Rationality and Logic (MIT Press, 2006)

Rough draft. To appear in Knauff, M. and Spohn, W. (ed.), Handbook of Rationality, MIT Press.

This chapter addresses the question as to how (if at all) propositional (PL) and first-order logic (FOL) relate to epistemic rationality. Rationality, it is often held, demands that our attitudes cohere in particular ways. Logic is often invoked as a source of such coherence requirements when it comes to belief: An ideally rational agent's beliefs are consistent and closed under logical consequence. However, this traditional picture has been challenged from various quarters. We begin by briefly reviewing the key concepts involved in PL and FOL. We then critically examine two distinct approaches to justifying logic-based requirements of rationality. The first lays down a set of desiderata codifying our intuitions, and then seeks to formulate a principle articulating the link between logic and rational belief that satisfies them. The second starts by identifying our most fundamental epistemic aim and seeks to derive requirements of rationality based on their ability to promote this aim.

Memory & Cognition, 1983

Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 2009

The paper tries to spell out a connection between deductive logic and rationality, against Harman's arguments that there is no such connection, and also against the thought that any such connection would preclude rational change in logic. One might not need to connect logic to rationality if one could view logic as the science of what preserves truth by a certain kind of necessity (or by necessity plus logical form); but the paper points out a serious obstacle to any such view.

New Ideas in Psychology 16 (1998) 125-139

This is our response to the commentaries on the paper on the logical substantiation of our theory.

Computational Intelligence, 1988

McDermott has recently explained his fundamental philosophical shift on the methodology of artificial intelligence (AI) and has further suggested that the shift is both necessary and inevitable. The shift results from a perception that a trend towards overformalisation has detached the real problems from the research results. McDermott's criticism is an enlightened exhumation of the criticisms of the seventies and explains new ways in which the logical methodology can be abused. I argue that McDermott's criticism should not discourage the use of logic, but force a timely reexamination of its fundamental role in AI.

Logic and Logical Philosophy, 2011

In this paper two concepts of psychologism in logic are outlined: the one which Frege and Husserl fought against and the new psycholo-gism, or cognitivism, which underlies a cognitive turn in contemporary logic. Four issues such cognitively oriented logic should be interested in are indicated. They concern: new fields opened for logical analysis , new methods and tools needed to address these fields, neural basis of logical reasoning, and an educational problem: how to teach such logic? Several challenging questions, which arise in the context of these issues, are listed.

Logica Universalis, 2010

Tarski's conceptual analysis of the notion of logical consequence is one of the pinnacles of the process of defining the metamathematical foundations of mathematics in the tradition of his predecessors Euclid, Frege, Russell and Hilbert, and his contemporaries Carnap, Gödel, Gentzen and Turing. However, he also notes that in defining the concept of consequence "efforts were made to adhere to the common usage of the language of every day life." This paper addresses the issue of what relationship Tarski's analysis, and Béziau's further generalization of it in universal logic, have to reasoning in the everyday lives of ordinary people from the cognitive processes of children through to those of specialists in the empirical and deductive sciences. It surveys a selection of relevant research in a range of disciplines providing theoretical and empirical studies of human reasoning, discusses the value of adopting a universal logic perspective, answers the questions posed in the call for this special issue, and suggests some specific research challenges.

2014

Press 978-0-521-83255-7-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic Edited by George di Giovanni Excerpt More information The Science of Logic section i: subjectivity Chapter 1. The concept Chapter 2. Judgment Chapter 3. The syllogism section ii: objectivity Chapter 1. Mechanism Chapter 2. Chemism Chapter 3. Teleology section iii: the idea Chapter 1. Life Chapter 2. The idea of cognition Chapter 3. The absolute idea www.cambridge.org