BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260610T022144Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20160930T113000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20160930T133000 SUMMARY:Capturing Consequence UID:20260612T191004Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-bd7db559-gt5qm TZID:America/New_York LOCATION:32 Vassar Street\, Cambridge\, United States DESCRIPTION:

The ability to capture implicational structure is a significant virtue in a logic. First-order formalisations are for instance often preferred to propositional ones because they are thought to underwrite the validity of more natural-language arguments than the latter.

My talk will compare and contrast the ability of some well-known logics---propositional and first-order in particular---to capture the implicational structure of natural language. Surprisingly\, there is a precise and important sense in which first-order logic does not improve on propositional logic as far as respecting natural-language validity is concerned. The correct way to state the oft-cited superiority of first-order logic vis-à\;-vis propositional logic is more nuanced. I shall articulate this and other philosophical morals. The question\, informally\, is whether the implicational structure of natural language can 'fit' into a particular logic\, and how 'capacious' in this regard various well-known logics are.

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