Two Cases of Deduction with Non-referring Descriptions

Formal reasoning with non-denoting terms, esp.non-referring descriptions such as "the King of France", is still an under-investigated area.The recent exception being a series of papers e.g. by Indrzejczak and Zawidzki.The present paper offers an alternative to their approach since instead of free logic and sequent calculus, it's framed in partial type theory with natural deduction in sequent style.Using a Montague-and Tich-style formalization of natural language, the paper successfully handles deduction with intensional transitives whose complements are non-referring descriptions, and derives Strawsonian rules for existential presuppositions of sentences with such descriptions.

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Journal
Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
Published
2024-12-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4204/eptcs.415.8
Primary Topic
Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Two Cases of Deduction with Non-referring Descriptions

Jiří Raclavský
Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
article

Two Cases of Deduction with Non-referring Descriptions

Jiří Raclavský
article en

Abstract

Formal reasoning with non-denoting terms, esp.non-referring descriptions such as "the King of France", is still an under-investigated area.The recent exception being a series of papers e.g. by Indrzejczak and Zawidzki.The present paper offers an alternative to their approach since instead of free logic and sequent calculus, it's framed in partial type theory with natural deduction in sequent style.Using a Montague-and Tich-style formalization of natural language, the paper successfully handles deduction with intensional transitives whose complements are non-referring descriptions, and derives Strawsonian rules for existential presuppositions of sentences with such descriptions.

Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer ScienceVol. 415
Masaryk University (CZ)
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Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
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