My main aim is to sketch a certain reading (‘genealogical’) of later Wittgenstein’s views on logical necessity. Along the way, I engage with the inferentialism currently debated in the literature on the epistemology of deductive logic.

In this paper, I develop an algorithmic impossible-worlds model of belief and knowledge that provides a middle ground between models that entail that everyone is logically omniscient and those that are compatible with even the most egregious kinds of logical incompetence. In outline, the model entails that an agent believes (knows) φ just in case she can easily (and correctly) compute that φ is true and thus has the capacity to make her actions depend on whether φ. The model thereby (...) captures the standard view that belief and knowledge ground are constitutively connected to dispositions to act. As I explain, the model improves upon standard algorithmic models developed by Parikh, Halpern, Moses, Vardi, and Duc, among other ways, by integrating them into an impossible-worlds framework. The model also avoids some important disadvantages of recent candidate middle-ground models based on dynamic epistemic logic or step logic, and it can subsume their most important advantages. (shrink)

In response to Paul Boghossian's objections in ‘Inferentialism and the epistemology of logic’, this paper defends counterexamples offered by Paolo Casalegno and the author to an inferentialist account of what it is to understand a logical constant, on which Boghossian had relied in his explanation of our entitlement to reason according to basic logical principles. The importance for understanding is stressed of non-inferential aspects of the use of logical constants. Boghossian's criteria for individuating concepts are also queried.

According to the Adoption Problem certain basic logical principles cannot be adopted. Drawing on the AP, Suki Finn presents an argument against logical pluralism: Modus Ponens and Universal Instantiation both govern a general structure shared by every logical rule. As such, analogues of these two rules must be present in every meta-logic for any logical system L, effectively imposing a restriction to logical pluralism at the meta-level through their presence constituting a “meta-logical monism”. We find a tension in the dual (...) role that the “unadoptable rules” must play in Finn’s “meta-logical monism” rendering it ineffective to restrict logical theories and systems. Consequently, we argue they cannot be both analogues of MP and UI and inferentially productive. We conclude with a series of suggestions regarding where a more satisfying and robust interpretation of the AP could lie. (shrink)

This article is about the problem of the justification of basic logical laws. Starting from an exposition of Lewis Carroll’s regress, I show the inadequacy of dominant current approaches in the epistemology of logic: they are incapable of responding satisfyingly to the central problem raised by the regress. The realisation of this failure motivates the need to adopt a different perspective on our conception of logical laws. I suggest, in the last portion of the article, that we should follow a (...) suggestion made by Paul Boghossian and look carefully at the primitivist conception of the foundations of logic, such as it is put forward by Aristotle. (shrink)

Most philosophers who had the opportunity to meet Paolo Casalegno (1952-2009) have been impressed by his sharp acumen, his passion for discussing philosophy and his human and intellectual generosity. I had the chance more than others to appreciate his qualities and benefit from them: we worked in the same university in Milan for many years and we had many occasions to discuss philosophy and other non-philosophical topics. I owe a debt of gratitude to him and, together with Paolo’s friends and (...) colleagues, I look for opportunities to remember his work and to continue to discuss it. One of them is the conference 'Good Points. Paolo Casalegno’s criticisms of some analytic philosophers' held in Milan in April 2011; the present special issue of dialectica collects the contributions on Paolo’s work presented on this occasion together with the reviews of two books published posthumously. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian, some truths are knowable a priori because they are expressed by epistemically analytic sentences. In such cases, understanding the sentence is meant to suffice for justified belief in the proposition it expresses. One alleged route from understanding to justification goes via what Boghossian calls ‘the synonymy model’. This article presents a dilemma for this model and argues that although a strategy for avoiding the dilemma is available, this does not vindicate Boghossian's model.

In this paper I present how the normative inferentialist can make the distinction between sentence meaning and content of the utterance. The inferentialist can understand sentence meaning as a role conferred to that sentence by the rules governing inferential transitions and content of the utterance as just a part of sentence meaning. I attempt to show how such a framework can account for prominent scenarios presented by contextualists as a challenge to semantic minimalism/literalism. I argue that inferentialism can address contextualist (...) challenges in a simple and effective manner by understanding sentence meaning as broad, but invariant. (shrink)

What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that (...) thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn’t just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can’t think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn’t fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it’s possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity. (shrink)

This article offers an overview of inferential role semantics. We aim to provide a map of the terrain as well as challenging some of the inferentialist’s standard commitments. We begin by introducing inferentialism and placing it into the wider context of contemporary philosophy of language. §2 focuses on what is standardly considered both the most important test case for and the most natural application of inferential role semantics: the case of the logical constants. We discuss some of the (alleged) benefits (...) of logical inferentialism, chiefly with regards to the epistemology of logic, and consider a number of objections. §3 introduces and critically examines the most influential and most fully developed form of global inferentialism: Robert Brandom’s inferentialism about linguistic and conceptual content in general. Finally, in §4 we consider a number of general objections to IRS and consider possible responses on the inferentialist’s behalf. (shrink)

This special issue collects together nine new essays on logical consequence :the relation obtaining between the premises and the conclusion of a logically valid argument. The present paper is a partial, and opinionated,introduction to the contemporary debate on the topic. We focus on two influential accounts of consequence, the model-theoretic and the proof-theoretic, and on the seeming platitude that valid arguments necessarilypreserve truth. We briefly discuss the main objections these accounts face, as well as Hartry Field’s contention that such objections (...) show consequenceto be a primitive, indefinable notion, and that we must reject the claim that valid arguments necessarily preserve truth. We suggest that the accountsin question have the resources to meet the objections standardly thought to herald their demise and make two main claims: (i) that consequence, as opposed to logical consequence, is the epistemologically significant relation philosophers should be mainly interested in; and (ii) that consequence is a paradoxical notion if truth is. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A traditional objection to inferentialism states that not all inferences can be meaning-constitutive and therefore inferentialism has to comprise an analytic-synthetic distinction. As a response, Peregrin argues that meaning is a matter of inferential rules and only the subset of all the valid inferences for which there is a widely shared corrective behaviour corresponds to rules and so determines meaning. Unfortunately, Peregrin does not discuss what counts as “widely shared”. In the paper, I argue for an empirical plausibility of (...) Peregrin’s proposal. The aim of the paper is to show that we can find examples of meaning-constitutive linguistic action, which sustain Peregrin’s response. The idea is supported by examples of meaning modulation. If Peregrin is right, then we should be able to find specific meaning modulations in which a new meaning is publicly available and modulated in such a way that it has a potential to be widely shared. I believe that binding modulations – a specific type of meaning modulations – satisfy this condition. (shrink)