Logic and Reasoning

Abstract

In the previous chapter we rejected the view that the laws of logic are a matter of the ‘ontological’ structure of either our world or of our thought; we concluded that the subject matter of logic is the most general rules sustaining our languages (together with the idealized versions of these rules which we develop as our logical calculi). This conclusion, together with the stress we put on the concept of inference, may suggest that we assent to the traditional construal of logic as the ‘science of reasoning’. And though there is a sense in which this is true, if put this way there is a danger of serious misconstruals, so the aim of this final chapter is to clear away this last possible misunderstanding of the inferentialist approach to logic.