Hannes Leitgeb
Hannes Leitgeb (1972) is an Austrian philosopher and mathematician. He is Professor of Philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and has received a Humboldt Chair in 2010. His research areas include logic (theories of truth and modality, paradox, conditionals, non-monotonic reasoning, dynamic doxastic logic), epistemology (belief , inference, revision of beliefs, foundations of probability, Bayesianism), philosophy of mathematics (structuralism, informal demonstrability, abstraction, identity criteria), philosophy of language (indeterminacy of translation, compositionality), cognitive science (symbolic representation and networks neuronal, metacognition), philosophy of science (empirical content, measurement theory) and history of philosophy (logical positivism, Carnap, Quine).
Hannes Leitgeb
Presentation summary:
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On Merely Expressive Devices
Hannes Leitgeb
In this talk I will develop a semantics for merely expressive devices: linguistic expressions that help us to express propositions (thoughts) but which do not at the same time contribute to the truth conditions of the propositions thereby expressed. Logical operators constitute paradigm case examples of such merely expressive devices, but I will argue that there are many further merely expressive devices, including stipulatively defined terms and metaphysical modalities. Ultimately, the semantics will throw new light on various important philosophical debates, such as on the viability of analyticity and the metaphilosophical status of logic and metaphysics.