What Harmony Could and Could Not Be

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (4):617 - 639 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The notion of harmony has played a pivotal role in a number of debates in the philosophy of logic. Yet there is little agreement as to how the requirement of harmony should be spelled out in detail or even what purpose it is to serve. Most, if not all, conceptions of harmony can already be found in Michael Dummett's seminal discussion of the matter in The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. Hence, if we wish to gain a better understanding of the notion of harmony, we do well to start here. Unfortunately, however, Dummett's discussion is not always easy to follow. The following is an attempt to disentangle the main strands of Dummett's treatment of harmony. The different variants of harmony as well as their interrelations are clarified and their individual shortcomings qua interpretations of harmony are demonstrated. Though no attempt is made to give a detailed alternative account of harmony here, it is hoped that our discussion will lay the ground for an adequate rigorous treatment of this central notion

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-12-22

Downloads
230 (#79,615)

6 months
20 (#101,729)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Florian Steinberger
Birkbeck, University of London

Citations of this work

Reasoning With Attitude.Luca Incurvati & Julian J. Schlöder - 2023 - New York: Oxford University Press USA.
Classical Harmony and Separability.Julien Murzi - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (2):391-415.
Small Steps and Great Leaps in Thought: The Epistemology of Basic Deductive Rules.Joshua Schechter - 2019 - In Magdalena Balcerak Jackson & Brendan Balcerak Jackson (eds.), Reasoning: New Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
On the Equivalence Conjecture for Proof-Theoretic Harmony.Florian Steinberger - 2013 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 54 (1):79-86.

View all 24 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The logical basis of metaphysics.Michael Dummett - 1991 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Articulating reasons: an introduction to inferentialism.Robert Brandom - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Natural deduction: a proof-theoretical study.Dag Prawitz - 1965 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.
Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism.Robert Brandom - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

View all 36 references / Add more references