2nd Semester 2024/25: Beyond standard syllogistic

Instructors

Robert van Rooij

ECTS

3 or 6

Description

Standardly, syllogistic logic is seen as just an unintering part of standard logic, and one that can be reduced to it. But in how is the other way possible as well? In this project we will see that syllogistic logic is more expressive, and can account for more types of reasoning than is normally assumed. Propositional logic, and reasoning involving relations and numerals, for instance. can be handled i.t.o. syllogistics. This will be the first part of the project. Another part of the project will be about an intensional semantics of syllogistics. Whereas standardly, terms are interpreted extensionally, as sets of individuals, many traditional logicians rather wanted to interpret terms intensionally, as sets of features, and most assumed that both would come down to the same. We will discuss how this can be done, what its limitations are, and how these limitations can be overcome. Interestingly, the way to overcome the limitations is to make use of modern uses of hyperintensional semantics. Finally we will discuss whether, and if so how, these (hyper)intensional semantics can account for Aristotle's hard to interpret modal syllogisms.

Organisation

I will give some lectures and after that we will read some papers of interest.

Prerequisites

Any MOL student should be able to follow this project. But it is most interesting for students that also have an interest in philosophy.

Assessment

essay