Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30-10:50. DMC 203
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Material will be drawn primarily from lectures. Notes that supplement the lectures can be found here.
It is recommended that you take handwritten notes during class, so you will need a notepad. The two books listed below also cover the same material and can provide further context. The second book is more advanced.
NB: the first book uses the symbol L for $\Box$ and M for $\Diamond$.
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Modal logic is the study of the logical behaviour of modalities–notions expressed by words like necessarily and possibly. Modal logic finds applications in all areas of philosophy: in metaphysics in the study of modality, time and laws; in the philosophy of language in the study of vagueness, conditionals and modals; in epistemology in the study of knowledge and belief, and in ethics in the form of deontic logic. Modalities of different sorts appear to be governed by a common logic, called K, and specific modalities may possibly be governed by further principles. In this course you will learn how to represent modalities in a formal system in which their logical properties can be formalized and studied. In the first part of the course we will look at how modalities interact with other logical words—the truth functional connectives and the quantifiers—and we will study their proof theory and model theory. In the second part of the course we will look at some philosophical applications of modal logics.
PHIL 350, PHIL 222. You should be familiar with propositional logic, and have experience with proofs by induction. We will recap these ideas in class. The prerequisites may be waived if the student can demonstrate some relevant background, which may include relevant courses in mathematics, linguistics or computer science.
Exercises 50\%
Proposal: 5%. Due April 9. Submit a detailed proposal of what you intend to do your final project on.
Final project: 25%. Due April 31.
Theory:
Propositional languages. (Week 3 and 4)
Propositional modal languages. (Weeks 5-7)
Derivations. (Week 8)
Applications: (Weeks 10-15)
We will study some subset of these applications. These may be influenced by the interests of the class.
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