Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things,—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

Logic, the tradition has it, is normative for reasoning. But is that really so? And if so, in what sense is logic normative for reasoning? As Gilbert Harman has reminded us, devising a logic and devising a theory of reasoning are two separate enterprises. Hence, logic's normative authority cannot reside in the fact that principles of logic just are norms of reasoning. Once we cease to identify the two, we are left with a gap. To bridge the gap one would (...) need to produce what John MacFarlane has appropriately called a bridge principle, i.e. a general principle articulating a substantive and systematic link between logical entailment and norms of reasoning. This is Harman's skeptical challenge. In this paper I argue that Harman's skeptical challenge can be met. I show how candidate bridge principles can be systematically generated and evaluated against a set of well‐motivated desiderata. Moreover, I argue that bridge principles advanced by MacFarlane himself and others, for all their merit, fail to address the problem originally set forth by Harman and so do not meet the skeptical challenge. Finally, I develop a bridge principle that meets Harman's requirements as well as being substantive. (shrink)

Abstract:When I throw a ball at you, do you see it as catch‐able? Do we perceive objects as edible, climbable or Q‐able in general? One could argue that it is just a manner of speaking to say so: we do not reallyseean object as edible, we only infer on the basis of its other properties that it is. I argue that whether or not an object is edible or climbable is indeed represented perceptually: weseeobjects as edible, and do not just (...) believe that they are. My argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that in order to perform an action Q with respect to an object, we need to represent this object as Q‐able and, second, I argue that we represent objects as having these propertiesperceptually. (shrink)

This chapter addresses an ambiguity in some of the literature on rational peer disagreement about the use of the term 'rational'. In the literature 'rational' is used to describe a variety of normative statuses related to reasons, justification, and reasoning. This chapter focuses most closely on the upshot of peer disagreement for what is rationally required of parties to a peer disagreement. This follows recent work in theoretical reason which treats rationality as a system of requirements among an agent's mental (...) states. It is argued that peer disagreement has either no, or a very limited, affect on what rationality requires of an agent in a given circumstance. This is in part because of difficulties generated by a novel example of evidence of evidence of p being evidence against p. This example calls into question the mechanisms whereby peer disagreement might affect what is rationally required of an agent. The chapter also reevaluates the importance of actual peer disagreement against the backdrop of prior expectations about whether disagreement is believed to be likely, arguing that peer disagreement is most likely to change what is rationally required of an agent when it is believed to be unlikely. (shrink)

“Conciencia”, la sección inicial de la Fenomenología de Hegel, se ocupa de la comprensión del mundo físico que nos rodea. La sección siguiente, “Autoconciencia”, comienza a considerar nuestra comprensión de nosotros mismos y de los otros. Este orden de discusión no es ni arbitrario ni meramente conveniente. Por el contrario, una de las principales lecciones que hemos de aprender hacia el final del desarrollo de la “conciencia” es que nuestra mejor concepción del mundo que es el objeto de nuestras actividades (...) cognitivas es inteligible solo como una parte de un relato que además considera la naturaleza del sujeto que se dedica a tales actividades. La razón para esta transición expositiva es un aspecto importante en el idealismo de Hegel. En este capítulo ofrezco una reconstrucción racional de un argumento que veo como el soporte de esta transición y del tipo de idealismo que esta implica. (shrink)

Inference is a process by which appropriate belief states get connected. Belief states are biological states in the sense that they are reentrant loops ; their intrinsic feature is recognition. In inference or reasoning the transition process between belief states is regulated by the rule of concept usage, involved in the belief state, in natural language. Like belief states experiential states are also biological states whose extrinsic feature is recognition, such that, one can have an, say, X-type experience without recognizing (...) it as an experience of X. One can, however, also have an experience of an X; in the latter case, one not only has an X-type experience but also recognizes an X as an X. In some cases the transition from X-type experience to believing an X to be there instantiates a quasi-inferential pattern. In all such cases the transition process is regulated by the rule of X usage. In such quasi-inferential transition additional belief states are involved. Such states assert that there are no countervailing factors and there are additional factors conducive to the conclusion. Such belief states are expressed non-propositionally in the language of thought. Propositions are a necessary part of such quasi-inference for they give content to thoughts to which one can assign 'falsity' and defeasible reasoning requires us to assign 'falsity' to our thoughts. Propositions implicated in the quasi-inferences from experience types to belief states are the evidential reasons for the conclusion and they can only be accepted as provisionally true and have to be revised in the light of further information. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that fiction is necessarily incomplete, but some recent work postulates the existence of universal fictions—stories according to which everything is true. Building such a story is supposedly straightforward: authors can either assert that everything is true in their story, define a complement function that does the assertoric work for them, or, most compellingly, write a story combining a contradiction with the principle of explosion. The case for universal fictions thus turns on the intuitive priority we assign (...) to the law of non-contradiction. My goal in this paper is to show that our critical and reflective literary practices set constraints on story-telling which preclude universal fictions. I will raise four stumbling blocks for universal fictionalists: the gap between saying and making true, our actual interpretive reactions to story-level contradictions, the criteria we accept for what counts as a story in our literary practices, and the undesirability of the universal fictionalist’s closure principles. (shrink)

The temptation to look for the “purely normative essence” of argument stems from the understandable ambition to distinguish rational persuasion from mere persuasion. But in seeking a purely normative notion of argument it is easy to overlook—or actually deny—that rational persuasion is a kind of persuasion. The burden of this essay is to show that the concept of reason from which our interest in argument derives can only exist and have normative force as a kind of persuasion, that is, as (...) something causal. (shrink)

Sarah McGrath argues that moral perception has an advantage over its rivals in its ability to explain ordinary moral knowledge. I disagree. After clarifying what the moral perceptualist is and is not committed to, I argue that rival views are both more numerous and more plausible than McGrath suggests: specifically, I argue that inferentialism can be defended against McGrath’s objections; if her arguments against inferentialism succeed, we should accept a different rival that she neglects, intuitionism; and, reductive epistemologists can appeal (...) to non-naturalist commitments to avoid McGrath’s counterexamples. (shrink)

Since at least the 1938 publication of Hans Reichenbach’s Experience and Predication , there has been widespread agreement that, when discussing the beliefs that people have, it is important to distinguish contexts of discovery and contexts of justification. Traditionally, when one conflates the two contexts, the result is a “genetic fallacy”. This paper examines genealogical critiques and addresses the question of whether such critiques are fallacious and, if so, whether this vitiates their usefulness. The paper concludes that while there may (...) be one or more senses in which genealogical critiques are fallacious, this does not vitiate their value. (shrink)

In this paper, Graham Priest’s understanding of dialetheism, the view that there exist true contradictions, is discussed, and various kinds of metaphysical dialetheism are distinguished between. An alternative to dialetheism is presented, namely a thesis called ‘dimathematism’. It is pointed out that dimathematism enables one to escape a slippery slope argument for dialetheism that has been put forward by Priest. Moreover, dimathematism is presented as a thesis that is helpful in rejecting the claim that logic is a normative discipline.

What is the relation between entailment and reasons for belief? In this paper, I discuss several answers to this question, and I argue that these answers all face problems. I then propose the following answer: for all propositions p1,...,pn and q, if the conjunction of p1,..., and pn entails q, then there is a reason against a person's both believing that p1,..., and that pn and believing the negation of q. I argue that this answer avoids the problems that the (...) other answers to this question face, and that it does not face any other problems either. I end by showing what the relation between deductive logic, reasons for belief and reasoning is if this answer is correct. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. This very general characterization gives rise to a whole family of positions. I argue that not all of them are stable. The main argument in the paper is inspired by considerations known as the “collapse problem”, and it aims at the most popular form of logical pluralism advocated by JC Beall and Greg Restall. I argue that there is a more general argument available that challenges all variants (...) of logical pluralism that meet the following three conditions: that there are at least two correct logical systems characterized in terms of different consequence relations, that there is some sort of rivalry among the correct logics, and that logical consequence is normative. The hypothesis I argue for amounts to conditional claim: If a position satisfies all these conditions, then that position is unstable in the sense that it collapses into competing positions. (shrink)

Logic has traditionally been construed as a normative discipline; it sets forth standards of correct reasoning. Explosion is a valid principle of classical logic. It states that an inconsistent set of propositions entails any proposition whatsoever. However, ordinary agents presumably do — occasionally, at least — have inconsistent belief sets. Yet it is false that such agents may, let alone ought to, believe any proposition they please. Therefore, our logic should not recognize explosion as a logical law. Call this the (...) ‘normative argument against explosion’. Arguments of this type play — implicitly or explicitly — a central role in motivating paraconsistent logics. Branden Fitelson, in a throwaway remark, has conjectured that there is no plausible ‘bridge principle’ articulating the normative link between logic and reasoning capable of supporting such arguments. This paper offers a critical evaluation of Fitelson’s conjecture, and hence of normative arguments for paraconsistency and the conceptions of logic’s normative status on which they repose. It is argued that Fitelson’s conjecture turns out to be correct: normative arguments for paraconsistency probably fail. (shrink)

This paper presents a counterexample to the principle that all epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes towards p are provided by evidence concerning p. I begin by motivating and clarifying the principle and the associated picture of epistemic reasons, including the notion of evidence concerning a proposition, which comprises both first- and second-order evidence. I then introduce the counterexample from incoherent doxastic attitudes by presenting three example cases. In each case, the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an (...) epistemic reason to suspend, which is not provided by evidence. I argue that this incoherence fact is a reason for the subject to take a step back and reassess her evidence for her conflicting attitudes, and thus a reason to suspend all of them. Suspending judgment enables the subject to revise attitudes where appropriate and thus (typically) to arrive at a set of coherent and well-supported attitudes. I then address a dilemma for my proposal and, in conclusion, briefly suggest a picture of epistemic reasons on which they are to be understood against the background of the subject’s virtuous intellectual conduct. (shrink)

This paper investigates the link between informational consequence and credence. I first suggest a natural constraint, namely that informational consequence should preserve certainty: on any rational credence distribution, when the premises of an informational inferences have credence 1, the conclusion also has credence 1. Then I show that the certainty‐preserving constraint leads to triviality. In particular, the following three claims are incompatible: (i) informational consequence is extensionally distinct from classical consequence; (ii) informational inferences preserve certainty; (iii) credences obey (a subset (...) of) classical Bayesian constraints. The proof is straightforward, but the theoretical implications are substantial. Informational theorists need to either give up the idea that credence applies to epistemic discourse, or develop a nonclassical theory of credence and credal update. Moreover, the result also suggests that there is a connection between informational consequence and triviality results, including classical triviality results like Lewis's. (shrink)

This essay offers a conception of logic by which logic may be considered to be exceptional among the sciences on the backdrop of a naturalistic outlook. The conception of logic focused on emphasises the traditional role of logic as a methodology for the sciences, which distinguishes it from other sciences that are not methodological. On the proposed conception, the methodological aims of logic drive its definitions and principles, rather than the description of scientific phenomena. The notion of a methodological discipline (...) is explained as a relation between disciplines or practices. Logic serves as a methodological discipline with respect to any theoretical practice, and this generality, as well as logic’s reflexive nature, distinguish it from other methodological disciplines. Finally, the evolution of model theory is taken as a case study, with a focus on its methodological role. Following recent work by John Baldwin and Juliette Kennedy, we look at model theory from its inception in the mid-twentieth century as a foundational endeavour until developments at the end of the century, where the classification of theories has taken centre-stage. (shrink)

One strategy for defending paraconsistent logics involves raising ‘normative arguments’ against the inference rule explosion. Florian Steinberger systematically criticises a wide variety of formulations of such arguments. I argue that, for one such formulation, Steinberger’s criticisms fail. I then sketch an argument, available to those who deny dialetheism, in defence of the formulation in question.

Logic appears to be normative for rational belief. The thesis of the normativity of logic holds that indeed logic has such a normative status. Gilbert Harman has questioned it, thereby giving rise to what has been called “Harman's skeptical challenge”. MacFarlane has clarified that in order to answer this challenge and support the normativity of logic, one needs a “bridge principle” that appropriately connects logical entailments and norms for belief, as well as relevant desiderata for the evaluation of candidate bridge (...) principles. Steinberger has identified a list of desiderata, on the basis of which he has proposed his own bridge principle and shown the inadequacy of previous proposals. This paper argues that Steinberger's list is in need of revision and his principle is unsatisfactory, and then puts forward a revised list of desiderata and a new bridge principle in support of the normativity of logic. (shrink)

This paper argues that the traditional characterization of the notion of paradox — an apparently valid argument with apparently true premises and an apparently false conclusion — is too narrow; there are paradoxes that do not satisfy it. After discussing, and discarding, some alternatives, an outline of a new characterization of the notion of paradox is presented. A paradox is found to be an apparently valid argument such that, apparently, it does not present the kind of commitment to the conclusion (...) that should be implied by an acceptance of the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reinterpret success semantics, a theory of mental content, according to which the content of a belief is fixed by the success conditions of some actions based on this belief. After arguing that in its present form, success semantics is vulnerable to decisive objections, I examine the possibilities of salvaging the core of this proposal. More specifically, I propose that the content of some very simple, but very important, mental states, the immediate mental antecedents (...) of action, can be explained in this manner. (shrink)

When we see an object, we also represent those parts of it that are not visible. The question is how we represent them: this is the problem of amodal perception. I will consider three possible accounts: (a) we see them, (b) we have non-perceptual beliefs about them and (c) we have immediate perceptual access to them, and point out that all of these views face both empirical and conceptual objections. I suggest and defend a fourth account, according to which we (...) represent the occluded parts of perceived objects by means of mental imagery. This conclusion could be thought of as a (weak) version of the Strawsonian dictum, according to which “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself”. (shrink)

Abstract: When I throw a ball at you, do you see it as catch-able? Do we perceive objects as edible, climbable or Q-able in general? One could argue that it is just a manner of speaking to say so: we do not really see an object as edible, we only infer on the basis of its other properties that it is. I argue that whether or not an object is edible or climbable is indeed represented perceptually: we see objects as (...) edible, and do not just believe that they are. My argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that in order to perform an action Q with respect to an object, we need to represent this object as Q-able and, second, I argue that we represent objects as having these properties perceptually. (shrink)

An influential objection to the epistemic power of the imagination holds that it is uninformative. You cannot get more out of the imagination than you put into it, and therefore learning from the imagination is impossible. This paper argues, against this view, that the imagination is robustly informative. Moreover, it defends a novel account of how the imagination informs, according to which the imagination is informative in virtue of its analog representational format. The core idea is that analog representations represent (...) relations ‘for free,’ and this explains how the imagination can contain more information than is put into it. This account makes important contributions to both philosophy of mind, by showing how the imagination can generate new content that is not represented by a subject’s antecedent mental states, and epistemology, by showing how the imagination can generate new justification that is not conferred by a subject’s antecedent evidence. (shrink)

According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. (...) In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning. (shrink)

Priest and others have presented their “most telling” argument for paraconsistent logic: that only paraconsistent logics allow non-trivial inconsistent theories. This is a very prevalent argument; occurring as it does in the work of many relevant and more generally paraconsistent logicians. However this argument can be shown to be unsuccessful. There is a crucial ambiguity in the notion of non-triviality. Disambiguated the most telling reason for paraconsistent logics is either question-begging or mistaken. This highlights an important confusion about the role (...) of logic in our development of our theories of the world. Does logic chart good reasoning or our commitments? We also consider another abductive argument for paraconsistent logics which also is shown to fail. (shrink)

Two of the most important outcomes of The Contradictory Christ include: identifying Christ as an unproblematically contradictory being as well as laying the foundations of an investigation of the logical consequences of the existence of Christ, qua contradictory, within a particular 'theory'. In light of the enormous reluevance of Beall’s The contradictory Christ for the study of inconsistency, my main concern here is to explore the effect of some methodological choices behind Beall’s proposal -this in order to recognize in more (...) detail the scope of Beall’s contribution. To do so, I will focus on three main questions: 1. What is required for the identification of a contradiction? 2. How can we recognize a true contradiction from either an apparent or a temporal contradiction? 3. If we identify a true contradiction within a theory, where can we actually go from there? (shrink)

Many have contended that non-classical logicians have failed at providing evidence of paraconsistent logics being applicable in cases of inconsistency toleration in the sciences. With this in mind, my main concern here is methodological. I aim at addressing the question of how should we study and explain cases of inconsistent science, using paraconsistent tools, without ruining into the most common methodological mistakes. My response is divided into two main parts: first, I provide some methodological guidance on how to approach cases (...) of inconsistent science; and second, I focus on a peculiar type of formal methodologies for the scrutiny of inconsistent reasoning, the _Paraconsistent Alternative Approach_ (henceforth, PAA) and argue that PAA can enhance a more accurate understanding of sensible reasoning in inconsistent contexts. (shrink)

According to a widely shared generic conception of inferential justification—‘the standard conception’—an agent is inferentially justified in believing that p only if she has antecedently justified beliefs in all the non-redundant premises of a good argument for p. This conception tends to serve as the starting-point in contemporary debates about the nature and scope of inferential justification: as neutral common ground between various competing, more specific, conceptions. But it’s a deeply problematic starting-point. This paper explores three questions that haven’t been (...) given the attention they deserve, that complicate the application of the standard conception to cases, and that reveal it to be underspecified at the core—in ways that aren’t resolved but inherited by more specific (extant) versions of it. The goal isn’t to answer the questions, but to articulate them, explain what turns on them, and invite a critical re-examination of the standard conception. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman, in Logic and Reasoning (Synthese 60 (1984), 107–127) describes an unsuccessful attempt ... to develop a theory which would give logic a special role in reasoning. Here reasoning is psychological, a procedure for revising one''s beliefs. In the present paper, I construe reasoning sociologically, as a process of linguistic interaction; and show how both reasoning in the psychologistic sense and logic are related to that process.

Logic is usually thought to concern itself only with features that sentences and arguments possess in virtue of their logical structures or forms. The logical form of a sentence or argument is determined by its syntactic or semantic structure and by the placement of certain expressions called “logical constants.”[1] Thus, for example, the sentences Every boy loves some girl. and Some boy loves every girl. are thought to differ in logical form, even though they share a common syntactic and semantic (...) structure, because they differ in the placement of the logical constants “every” and “some”. By contrast, the sentences Every girl loves some boy. and Every boy loves some girl. are thought to have the same logical form, because “girl” and “boy” are not logical constants. Thus, in order to settle questions about logical form, and ultimately about which arguments are logically valid and which sentences logically true, we must distinguish the “logical constants” of a language from its nonlogical expressions. (shrink)

Equivocation, or multiple meaning, is explained through the introduction of an additional response, the distinction, to points of order in formal dialogue objecting to immediate inconsistency.

Simulation theory explains third-person mental state attribution in terms of an attributor's ability to imaginatively mimic other people's mental processes. Jane Heal's version of simulation theory, which she calls a theory of “co-cognition,” maintains that one can know and can predict others’ beliefs primarily by thinking about what their antecedent beliefs imply. I argue that Heal's account of belief attribution elides crucial differences between reasoning and merely discovering relations among propositions.

We develop and defend a new approach to counterlogicals. Non-vacuous counterlogicals, we argue, fall within a broader class of counterfactuals known as counterconventionals. Existing semantics for counterconventionals, 459–482 ) and, 1–27 ) allow counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of predicates and relations. We extend these theories to counterlogicals by allowing counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of logical vocabulary. This yields an elegant semantics for counterlogicals that avoids problems with the usual impossible worlds semantics. We conclude by showing how this approach (...) can be extended to counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

The phenomenological movement begins in the Prolegomena to Husserl’s Logical Investigations as a philosophy of logic. Despite this, remarkably little attention has been paid to Husserl’s arguments in the Prolegomena in the contemporary philosophy of logic. In particular, the literature spawned by Gilbert Harman’s work on the normative status of logic is almost silent on Husserl’s contribution to this topic. I begin by raising a worry for Husserl’s conception of ‘pure logic’ similar to Harman’s challenge to explain the connection between (...) logic and reasoning. If logic is the study of the forms of all possible theories, it will include the study of many logical consequence relations; by what criteria, then, should we select one consequence relation as correct? I consider how Husserl might respond to this worry by looking to his late account of the ‘genealogy of logic’ in connection with Gurwitsch’s claim that ‘[i]t is to prepredicative perceptual experience … that one must return for a radical clarification and for the definitive justification of logic’. Drawing also on Sartre and Heidegger, I consider how prepredicative experience might constrain or guide our selection of a logical consequence relation and our understanding of connectives like implication and negation. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that logic, whatever it may be, is normative. While accounting for the normativity of logic is a challenge for any view of logic, in this paper I argue that it is particularly problematic for certain types of logical pluralists, due to what I call the normative problem for logical pluralism. I introduce the NPLP, distinguish it from other problems that logical pluralists may face, and show that it is unsolvable for one prominent type of logical pluralism.

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the Quinean view that logical theories have no special epistemological status, in particular, they are not self-evident or justified a priori. Instead, logical theories are continuous with scientific theories, and knowledge about logic is as hard-earned as knowledge of physics, economics, and chemistry. Once we reject apriorism about logic, however, we need an alternative account of how logical theories are justified and revised. A number of authors have recently argued that logical theories are justified by abductive (...) argument (e.g. Gillian Russell, Graham Priest, Timothy Williamson). This paper explores one crucial question about the abductive strategy: what counts as evidence for a logical theory? I develop three accounts of evidential confirmation that an anti-exceptionalist can accept: (1) intuitions about validity, (2) the Quine-Williamson account, and (3) indispensability arguments. I argue, against the received view, that none of the evidential sources support classical logic. (shrink)

There is a pervasive view that inference—as opposed, notably, to a grasp of objects—is an intralinguistic process that does not draw on extralinguistic resources. The present paper aims to show that this dichotomy between inferring and grasping objects can be resisted. Specifically, I offer an alternative view: a phenomenological account according to which our most basic inferences draw on our grasp of objects. I motivate this account on the grounds that, although it is restricted to such basic inferences, it has (...) significant implications for the general question of whether inference involves taking one's premises to support one's conclusion. The proposed account implies that basic inferences need not involve corresponding “takings,” (even though such inferences involve conceptual content), but it leaves open the possibility that non-basic inferences do involve corresponding “takings,” while relying on basic inferences. It will turn out that such a disjunctive view, according to which non-basic reasoning is somewhat parasitic on basic reasoning, manages to avoid many of the problems with which the literature on the “taking condition” deals. (shrink)

According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to res...

Is logic normative for reasoning? In the wake of work by Gilbert Harman and John MacFarlane, this question has been reduced to: are there any adequate bridge principles which link logical facts to normative constraints on reasoning? Hitherto, defenders of the normativity of logic have exclusively focussed on identifying adequate validity bridge principles: principles linking validity facts—facts of the form 'gamma entails phi'—to normative constraints on reasoning. This paper argues for two claims. First, for the time being at least, Harman’s (...) challenge cannot be surmounted by articulating validity bridge principles. Second, Harman’s challenge can be met by articulating invalidity bridge principles: principles linking invalidity facts of the form 'gamma does not entail phi' to normative constraints on reasoning. In doing so, I provide a novel defence of the normativity of logic. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Horwich's metaphilosophical interpretation of Wittgenstein. Specifically, it focuses on Horwich's charge that all philosophy is irrational. First, I coordinate the various aspects of Horwich's metaphilosophical program to make sense of his charge of irrationality against philosophy. Second, I argue that this metaphilosophical program misfires in two distinct ways. However, third, I close by calling attention to what I posit to be a critical insight of Horwich's account.

People reason not only in beliefs, but also in intentions, preferences, and other attitudes. They form preferences from existing preferences, or intentions from existing beliefs and intentions, and so on. This often involves choosing between rival conclusions. Building on Broome (Rationality through reasoning, Hoboken, Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118609088, 2013) and Dietrich et al. (J Philos 116:585–614. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20191161138, 2019), we present a philosophical and formal analysis of reasoning in attitudes, with or without facing choices in reasoning. We give different accounts of choosing, in (...) terms of a conscious activity or a partly subconscious process. Reasoning in attitudes differs fundamentally from reasoning _about_ attitudes, a form of theoretical reasoning in which one discovers rather than forms attitudes. We show that reasoning in attitudes has standard formal properties (such as monotonicity), but is indeterministic, reflecting choice in reasoning. Like theoretical reasoning, it need not follow logical entailment, but for a more radical reason, namely indeterminism. This makes reasoning in attitudes harder to model logically than theoretical reasoning. But it can be studied abstractly, using indeterministic consequence operators. (shrink)

We present an abstract model of rationality that focuses on structural properties of attitudes. Rationality requires coherence between your attitudes, such as your beliefs, values, and intentions. We define three 'logical' conditions on attitudes: consistency, completeness, and closedness. They parallel the familiar logical conditions on beliefs, but contrast with standard rationality conditions like preference transitivity. We establish a formal correspondence between our logical conditions and standard rationality conditions. Addressing John Broome's programme 'rationality through reasoning', we formally characterize how you can (...) (not) become more logical by reasoning. Our analysis connects rationality with logic, and enables logical talk about multi-attitude psychology. (shrink)

Hume’s Law that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is” has often been deemed to bear a significance that extends far beyond logic. Repeatedly, it has been invoked as posing a serious threat to views about normativity: naturalism in metaethics and positivism in jurisprudence. Yet in recent years, a puzzling asymmetry has emerged: while the view that Hume’s Law threatens naturalism has largely been abandoned (due mostly to Pigden’s work, see e.g. Pigden 1989), the thought that Hume’s Law is (...) a serious challenge to positivism has only grown in prominence. Our main aim is to establish that Hume’s Law is not a threat to positivism or naturalism. First, we connect extensive, but unfortunately siloed, discussions of this issue. Second, we show that Hume’s Law is not a serious threat to naturalism or positivism, for the gap between logic and such theses is very hard to bridge in a way that would make Hume’s Law able to bear this significance. Finally, we emphasize an implication of our discussion: it undermines one of the main “dialectical tributaries” in jurisprudence (Toh 2018). (shrink)

According to the logical pluralism of Beall and Restall, there are several distinct relations of logical consequence. Some critics argue that logical pluralism suffers from what I call the collapse problem: that despite its intention to articulate a radically pluralistic doctrine about logic, the view unintentionally collapses into logical monism. In this paper, I propose a contextualist resolution of the collapse problem. This clarifies the mechanism responsible for a plurality of logics and handles the motivating data better than the original (...) view. It is a major improvement that should be embraced by all logical pluralists. (shrink)