In this paper an analysis of scientific theories and theory change including meaning change is presented by using intensional logic. Several cases of scientific progress are distinguished and special attention is given to incommensurability. It is argued that ,in all cases the comparison of rival theories is possible via translation. Finally two different forms of theory-Iadenness of observation are analysed.

Pavel Tichy (1936-1994) was a Czech philosopher who originally studied and worked at Charles University in Prague, and spent the second half of his life in New Zealand as a political refugee. Early in his career he invented intensional logic, simultaneously with Richard Montague, but published his version in 1971, slightly after Montague's 1970 papers, and has never been recognised for this achievement. But this was only the beginning of his work. He developed a highly original theory of (...) semantics called Transparent Intensional Logic, which is the basis of an important research program based in the Czech Republic and Slovenia. He published a wide range of original work in semantics, philosophy of logic and language, philosophy of science, and metaphysics; but despite the indisputable quality of this work, he has gained little contemporary recognition. This article provides a brief introduction to his work, focussing mainly on basic ideas of his intensional semantics and his theory of 'constructions'. (shrink)

The paper describes the solution to semantic paradoxes pioneered by Pavel Tichý and further developed by the present author. Its main feature is an examination (and then refutation) of the hidden premise of paradoxes that the paradox-producing expression really means what it seems to mean. Semantic concepts are explicated as relative to language, thus also language is explicated. The so-called ‘explicit approach’ easily treats paradoxes in which language is explicitly referred to. The residual paradoxes are solved by the ‘implicit approach’ (...) which employs ideas made explicit by the former one. (shrink)

Neo-Fregean approaches to set theory, following Frege, have it that sets are the extensions of concepts, where concepts are the values of second-order variables. The idea is that, given a second-order entity $X$, there may be an object $\varepsilon X$, which is the extension of X. Other writers have also claimed a similar relationship between second-order logic and set theory, where sets arise from pluralities. This paper considers two interpretations of second-order logic—as being either extensional or intensional—and (...) whether either is more appropriate for this approach to the foundations of set theory. Although there seems to be a case for the extensional interpretation resulting from modal considerations, I show how there is no obstacle to starting with an intensional second-order logic. I do so by showing how the $\varepsilon$ operator can have the effect of “extensionalizing” intensional second-order entities. (shrink)

We want to show that Aristotle’s general conception of syllogism includes as its essential part the logical concept of necessity, which can be understood in a causal way. This logical conception of causality is more general then the conception of the causality in the Aristotelian theory of proof (“demonstrative syllogism”), which contains the causal account of knowledge and science outside formal logic. Aristotle’s syllogistic is described in a purely intensional way, without recourse to a set-theoretical formal semantics. It (...) is shown that the conclusion of a syllogism is justified by the accumulation of logical causes applied during the reasoning process. It is also indicated that logical principles as well as the logical concept of causality have a fundamental ontological role in Aristotle’s “first philosophy”. (shrink)

This book aims to develop certain aspects of Gottlob Frege’s theory of meaning, especially those relevant to intensional logic. It offers a new interpretation of the nature of senses, and attempts to devise a logical calculus for the theory of sense and reference that captures as closely as possible the views of the historical Frege. (The approach is contrasted with the less historically-minded Logic of Sense and Denotation of Alonzo Church.) Comparisons of Frege’s theory with those of (...) Russell and others are given. It is in the end shown that developing Frege’s theory in these ways reveals serious problems hitherto largely unnoticed, including those possibly rendering a Fregean intensional logic inconsistent even if his naïve class theory is excluded. (shrink)

In this paper we define intensional models for the classical theory of types, thus arriving at an intensional type logic ITL. Intensional models generalize Henkin's general models and have a natural definition. As a class they do not validate the axiom of Extensionality. We give a cut-free sequent calculus for type theory and show completeness of this calculus with respect to the class of intensional models via a model existence theorem. After this we turn our (...) attention to applications. Firstly, it is argued that, since ITL is truly intensional, it can be used to model ascriptions of propositional attitude without predicting logical omniscience. In order to illustrate this a small fragment of English is defined and provided with an ITL semantics. Secondly, it is shown that ITL models contain certain objects that can be identified with possible worlds. Essential elements of modal logic become available within classical type theory once the axiom of Extensionality is given up. (shrink)

In, Kosterec attempts to provide ``model-theoretic proofs'' of certain theses involving the normal modal operators $\Diamond$ and $\square$ and the truth-in-fiction operator $F$ which he then goes on to show have counterexamples in Kripke models. He concludes from this that the embedding of modal logic under the truth-in-fiction operator is unsound. We show instead that it is the ``model-theoretic proofs'' that are themselves unsound, involving illicit substitution, a subtle error that nevertheless allows us to draw an important conclusion about (...) intensional contexts and semantic equivalences. (shrink)

After the publication of Marshall’s theorem (2009), it has been widely accepted that the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction cannot be analyzed in broadly logical terms, but instead requires appealing to more robust metaphysical notions like grounding, naturalness or duplication. However, in this article I will defend that this is not so. Instead of showing the limitations of Marshall’s undoubtedly impressive result, I will present here a broadly logical definition of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, and show that it is extensional adequate regardless of our (...) preferred conception of property identity. (shrink)

It is argued that the distinction between the mental and the nonmental is at bottom logical. The paper begins by sketching and defending a theory of intensional logic in which the notion of logically and metaphysically basic relations (called connections) can be defined. This notion is then employed in an analysis of intentionality: a connection is intentional iff it can contingently connect some individual to some proposition or concept independently of whether it connects the individual to some necessarily (...) equivalent proposition or concept. After potential counterexamples have been explained away, the paper then extends the analysis to a general analysis of mentality. Finally, a "transcendental" argument is given for the thesis that at least some mental relations must be logically and metaphysically basic. (shrink)

In the paper, original formal-logical conception of syntactic and semantic: intensional and extensional senses of expressions of any language L is outlined. Syntax and bi-level intensional and extensional semantics of language L are characterized categorically: in the spirit of some Husserl’s ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajukiewicz’s theory syntactic/semantic categories and in accordance with Frege’s ontological canons, Bocheński’s famous motto—syntax mirrors ontology and some ideas of Suszko: language should be a linguistic scheme of ontological reality and simultaneously a tool (...) of its cognition. In the logical conception of language L, its expressions should satisfy some general conditions of language adequacy. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and semantic senses and mutual, syntactic, and semantic compatibility, correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility syntactic and semantic categories of expressions of L. From this postulate, three principles of compositionality follow: one syntactic and two semantic already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L: syntactic, intensional, and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, of course, an idealization, but only expressions with high degrees of precision of their senses, after due justification, may become theorems of science. (shrink)

Commonplace syntactic constructions in natural language seem to generate ontological commitments to a dazzling array of metaphysical categories - aggregations, sets, ordered n-tuples, possible worlds, intensional entities, ideal objects, species, intensive and extensive quantities, stuffs, situations, states, courses of events, nonexistent objects, intentional and discourse objects, general objects, plural objects, variable objects, arbitrary objects, vague kinds and concepts, fuzzy sets, and so forth. But just because a syntactic construction in some natural language appears to invoke a new category of (...) entity, are we theoreticians epistemically justified in holding that there are such entities? This would hardly seem sufficient. To be epistemically justified, the ontology to which we theoreticians are committed must pass strict standards: the entities must be of the sort required by our best comprehensive theory of the world. The thesis of this paper is that fine-grained type-free intensional entities are like this. If the thesis is right, these entities have a special objective status perhaps not possessed by some of the other ontological categories associated with special syntactic constructions in natural language. In fact, it is plausible to hold that fine-grained type-free intensional entities provide the proper minimal framework for constructing logical and linguistic theories. In this paper my strategy will be to survey the competing conceptions of fine-grained type-free intensionality and to present arguments in support of one of them. Following this narrowing down process, I will go on to the indicated epistemological considerations. (shrink)

We approach the topic of solution equivalence of propositional problems from the perspective of non-constructive procedural theory of problems based on Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). The answer we put forward is that two solutions are equivalent if and only if they have equivalent solution concepts. Solution concepts can be understood as a generalization of the notion of proof objects from the Curry-Howard isomorphism.

As emphasized by Alonzo Church and David Kaplan (Church 1974, Kaplan 1975), the philosophies of language of Frege and Russell incorporate quite different methods of semantic analysis with different basic concepts and different ontologies. Accordingly we distinguish between a Fregean and a Russellian tradition in intensional semantics. The purpose of this paper is to pursue the Russellian alternative and to provide a language of intensional logic with a model-theoretic semantics. We also discuss the so-called Russell-Myhill paradox that (...) threatens simple Russellian type theory if propositions satisfies very strict principles of individuation. One way of avoiding the paradox is to adopt a ramified rather than a simple theory of types. (shrink)

The book is a collection of papers and aims to unify the questions of syntax and semantics of language, which are included in logic, philosophy and ontology of language. The leading motif of the presented selection of works is the differentiation between linguistic tokens (material, concrete objects) and linguistic types (ideal, abstract objects) following two philosophical trends: nominalism (concretism) and Platonizing version of realism. The opening article under the title “The Dual Ontological Nature of Language Signs and the Problem (...) of Their Mutual Relations” provides a broad introduction into the problem area connected with this differentiation, while the logic-formal characteristics of the distinction are framed in the work entitled “On the Type-Token Relationships” (Chapter 1). The basic part of the book deals with issues relating to syntax (Chapters 2-4) and semantics of language (Chapters 5-6), as well as pertaining to syntactic-semantic pragmatic questions (Chapters 7-13). Throughout the book, language, categorial language, is characterized syntactically as generated by classical categorial grammar (Chapter 2) and formalized on two opposing levels: as language of expression-tokens (level of tokens) and language of expression-types (level of types). The author’s considerations contained in Chapters 2 and 4 lead to the important philosophical conclusion that in formal-logical syntactic studies on language the assumption that expression-types constitute the primary language layer while expression-tokens make the secondary one, can be neglected; thus, this speaks in favour of the opposing standpoint—the concretistic one—in the ontology of language syntax. In the works “Meaning and Interpretations”, Parts I and II (Chapters 5 and 6), it is underlined, however, that such semantic concepts as: meaning, denotation and interpretation are defined on the types level, yet their formal definitions require making use of notions of the tokens level. The semantic notions introduced in the above-mentioned articles are also used in the following works of the present selection, under the titles: “Three Principles of Compositionality” and “On Metaknowledge and Truth” (Chapters 7 and 8). They formalize two principles of compositionality that are well known in the literature on the subject, deriving from Frege, i.e. those of meaning and of denotation; they are related to the syntactic principle of compositionality which was introduced by the author. All the three principles are, at the same time, three conditions of homomorphism of categorial language algebra into three kinds of non-standard models of language (one syntactic and two semantic ones: intensional and extensional), which allows introducing three definitions of truthfulness into these models. The next two works in the collection, entitled: “On Language Adequacy” and “What is the Sense in Logic and Philosophy of Language” (Chapters 9 and 10) concern adequacy of categorial language syntax along with its dual semantics: intensional and extensional, and categorial compatibility of any of its syntactic categories with two corresponding semantic categories: intensional and extensional, based on the compatibility the syntactic category of each language expression with the ontological category assigned to its denotatum. The well-known problem of categorial compatibility for first-order quantifiers finds its solution in the paper “Categories of First-Order Quantifiers” (Chapter 11). In the work “Logic and Ontology of Language” (Chapter 12), being in a sense a summary of the considerations presented in the preceding chapters of the book, language is treated as an ontological being, characterized in compliance with the logical conception of language proposed by Ajdukiewicz. Application—like throughout the book—of tools of classical logic and set theory has resulted in emergence of a general formal logical theory of syntax, semantics and pragmatics of language, which takes into account duality in the understanding of linguistic expressions as tokens (concretes) and types (abstract objects). In terms that take into account a functional approach to language itself, there comes out an ontological neutrality of logic with respect to existential assumptions relating to the ontological nature of linguistic expressions and their extra-linguistic ontological counterparts. The issues connected with applying logic while explaining the manner of using linguistic tokens and linguistic types to determine notions of language communication are raised and illustrated in the last chapter of the work, bearing the title “A Logical Conceptualization of Knowledge on the Notion of Language Communication”. (shrink)

In this paper I propose and motivate a logic of the interdefined concepts of making true and control, understood as intensional propositional operators to be indexed to an agent. While bearing a resemblance to earlier logics in the tradition, the motivations, semantics, and object language theory differ on crucial points. Applying this logic to widespread formal theories of agency, I use it as a framework to argue against the ubiquitous assumption that the strongest actions or options available (...) to a given agent must always be pairwise incompatible. The conclusion is that this assumption conflicts with failures of higher order control of agents over their degree or precision of control, failures exhibited by such imperfect agents as ourselves. I discuss models in this setting for understanding such imperfectly self-controlling agents. In an appendix, I prove several relevant results about the logic described, including soundness and completeness both for it and for certain natural extensions. (shrink)

In the paper, various notions of the logical semiotic sense of linguistic expressions – namely, syntactic and semantic, intensional and extensional – are considered and formalised on the basis of a formal-logical conception of any language L characterised categorially in the spirit of certain Husserl's ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajdukiewicz's theory of syntactic/semantic categories and, in accordance with Frege's ontological canons, Bocheński's and some of Suszko's ideas of language adequacy of expressions of L. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic (...) and semantic senses and mutual, syntactic and semantic correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility of syntactic and semantic (extensional and intensional) categories of expressions of L. This postulate defines the unification of these three logical senses. There are three principles of compositionality which follow from this postulate: one syntactic and two semantic ones already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism of partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L: syntactic, intensional and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, obviously, an idealisation. The syntactic and semantic unambiguity of its expressions is not, of course, a feature of natural languages, but every syntactically and semantically ambiguous expression of such languages may be treated as a schema representing all of its interpretations that are unambiguous expressions. (shrink)

The principle of universal instantiation plays a pivotal role both in the derivation of intensional paradoxes such as Prior’s paradox and Kaplan’s paradox and the debate between necessitism and contingentism. We outline a distinctively free logical approach to the intensional paradoxes and note how the free logical outlook allows one to distinguish two different, though allied themes in higher-order necessitism. We examine the costs of this solution and compare it with the more familiar ramificationist approaches to higher-order (...) class='Hi'>logic. Our assessment of both approaches is largely pessimistic, and we remain reluctantly inclined to take Prior’s and Kaplan’s derivations at face value. (shrink)

I introduce a formalization of probability which takes the concept of 'evidence' as primitive. In parallel to the intuitionistic conception of truth, in which 'proof' is primitive and an assertion A is judged to be true just in case there is a proof witnessing it, here 'evidence' is primitive and A is judged to be probable just in case there is evidence supporting it. I formalize this outlook by representing propositions as types in Martin-Lof type theory (MLTT) and defining a (...) 'probability type' on top of the existing machinery of MLTT, whose inhabitants represent pieces of evidence in favor of a proposition. One upshot of this approach is the potential for a mathematical formalism which treats 'conjectures' as mathematical objects in their own right. Other intuitive properties of evidence occur as theorems in this formalism. (shrink)

Attempting to deflate ontological debates, the proponent of Quantifier Variance (QV) claims that there are multiple quantifier meanings of equal metaphysical merit. According to Hirsch—the main proponent of QV—metaphysical merit should be understood intensionally: two languages have equal merit if they allow us to express the same possibilities. I examine the notion of metaphysical merit and its purported link to intensionality. That link, I argue, should not be supported by adopting an intensional theory of semantic content. Rather, I give (...) a general strategy for supporting claims about metaphysical merit and examine whether that strategy can be used to link merit and intensionality. Though I don’t deliver a definitive verdict, the discussion provides a clearer framework for articulating and evaluating claims about metaphysical merit. (shrink)

Standard approaches to proper names, based on Kripke's views, hold that the semantic values of expressions are (set-theoretic) functions from possible worlds to extensions and that names are rigid designators, i.e.\ that their values are \emph{constant} functions from worlds to entities. The difficulties with these approaches are well-known and in this paper we develop an alternative. Based on earlier work on a higher order logic that is \emph{truly intensional} in the sense that it does not validate the axiom (...) scheme of Extensionality, we develop a simple theory of names in which Kripke's intuitions concerning rigidity are accounted for, but the more unpalatable consequences of standard implementations of his theory are avoided. The logic uses Frege's distinction between sense and reference and while it accepts the rigidity of names it rejects the view that names have direct reference. Names have constant denotations across possible worlds, but the semantic value of a name is not determined by its denotation. (shrink)

A textbook for modal and other intensional logics based on the Open Logic Project. It covers normal modal logics, relational semantics, axiomatic and tableaux proof systems, intuitionistic logic, and counterfactual conditionals.

In this paper I will explore the question whether the Trivialization construction of transparent intensional logic (TIL) can be understood in terms of the Execution construction, specifically, in terms of its degenerate case known as the 0-Execution. My answer will be positive and the apparent contrast between the intuitive understanding of Trivialization and 0-Execution will be explained as a matter of distinct yet related informal perspectives, not as a matter of technical or conceptual differences.

Revised and reprinted in Handbook of Philosophical Logic, volume 10, Dov Gabbay and Frans Guenthner (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, (2003). -- Two sorts of property theory are distinguished, those dealing with intensional contexts property abstracts (infinitive and gerundive phrases) and proposition abstracts (‘that’-clauses) and those dealing with predication (or instantiation) relations. The first is deemed to be epistemologically more primary, for “the argument from intensional logic” is perhaps the best argument for the existence of properties. This argument (...) is presented in the course of discussing generality, quantifying-in, learnability, referential semantics, nominalism, conceptualism, realism, type-freedom, the first-order/higher-order controversy, names, indexicals, descriptions, Mates’ puzzle, and the paradox of analysis. Two first-order intensional logics are then formulated. Finally, fixed-point type-free theories of predication are discussed, especially their relation to the question whether properties may be identified with propositional functions. (shrink)

Standard epistemic logic actually formalizes folk-psychology. The problem of logical omniscience shows that this logic is not adequate in a cognitivist setting. In order to describe realistic information-processing believers, we need both an ontology of particulars and a hyper-intensional taxonomy of representations. From this point of view, sub-structural logics, which do not overlook the syntaxic details of the processing of information, are an interesting alternative to possible worlds semantics.

This paper presents a new system of logic, LF, that is intended to be used as the foundation of the formalization of science. That is, deductive validity according to LF is to be used as the criterion for assessing what follows from the verdicts, hypotheses, or conjectures of any science. In work currently in progress, we argue for the unique suitability of LF for the formalization of logic, mathematics, syntax, and semantics. The present document specifies the language and (...) rules of LF, lays out some notational conventions, and states some basic technical facts about the system. (shrink)

The identity theory’s rise to prominence in analytic philosophy of mind during the late 1950s and early 1960s is widely seen as a watershed in the development of physicalism, in the sense that whereas logical behaviourism proposed analytic and a priori ascertainable identities between the meanings of mental and physical-behavioural concepts, the identity theory proposed synthetic and a posteriori knowable identities between mental and physical properties. While this watershed does exist, the standard account of it is misleading, as it is (...) founded in erroneous intensional misreadings of the logical positivists’—especially Carnap’s—extensional notions of translation and meaning, as well as misinterpretations of the positivists’ shift from the strong thesis of translation-physicalism to the weaker and more liberal notion of reduction-physicalism that occurred in the Unity of Science programme. After setting the historical record straight, the essay traces the first truly modern identity theory to Schlick’s pre-positivist views circa 1920 and goes on to explore its further development in Feigl, arguing that the fundamental difference between the Schlick-Feigl identity theory and the more familiar and influential Place-Smart-Armstrong identity theory has resurfaced in the deep and seemingly unbridgeable gulf in contemporary philosophy of consciousness between inflationary mentalism and deflationary physicalism. (shrink)

The question whether natural language permits quantification over intentional objects as the ‘nonexistent’ objects of thought is the topic of a major philosophical controversy, as is the status of intentional objects as such. This paper will argue that natural language does reflect a particular notion of intentional object and in particular that certain types of natural language constructions (generally disregarded in the philosophical literature) cannot be analysed without positing intentional objects. At the same time, those intentional objects do not come (...) for free; rather they are strictly dependent on intentional acts that generally need to have a presence, in one way or another, in the semantic structure of the sentence. (shrink)

The received view in the history of the philosophy of psychology is that the logical positivists—Carnap and Hempel in particular—endorsed the position commonly known as “logical” or “analytical” behaviourism, according to which the relations between psychological statements and the physical-behavioural statements intended to give their meaning are analytic and knowable a priori. This chapter argues that this is sheer legend: most, if not all, such relations were viewed by the logical positivists as synthetic and knowable only a posteriori. It then (...) traces the origins of the legend to the logical positivists’ idiosyncratic extensional or at best weakly intensional use of what are now considered crucially strongly intensional semantic notions, such as “translation,” “meaning” and their cognates, focussing on a particular instance of this latter phenomenon, arguing that a conflation of explicit definition and analyticity may be the chief source of the legend. (shrink)

After a brief history of Brentano's thesis of intentionality, it is argued that intentionality presents a serious problem for materialism. First, it is shown that, if no general materialist analysis (or reduction) of intentionality is possible, then intentional phenomena would have in common at least one nonphysical property, namely, their intentionality. A general analysis of intentionality is then suggested. Finally, it is argued that any satisfactory general analysis of intentionality must share with this analysis a feature which entails the existence (...) of a nonphysical "level of organization". (shrink)

This paper discusses certain problems arising within the treatment of the senses of functions in Alonzo Church's Logic of Sense and Denotation. Church understands such senses themselves to be "sense-functions," functions from sense to sense. However, the conditions he lays out under which a sense-function is to be regarded as a sense presenting another function as denotation allow for certain undesirable results given certain unusual or "deviant" sense-functions. Certain absurdities result, e.g., an argument can be found for equating any (...) two senses of the same type. An alternative treatment of the senses of functions is discussed, and is thought to do better justice to Frege's original theory. (shrink)

It is a received view that Kant’s formal logic (or what he calls “pure general logic”) is thoroughly intensional. On this view, even the notion of logical extension must be understood solely in terms of the concepts that are subordinate to a given concept. I grant that the subordination relation among concepts is an important theme in Kant’s logical doctrine of concepts. But I argue that it is both possible and important to ascribe to Kant an objectual (...) notion of logical extension according to which the extension of a concept is the multitude of objects falling under it. I begin by defending this ascription in response to three reasons that are commonly invoked against it. First, I explain that this ascription is compatible with Kant’s philosophical reflections on the nature and boundary of a formal logic. Second, I show that the objectual notion of extension I ascribe to Kant can be traced back to many of the early modern works of logic with which he was more or less familiar. Third, I argue that such a notion of extension makes perfect sense of a pivotal principle in Kant’s logic, namely the principle that the quantity of a concept’s extension is inversely proportional to that of its intension. In the process, I tease out two important features of the Kantian objectual notion of logical extension in terms of which it markedly differs from the modern one. First, on the modern notion the extension of a concept is the sum of the objects actually falling under it; on the Kantian notion, by contrast, the extension of a concept consists of the multitude of possible objects—not in the metaphysical sense of possibility, though—to which a concept applies in virtue of being a general representation. While the quantity of the former extension is finite, that of the latter is infinite—as is reflected in Kant’s use of a plane-geometrical figure (e.g., circle, square), which is continuum as opposed to discretum, to represent the extension in question. Second, on the modern notion of extension, a concept that signifies exactly one object has a one-member extension; on the Kantian notion, however, such a concept has no extension at all—for a concept is taken to have extension only if it signifies a multitude of things. This feature of logical extension is manifested in Kant’s claim that a singular concept (or a concept in its singular use) can, for lack of extension, be figuratively represented only by a point—as opposed to an extended figure like circle, which is reserved for a general concept (or a concept in its general use). Precisely on account of these two features, the Kantian objectual extension proves vital to Kant’s theory of logical quantification (in universal, particular and singular judgments, respectively) and to his view regarding the formal truth of analytic judgments. (shrink)

This essay presents a philosophical and computational theory of the representation of de re, de dicto, nested, and quasi-indexical belief reports expressed in natural language. The propositional Semantic Network Processing System (SNePS) is used for representing and reasoning about these reports. In particular, quasi-indicators (indexical expressions occurring in intentional contexts and representing uses of indicators by another speaker) pose problems for natural-language representation and reasoning systems, because--unlike pure indicators--they cannot be replaced by coreferential NPs without changing the meaning of the (...) embedding sentence. Therefore, the referent of the quasi-indicator must be represented in such a way that no invalid coreferential claims are entailed. The importance of quasi-indicators is discussed, and it is shown that all four of the above categories of belief reports can be handled by a single representational technique using belief spaces containing intensional entities. Inference rules and belief-revision techniques for the system are also examined. (shrink)

The behaviour of a multi-agent system is driven by messaging. Usually, there is no central dispatcher and each autonomous agent, though resource-bounded, can make less or more rational decisions to meet its own and collective goals. To this end, however, agents must communicate with their fellow agents and account for the signals from their environment. Moreover, in the dynamic, permanently changing world, agents’ behaviour, i.e. their activities, must also be dynamic. By communicating with other fellow agents and with their environment, (...) agents should be able to learn new concepts and enrich their knowledge base. Processes and events that happened in the past may be irrelevant in the present or have a significant impact in the future, and vice versa. Therefore, the fine-grained analysis of agents’ activities as well as events within or beyond the system is very important so that the system can run smoothly without falling into inconsistencies. Moreover, as the system should communicate with its environment, the analysis should be as close to natural language as possible. The goal of this paper is a proposal for such an analysis. To this end, I apply Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL) because TIL is particularly apt for a fine-grained analysis of processes and events specified in the present, past or future tense with reference to the time when they happened, happen or will happen. (shrink)

The previous Part I of the paper discusses the option of the Gödel incompleteness statement (1931: whether “Satz VI” or “Satz X”) to be an axiom due to the pair of the axiom of induction in arithmetic and the axiom of infinity in set theory after interpreting them as logical negations to each other. The present Part II considers the previous Gödel’s paper (1930) (and more precisely, the negation of “Satz VII”, or “the completeness theorem”) as a necessary condition for (...) granting the Gödel incompleteness statement to be a theorem just as the statement itself, to be an axiom. Then, the “completeness paper” can be interpreted as relevant to Hilbert mathematics, according to which mathematics and reality as well as arithmetic and set theory are rather entangled or complementary rather than mathematics to obey reality able only to create models of the latter. According to that, both papers (1930; 1931) can be seen as advocating Russell’s logicism or the intensional propositional logic versus both extensional arithmetic and set theory. Reconstructing history of philosophy, Aristotle’s logic and doctrine can be opposed to those of Plato or the pre-Socratic schools as establishing ontology or intensionality versus extensionality. Husserl’s phenomenology can be analogically realized including and particularly as philosophy of mathematics. One can identify propositional logic and set theory by virtue of Gödel’s completeness theorem (1930: “Satz VII”) and even both and arithmetic in the sense of the “compactness theorem” (1930: “Satz X”) therefore opposing the latter to the “incompleteness paper” (1931). An approach identifying homomorphically propositional logic and set theory as the same structure of Boolean algebra, and arithmetic as the “half” of it in a rigorous construction involving information and its unit of a bit. Propositional logic and set theory are correspondingly identified as the shared zero-order logic of the class of all first-order logics and the class at issue correspondingly. Then, quantum mechanics does not need any quantum logics, but only the relation of propositional logic, set theory, arithmetic, and information: rather a change of the attitude into more mathematical, philosophical, and speculative than physical, empirical and experimental. Hilbert’s epsilon calculus can be situated in the same framework of the relation of propositional logic and the class of all mathematical theories. The horizon of Part III investigating Hilbert mathematics (i.e. according to the Pythagorean viewpoint about the world as mathematical) versus Gödel mathematics (i.e. the usual understanding of mathematics as all mathematical models of the world external to it) is outlined. (shrink)

Russell’s initial project in philosophy (1898) was to make mathematics rigorous reducing it to logic. Before August 1900, however, Russell’s logic was nothing but mereology. First, his acquaintance with Peano’s ideas in August 1900 led him to discard the part-whole logic and accept a kind of intensional predicate logic instead. Among other things, the predicate logic helped Russell embrace a technique of treating the paradox of infinite numbers with the help of a singular concept, (...) which he called ‘denoting phrase’. Unfortunately, a new paradox emerged soon: that of classes. The main contention of this paper is that Russell’s new conception only transferred the paradox of infinity from the realm of infinite numbers to that of class-inclusion. Russell’s long-elaborated solution to his paradox developed between 1905 and 1908 was nothing but to set aside of some of the ideas he adopted with his turn of August 1900: (i) With the Theory of Descriptions, he reintroduced the complexes we are acquainted with in logic. In this way, he partly restored the pre-August 1900 mereology of complexes and simples. (ii) The elimination of classes, with the help of the ‘substitutional theory’, and of propositions, by means of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment, completed this process. (shrink)

It is customarily assumed that propositional attitudes present two independent components: a propositional component and a psychological component, in the form of an attitude. These two components are caught by means of two different methods: propositions by some model theoretic theory, psychological attitudes by making appeal to their functional or psychological role. Some authors have seek a convergence by individuating propositions by Functional role semantics. In this paper I show that when it comes to emotional attitudes with propositional content, either (...) the independence of proposition and attitude collapses or functional role semantics brings to unstable individuation conditions for propositions. Some consequences of these two outcomes are considered. (shrink)

Should objects count as necessarily having certain properties, despite their not having those properties when they do not exist? For example, should a cat that passes out of existence, and so no longer is a cat, nonetheless count as necessarily being a cat? In this essay I examine different ways of adapting Aldo Bressan’s MLν so that it can accommodate an affirmative answer to these questions. Anil Gupta, in The Logic of Common Nouns, creates a number of languages that (...) have a kinship with Bressan’s MLν , three of which are also tailored to affirmatively answering these questions. After comparing their languages, I argue that metaphysicians and philosophers of language should prefer MLν to Gupta’s languages in most applications because it can accommodate essential properties, like being a cat, while being more uniform and less cumbersome. (shrink)

Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL) is an overarching logical framework apt for the analysis of all sorts of discourse, whether colloquial, scientific, mathematical or logical. The theory is a procedural (as opposed to denotational) one, according to which the meaning of an expression is an abstract, extra-linguistic procedure detailing what operations to apply to what procedural constituents to arrive at the product (if any) of the procedure that is the object denoted by the expression. Such procedures are rigorously (...) defined as TIL constructions. Though TIL analytical potential is very large, deduction in TIL has been rather neglected. Tichý defined a sequent calculus for pre-1988 TIL, that is TIL based on the simple theory of types. Since then no other attempt to define a proof calculus for TIL has been presented. The goal of this paper is to propose a generalization and adjustment of Tichý’s calculus to TIL 2010. First, I briefly recapitulate the rules of simple-typed calculus as presented by Tichý. Then, I propose the adjustments of the calculus so that it be applicable to hyperintensions within the ramified hierarchy of types. TIL operates with a single procedural semantics for all kinds of logical-semantic context, be it extensional, intensional or hyperintensional. I show that operating in a hyperintensional context is far from being technically trivial. Yet, it is feasible. To this end, we introduce a substitution method that operates on hyperintensions. It makes use of a four-place substitution function (called Sub) defined over hyperintensions. (shrink)

Presented here is an argument for the existence of universals. Like Church's translation- test argument, the argument turns on considerations from intensional logic. But whereas Church's argument turns on the fine-grained informational content of intensional sentences, this argument turns on the distinctive logical features of 'that'-clauses embedded within modal contexts. And unlike Church's argument, this argument applies against truth-conditions nominalism and also against conceptualism and in re realism. So if the argument is successful, it serves as a (...) defense of full ante rem realism. The argument emphasizes the need for a unified treatment of intensional statements -- modal statements as well as statements of assertion and belief. The larger philosophical moral will be that ante rem universals are uniquely suited to carry a certain kind of modal information. Linguistic entities, mind-dependent universals, and instance-dependent universals are incapable of serving that function. (shrink)

This is the only complete logic for properties, relations, and propositions (PRPS) that has been formulated to date. First, an intensional abstraction operation is adjoined to first-order quantifier logic, Then, a new algebraic semantic method is developed. The heuristic used is not that of possible worlds but rather that of PRPS taken at face value. Unlike the possible worlds approach to intensional logic, this approach yields a logic for intentional (psychological) matters, as well as (...) modal matters. At the close of the paper, the origin of incompleteness in logic is investigated. The culprit is found to be the predication relation, a relation on properties and relations that is expressed in natural language by the copula. (shrink)

The paper examines two possible analyses of fictional names within Pavel Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic. The first of them is the analysis actually proposed by Tichý in his (1988) book The Foundations of Frege’s Logic. He analysed fictional names in terms of free variables. I will introduce, explain, and assess this analysis. Subsequently, I will explain Tichý’s notion of individual role (office, thing-to-be). On the basis of this notion, I will outline and defend the second analysis of (...) fictional names. This analysis is close to the approach known in the literature as role realism (the most prominent advocates of this position are Nicholas Wolterstorff, Gregory Currie, and Peter Lamarque). (shrink)

Higher-order theories of properties, relations, and propositions are known to be essentially incomplete relative to their standard notions of validity. It turns out that the first-order theory of PRPs that results when first-order logic is supplemented with a generalized intensional abstraction operation is complete. The construction involves the development of an intensional algebraic semantic method that does not appeal to possible worlds, but rather takes PRPs as primitive entities. This allows for a satisfactory treatment of both the (...) modalities and the propositional attitudes, and it suggests a general strategy for developing a comprehensive treatment of intensional logic. (shrink)

Composition as Identity is the view that an object is identical to its parts taken collectively. I elaborate and defend a theory based on this idea: composition is a kind of identity. Since this claim is best presented within a plural logic, I develop a formal system of plural logic. The principles of this system differ from the standard views on plural logic because one of my central claims is that identity is a relation which comes in (...) a variety of forms and only one of them obeys substitution unrestrictedly. I justify this departure from orthodoxy by showing some problems which result from attempts to avoid inconsistencies within plural logic by means of postulating other non-singular terms besides plural terms. Thereby, some of the main criticisms raised against Composition as Identity can be addressed. Further, I argue that the way objects are arranged is relevant with respect to the question which object they compose, i.e. to which object they are identical to. This helps to meet a second group of arguments against Composition as Identity. These arguments aim to show that identifying composite objects on the basis of the identity of their parts entails, contrary to our common sense view, that rearranging the parts of a composite object does not leave us with a different object. Moreover, it allows us to carve out the intensional aspects of Composition as Identity and to defend mereological universalism, the claim that any objects compose some object. Much of the pressure put on the latter view can be avoided by distinguishing the question whether some objects compose an object from the question what object they compose. Eventually, I conclude that Composition as Identity is a coherent and plausible position, as long as we take identity to be a more complex relation than commonly assumed. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach’s pragmatic treatment of the problem of induction in his later works on inductive inference was, and still is, of great interest. However, it has been dismissed as a pseudo-solution and it has been regarded as problematically obscure. This is, in large part, due to the difficulty in understanding exactly what Reichenbach’s solution is supposed to amount to, especially as it appears to offer no response to the inductive skeptic. For entirely different reasons, the significance of Bertrand Russell’s classic (...) attempt to solve Hume’s problem is also both obscure and controversial. Russell accepted that Hume’s reasoning about induction was basically correct, but he argued that given the centrality of induction in our cognitive endeavors something must be wrong with Hume’s basic assumptions. What Russell effectively identified as Hume’s (and Reichenbach’s) failure was the commitment to a purely extensional empiricism. So, Russell’s solution to the problem of induction was to concede extensional empiricism and to accept that induction is grounded by accepting both a robust essentialism and a form of rationalism that allowed for a priori knowledge of universals. So, neither of those doctrines is without its critics. On the one hand, Reichenbach’s solution faces the charges of obscurity and of offering no response to the inductive skeptic. On the other hand, Russell’s solution looks to be objectionably ad hoc absent some non-controversial and independent argument that the universals that are necessary to ground the uniformity of nature actually exist and are knowable. This particular charge is especially likely to arise from those inclined towards purely extensional forms of empiricism. In this paper the significance of Reichenbach’s solution to the problem of induction will be made clearer via the comparison of these two historically important views about the problem of induction. The modest but important contention that will be made here is that the comparison of Reichenbach’s and Russell’s solutions calls attention to the opposition between extensional and intensional metaphysical presuppositions in the context of attempts to solve the problem of induction. It will be show that, in effect, what Reichenbach does is to establish an important epistemic limitation of extensional empiricism. So, it will be argued here that there is nothing really obscure about Reichenbach’s thoughts on induction at all. He was simply working out the limits of extensional empiricism with respect to inductive inference in opposition to the sort of metaphysics favored by Russell and like-minded thinkers. (shrink)

This paper is the twin of (Duží and Jespersen, in submission), which provides a logical rule for transparent quantification into hyperprop- ositional contexts de dicto, as in: Mary believes that the Evening Star is a planet; therefore, there is a concept c such that Mary be- lieves that what c conceptualizes is a planet. Here we provide two logical rules for transparent quantification into hyperpropositional contexts de re. (As a by-product, we also offer rules for possible- world propositional contexts.) One (...) rule validates this inference: Mary believes of the Evening Star that it is a planet; therefore, there is an x such that Mary believes of x that it is a planet. The other rule validates this inference: the Evening Star is such that it is believed by Mary to be a planet; therefore, there is an x such that x is believed by Mary to be a planet. Issues unique to the de re variant include partiality and existential presupposition, sub- stitutivity of co-referential (as opposed to co-denoting or synony- mous) terms, anaphora, and active vs. passive voice. The validity of quantifying-in presupposes an extensional logic of hyperinten- sions preserving transparency and compositionality in hyperinten- sional contexts. This requires raising the bar for what qualifies as co-denotation or equivalence in extensional contexts. Our logic is Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic. The syntax of TIL is the typed lambda calculus; its highly expressive semantics is based on a procedural redefinition of, inter alia, functional abstraction and application. The two non-standard features we need are a hyper- intension (called Trivialization) that presents other hyperintensions and a four-place substitution function (called Sub) defined over hy- perintensions. (shrink)

Intensional evidence is any reason to accept a proposition that is not the truth values of the proposition accepted or, if it is a complex proposition, is not the truth values of its propositional contents. Extensional evidence is non-intensional evidence. Someone can accept a complex proposition, but deny its logical consequences when her acceptance is based on intensional evidence, while the logical consequences of the proposition presuppose the acceptance of extensional evidence, e.g., she can refuse the logical (...) consequence of a proposition she accepts because she doesn’t know what are the truth-values of its propositional contents. This tension motivates counterexamples to the negation of conditionals, the propositional analysis of conditionals, hypothetical syllogism, contraposition and or-to-if. It is argued that these counterexamples are non-starters because they rely on a mix of intensionally based premises and extensionally based conclusions. Instead, a genuine counterexample to classical argumentative forms should present circumstances where an intuitively true and extensionally based premise leads to an intuitively false conclusion that is also extensionally based. The other point is that evidentiary concerns about intensionally based beliefs should be constrained by the truth conditions of propositions presented by classical logic, which are nothing more than requirements of coherence in distributions of truth value. It is argued that this restriction also dissolves some known puzzles such as conditional stand-offs, the Adams pair, the opt-out property and the burglar’s puzzle. (shrink)