Report

The Fall Meeting 2011 took place in Geneva the 7th of October. It was devoted to philosophical modal logic and brought together people from a wide range of disciplines. The day started with a tutorial given by Fabrice Correia who introduced the basic notions of philosophical modal logic, thereby establishing a common ground for the talks to come. Once having motivated the formal study of modalities by their abundant presence in natural language, he laid down the formal definitions of both the semantic and the proof theoretical framework of modal logic. He closed his talk giving some insight into his current research on the theory of grounding. After a home-cooked lunch offered by the SGSLPS, the participants headed for the afternoon session. Based on three texts, Sara Uckelman showed how modalities were treated in the medieval period. Using contemporary modal logical tools, she developed a careful analysis of the modalities considered in these texts. This analysis gives rise to alternative modal logic systems contrasting interestingly from the standard system. The last talk was given by Alessandro Giordani who presented an extension of the classical modal logic. Explicit modal logic arose from a question first formulated by K. Gödel and was developed by S. N. Artemov. This theory extends modal logic by permitting explicit mention of that in virtue of which modal statements hold. Both the major involvement of the participants and their diverse backgrounds created a favourable atmosphere for high level interdisciplinary discussions. The social dinner was the occasion for the speakers to share some thoughts and make some plans for future events and collaborations.