Logic List Mailing Archive

Two PhD positions in "Truth & Semantics", Bristol (England), Deadline: 24 Mar 2019

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol invites 
applications for two fully funded, 4 year PhD-studentships with the 
ERC-funded project 'Truth and 
Semantics'<https://sites.google.com/site/jssternjohannes/trust> directed 
by Johannes Stern.

Details of the studentships can be found on the project 
website<https://sites.google.com/site/jssternjohannes/trust/phd-studentships> 
and below:

Candidate requirements: We encourage applications from students with a 
background in fields relevant to the project's research aims and training 
in logic and/or formal semantics. Successful candidates will work with the 
Principal Investigator and the project team (two Postdocs) on the 
project's research questions. The main tasks are to complete a 
dissertation within four years and to participate in organising the 
project's events.

Project description: "Anne believes that Bob assumes that Anne believes 
that Bob's assumption is false. Does Anne believe that Bob's assumption is 
false?" Don't try too hard answering the question - any straightforward 
attempt will lead to paradox."But what are we to make of sentences such as 
"Anne believes that Bob's assumption is false." Is the sentence true or 
false? On the face of it, it would seem that answering this question is a 
pressing problem for natural language semantics that assigns truth 
conditions to sentences of natural language. However, semanticists have 
largely ignored problems of this kind, leaving the field to philosophical 
logicians working on paradoxes, in particular, the paradoxes of truth such 
as the Liar paradox. But research on the paradoxes of truth has often 
focused on exploring the space of possible coherent "solutions" to the 
paradoxes thereby ignoring desiderata of natural language semantics. The 
project provides a unified perspective on natural language semantics, 
conceived of as truth-conditional semantics, and the research on the 
so-called semantic paradoxes in form of theories of self-applicable truth. 
A unified approach to truth and semantics will need to answer two 
principal challenges, which divides the research project into two 
interrelated parts. The first part, Truth in Semantics, aims at developing 
semantic accounts for rich fragments of natural language, that is, 
fragments in which, besides the notion of truth, we allow for, e.g., modal 
expressions, propositional attitudes but also natural language 
conditionals. The second part, Truth and the Foundations of Semantics, 
assumes a metasemantic perspective and explores the role of the notion of 
truth in the foundations of natural language semantics, conceived of as 
truth-conditional semantics. The project constitutes the first systematic 
study of truth and natural language semantics from such a combined 
perspective.

Location: Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol
Eligibility: Home/EU students
Funding amount: Fees and stipend in line with RCUK (currently £14,777 p.a.)
Dates: Oct 2019 - Sept 2023 (4 years)

How to apply: To apply, please visit http://www.bris.ac.uk/pg-howtoapply. 
Please select Philosophy (PhD) on the Programme Choice page and enter 
details of the studentship in the Funding and Research Details sections of 
the form. Applicants are also asked to send a one page letter of 
motivation and CV to Johannes Stern<mailto:johannes.stern@bristol.ac.uk> 
by the closing date.

For any queries relating to the application process, please contact PG 
Arts Admisisons team<mailto:artf-gradschool@bristol.ac.uk>. For further 
information on the studentship, please contact Johannes 
Stern<mailto:johannes.stern@bristol.ac.uk> directly.

Deadline: 24 March 2019
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