CEFISES Seminar: Bogdan Dicher, “Non-foundationalist framework for metainferentialism”

Note that this seminar starts unusually at 15h instead of 14h!

Series: Explanatory Inference

Abstract: In recent work I have defended the view that logics are best understood metainferentially, as Tarskian consequence relations over sequents. The rationale for rejecting the more familiar inferential determination of consequence include (1) the underdetermination of consequence: inferences alone appear not to suffice for determining the identity of a logic, and (2) the fragmentation of consequence: the standard ways of associating consequence relations to logical calculi does not yield an unified concept of consequence, but rather a variety of notions of consequence, all differing with respect to their structural properties. These flaws are avoided on the metainferential view. Nonetheless, there is a cost to be paid: a rather indirect way of connecting logic with its traditional application, that of prescribing the objective conditions for correct inferences. In this talk I will examine the extent to which this is a problem and argue that it is only against the background of an untenable foundationalist view of logic, that takes it to be qualitatively contiguous with the phenomena it provides a theory of. Subsequently, I will explore the prospects of two non-foundationalist alternatives—the logic-as-modelling view put forward by Cook and Shapiro and the constructionist perspective advocated by Allo and Floridi—for providing a broad non-foundationalist philosophical frame for metainferentialism.