Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy
Symposium
Thursday 27 May 2010
Bern, Switzerland
4th International Lauener Symposium
on Analytical Philosophy
In Honour of Professor Sir Michael Dummett
Prof. Dr. Timothy Williamson
((University of Oxford))
Logics and Metalogics
The lecture will consider Michael Dummett’s contention, in The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, that semantic theories should be formulated in such a way that the logic of the object-language is maximally insensitive to the logic of the meta-language. The controversy over the status of the Barcan formula and its converse in quantified modal logic will be taken as a case study. It will be argued that the insensitivity in question is a less desirable feature of a semantic theory than Dummett suggests.
