Anti-Exceptionalism About Logic - a podcast by MCMP Team

Ole Hjortland (Bergen) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (3 December, 2015) titled "Anti-Exceptionalism About Logic". Abstract: Logic isn’t special. Its theories are continuous with science; its method continuous with scientific method. Logic isn’t a priori, nor are its truths analytic truths. Logical theories are revisable, and if they are revised, they are revised on the same grounds as scientific theories. These are the tenets of anti-exceptionalism about logic. The position is most famously defended by Quine, but has more recent advocates in Maddy (2002), Priest (2006a; 2014), Russell (2014; 2015), and Williamson (2013b; 2015). Anti- exceptionalism would not be an attractive position, however, if it was only a rejection of exceptionalism, and in particular a rejection of apriorism. A number of questions remains: What is a logical theory according to the anti-exceptionalist, what is a logical theory a theory of, and what constitutes evidence for such a theory? We argue against Williamson’s deflationary account of logical theories, and we show how a non-deflationary account undercuts his argument for classical logic. Instead we offer an alternative account of logical theories, on which logical pluralism is a plausible consequence of anti-exceptionalism.

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