Understanding of Logical Formulas

Timm Lampert (Humboldt University, Berlin)

Gerhard Schurz and Christoph Schamberger kindly invite you to attend the talk at the Research Colloquium on 13 May 2025:

From 18:30 to 20:15. The talk by PD Dr. Timm Lampert „Understanding of Logical Formulas".

Abstract: Semantics of first-order logic formulas merley provide a method for showing whether single interpretations make a formula true or false. However, it does not provide a general method for dis-tinguishing true from false interpretations. Yet, this is necessary if the understanding of logical formu-las, in analogy to the understanding of concepts, requires that not only individual cases, but a whole set is to comprehend. The paper presents a general procedure for generating disjunctive normal forms of first order logic and their graphical representation, which provides a general criterion for identifying true interpretations, at least for a decidable fragment of predicate logic formulas, and thus a method for making these formulas comprehensible. Finally, it is shown where the limits of understanding first-order formulas lie.

Speaker: PD Dr. Timm Lampert is a senior lecturer (Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben) at the Philo-sophical Department of the University Hagen since 2022; before guest and tempory professor at the Humboldt University Berlin for philosophy of science; research fellower at the Carnegie Mellon Univer-sity Pittsburgh and the Copernikus University Torun (Poland), assistent and senior assistent at the Uni-versity of Berne (Switzerland) and scientific colloborator at the University of Hamburg. Dissertation on Wittgenstein’s Physikalism at Hamburg and Habilitation on New Logic at Berne. Areas of Research: Automatic Reasoning, Diagrammatic Logic, Causality, Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein. Re-cent relevant publications include: “A Logical Refutation of Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy of Logic” (with Anderson Nakanon, History and Philosophy of Logic 2025); “Explaining Undecidability of First-Order Logic” (with Anderson Nakano, Philosophical Problems in Science 2025); “Newton’s Experi-mental Proof” (Theoria 2021); “Wittgenstein’s Elimination of Identity” (with Markus Säbel, The Review of Symbolic Logic 2021); “Decidability and Notation” (Logique et Analyse 2020); “Wittgenstein and Gödel: An Attempt to make ‘Wittgenstein’s Objection’ reasonable” (Philosophia Mathematica 2018); “Minimizing Disjunctive Normal Forms of First-Order Logic” (Logic Journal of the IGPL 2017).

The event will be held in a hybrid format: in person in Room 24.53 01.81 and with the option to join via Zoom. For the Zoom link, please email [email protected]. We look forward to your participation.