Reflective Equilibrium and the Principles of Logical Analysis : Understanding the Laws of Logic

This book offers a comprehensive account of logic that addresses fundamental issues concerning the nature and foundations of the discipline. The authors claim that these foundations can not only be established without the need for strong metaphysical assumptions, but also without hypostasizing logical forms as specific entities. They present a systematic argument that the primary subject matter of logic is our linguistic interaction rather than our private reasoning and it is thus misleading to see logic as revealing "the laws of thought." In this sense, fundamental logical laws are implicit to our "language games" and are thus more similar to social norms than to the laws of nature. Peregrin and Svoboda also show that logical theories, despite the fact that they rely on rules implicit to our actual linguistic practice, firm up these rules and make them explicit. By carefully scrutinizing the project of logical analysis, the authors demonstrate that logical rules can be best seen as products of the so called reflective equilibrium. They suggest that we can profit from viewing languages as "inferential landscapes" and logicians as "geographers" who map them and try to pave safe routes through them. This book is an essential resource for scholars and researchers engaged with the foundations of logical theories and the philosophy of language. Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 What Is Logic about? -- 2 Some Platitudes about Argumentation and Arguments -- 2.1 Arguments and Their Correctness -- 2.2 Are There Correct Arguments that Are Not Logically Correct? -- 2.3 Forms of Arguments -- 3 Beyond the Platitudes -- 3.1 Boundaries? -- 3.2 Truth? -- 3.3 Truth-Preservation? -- 3.4 Logical Form? -- 4 Logical Analysis -- 4.1 Structure versus Form -- 4.2 The Art of Analysis -- 4.3 Regimentation and Logical Structure -- 4.4 Hybrid Languages -- 4.5 Abstraction and Logical Form -- 5 Criteria of Formalization -- 5.1 Seeking the Best Formalization -- 5.2 The Criteria of Formalization -- 5.3 Formalization as Bootstrapping -- 6 Semantic Criteria? -- 6.1 Logical Formalization as Translation? -- 6.2 Does Semantics Offer Us a Firmer Foundation? -- 6.3 Does Semantics Let Us Capture What Inferences Do Not? -- 6.4 Do Logical Forms Have Truth Conditions? -- 7 Reflective Equilibrium -- 7.1 What Is Refl ective Equilibrium? -- 7.2 Reflective Equilibrium Is Not Creation Ex Nihilo -- 7.3 From Form to Function -- 7.4 Laws of Logic as Resulting from a Reflective Equilibrium -- 7.5 Logic and 'Intuitions' -- 8 Logic as a Result of the Reflective Equilibrium -- 8.1 How Much Does the Reflective Equilibrium Alter Our 'Intuitions'? -- 8.2 Logic and Natural Languages -- 8.3 Logic and Correctness of Arguments -- 8.4 Plurality of Logics -- 8.5 Laws of Logic -- 8.6 Logic and Meaning -- 9 Incorrectness -- 9.1 Which Arguments Are Logically Incorrect? -- 9.2 Are There Arguments that Are Logically Incorrect, but Correct? -- 9.3 Incorrect Arguments -- 9.4 A Strong Notion of Logical Incorrectness -- 9.5 Properties of the Definition of Logical Incorrectness -- 10 Logical Analysis as Mapping the Inferential Landscape -- 10.1 A Holistic View on Formalization -- 10.2 An Example Jaroslav Peregrin And Vladimír Svoboda. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes.