Kant’s Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit and Proof-theoretic Semantics

History and Philosophy of Logic 44 (3):273-286 (2022)
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Abstract

According to Schroeder-Heister 2018, proof-theoretic semantics is ‘an alternative to truth-condition semantics. It is based on the fundamental assumption that the central notion in terms of which meanings are assigned to certain expressions of our language, in particular to logical constants, is that of proof rather than truth. In this sense proof-theoretic semantics is semantics in terms of proof. Proof-theoretic semantics also means the semantics of proofs, i.e. the semantics of entities which describe how we arrive at certain assertions given certain assumptions.' This text advocates that proof-theoretic semantics, as described above, was an approach to semantical issues in logic that appeared in mainstream philosophical literature at least a couple of centuries before the tradition of general proof theory (cf. Prawitz 1971) came into being. This is done by means of an interpretive analysis of Kant’s 1762 essay Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren, in which two theses are argued: first, that the issue of justifying the logical validity of inferences is approached by Kant in this text, in a strong sense, in terms of proofs; and second, that the purpose of his effort is to establish a point concerning the semantical equivalence between certain distinct valid inferences.

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Citations of this work

Does Logic Have a History at All?Jens Lemanski - forthcoming - Foundations of Science:1-23.

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References found in this work

Natural deduction: a proof-theoretical study.Dag Prawitz - 1965 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.
Ideas and Results in Proof Theory.Dag Prawitz & J. E. Fenstad - 1971 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 40 (2):232-234.
A natural extension of natural deduction.Peter Schroeder-Heister - 1984 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 49 (4):1284-1300.
Proof-Theoretic Semantics.Peter Schroeder-Heister - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Identity of proofs based on normalization and generality.Kosta Došen - 2003 - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 9 (4):477-503.

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