Greetings,

We are pleased to announce the 249th Colloquium, organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies at Seoul National University.

For this session, we are honored to host Professor Kevin Davey from the University of Chicago, who will present on the topic: "What the Curry-Howard Correspondence Shows Us About the Meaning of the Connectives." We warmly invite all those interested to attend this insightful event.

Details:

• Date: Monday, April 28, 2025, 4:00 PM–6:00 PM

• Venue: Room 403, Building 6, College of Humanities, Institute for Philosophical Studies, Seoul National University

• Speaker: Kevin Davey (University of Chicago)

• Topic: What the Curry-Howard Correspondence Shows Us About the Meaning of the Connectives

Lecture Overview:
The Curry-Howard Correspondence draws a surprising connection between (i) ways of organizing and manipulating data, and (ii) proofs in formal logic.
It offers a new way of thinking about the formalism of logic which, while now somewhat familiar to computer scientists, has largely been overlooked by philosophers. In this talk I present the outlines of the Curry-Howard correspondence, and argue that it gives a philosophically satisfying account of the meaning oflogical connectives. I also argue that it offers a compelling way of seeing what is wrong with pathological connectives like ‘tonk’. The talk will presuppose only a basic understanding of elementary logic.


Speaker Introduction:
Kevin Davey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003, and also has Masters degrees in both physics and mathematics. His main areas of interest are the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, logic, epistemology and the philosophy of physics. In the general philosophy of science and epistemology he is particularly interested in understanding the character of non-deductive inference, both within and outside the context of science. In the philosophy of mathematics, he is currently engaged in a close study of the origin of proof in both the western and non-western mathematical traditions, and the light that sheds on contemporary debates about the nature of mathematics. In logic, he is currently looking at the way we reason about truth, focusing both on philosophical questions about the nature of the truth predicate and technical questions about formal theories of truth.