A Phenomenological Analysis of the Distinction Between Structural Rules and Particle Rules in Dialogical Logic

Abstract

As it is well-known, Husserl distinguishes between three levels of formal logic: pure morphology, consequence-logic and truth-logic. The distinction between the second level, which concerns the peculiarities of the derivation of propositions from each other, and the third level, which concerns the deduction or any kind of proof as a whole in which the truth of the premises and the consequences are at work, is very important to understand Husserl’s conception of pure logic. Such a distinction remains unnoticed for the truth-functional approaches toward logic, for they define the meaning of logical connectives on the basis of truth and falsity. Therefore, they cannot recognize the peculiarities of the derivation or consequence-relation as such. My aim in this paper is to show that the dialogical distinction between particle rules and structural rules, and also the distinction between play-level and strategy-level, may be considered as representing the distinction between the second and the third levels of logic; and thus the dialogical semantics provides us with a device to explore the phenomenological idea in a precise way. On the other hand, certain themes of the overall phenomenological analysis of logic help to show the philosophical significance of those dialogical features.