This paper puts forward and defends an account of mathematical truth, and in particular an account of the truth of mathematical axioms. The proposal attempts to be completely nonrevisionist. In this connection, it seeks to satisfy simultaneously both horns of Benacerraf’s dilemma. The account builds upon Georg Kreisel’s work on informal rigour. Kreisel defends the view that axioms are arrived at by a rigorous examination of our informal notions, as opposed to being stipulated or arrived at by trial and error. This view is then supplemented by a Fregean account of the objectivity and our knowledge of abstract objects. It is then argued that the resulting view faces no insurmountable metaphysical or epistemic obstacles.

At the beginning of Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (§2) [1884], Frege observes that “it is in the nature of mathematics to prefer proof, where proof is possible”. This, of course, is true, but thinkers differ on why it is that mathematicians prefer proof. And what of propositions for which no proof is possible? What of axioms? This talk explores various notions of self-evidence, and the role they play in various foundational systems, notably those of Frege and Zermelo. I argue that both programs are undermined at a crucial point, namely when self-evidence is supported by holistic and even pragmatic considerations.

The inversion principle for logical rules expresses a relationship between introduction and elimination rules for logical constants. Hallnäs & Schroeder-Heister (1990, 1991) proposed the principle of definitional reflection, which embodies basic ideas of inversion in the more general context of clausal definitions. For the context of admissibility statements, this has been further elaborated by Schroeder-Heister (2007). Using the framework of definitional reflection and its admissibility interpretation, we show that, in the sequent calculus of minimal propositional logic, the left introduction rules are admissible when the right introduction rules are taken as the definitions of the logical constants and vice versa. This generalizes the well-known relationship between introduction and elimination rules in natural deduction to the framework of the sequent calculus.

The trilattice SIXTEEN3 introduced in Shramko & Wansing (2005) is a natural generalization of the famous bilattice FOUR2. Some Hilbert-style proof systems for trilattice logics related to SIXTEEN3 have recently been studied (Odintsov, 2009; Shramko & Wansing, 2005). In this paper, three sequent calculi GB, FB, and QB are presented for Odintsov’s (2009) first-degree proof system ⊢B related to SIXTEEN3. The system GB is a standard Gentzen-type sequent calculus, FB is a four-place (horizontal) matrix sequent calculus, and QB is a quadruple (vertical) matrix sequent calculus. In contrast with GB, the calculus FB satisfies the subformula property, and the calculus QB reflects Odintsov’s coordinate valuations associated with valuations in SIXTEEN3. The equivalence between GB, FB, and QB, the cut-elimination theorems for these calculi, and the decidability of ⊢B are proved. In addition, it is shown how the sequent systems for ⊢B can be extended to cut-free sequent calculi for Odintsov’s LB, which is an extension of ⊢B by adding classical implication and negation connectives.

I first show that most authors who developed Plural Quantification Logic (PQL) argued it could capture various features of natural language better than can other logic systems. I then show that it fails to do so: it radically departs from natural language in two of its essential features; namely, in distinguishing plural from singular quantification and in its use of an ‘is-one-of’ relation. Next, I sketch a different approach that is more adequate than PQL for capturing plural aspects of natural language semantics and logic. I conclude with a criticism of the claim that PQL should replace natural language for specific philosophical or scientific purposes.

Disquotational theories of truth, that is, theories of truth based on the T-sentences or similar equivalences as axioms are often thought to be deductively weak. This view is correct if the truth predicate is allowed to apply only to sentences not containing the truth predicate. By taking a slightly more liberal approach toward the paradoxes, I obtain a disquotational theory of truth that is proof theoretically as strong as compositional theories such as the Kripke–Feferman theory, although it doesn’t probe the compositional axioms.

We show how to develop a multitude of rules of nonmonotonic logic from very simple and natural notions of size, using them as building blocks.

In this paper we show how to interpret Robinson’s arithmetic Q and the theory R of Tarski, Mostowski, and Robinson as theories of cardinals in very weak theories of relations over a domain.

doi: 10.1017/S1755020308090084, Published by Cambridge University Press 31 March 2009 in Volume 1, Number 4 (2008) of The Review of Symbolic Logic.

On page 541, in the 4th paragraph, in line 7, an error occurred. The sentence should correctly read:

“For all worlds w, if there is more than one grain of sand in the pile in w, then there is still more than one grain of sand after removing one grain of sand.”

This essay proposes a procedural interpretation of negative information in terms of split negation as procedural prohibition. Information frames and models are introduced, with negation defined as the implication of bottom, 0. A method for extracting the procedures prohibited by complex formulas is outlined, and the relationship between types of prohibited procedures is identified. Definitions of negation types in terms of the implication of 0 on an informational interpretation have been criticized. This criticism turns on the definitions creating a purportedly unnatural asymmetry between positive and negative information. It is demonstrated below that a strong asymmetry between positive and negative information is in fact the case. As such, an asymmetry between positive and negative information is natural, and something that we should want an informational interpretation of negation to preserve.

In this paper we will investigate different axiomatic theories of truth that are minimal in some sense. One criterion for minimality will be conservativity over Peano Arithmetic. We will then give a more fine-grained characterization by investigating some interpretability relations. We will show that disquotational theories of truth, as well as compositional theories of truth with restricted induction are relatively interpretable in Peano Arithmetic. Furthermore, we will give an example of a theory of truth that is a conservative extension of Peano Arithmetic but not interpretable in it. We will then use stricter versions of interpretations to compare weak theories of truth to subsystems of second-order arithmetic.

We introduce Information Bearing Relation Systems (IBRS) as an abstraction of many logical systems. These are networks with arrows recursively leading to other arrows etc. We then define a general semantics for IBRS, and show that a special case of IBRS generalizes in a very natural way preferential semantics and solves open representation problems for weak logical systems. This is possible, as we can “break” the strong coherence properties of preferential structures by higher arrows, that is, arrows, which do not go to points, but to arrows themselves.