Inferential semantics, paraconsistency, and preservation of evidence

Abstract

Proof-theoretic semantics provides meanings to the connectives of intuitionistic logic without the need for a semantics in the standard sense of an attribution of semantic values to formulas. Meanings are given by the inference rules that, in this case, do not express preservation of truth but rather preservation of availability of a constructive proof. Elsewhere we presented two paraconsistent systems of natural deduction: the Basic Logic of Evidence (BLE) and the Logic of Evidence and Truth (LETJ). The rules of BLE have been conceived to preserve a notion weaker than truth, namely, evidence, understood as reasons for believing in or accepting a given proposition. LETJ, on the other hand, is a logic of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness that extends BLE by adding resources to recover classical logic for formulas taken as true, or false. We extend the idea of proof-theoretic semantics to these logics and argue that the meanings of the connectives in BLE are given by the fact that its rules are concerned with preservation of the availability of evidence. An analogous idea also applies to LETJ.