The Logic Colloquium this Friday, April 10, 2:00pm in SHH 401  (with a hybrid option) will feature Dean McHugh (Edinburgh/NYU).

Conditional Modality with Alternatives

This talk brings together two ideas. First, that statements under a modal are interpreted as conditional antecedents. ‘Possibly A’ states that if A were true, there would be some case where the relevant ideals are met. Dually, ‘necessarily A’ states that if A were false, there would be no case where the relevant ideals are met. Second, conditional antecedents are interpreted via sets of alternatives, with some items—such as disjunction and ‘any’—introducing multiple alternatives. Combining them returns, in a uniform and automatic way, a solution to three challenges facing the standard theory of modality: free choice inferences, independence inferences, and counterexamples to substitution of logical equivalents.

On Wednesday, March 25 (9am, SHH 338), Stefan Kaufmann will give a pre-version of his presentation “Directions in Modality” for the upcoming Workshop “Modality in Logic and Language” (TLLM 2026) at Tsinghua University, Beijing (https://tsinghualogic.net/JRC/tllm-2026/ ). 

On Wednesday, 02/18, 9am in SSH 338, Eli Herbst will lead the discussion of Mendia (2020) “One more comparative: The de/que distinction in Spanish comparatives”, NLLT 38: 581-626.

On Wednesday, 02/11, 9am in SSH 338, Stefan Kaufmann will lead the discussion of von Fintel and Pasternak (2025) “Attitudes, aboutness, and indirect restriction”, Linguistics and Philosophy 48, pp. 603-645.

On Wednesday, 02/04, 9am in SSH 338, Jiayi Zhou will discuss her on-going work on a Mandarin reciprocal, the title is “The Collective Reciprocal Affix in Mandarin: Simultaneity and Mutual Belief”.

The Meaning Group will have its first meeting of the semester on Wednesday, January 28th, 9am-10am, in SSH 338.

We will be discussing Degano & Aloni (2025) “How to be (non-)specific?” L&P 48.

Please join us for the (short) Award Ceremony and McGee’s lecture in BUSN 127, this Friday at 2 p.m. Contact Stefan Kaufmann for zoom information.

Vann McGee (M.I.T.):
“Terrestrial Logic”

We explore a “rules-of-inference first” methodology for logical theory. Instead of starting with truth conditions and looking for truth-preserving rules, we start out with the rules and set out to find appropriate truth conditions. We reach the conclusion that the classical rules pin down the semantic values of the logical words – “or,” “not,” “for all,” and so on – precisely. Inasmuch as, at least outside pure mathematics, human language and thought are saturated through and through with vagueness, this is, I think, a surprising outcome.

Friday, November 21, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

This Friday’s Logic Colloquium:

John Mackay (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
“Counterparts and Tolerance”
Friday, November 14, 2-4pm
Hybrid: MCHU 202 & Zoom

Contact Stefan Kaufmann for zoom access information.

Abstract:
One motivation for counterpart theory comes from a family of puzzles about identity and modal variation known as puzzles of tolerance. In these puzzles, an object could have been slightly different but could not have been radically different. It is commonly assumed, both by counterpart theorists and their critics, that the counterpart-theoretic solution to the puzzles of tolerance involves the intransitivity of counterpart relations. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake, and instead I defend a solution to the puzzles of tolerance that involves transitive counterpart relations with context-sensitive names and variables.