[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Mircea Dumitru, (University of Bucharest)

[Ryan Cox]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is Mircea Dumitru, (University of Bucharest, Romanian Academy)

The title of the talk is "Representations, Models, and Proofs/Rules". Here is an abstract for the talk:

In this paper I present and assess, firstly independently from one another, and then comparatively, the strengths and the weaknesses of three views on semantics: model-theoretic, truth-conditional, and proof-theoretic. The whole philosophical perspective from which I explore those three approaches is motivated by the investigation of the connection between truth and meaning, and also by the understanding of the role and place of meaning within a physicalist outlook of the world. I also hint at how one can combine and coordinate those three approaches depending on the philosophical issues which those systems seek to model. In the process, I present the philosophical rich and nuanced positions of Donald Davidson who pioneered the Tarski-type truth-conditional semantics for natural languages, and of Wilfrid Sellars who made an essential contribution to the understanding of both semantic and pragmatic aspects of the relations between truth and meaning from an inferentialist (proof) based perspective. The paper sketches how certain problems within the Davidsonian framework can be fixed within the Sellarsian framework. The paper ends with some critical points and challenges that I raise against the proof-theoretic (inferentialist) approach questioning its power to give a complete account of the issue of the relationship between truth, meanings, and rules.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Feb 26 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

A version of the paper is available for those who would like to pre-read. Request a copy here: ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au<mailto:ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au>

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au<mailto:ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au>

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au
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