Class Schedule: Tuesday, 11:45 - 1:45, Room 7395
Textbook: First-Order Modal Logic, Melvin Fitting and Richard L. Mendelsohn, ISBN 978-0-7923-5335-5
Instructors: Melvin Fitting and Richard L. Mendelsohn
Description:
Modal logic is usually thought of as the logic of qualified truth: necessarily true, true at all times, and so on. From at least Montague on, quantified modal logic has also been thought of as the natural setting for a logic of intensions. This course will cover the whole range.
We begin with propositional modal logic, presented semantically via Kripke models, and proof theoretically using both tableaus and axiom systems. First-order modal logic will be studied in considerable detail, using possible-world semantics and tableau systems, but not axiom systems. Various philosophical issues will be discussed, amongst which are: the nature of possible worlds, possibilist and actualist quantification, rigid and non-rigid designators, intensional and extensional objects, existence and being, equality, synonymy, designation and non-designation, and definite descriptions in a modal context.
The prerequisites for the course are: a familiarity with classical logic, both propositional and first-order, a certain degree of sophisication, and tolerance and patience.
[Counts towards the comprehensive exams in Philosophy of Language or Philosophy of Science]