Evident yet opaque: a defense of the evaluative normativity of logic
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The research in this dissertation concerns the philosophy of logic. More specifically, it concerns the normative status of deductive logic. Many philosophers and logicians have thought that logic tells us how we ought to reason. Let us call the claim that logic is normative for reasoning the Basic Normativity Thesis (BNT). This thesis has enjoyed widespread acceptance until relatively recently with the work of Gilbert Harman (1984, 1986, 2009), Gillian Russell (2017) and others, who show that this thesis is not as obvious as it would appear. My central dissertation thesis is that (NTE*) logic is evaluatively normative for deductive reasoning, where this means that logic evaluates deductive reasoning for correctness. I argue for this thesis by using a methodology that has been adopted by other leading researchers in the area. This methodology tests bridge principles against a set of adequacy conditions. A logical norm, or, equivalently, a bridge principle, connects logical validities or logical invalidities with norms regarding belief, disbelief, or degrees of belief. In general, if a bridge principle is adequate, then it will show how logic is normative for deductive reasoning. Thus, in defending my dissertation thesis, I defend my own set of bridge principles. In sum, in this dissertation, it will be argued that logic is evaluatively normative for deductive reasoning.
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Ph. D.