In counter to the above, here is a non-traditional view of Logic:Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 3:37 pm Yep. To make sense, a description of any kind of antirealism has to be realist, just as, to make sense, a description of any kind of non-classical logic has to be classical.
"The claim is that there are different conceptions of logical consequence in classical and non-classical logic, which although not compatible can still capture correct accounts of the idea of logical consequence.
Therefore, it does not make sense to think that there is a uniquely correct conception of validity and logical consequence."
Discuss??https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rela ... #RelAboLog
Relativism about Logic
Debates about the scope and authority of logic are also focal to discussions of rationality.
The argument for Relativism about logic is usually traced to the French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939) who claimed that tribal or “primitive” cultures did not subscribe to universal laws of logic such as the principles of non-contradiction and identity and were in a pre-logical stage of thinking (Lévy-Bruhl 1922/1923).
In a posthumous publication, Lévy-Bruhl renounced his earlier views, finding them “simplistic and rather crude” (Lévy-Bruhl 1949/1975: 48) but he remains the standard bearer for Relativism about logic.
Peter Winch’s interpretation of the Azande material became the impetus for a new wave of arguments for Relativism about logic.
Barry Barnes and David Bloor, for instance, have argued that different societies may have incompatible but internally coherent systems of logic because validity and rules of inference are defined by, and hence are relative to, the practices of a given community, rather than a priori universal restrictions on all thought.
According to Bloor,
The Azande have the same psychology as us but radically different institutions.
If we relate logic to the psychology of reasoning we shall be inclined to say that they have the same logic;
if we relate logic more closely to the institutional framework of thought then we shall incline to the view that the two cultures have different logics. (Bloor 1976: 129–130).
Even the status of “contradictions” is at times seen as culturally relative and the Azande’s application of witchcraft in determining guilt is cited as an example.
The Azande, according to Evans-Prichard, believe that it is possible to identify a witch by examining the contents of his intestine (through the use of a poison oracle).
They also believe that Witchhood is inherited patrilineally.
Since the Azande clan members are related to each other through the male line, it follows that if one person is shown to be a witch, then all the members of his clan must also be witches.
Evans-Pritchard tells us that although the Azande see the sense of this argument they do not accept the conclusion; they seem to side-step the contradiction in their belief-system.
Relativistically inclined commentators have argued that the Azande both do and do not contradict themselves depending on, or relative to, the culture that is being taken as the vantage point (Bloor 1976: 124 and Jennings 1989: 281).
See Seidel (2014) for a sustained critique.
More recently, Peng and Nisbett, using experimental data, have argued that Chinese and American students have different attitudes towards the Law of Non-Contradiction.
The Chinese, they claim, are more willing to accept that conflicting views may be compatible and therefore are less disposed to recognize or condemn contradictions (Peng & Nisbett 1999).
In his The Geography of Thought (2003), Nisbett has generalized his results to claim that Asian and European structures of thinking, including perception and conceptualization, differ significantly.
Nisbitt’s data, as well as the claims by Barnes and Bloor, are contributions to a long-standing debate about the status of logic.
Their approach attempts to naturalize logic by tying it to actual practices of the human subjects.
The relativistically inclined, however, argue that to think of logic as singular, a priori, and universal speaks of a philosophical prejudice and does not sit well with a naturalistic and scientific attitude.
As to the claim by Quine and Davidson, that an allegedly illogical culture is in fact a misinterpreted or badly interpreted culture—that if the speakers of a language seem to accept sentence of the form “P and not-P”, this is conclusive evidence that “and” and “not” in their language do not mean what these words mean in English (Quine 1960)—the Relativists and their sympathisers point out that reasoning in deviant ways is quite common and is not an impediment to understanding or translating others (e.g., Stich 2012).
They further argue that such diversity is better explained by the Relativist’s claim that the correctness of the principles of reasoning is relative to their cultural background rather than by the absolutist approach that attributes wholesale error to alternative epistemic systems or to the members of other cultures.
A different line of support for Relativism about logic starts with pluralism about logic, the view that there can be a multitude of correct but not fully compatible conceptions of logic where differing accounts of logical consequence, logical connectives or even validity are on offer.
Relativism ensues if we also assume that there is no neutral framework for adjudicating between the differing accounts.
What counts as a correct account of logical consequence and validity or even the choice of logical vocabulary are relative to the system of logic that embed and justify these accounts and choices.
(See Steinberger 2019 for a useful survey.).
Stewart Shapiro (2014) is probably the most vocal defender of this approach.
His argument for Relativism about logic is similar to defences of Relativism in other areas where intractable differences in a particular domain and an inability to reconcile them are used as the motivators for Relativism.
Shapiro advocates what, following Crispin Wright, he calls “folk-Relativism” and its slogan that “There is no such thing as simply being Φ” (Shapiro, 2014: 7; Wright 2008a: 158) and applies it to validity and logical consequence.
The claim is that there are different conceptions of logical consequence in classical and non-classical logic, which although not compatible can still capture correct accounts of the idea of logical consequence.
Therefore, it does not make sense to think that there is a uniquely correct conception of validity and logical consequence.
Different conceptions can be legitimate in so far as each is (internally) consistent and also non-trivial in the sense that it is the basis a workable mathematical systems, i.e., the means of making sense of “the practice of pursuing and applying mathematics” (Shapiro 2014: 81).
Intuitionism and fuzzy logic are notable examples.
Choices between different logical vocabularies also can lead to a relativized conception of logic in so far a these vocabularies play a decisive role in generating different relations of logical consequence.
Views?