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Call for Publications

Theme: Logical Pluralism and Translation
Publication: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy
Date: Special Issue
Deadline: 30.4.2016

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Overview

Translation plays a keynote role in logic, philosophy of language and
philosophy of logic. On the one hand, logical pluralism and
translations of logics are at the forefront of the current debates on
the philosophy of logic. Both streams have attracted an ever growing
interest among scholars, against the backdrop of the plurality of
different non-classical logics that extend, or compete with,
classical logic. On the other hand, linguists and philosophers of
language developed effective semantical tools explaining a variety of
linguistic and conceptual phenomena by inquiring the conditions under
which a sentence in one language can be properly said a translation
of a sentence in another language, and when it is that case that such
a translation can be considered sound.

Possible topics

This extremely rich and diversified situation suggests a number of
intriguing philosophical issues including, but not limited to, the
following ones:

- The translation of several linguistic phenomena seems to call for a
pluralist account: what sort of logic do we need to translate
“expressive terms” or “scientific terms” without running into
untranslatability or incommensurability? Is the translation of
indexicals completely captured by Montague's or Kaplan's semantics?
Does the translation of natural kind terms necessarily require
Putnam's semantics to be fully explained?

- The translation of proper names has proved to raise difficulties
for (Neo)Fregean and direct- reference semantics: could such
difficulties be overcome by adopting other logical perspectives, as,
for instance, possible worlds semantics? Could the struggle between
descriptivist and Kripkean explanation be settled in a pluralistic
framework?

- Since the concept of translation can be “taken for granted” in
formalized languages, Davidson's model of meaning takes Tarskian
theory of truth for formalized languages as a model for explaining
the concept of translation in natural languages. How far could
Davidson's programme be extended to other theories of truth for
formalized languages? Could we expect further results by using
different logical systems to explain translation in natural
languages? To what extent can the concept of translation be “taken
for granted” in formalized languages in order to understand
translation in natural languages?

- In place of formal logic, the Gricean account of speaker's meaning
requires “the logic of conversation” to take care of implicatures and
other implicit usages of language. Is conversational logic necessary
to clarify the translation of speaker's meaning? Could alternative
logics provide a more comprehensive explanation of speaker's meaning?

- Which translations of logics preserve the meaning of logical
constants? Quine's meaning variance argument against non-classical
logics casts doubts on the claim that the so-called homophonic
translations are meaning-preserving. How are we to assess this
allegation? Is the classical counterpart of, say, an intuitionistic
disjunction provided by its homophonic translation or by its
Goedel-Glivenko translation?

- We encounter several classes of translations on the market
(conservative, definitional, etc.). What is the philosophical import
of these technical concepts?

- There are translation-based approaches to the concept of deductive
equivalence between consequence relations. These approaches allow us
to compare consequence relations across different languages (Gyuris)
or across systems with different data types (formulas, sequents,
equations: Blok-Jonsson). Is there a significant common abstractions
that encompasses both? 

Invited contributors

J.C. Beall (University of Connecticut)
W.A. Carnielli (State University of Campinas)
M. Carrara (University of Padua)
D. Marconi (University of Turin)
P. Rawling (Florida State University)
M. Santambrogio (University of Parma)
S. Shapiro (Ohio State University)
K. Wehmeier (University of California, Irvine)

Guest editors

Francesca Ervas (University of Cagliari)
Antonio Ledda (University of Cagliari)
Francesco Paoli (University of Cagliari)
Giuseppe Sergioli (University of Cagliari)

Submission process

Contributions must be original and not submitted elsewhere. Papers
must be in English and should not exceed 8,000 words (references and
footnotes included). Each submission should also include a separate
title page containing contact details, a brief abstract and list of
keywords for indexing purposes. All papers will be subject to
double-blind peer-review, following international standard practices.
Manuscripts should be submitted exclusively through the Online
Manuscript Submission System (Editorial Manager), accessible at:
http://www.editorialmanager.com/topo/

Please save your manuscript in one of the formats supported by the
system (e.g., Word, WordPerfect, RTF, TXT, LATEX2e, TEX, Postscript,
etc.), which does NOT include PDF. Make sure to select the
appropriate article type for your submission by selecting “S.I.:
Logical pluralism and translation (Ervas/Ledda/Paoli/Sergioli)” as
the appropriate tab from the scroll-down menu.

Deadline for submission: April 30, 2016

For any further information please contact:

Francesca Ervas ([email protected])
Antonio Ledda ([email protected])
Francesco Paoli ([email protected])
Giuseppe Sergioli ([email protected])

Journal website:
http://www.springer.com/philosophy/journal/11245




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