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Department of Philosophy
Department Seminar

Sindre Søderstrøm: A New Theory of the Normativity of Logic

The fourth and last Department Seminar this Spring is given by Sindre Søderstrøm who is Ph.D. student in the NRC-financed project Anti-Exceptionalism about Logic.

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Abstract

Showing in what way logic constrains reasoning has proved difficult. Even if correct thinking were in some sense best described as following standard logical rules, these requirements would be too demanding in actual practice. No one can, for example, be expected to deduce all the logical consequences of one's beliefs. They are too many and too complex.

Even so, most agree that logic is in some sense normative. One influential idea is that there are so-called bridge principles, which connect facts about logical consequence and laws of belief revision. Such principles could articulate logic's relationship to reasoning. However, no satisfactory bridge principle has been produced. In this talk I will argue that this is no fault of logic, rather it is a consequence of the epistemological value theory being presupposed by the bridge principles. As alternative, I will go on to outline a virtue epistemologist account of the normativity of logic.