Nicolas Clerbout nicolas.clerbout@etu.univ-lille3.fr 179, Bd de la Liberté 59000 Lille – France Tel : 0033/ 320 318470 or 0033/ 607 717691 mise à jour le 6 juillet 2007
Research Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Shahid Rahman	Research interests: Logical games. Modal logics and subjunctive modal logics. Formal analysis of the language. Modalities and argumentation.
Project for the PhD-Dissertation: Kripke’s Modal Argument to challenge the description theories of proper names rests on the claim that modal logic is an adequate tool to formalize the possibility. Accordingly, the nuances of potential and unreal expressed by the subjunctive mood are only types of possibilities adequately captured by the way standard modal logic deals with the notion of possibility. One of possible criticisms against this position consists in showing that standard modal logic fails to account for the difference between “indicative” and “subjunctive” grammatical moods. Such a criticism is in particular advanced by Kai F. Wehmeier. Then he gives a solution to have a formal language richer than the one of standard modal logic, in order to gain in expressivity and to carry out a better logical analysis of the modal natural speech. Our purpose is to show that both the criticism of Wehmeier and the solution which he gives are special features of a more general issue than a grammatical distinction between verb moods. They are in fact signs of the need to reconsider the notion of scope: the standard modal logic fails because it rests on a static approach of the scope of operators (the usual syntactic approach). By contrast, a modal logic such as the one proposed by Wehmeier seems, quite as the modal IF-Logic and lambda-calculus, to depend on a dynamic approach of the scope of operators.
Subjects of the Masters: Master 1: “L’irréel argumentatif”, under the direction of Shahid Rahman. Master 2: “La logique modale du subjonctif. Dialogues et calcul de séquents”, under the direction of Shahid Rahman.
Communications: 2007 (march) : 2nd Congress of SPS (“Société de Philosophie des Sciences”). “Towards a Dynamic Notion of Scope of Operators in Modal Logic” (the communication was made in French). Other: 2006-2007, with Marie-Hélène Gorisse and Emmanuel Genot. In charge of a “Formal Techniques” workshop. Lecture on Smullyan’s First-Order Logic (Dover Publications, Inc. New York). Online works: An introduction to propositionnal logic, for the logic course of “Licence 1” , can be found here. Links: http://pragmadial.blogspot.com/ http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/l3logique/ (discussion group dealing with the logical course of licence).