About

This is the website of `Logical consequence - Epistemological and proof-theoretic perspectives', a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG grant Tr1112/1-1). The project was led by Luca Tranchini and was hosted by the Chair for Logic of the Wilhelm-Schickard-Institut, Tübingen university. The project started in March 2012 and ended in February 2015.

Here is a short summary:

The traditional analysis of logical consequence due to Tarski explains consequence in terms of truth. A more recent rival view aims at replacing the notion of truth with the one of proof. What is common to both approaches is the characterization of consequence as `transmission': B is a logical consequence of A if and only if truth (resp. provability) is transmitted from A to B.

Both analyses of logical consequence are the core of alternative views on meaning. The truth-theoretic account characterizes the meaning of a sentence in terms of the conditions that must obtain for it to be true. The proof-theoretic approach seeks to characterize the meaning of a sentence in terms of what it is to prove it or, say, to recognize that it is true.

The aim of the project is to argue that the transmission view of consequence, as encapsulated in the standard proof-theoretic approach, flaws the possibility of developing a real alternative to a truth-based approach. And to develop an alternative proof-theoretic approach, based on the rejection of the `transmission' view of consequence, capable of yielding a conception of meaning anchored to subjects' epistemological capabilities.