The idea of a proof-theoretic semantics and the meaning of the logical operations (Q1970589)

This conceptual paper aims at presenting and putting into perspective the idea of a proof-theoretic semantics of logical operations. Paying particular attention to the functional completeness problem the author first gives a brief survey on several semantic paradigms, namely, the model-theoretic, algebraic, game-theoretic, and dynamic. Then the idea of a proof-theoretic semantics is explained and analysed for more details. It is shown, for instance, that display logic provides a proof-theoretic schema general enough to extend the proof-theoretic characterization of logical operations to modal and tense logics.