27 May
2026
27 May
'26
8:54 a.m.
Dear all,
our next speaker in the Philosophy of Science Colloquium organized by
the Institute Vienna Circle is Pedro Del Valle-Inclan (IVC Fellow,
Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa), who will give a talk on May 28,
4.45-6.15 pm.
All are welcome!
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*Philosophy of Science Colloquium TALK: **Pedro Del Valle-Inclan (IVC
Fellow, Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa)*
Carnap's Problem: Rules, Models, and Meaning
Philosophy of Science Colloquium
The Institute Vienna Circle holds a Philosophy of Science Colloquium
with talks by our present fellows.
*
Date:* 28/05/2026
*
Time:* 16h45
*
Venue:* New Institute Building (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien, HS 3C
*
Abstract:*
In his /Formalization of Logic /(1943) Carnap pointed out that there are
non-normal interpretations of classical logic: non-standard
interpretations of the
connectives and quantifiers that are consistent with the classical
consequence relation of a language.
Different ways around the problem have been proposed. In a recent paper,
Bonnay and Westerst˚ahl argue that the key to a solution is imposing
restrictions on the type of interpretation we take into account. More
precisely, they claim that if we restrict attention to interpretations
that are (a) compositional, (b) non-trivial and (c) in the case of the
quantifiers, invariant under permutations of the domain, Carnap’s
Problem is avoided.
This paper has two goals. The first is to show that Bonnay and
Westerst˚ahl’s solution to Carnap’s Problem doesn’t work. The second is
to argue that something similar to their proposal seems to do the job.
The problems with Bonnay and Westerst˚ahl’s approach trace back to
issues concerning the (un)definability of subsets of the domain of
first-order structures, as well as to the compositionality of
first-order languages. After expanding on these problems, I’ll propose a
way to modify Bonnay and Westerst˚ahl’s account and solve Carnap’s Problem.