Logic as Enaction: The Case of Eleatic Antilogic

Lecture by Mathieu Marion (UQUAM), organized by the Department of Theoretical Philosophy (joint work with Benoit Castelnerac, who will also be present!)

Abstract

We present rules for dialectical games, understood as a specific form of antilogikê developed by philosophers, and explain some of the key concepts of these dialectical games in terms of ideas from game semantics.

In the games we describe, for a thesis A asserted by the answerer, a questioner must elicit the answerer’s assent to further assertions B1 , B2 ,. . . , Bn, which form a scoreboard from which the questioner seeks to infer an impossibility (adunaton); we explain why the questioner must not insert any of his own assertions in the scoreboard, as well as the crucial role the Law of Non Contradiction, and why the games end with the inference to an impossibility, as opposed to the assertion of ¬A.

(Abstract adapted from their paper 'Antilogic', which appeared in the The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 2013)

Time & place

Wednesday 26 February 15.15-17.00
Room Alfa, Faculty of Philosophy