

The main result of this paper is a normalizing system of natural deduction for the full language of intuitionistic linear logic. No explicit weakening or contraction rules for -formulas are needed. By the systematic use of general elimination rules a correspondence between normal derivations and cut-free derivations in sequent calculus is obtained. Normalization and the subformula property for normal derivations follow through translation to sequent calculus and cut-elimination.

In what does the sense of a sentential connective consist? Like many others, I hold that its sense lies in rules that govern deductions. In the present paper, however, I argue that a classical logician should take the relevant deductions to be arguments involving affirmative or negative answers to yes-or-no questions that contain the connective. An intuitionistic logician will differ in concentrating exclusively upon affirmative answers. I conclude by arguing that a well known intuitionistic criticism of classical logic fails if (...) the answer "No" is accorded parity with the answer "Yes". (shrink)

In the proof-theoretic semantics approach to meaning, harmony , requiring a balance between introduction-rules (I-rules) and elimination rules (E-rules) within a meaning conferring natural-deduction proof-system, is a central notion. In this paper, we consider two notions of harmony that were proposed in the literature: 1. GE-harmony , requiring a certain form of the E-rules, given the form of the I-rules. 2. Local intrinsic harmony : imposes the existence of certain transformations of derivations, known as reduction and expansion . We propose (...) a construction of the E-rules (in GE-form) from given I-rules, and prove that the constructed rules satisfy also local intrinsic harmony. The construction is based on a classification of I-rules, and constitute an implementation to Gentzen’s (and Pawitz’) remark, that E-rules can be “read off” I-rules. (shrink)

In proof-theoretic semantics the meaning of an atomic sentence is usually determined by a set of derivations in an atomic system which contain that sentence as a conclusion (see, in particular, Prawitz, 1971, 1973). The paper critically discusses this standard approach and suggests an alternative account which proceeds in terms of subatomic introduction and elimination rules for atomic sentences. A simple subatomic normal form theorem by which this account of the semantics of atomic sentences and the terms from which they (...) are composed is underpinned, shows moreover that the proof-theoretic analysis of first-order logic can be pursued also beneath the atomic level. (shrink)

The paper proposes a semantic value for the logical constants (connectives and quantifiers) within the framework of proof-theoretic semantics, basic meaning on the introduction rules of a meaning conferring natural deduction proof system. The semantic value is defined based on Fregecontributions” to sentential meanings as determined by the function-argument structure as induced by a type-logical grammar. In doing so, the paper proposes a novel proof-theoretic interpretation of the semantic types, traditionally interpreted in Henkin models. The compositionality of the resulting attribution (...) of semantic values is discussed. Elsewhere, the same method was used for defining proof-theoretic meaning of subsentential phrases in a fragment of natural language. Doing the same for (the simpler and clearer case of) logic sheds more light on the proposal. (shrink)

I explain why Fernando Ferreira's interesting formal result does not threaten the bilateralist account of the sense of the connectives.

Timothy Smiley’s wonderful paper ‘Rejection’ (1996) is still perhaps not as well known or well understood as it should be. This note first gives a quick presentation of themes from that paper, though done in our own way, and then considers a putative line of objection – recently advanced by Julien Murzi and Ole Hjortland (2009) – to one of Smiley’s key claims. Along the way, we consider the prospects for an intuitionistic approach to some of the issues discussed in (...) Smiley’s paper. (shrink)

The structure of derivations in natural deduction is analyzed through isomorphism with a suitable sequent calculus, with twelve hidden convertibilities revealed in usual natural deduction. A general formulation of conjunction and implication elimination rules is given, analogous to disjunction elimination. Normalization through permutative conversions now applies in all cases. Derivations in normal form have all major premisses of elimination rules as assumptions. Conversion in any order terminates.Through the condition that in a cut-free derivation of the sequent Γ⇒C, no inactive weakening (...) or contraction formulas remain in Γ, a correspondence with the formal derivability relation of natural deduction is obtained: All formulas of Γ become open assumptions in natural deduction, through an inductively defined translation. Weakenings are interpreted as vacuous discharges, and contractions as multiple discharges. In the other direction, non-normal derivations translate into derivations with cuts having the cut formula principal either in both premisses or in the right premiss only. (shrink)