CFP: Modal Syllogistic

Aristotle is the founder of modal logic. His system of modal syllogisms, presented in chapters 3 and 8-22 of the first book of the Prior Analytics, has been studied for many centuries, with less than successful results. In 1955, Jan Łukasiewicz declared that “in contrast to the assertoric syllogistic which is perfectly clear and nearly free of errors, Aristotle’s modal syllogistic is almost incomprehensible because of its many faults and inconsistencies”. Some scholars have been trying to resist this pessimistic judgement and to articulate interpretations of the modal syllogistic that are, at the same time, logically consistent and plausible on exegetical grounds. This workshop wants to provide a forum for discussion and to reflect, via the contributed talks and informal discussions, the state of art of the subject. Confirmed speakers: Marko Malink (Chicago)Paolo Crivelli (Geneva)Sara Uckelman (Heidelberg)Ulrich Nortmann (Saarland)

Submission Details: We invite submissions of long abstracts or short papers (1500-2000 words) on any aspect of the modal syllogistic. The time slot is 80 minutes (50’ talk + 30’ discussion). Abstracts (or papers) should be prepared for blind-refereeing and sent in Word or PDF format (doc, docx or pdf). We aim at accepting five contributed papers. Abstract should be sent to [email protected] . The subject of the e-mail should be “submission: workshop on modal syllogistic”. The body of the email should include your name, affiliation, and abstract title. (We are unable to provide speakers with accommodation for the duration of the workshop, but we can help them finding good solutions. Unfortunately, we cannot cover travel expenses.)

Submission deadline: May 31, 2014

Notification of acceptance: June 20, 2014

Organizer:

Ricardo Santos (Évora and LanCog, Lisbon)

Sponsors:

Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

Project “Compêndio em Linha de Problemas de Filosofia Analítica” PTDC/FIL-FIL/121209/2010

Project “Tradução Anotada das Obras de Aristóteles (Quarta Fase)” PTDC/MHC-FIL/3672/2012