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20 December 2017, E.W. Beth Lecture, Stewart Shapiro

Speaker: Stewart Shapiro
Title: Open texture, and its ramifications for logic and semantics
Date: Wednesday 20 December 2017
Time: 20:30-21:30
Location: D0.09, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, 1012 CN Amsterdam, Amsterdam (Changed!)

This year's E. W. Beth Lecture will be given by Stewart Shapiro (Ohio State University, Columbus), well known
for his work on the Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophical Logic, and Philosophy of Language.

The purpose of this talk is to articulate and evaluate Waismann's notion of open-texture. We contrast this notion with the more well-known accounts of analyticity articulated by the logical positivists, Rudolf Carnap in particular, the rejection of analyticity by W. V. O. Quine, and its subsequent defense by Grice and Strawson. One underlying theme is how far open-texture reaches. Do we follow Waismann and restrict it to empirical predicates, or is the phenomenon more general, applying even in science and mathematics? Our goal is to explore the extent to which the Waismannian insights bear on the enterprise of natural language semantics and of the model-theoretic notion of logical consequence. Does the fact that contemporary model theory, and
many of the models for lexical semantics, allow no room for open-texture tell against those enterprises, as they are currently practiced?

The E.W. Beth lecture is part of the Amsterdam Colloquium 2017. Drinks will be served after the lecture in Kapitein Zeppos.

For more information, see http://events.illc.uva.nl/AC/AC2017/ or contact Frank Veltman at .

Please note that this newsitem has been archived, and may contain outdated information or links.