Cool Logic

Thomas Randriamahazaka (ILLC)

Meinong and the lambdas: a new neo-Meinongian logic

November 22nd at 18:30, in ILLC Seminar Room F1.15, Science Park 107, Amsterdam

Meinong, the founder of object theory, has often been accused of being inconsistent and ontologically unparsimonious, in part because his theory allows for nonexistent and even impossible objects. However, his insights have been used to develop the so-called neo-Meinongian logics, i.e. consistent versions of object theory that can be used as foundations for formal semantics. In this talk, I review the problems with the naive version of object theory and presents the main neo-Meinongian strategies to solve them. I then propose my own neo-Meiongian logic, based the notions of complex property and lambda-abstraction.