Department Colloquium: Irad Kimhi (The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago)

"The Truth of Logic and the Univocity of p"

Abstract:

The notion of an occurrence of a proposition in discourse is the subject of the following observation:
        (O) A proposition may occur in discourse, now asserted, now unasserted, and yet             be recognizably the same proposition.

I shall argue that the true significance of this observation is utterly distorted by Geach’s manner of construing of it — a construal widely known today as “the Frege-Geach point”. Though it serves as a basis for a contemporary understanding of logical form, strictly thought through, this way of construing (O) can be shown to lead to absurdity.  I will further argue that a straightforward, undistorted, acceptance of (O) is the key to a genuine philosophical logic.

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