Truth Preservation in AI

Must READ


Logique & Analyse 183–184 (2003), x–x
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE AS TRUTH-PRESERVATION
STEPHEN READ
Abstract
It is often suggested that truth-preservation is insufficient for logical
consequence, and that consequence needs to satisfy a further condi-
tion of relevance. Premises and conclusion in a valid consequence
must be relevant to one another, and truth-preservation is too coarse-
grained a notion to guarantee that. Thus logical consequence is the
intersection of truth-preservation and relevance.
This situation has the absurd consequence that one might concede
that the conclusion of an argument was true (since the argument had
true premises and was truth-preserving); yet should refuse to infer
the conclusion from the premises, in the absence of demonstration
of the relevance of the premises to the conclusion.
The error lies in giving insufficient attention to the notion of truth-
preservation. Relevance is no separable ingredient in the analysis of
logical consequence, but a necessary condition of it. If an argument
really is truth-preserving, then that in itself is enough to show that
the premises are (logically) relevant to the conclus

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