Truth, Semantics & Logical Systems

← Back to Domain-Specific Families

Abstractions about formal truth, semantic interpretation, metalanguage, propositions, proof, and nonclassical systems of logical consequence.

18 abstractions in this family — domain-specific abstractions that sit near one another in structural-signature space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• Animistic fallacy — The error of inferring that an observed order, event or outcome must have been intentionally caused merely because it occurred or appears organized.
• Categorical proposition — A proposition asserting or denying that all or some members of a subject category belong to a predicate category.
• Constructive dilemma — A valid propositional inference from two conditionals and a disjunction of their antecedents to the disjunction of their consequents.
• Deflationary theory of truth — A family of theories holding that truth talk adds no substantial property beyond assertion, endorsement or semantic equivalence.
• Descriptive interpretation — A Carnapian interpretation of a formal system in which at least one primitive symbol denotes an empirical object or observable property.
• Doxastic logic — A modal logic that formalizes what agents believe and how those beliefs interact with implication, introspection and consistency.
• Frege–Church ontology — A semantic ontology distinguishing objects or denotations, names or expressions, and concepts or senses to preserve intensional differences under reference-preserving substitution.
• Grelling–Nelson paradox — A semantic paradox produced by asking whether the adjective “non-self-descriptive” describes itself.
• Logical equality — A truth-functional connective that is true exactly when its two propositions have the same truth value.
• Metalanguage — A language used to name, quote, define or make claims about expressions and structures of another object language.
• Proof by example — The invalid inference that a universal claim has been proved merely by exhibiting one or several favorable instances.
• Proof-theoretic semantics — An approach to meaning in which the inferential rules governing an expression, especially introduction and elimination rules, constitute or determine its semantic content.
• Relevance logic — A family of nonclassical logics requiring a substantive connection between the antecedent and consequent of a valid implication.
• Semantic theory of truth — A formal account defining truth for an object language in a suitably stronger metalanguage through recursive satisfaction and T-schema instances.
• Subalternation — In the traditional square of opposition, the immediate inference from a universal categorical proposition to its corresponding particular proposition, and contrapositively from the particular's falsity to the universal's falsity.
• Supposition theory — A family of medieval logical theories classifying how terms stand for things in propositions.
• T-schema — The disquotational schema stating that the named sentence S is true if and only if S.
• Trivialism — The logical or metaphysical thesis that every proposition is true, including each contradiction and its negation.