Theories and Logics

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of some formal principles and notions used earlier. They will also be needed in the exact treatment of some case studies in the next chapter. Logically educated readers will find most of the principles familiar from the literature, but the details are presented in the form that best suits my purposes. The basic idea is here that the logical tools chosen should not excessively constrain metascientific studies, but should provide sufficiently exact means whenever formal accuracy is needed. The former requirement means, first, that the logical framework employed has to have enough expressive power, and, second, that it must be adaptable so as to be able to combine with philosophical and pragmatic investigations. In addition to formal details, I consider, in the first section and at the end of the second, some questions of this kind, as related to the recent developments in logic that generalize the whole notion of logic (or, rather, of a logic). Furthermore, I make a brief historical digression, in Section 3, to explore Rudolf Carnap’s anticipation, in the thirties, of what happened in logic and logical metascience somewhat later in the twentieth century. Carnap’s enterprise seems to be of historical interest that is not generally recognized.