Abstract
What would a satisfying neo-Kantian and neo-Quinean account of logic be like? How should we account for its role as an instrument for acquiring knowledge, and as an instrument for the criticism of theories? How should we account for its special status in the epistemic scheme of things? I intend below to re-apply the distinctions between analytic and synthetic and betweena prioriand aposteriori (paceQuine) to answer these questions in what I hope is a novel and interesting way. My answers will put me at odds with both Kantians and Quineans; for I do not think that avoiding disagreements with either camp puts one wholly in the other.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Which I wish here to characterize non-committally, as either theses or rules of inference.
Namely, the connectives, the quantifiers and the identity predicate.
See myAnti-Realism and Logic Volume 1: Truth as Eternal Clarendon Press, Oxford, ch. 25, for a purely logical derivation of the Peano-Dedekind rules for zero, successor and natural number.
In an as yet unpublished work entitled ‘Natural Foundations for Projective Geometry’, I show how the incidence operators for three-dimensional projective geometry can be furnished with introduction and elimination rules that fix their meanings.
InNatural LogicEdinburgh University Press, 1978, ch. 7, I show how virtual set theory can be characterized by introduction and elimination rules for the set abstraction operator within a free logic.
But space prevents me from doing so here.
As quoted in Ray Monk,Ludwig Wittgenstein:The Duty of GeniusVintage, London, 1990.
For a fuller account of the relationship between Carnap and Quine, see my Carnap and Quine’, forthcoming in W. Salmon (ed.)Logic Language and the Structure of Scientific TheoriesAmerican Universities Press.
Anti-Realism and Logic op. cit.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tennant, N. (1994). Logic and its Place in Nature. In: Parrini, P. (eds) Kant and Contemporary Epistemology. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0834-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0834-8_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-4359-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-0834-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive