Slides of Session 1 (Download)

Slides of Session 2 (Download)

It is our great honor and pleasure to announce that Frank Veltman, Professor Emeritus of Logic and Cognitive Science at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at University of Amsterdam, will offer an in-person mini-course on update semantics on November 4 and 11, as part of our logic seminar series this semester. Anyone with access to PKU campus are welcome to join.

Professor Veltman is one of the earliest and most influential proponents of update semantics, which has become an indispensible perspecitve on the formal semantics of natural language and communication and a dominant approach on hot topics such as indicative conditionals and epistemic modals. In this mini-course, professor Veltman will give an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the essentials of update semantics and its applications.

Time Nov. 4th (Tuesday) and 11th (Tuesday), 15:10 - 18:00

Location Room 211, Natural Sciences Teaching Building (理教)

Abstract

This two-session mini course (three hours per session) introduces update semantics, a dynamic approach to meaning.

Update semantics departs from standard truthconditional semantics by equating the meaning of a sentence not with its truth conditions, but with its potential impact on the cognitive state of an addressee.

The first part of this mini course introduces the core ideas of this framework and illustrates them through a closer examination of the epistemic modal might and of indicative conditionals.

We will then turn to counterfactual conditionals, beginning with a critical look at the classic analysis developed of David Lewis. Building on this discussion, I will develop an alternative account that gives a dynamic twist to the Premise Semantics for counterfactuals proposed independently by Angelika Kratzer and myself in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the final part, Identity and Identification, we will explore how names, demonstratives, definite descriptions, and pronouns differ in their logical behavior, especially when they occur in identity statements within or outside the scope of epistemic and alethic modalities.