A survey of logical realism

Tuomas E Tahko

doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02369-5

Abstract

Logical realism is a view about the metaphysical status of logic. Common to most if not all the views captured by the label ‘logical realism’ is that logical facts are mind- and language-independent. But that does not tell us anything about the nature of logical facts or about our epistemic access to them. The goal of this paper is to outline and systematize the different ways that logical realism could be entertained and to examine some of the challenges that these views face. It will be suggested that logical realism is best understood as a metaphysical view about the logical structure of the world, but this raises an important question: does logical realism collapse into standard metaphysical realism? It will be argued that this result can be accommodated, even if it cannot be altogether avoided.

Highlights

What is logical realism? One obvious reading suggests that the notion stands for realism about logic
It shall be suggested that logical realism is best understood as a metaphysical view about the logical structure of the world
This raises an important question: does logical realism collapse into standard metaphysical realism? It turns out that this result cannot be avoided entirely, but it can be accommodated in such a way that it still makes sense to talk about logical realism as an independent view

Summary

Introduction

What is logical realism? One obvious reading suggests that the notion stands for realism about logic. I will give an example of a possible way to understand the distinction which is interesting from the point of view of logical realism. This understanding comes from a recent survey by Eklund (2017), where he discusses ‘goodness pluralism’: given some particular purpose, different languages serve that purpose well. Setting aside these initial complications, we should get clearer about what motivates logical realism in the first place This is the goal of sections two and three, where we will outline some views in the literature that the label ‘logical realism’ may be associated with, focusing on Sher’s and Maddy’s projects. Footnote 3 (continued) would not constitute mind- and language-independence in the sense that is traditionally associated with realism, so I will set this complication aside

Motivation: a foundation for logic

Further motivation

Logical constants and logical structure

The case of negation

The overgeneration problem