Abstract
Logical pluralism is commonly described as the view that there is more than one correct logic. It has been claimed that, in order for that view to be interesting, there has to be at least a potential for rivalry between the correct logics. This paper offers a detailed assessment of this suggestion. I argue that an interesting version of logical pluralism is hard, if not impossible, to achieve. I first outline an intuitive understanding of the notions of rivalry and correctness. I then discuss a natural account of rivalry in terms of disagreement about validity claims and the argument from meaning variance that has been raised against it. I explore a more refined picture of the meaning of validity claims that makes use of the character-content distinction of classical two dimensional semantics. There are three ways in which pluralists can use that framework to argue for the view that different logics may be rivals but could nevertheless be equally correct. I argue that none of them is convincing.
Highlights
Logics can be applied for a variety of purposes
Even if we focus on more traditional applications like the study of valid arguments, there still are quite a number of different logics, each offering a theory of validity
Being valid according to one notion of consequence is not the same as being valid according to another. This is the central claim of logical pluralism: There is more than one correct account of validity
Summary
Logics can be applied for a variety of purposes. They can be used for such diverse tasks as managing databases, simulating intelligent behaviour, analysing the grammatical structure of natural languages, or simplifying electronic circuits. This paper is concerned with those relations between different logics It is concerned with the question of whether an undoubtedly interesting version of the plurality thesis can be defended: a pluralism which claims that there are ‘‘at least two opposing, but correct, answers to the question of whether a single argument is valid’’ (Russell 2008, 609, emphasis added). Being valid according to one notion of consequence is not the same as being valid according to another This is the central claim of logical pluralism: There is more than one correct account of validity (see Cook 2010, 493). Characterized this way, relativism and pluralism are independent views. The claim is (i) that there are at least two logics such that the formal arguments valid in those logics correspond to informal arguments valid in some extra-systematic sense and (ii) that proponents of those logics endorse jointly incompatible claims about the validity of a single argument
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