Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the epistemic approach to paraconsistency. This approach is advanced as an alternative to dialetheism on what concerns interpreting paraconsistency and contradictions; instead of having to accept that there are true contradictions (as dialetheists argue), it is suggested that we may understand such situations as involving only conflicting evidence, which restricts contradictions to a notion of evidence weaker than truth. In this paper, we first distinguish two conflicting programs entangled in the proposal: (1) interpreting paraconsistency in general through the notion of evidence, and (2) modeling reasoning with evidence by using paraconsistent logic. The first part of the program, we argue, does not succeed, on the grounds that it does not lead to a uniform proposal to the understanding of paraconsistency, and fails to engage with dialetheism in a legitimate dispute about interpretation of paraconsistency. Also, when seen through the lights of the second kind of approach, a ‘logic as modeling’ approach, weaknesses of dealing with evidence through paraconsistency come to light, basically because evidence does not seem to suggest the need of a paraconsistent treatment. As a result, one can neither approach paraconsistency in general through evidence, nor approach evidence with the use of paraconsistent logics.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arenhart, J. R. B. (2015). Liberating paraconsistency from contradiction. Logica Universalis, 9, 523–544.
Barrio, E., & da Re, B. (2018). Paraconsistency and its philosophical interpretations. Australasian Journal of Logic, 15(2), 151–170.
Barrio, E., Pailos, F., & Szmuc, D. (2018). What is a paraconsistent logic? In W. Carnielli & J. Malinowski (Eds.), Contradictions, from consistency to inconsistency (pp. 89–108). Switzerland: Springer.
Beall, J. C., & Ripley, D. (2004). Analetheism and dialetheism. Analysis, 64(281), 30–35.
Carnielli, W., & Coniglio, M. (2016). Paraconsistent logic: Consistency, contradiction, and negation. Switzerland: Springer.
Carnielli, W., Coniglio, M., & Rodrigues, A. (2018). On formal aspects of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency. In M. Freund, M. Fernández, & M. Ruffino (Eds.), Logic and philosophy of logic. Recent trends in Latin America and Spain (pp. 49–74). London: College.
Carnielli, W., & Rodrigues, A. (2015). On the philosophy and mathematics of the logics of formal inconsistency. In J.-Y. Béziau, M. Chakraborty, & S. Dutta (Eds.), New directions in paraconsistent logic (pp. 57–88). New Delhi: Springer.
Carnielli, W., & Rodrigues, A. (2019a). An epistemic approach to paraconsistency: A logic of evidence and truth. Synthese, 196, 3789–3813.
Carnielli, W., & Rodrigues, A. (2019b). On epistemic and ontological interpretations of intuitionistic and paraconsistent. Forthcoming in Logic Journal of the IGPL.
da Costa, N. C. A., Krause, D., & Bueno, O. (2007). Paraconsistent logic and paraconsistency. In D. Jacquette, D. M. Gabbay, P. Thagard, & J. Woods (Eds.), Handbook of the philosophy of science. Volume 5: Philosophy of logic (pp. 655–775). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Fitting, M. (2017). Paraconsistent logic, evidence, and justification. Studia Logica, 105(6), 1149–1166.
lo Guercio, N., & Szmuc, D. (2018). Remarks on the epistemic interpretation of paraconsistent logic. Principia, 22(1), 153–170.
Priest, G. (2006a). In contradiction: A study of the transconsistent (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford Un. Press.
Priest, G. (2006b). Doubt truth to be a liar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Priest, G., Berto, F., & Weber, Z. (2018). Dialetheism. In: Edward N. Zalta (ed.) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (Fall 2018 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/dialetheism/.
Rodrigues, A., Bueno-Soler, J., & Carnielli, W. (2020). Measuring evidence: A probabilistic approach to an extension of Belnap–Dunn logic. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02571-w.
Routley, R. (1980). Exploring Meinong’s jungle and beyond. An investigation of noneism and the theory of items. Canberra: Departmental Monograph, Philosophy Department, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Smith, P. (2011). Squeezing arguments. Analysis, 71, 22–30.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Arenhart, J.R.B. The evidence approach to paraconsistency versus the paraconsistent approach to evidence. Synthese 198, 11537–11559 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02813-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02813-x