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Philosophical Accounts of First-Order Logical Truths

  • Constantin C. BrîncuşEmail author
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Abstract

Starting from certain metalogical results (the completeness theorem, the soundness theorem, and Lindenbaum-Scott theorem), I argue that first-order logical truths of classical logic are a priori and necessary. Afterwards, I formulate two arguments for the idea that first-order logical truths are also analytic, namely, I first argue that there is a conceptual connection between aprioricity, necessity, and analyticity, such that aprioricity together with necessity entails analyticity; then, I argue that the structure of natural deduction systems for FOL displays the analyticity of its truths. Consequently, each philosophical approach to these truths should account for this evidence, i.e., that first-order logical truths are a priori, necessary, and analytic, and it is my contention that the semantic account is a better candidate.

Keywords

First-order logical truths Completeness theorem Lindenbaum-Scott theorem 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mircea Dumitru, Mircea Flonta, Matti Eklund, Ilie Pârvu, Gabriel Sandu, and Iulian Toader for their feedback. Special thanks to a reviewer for this journal whose substantial comments helped me improve this paper.

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© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of Bucharest, Faculty of PhilosophyBucharestRomania

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