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Mark Colyvan

Logic in Fiction
Mark Colyvan (University of Sydney)

Abstract: This paper will address the question of whether the logic of a fiction can be specified as part of the fiction. For example, can one tell a fictional story in which it is part of the story that the logic in question is, say, K3? It seems unproblematic that we can do this. After all, we can tell a story about a world with a different geometry from ours, different physical laws, and even different numbers of dimensions (e.g. the two-dimensional world of Flatland). While allowing fictions to specify their own logics seems a natural extension of such science fiction, there are problems looming. Fictions are, by their very nature, incomplete. Specifying that the logic in question is classical is to embrace, amongst other things, excluded middle. But if the fictional world is incomplete, in what sense can it be part of the story that excluded middle holds? We would, in effect, be specifying that the incomplete situation described in the fiction is complete. Imposing excluded middle where it doesn’t belong leads to contradiction. These are especially pressing issues for (particular kinds of) fictionalism about mathematics.

When
Thu Sep 5, 2019 5am – 6:30am Coordinated Universal Time
Where
The Muniment Room (map)