19 April 2022, EXPRESS / PhilMath Seminar, Gil Sagi

Is there a relation of logical consequence in natural language? Logicality, in the philosophical literature, has been conceived of as a restrictive phenomenon that is alien to the complex and messy character of natural language. In this talk, I will claim that there is a relation of logical consequence in natural language, and moreover, that it is the subject matter of the bulk of current theories of formal semantics. I employ the framework of semantic constraints (Sagi 2014), which generalises the Tarskian definition of logical consequence. I apply the widely accepted criterion of invariance under isomorphisms (Sher 1996) generalised to the framework of semantic constraints (Sagi 2022), as well as a theory of Glanzberg (2014) to delineate the relation of logical consequence in natural language.