Buddhist Logic from a Global Perspective

Buddhist philosophers have developed a rich tradition of logic. Buddhist material on logic that forms the Buddhist tradition of logic, however, is hardly discussed or even known. This article presents some of that material in a manner that is accessible to contemporary logicians and philosophers of logic and sets agendas for global philosophy of logic

HUSSERL\u27S DYADIC SEMANTICS

Husserl’s Logical Investigations contain an apparent discrepancy in their account of meaning. They first present meanings, contra psychologism, as commonly available, reiterable, invariant, possibly valid, and independent of our “acts of meaning”. They then present meaning, almost psychologistically, as a kind of intentional experience on which all truths and other transcendent meanings depend. I offer a critical developmental study of this problem within Husserl’s semantics. I argue (1) that Husserl had reason to adopt his dyadic account of signification, (2) that this “two-sided” account shaped, and was reciprocally informed by, the two-step phenomenological method, and (3) that Husserl’s proposed resolution to the strain within his semantics, while driven by legitimate motivations, is precarious. I begin with the Logical Investigations and their context. I represent their two sets of semantic claims, recalling how the discord between claims of those sets would have been especially conspicuous when the Investigations were published, amid much debate over psychologism, in 1900-01. I then show why Husserl embraced two discordant views of meaning. I survey the 19th century sources for these views, confirming Jocelyn Benoist’s genealogical thesis that Husserl’s semantics took its psychological and logical sides primarily from Franz Brentano and Bernard Bolzano, respectively. And I present the Bolzanian arguments and Brentanian descriptions that served as grounds for Husserl’s semantics, showing how these pieces of reasoning were appropriated, and weighing their strength. Next, I trace how Husserl’s two-sided theory of meaning, and its apparent incoherence, both inspired and determined the transcendental and eidetic reductions. I then examine how Husserl subsequently used the phenomenological method to reinforce, to integrate, and to revise his theory of meaning. And I address a methodological criticism that this circular development prompts. Finally, I assess Husserl’s attempt to explain the division within the phenomenon of meaning by reference to what he called “transcendental subjectivity”. I consider two contrary objections to this explanation. I indicate how Husserl’s explanation is responsive to the insight behind each objection, but contend that it is perhaps not adequately responsive to the insight behind either

Dummett, Achilles and the tortoise

to appearI examine here Dummett's views on inference in the light of Carroll's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. Various readings of the paradox are reviewed, and the one which is favoured is that the Tortoise questions the normative force of logical laws and rules. Dummett's analysis of the epistemology of understanding provides the ints of a solution to this problem, but it is agued that this solution is still incomplete

Sellars's Core Critique of C. I. Lewis: Against the Equation of Aboutness with Givenness

Many have taken Sellars’s critique of empiricism in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (EPM) to be aimed at his teacher C. I. Lewis. But if so, why do the famous arguments of its opening sections carry so little force against Lewis’s views? Understandably, some respond by denying that Lewis’s epistemology is among the positions targeted by Sellars. But this is incorrect. Indeed, Sellars had earlier offered more trenchant (if already familiar) critiques of Lewis’s epistemology. What is original about EPM is that it criticizes empiricist positions like Lewis’s not because of their foundationalism, but because of their psychologism about meaning. Since psychologism turns out to be unacceptable by Lewis’s own lights, EPM has a compelling (if implicit) critique of Lewis to offer after all, one that strikes at the heart of his philosophical system

Judgement, Responsibility and the Life-World: Perth Workshop 2011 Conference Proceedings

The workshop was part of the ARC funded project Judgement, Responsibility and the Life-world..

A Psychological Theory of Reasoning as Logical Evidence—a Piagetian Perspective

Many contemporary logicians acknowledge a plurality of logical theories and accept that theory choice is in part motivated by logical evidence. However, just as there is no agreement on logical theories, there is also no consensus on what constitutes logical evidence. In this paper, I outline Jean Piaget’s psychological theory of reasoning and show how he used it to diagnose and solve one of the paradoxes of material implication. I assess Piaget’s use of psychology as a source of evidence for logical theory in light of reservations raised by psychologism, and I highlight some ramifications for exceptionalism and anti-exceptionalism about logic by considering his use of psychology as logical evidence in the framework of genetic epistemology, Piaget’s research programme. I conclude that Piaget’s psychological theory of reasoning not only plausibly serves as a source of evidence for logical theory but also makes a strong case for anti-exceptionalism about logic

A Psychological Theory of Reasoning as Logical Evidence—a Piagetian Perspective

Many contemporary logicians acknowledge a plurality of logical theories and accept that theory choice is in part motivated by logical evidence. However, just as there is no agreement on logical theories, there is also no consensus on what constitutes logical evidence. In this paper, I outline Jean Piaget’s psychological theory of reasoning and show how he used it to diagnose and solve one of the paradoxes of material implication. I assess Piaget’s use of psychology as a source of evidence for logical theory in light of reservations raised by psychologism, and I highlight some ramifications for exceptionalism and anti-exceptionalism about logic by considering his use of psychology as logical evidence in the framework of genetic epistemology, Piaget’s research programme. I conclude that Piaget’s psychological theory of reasoning not only plausibly serves as a source of evidence for logical theory but also makes a strong case for anti-exceptionalism about logic

An unbridled search for logic: four studies of Husserl's logical investigations (1900-01)

The early Husserl wants to know what logic is, or what we should call ‘logic.’ He poses the question in a way that knowingly encompasses both what the 19th century (after Kant but before Frege) and the 20th century (since Frege) call ‘logic.’ But that he asks the question, and with such scope, has yet to be widely recognized. In particular, Husserl scholars still lack an overview of how Husserl’s early, explicitly logical inquiries, driven more by this single question than any worry about doctrinal consistency, does at least two things at once: probe what will later be called ‘pure phenomenology’ or ‘transcendental logic,’ and delimit logic as a positive yet mathematical discipline. With the aim of providing the neglected overview of this project, this dissertation takes the measure of Husserl’s two-volume Logical Investigations (1900-01) in four studies. Chapter I argues that the first volume, the Prolegomena to Pure Logic (1900), intends at once to resolve a 19th-century conflict and to establish logic’s possibility as its own discipline, all by means of demonstrating the confusion of psychologism (the view that empirical psychology could set the terms for logic as a discipline). Chapter II then contends that most of the Prolegomena’s first chapter falls outside this intention, departing from the book’s Bolzano-inspired argumentative framework yet thereby anticipating Husserl’s later ‘transcendental logic.’ Chapter III presents Frege and Husserl as two images of indecision as to how it falls to logic to know truth’s laws. Chapter IV concludes by expounding Husserl’s conception of logic as noetics, the self-clarification of knowing, thus completing the picture of Husserl’s indecision, while also laying groundwork to track the development of his thinking after the Logical Investigations

Wittgensteinian Quietism

One can't help but be struck by the range of incompatible positions that Wittgenstein's philosophy, his rule-following considerations in particular, have been taken to support. For instance, according to one very popular interpretation of the rule-following considerations, Wittgenstein proves that claims about the meanings of words aren't objectively true. On another interpretation, Wittgenstein shows that discourse about meaning, though without foundation, is as capable of robust truth as any. Still others argue that the Wittgenstein of the Investigations was neither a realist nor an antirealist with respect to discourse about meaning. On the contrary, according to proponents of this last interpretation, Wittgenstein rejected as "nonsense" both the questions that the rule-following considerations seem to pose and the answers that realists and antirealists have tried to give to these questions.This third, quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein has received increased critical attention of late. Some commentators have suggested that there is no textual basis for the quietist interpretation of the early Wittgenstein. Less has been written that purports to assess the arguments that quietists have found in Wittgenstein, early or late. In this dissertation, I assess the philosophical credentials of the quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein. In the first part, I argue that the material from Frege that inspired the Tractatus doesn't support quietism in the way that proponents of the quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein suppose. In the second part, I argue that the rule-following considerations support a position that's closely related to, but in important respects different from the one that the proponents of the quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein endorse

Universal Logic and the Geography of Thought - Reflections on logical pluralism in the light of culture

The aim of this dissertation is to provide an analysis for those involved and interested in the interdisciplinary study of logic, particularly Universal Logic. While continuing to remain aware of the importance of the central issues of logic, we hope that the factor of culture is also given serious consideration. Universal Logic provides a general theory of logic to study the most general and abstract properties of the various possible logics. As well as elucidating the basic knowledge and necessary definitions, we would especially like to address the problems of motivation concerning logical investigations in different cultures. First of all, I begin by considering Universal Logic as understood by Jean-Yves Béziau, and examine the basic ideas underlying the Universal Logic project. The basic approach, as originally employed by Universal Logicians, is introduced, after which the relationship between algebras and logics at an abstract level is discussed, i.e., Universal Algebra and Universal Logic. Secondly,I focus on a discussion of the translation paradox , which will enable readers to become more familiar with the new subject of logical translation, and subsequently comprehensively summarize its development in the literature. Besides helping readers to become more acquainted with the concept of logical translation, the discussion here will also attempt to formulate a new direction in support of logical pluralism as identified by Ruldof Carnap (1934), JC Beall and Greg Restall (2005), respectively. Thirdly, I provide a discussion of logical pluralism. Logical pluralism can be traced back to the principle of tolerance raised by Ruldof Carnap (1934), and readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of this concept from the discussion. Moreover,an attempt will be made to clarify the real and important issues in the contemporary debate between pluralism and monism within the field of logic in general. Fourthly, I study the phenomena of cultural-difference as related to the geography of thought. Two general systems in the geography of thought are distinguished, which we here call thought-analytic and thought-holistic. They are proposed to analyze and challenge the universality assumption regarding cognitive processes. People from different cultures and backgrounds have many differences in diverse areas, and these differences, if taken for granted, have proven particularly problematic in understanding logical thinking across cultures. Interestingly, the universality of cognitive processes has been challenged, especially by Richard Nisbett s research in cultural psychology. With respect to these concepts, C-UniLog can also be considered in relation to empirical evidence obtained by Richard Nisbett et al. In the final stage of this dissertation, I will propose an interpretation of the concept of logical translation, i.e., translations between formal logical mode (as cognitive processes in the case of westerners) and dialectical logical mode (as cognitive processes in the case of Asians). From this, I will formulate a new interpretation of the principle of tolerance, as well as of logical pluralism