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7 - Disjunction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

James W. Garson
Affiliation:
University of Houston
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Summary

It has been relatively easy to locate a natural semantics for propositional logics that involve connectives other than disjunction. Discussion of disjunction has been postponed because the situation here is more complicated. It is possible to locate a condition ‖∨‖ on models that the rules for disjunction express (Section 7.2). However, it is unfamiliar; ‖∨‖ is neither the classical condition nor the intuitionistic reading of ∨ that was introduced by Beth (Section 7.1). Furthermore, there is reason to worry whether ‖∨‖ qualifies as a recursive characterization of truth conditions (Section 7.3). So it will be necessary to try to rescue ‖∨‖ (if we can) with a new isomorphism result. In Section 7.4, a variant of the Kripke semantics will be introduced (called path semantics) that includes an additional structure used in the disjunction truth condition. An isomorphism is shown to exist between the models in path semantics and models that obey ‖∨‖ (Section 7.5). This goes part of the way towards legitimizing the condition expressed by the disjunction rules as qualifying as a semantics. However Section 7.6 demonstrates that neither functionality nor a desirable form of compositionality holds for ‖∨‖. So whether the isomorphism result goes far enough to offset this pathology is in doubt. Whether we should accept ‖∨‖ as a legitimate reading for ∨ will be something left for the reader to judge.

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What Logics Mean
From Proof Theory to Model-Theoretic Semantics
, pp. 81 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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  • Disjunction
  • James W. Garson, University of Houston
  • Book: What Logics Mean
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139856461.008
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  • Disjunction
  • James W. Garson, University of Houston
  • Book: What Logics Mean
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139856461.008
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Disjunction
  • James W. Garson, University of Houston
  • Book: What Logics Mean
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139856461.008
Available formats
×