The Collapse Argument Reconsidered

Abstract

According to Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism, classical logic, relevant logic, and intuitionistic logic are all correct. On this version of logical pluralism, logic is considered to be normative, in the sense that someone who accepts the truth of the premises of a valid argument, is bound to accept the conclusion. So-called collapse arguments are designed to show the incompatibility of the simultaneous acceptance of logical pluralism and the normativity of logic. Caret, however, by proposing logical contextualism, and Blake-Turner and Russell by proposing telic pluralism, have sought to nullify the collapse problem. In the present article, after setting out these two approaches to the collapse problem, we argue that by using the concept of the ‘rationality of beliefs’ in order to frame the canonical purpose of logic, it can be demonstrated that if logical contextualism and telic pluralism are considered as philosophically significant logical pluralisms, a refined version of the collapse argument is still a threat for both of these kinds of logical pluralism.