Zoom Talk: Diego Tajer (Buenos Aires / MCMP)

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Title:

Anti-exceptionalism and methodological pluralism in logic

Abstract:

According to methodological anti-exceptionalism (Martin & Hjortland 2020), logic follows a scientific methodology. There has been some discussion about which methodology logic has. Authors such as Priest (2014), Hjortland (2017) and Williamson (2017) argued that logic can be characterized by an abductive methodology. According to this method, we choose the theory that behaves better under a set of epistemic criteria (such as fit to data, simplicity, fruitfulness, or coherence).

In this paper, I will analyze some important discussions in philosophy of logic (intuitionism versus classical logic, the meaning of the conditionals, and the semantic paradoxes), and I will show that they presuppose different methodologies, different notions of evidence, and different epistemic values. I will argue that instead of having a specific methodology such as abductivism, logic can be characterized by a methodological pluralism. This position can also be seen as the application of scientific pluralism (Kellert et al. 2006) to the realm of logic.