24 January 2025, Women in Logic Online, Francesca Poggiolesi

On January 24, 2025, Francesca Poggiolesi will hold the third talk in the seminar series “Women in Logic Online”!
Abstract:
Since the time of Aristotle, a distinction has been recognized between proofs that merely establish the truth of a theorem and those that provide an explanation by revealing the reasons why the theorem is true. While the former have been rigorously formalized in the ground-breaking work of Gentzen, the latter—despite being explored by eminent thinkers such as Leibniz and Bolzano—have not been subjected to systematic analysis. Recently, however, explanatory proofs have garnered increasing attention in philosophical discourse. The central question driving this debate is: _What makes a proof explanatory?_ Specifically, what features endow certain proofs with their explanatory power? In this talk, we aim to address this question through a logical formalization that leverages two pivotal tools of proof theory: the formalism known as _deep sequents_ and a systematic method for transforming _axioms into rules_. The results presented are partly based on a joint work with E. Pimentel (UCL, London).