September 27th at 18:30, in ILLC Seminar Room F1.15, Science Park 107, Amsterdam
Metaphysicians, especially realistic ones, have been struggling to secure their methodology. Many ask how we can know anything about metaphysical reality, which is independent of our cognitive reach. How do we know that there are talking donkeys somewhere? We may not know anything about metaphysical reality. However, we know something about logic -- inferential rules and semantics. Several philosophers, including Michael Dummett, Ted Sider, and Timothy Williamson, have tried to employ logic as the main research tool for metaphysics. For them, valid logical inferences and their corresponding semantic structure reflect the structure of metaphysical reality. However, their previous attempts have assumed logical monism, which forces us to decide the one correct logic before claiming any metaphysical statement. The two-fold tasks -- first, to defend logical monism in general, second, to argue that her selection is the right one -- seem very hard to complete in this era of logical pluralism. In this talk, I will present a new semantics for propositional modal logic which makes it possible to guess the metaphysical reality without deciding which is the right logic.