The variety of consequence, according to Bolzano (Q1083442): Difference between revisions

Bernard Bolzano invented the semantic notion of logical consequence, a full century before Tarski. Nevertheless, his logic did not look much like ours, as he did not focus on any specific set of logical constants. Instead, Bolzano studied general aspects of consequence. This paper points out three features of that study which are still of contemporary significance: 1) the realization that there are many notions of valid consequence, depending on the particular kind of reasoning one is involved in; 2) a general semantic study of partially interpreted languages, having only part of their vocabulary interpreted in some model, with the remainder still to be fixed; 3) the development of a systematic metatheory of consequence and consistency for various notions of consequence, in an environment of partial interpretation.