The document discusses a paper titled "Logic is Metaphysics" that argues the choice of logic impacts metaphysical claims about what entities exist. Commenters discuss and debate the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Some key points made are that logic is a human construct for reasoning about the world rather than reflecting universal truths, and that the choice of logic constrains the rules of inference that can be used to make claims rather than directly determining what exists in reality.
The document discusses a paper titled "Logic is Metaphysics" that argues the choice of logic impacts metaphysical claims about what entities exist. Commenters discuss and debate the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Some key points made are that logic is a human construct for reasoning about the world rather than reflecting universal truths, and that the choice of logic constrains the rules of inference that can be used to make claims rather than directly determining what exists in reality.
The document discusses a paper titled "Logic is Metaphysics" that argues the choice of logic impacts metaphysical claims about what entities exist. Commenters discuss and debate the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Some key points made are that logic is a human construct for reasoning about the world rather than reflecting universal truths, and that the choice of logic constrains the rules of inference that can be used to make claims rather than directly determining what exists in reality.
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Logic is Metaphysics (2011) [pdf] (philpapers.org)
75 points by lainon 11 hours ago | hide | past | web | favorite | 33 comments
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jc763 10 hours ago [-]
>Does the number seven exist? Does the red color exist? What evidence do we have to answer these questions? What are the truth conditions for ∃x P(x) when P(x) stands for a number or a property? To respond to these questions is to set an ontology, and setting an ontology is to do metaphysics. This is exactly what Quine does when he states some reasons to include numbers and to exclude properties from the domain of our variables. Good paper. reply
westoncb 7 hours ago [-]
Seems like from that it's just framework construction. It may have the same internal structure as an ontology, but to say the statements have any external correspondence (to the metaphysical; I'm using 'external' loosely) would require an extra step. I can set an ontology where `thingamajiggers` are the only entity (so I guess the only truth condition for '∃x P(x)' is that P(x) is a thingamajigger), and I guess if you want to you can say I'm doing metaphysics at that point, though it does seem a little pointless to do so. reply
danbruc 8 hours ago [-]
I am not sure whether I really understand what the author argues for, probably because I read the paper in a rush. Does he argue that [the choice of] a logic is in some sense equivalent to [a choice of] what kind of entities exist? If that is indeed the case, I would tend to disagree. While we often think of logic as a provider of undisputable truth, I am not sure that this is justified. There is more than one type of logic and they lead to different conclusions or contradict each other in the general case. Therefore it seems to me that the obvious thing to say is that logic is a human construct we use to reason about the world, it does not reflect universal truths but was invented and constructed in a way to be useful to deal with our world. In consequence it is obviously very likely that logic and metaphysics are strongly correlated, but that would hardly be any deep insight but just a consequence of the way we constructed or choose the logic we use. If the logic I use to deal with the world makes a prediction about the world, for example the existence of a certain entity, then that entity might actually exist if may logic is a good match for the world, but I see no reason why the entity would have to exists, my logic could just be a bad choice. reply jjaredsimpson 7 hours ago [-] What I took away: If you want to say 'Santa Claus doesn't exist', you can't write a formula ~E x. x=Santa Claus. Because then you are conceding in your logic that some object Santa Claus exists. So there is some connection between the structure of sentences we can construct in our logic and metaphysical claims. We should then try to understand differences in metaphysical claims by finding differences in logics. The author then tries to show this for the metaphysical claim, 'Statements are true or false independent of whether they can be verified.' Instead of arguing about what is truth, what does it mean for a proposition to be verified. We can instead as about the differences in the logic. Because to even talk about truth and existence we need a logic first. So don't think there is a claim that choice of logic forces claims about real world existence. I think is the more subtle connection, that choice of logic forces a choice about rules of inference. Real world claims would need to be based on introducing propositions (which are independent of the logic?) and then using rules of inference (which are dependent on the logic). reply
danbruc 6 hours ago [-]
I think we mostly understand the paper the same way. Still this seems utterly unremarkable to me, but maybe I am still just missing the important point. If you want to come up with a language to talk about the world, a logical system in this case, you make choices. You decide if you want to be first order or higher order, whether you want temporal facts, what you allow your variables to range over, which inference rules to use, and what predicates you allow. Or whatever else. If you only want to talk about physical things, you may be able to get away with existential qualification. If you also want to deal with concepts like Santa Claus you probably have to be more sophisticated because now »exists« is an overloaded term in your domain and throwing the same existential qualifiers in front of everything won't yield results that can be meaningfully translated to statements about the world. In the end you have the world, you have a model of the world in your logic, and you have some kind of mapping between the world and your model, most likely even on a meta level. Not only do objects in your logic have to be related to objects in the world, but the very structure of your logic, its inference rules, the allowed constructs, and so on, have to map to some of the structure of how the world works. So as I said, it should come at no surprise that differences in logic have to be equated with differences in the world you are modelling, but the real significance of that, if any, is still beyond me. reply
empath75 6 hours ago [-]
It seems to me that it’s possible to use logic while having no belief at all as to whether that logic has any connection to reality — it could simply be an exercise in symbol manipulation with no meaning at all, which is the formalist position. A formalist would have no problem using a logical system that implies a particular belief about existence while not holding that belief at all. reply
danbruc 6 hours ago [-]
Sure, but if you are only doing string manipulation with your logic, then you are doing mathematics and not philosophy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that but it also says nothing about the relation between logic and metaphysics. reply
Twisol 6 hours ago [-]
So this is a bit of a tangent, but your Santa Claus example really clarified something I've been reading about recently. I'm reading Lloyd's "Foundations of Logic Programming", which essentially explains the fundamentals behind logic languages like Prolog. We write programs using uninterpreted functions[0] to represent our data, and define predicates to drive the program. The idea of using the Herbrand universe is that it gives a convenient universal starting point: if the program has a model in some universe, it will have a model in the Herbrand universe, and if the program does not have a model, it cannot have a model in the Herbrand universe. Your Santa Claus example helped me understand why the Herbrand universe is only useful if you restrict yourself to clauses (disjunctions under universal quantification). The Herbrand universe consists of all objects one has named (and objects one can form with function symbols, but we have none of those here), so it must necessarily falsify "~E x. x = Santa Claus". It's easy to find a model where this statement is true (take the empty universe, or the universe which contains only the Tooth Fairy), but there is no model of this statement in the Herbrand universe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterpreted_function reply
ethn 7 hours ago [-]
The platonic "Santa Claus" does exist, so it's completely valid. The statement "Santa Claus doesn't exist" is stating there is no judgement from experience which adheres to the concept of Santa Claus. reply
danbruc 6 hours ago [-]
The platonic "Santa Claus" does exist, so it's completely valid. Most if not all people would would certainly agree that the idea or concept of »Santa Claus« exists in some way. But when you qualify it with »Platonic« you are implying - intentionally or not - a quite specific view about the nature of abstract objects and that will decrease the number of people agreeing with this statement substantially. reply
omon 6 hours ago [-]
Not really it's a common noun, which just means non-physical objects which exist in some way, even if Nominalist. You're confusing platonic with Platonic realism which are different things. But perhaps he should edit it to be more clear if the mistake is quite common, albeit perhaps meaning espoused by capitalization has been forgotten. reply
danbruc 6 hours ago [-]
In German we do not have that distinction between the different capitalizations, at least not that I am aware of, and the usage of platonic is probably essentially limited to platonic love and relationships. Something learned about the subtleties of the English language. reply
mcbits 5 hours ago [-]
We don't have that distinction in English, either. Words derived from names just tend to lose their capitalization over time and may gradually be diluted in meaning as people use them without understanding their origin. reply
ethn 1 hour ago [-]
Bold, passive, and mistaken accusation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun But I do see how it could be confused with platonic love, albeit I'm comfortable using it without clarification in the appropriate contexts. You're right, in German all nouns are capitalized. reply
danharaj 7 hours ago [-]
A philosophical discussion of logic in this decade should at least be aware of the Curry- Howard isomorphism and Linear Logic. This paper makes a passing mention of this by treating the law of excluded middle. I would say that denying that law has led to the most fruitful developments of logic in the last century. Philosophy without technical input is sophistry, technical developments without philosophy end up answering questions of no interest. Girard is an entertaining source of both philosophical and technical insight: On the meaning of logical rules I : syntax vs. semantics http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/meaning1.pdf Per-Martin Lof's ideas are also important: ON THE MEANINGS OF THE LOGICAL CONSTANTS AND THE JUSTIFICATIONS OF THE LOGICAL LAWS https://uberty.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/Martin-Lof83.p... This only scratches the surface. reply
omon 6 hours ago [-]
Wholly irrelevant, the paper is specifically concerned with recovering a dialectic between W. O. Quine and M. Dummett. Even if the question was the more general, "Is Logic Metaphysics?", knowledge of formal logics isn't even of concern. It's trivial that we can construct a plethora of axioms with their own definitions, the problem remains: to even adhere to those definitions one is exercising another intuitive logic— even in the case of computation which is an engineered construction to proxy this very intuition, otherwise we would have never been concerned with the linear properties necessary for computation to begin with. reply
TheOtherHobbes 3 hours ago [-]
"Intuitive" being another word for "subjective." The experience of truth and logical consistency is entirely subjective. We can build networks of concepts that trigger the experience in ourselves and in others, but that doesn't make them objectively true - it makes them subjectively persistent and shared. We acquired a cat recently, and it's interesting that her experience of basic spatial relationships is very different to ours. She doesn't have the same experience of physics that we do. She sometimes gets confused by inside vs outside, and her experience of moving objects seems to be different to ours. She also gives the impression of experiencing hands and feet as disconnected objects, and not part of a gestalt "human". We have no guarantees that from an alien point of view, our own experience of physics and of relationships doesn't have equivalent limitations. If the limitations exist, we're not aware of them. But to the extent that our cat's view of the world is probably recognisable by other cats, she's not aware of her limitations either. It's more of a stretch, but not impossible, that our experience of logical abstraction and consistency may also have limitations. There may be non- human viewpoints where the basic subjective qualia of truth and consistency are more coherent, reliable, and inclusive than our own. None of this can be proved, but it seems optimistic to me to believe that our version of logic is as good as logic can possibly be. reply
omon 49 minutes ago [-]
Yet we're able to discuss topics with each other, this is the basis of Poincare's Inter-subjective reality. There must be some commonalities of experience which allows us to map our whole experiences between each other. We are definitively limited to our experience, it is impossible to discuss or probe anything outside of it when the entire world and its phenomena is only dictated through experience to us. Experience is a language which makes meaning from the not-experience. As Bohr put it, "We're all suspended in language." reply
danharaj 3 hours ago [-]
What I'm saying is that linear logic is exactly a technical exploration directly pertinent to the questions Quine and Dummett considered. And who cares if the paper is specifically about Quine and Dummett? What's the point of resuscitating such a dialogue without informing it of modern developments? To do so seems like frolicking in the graveyard. But much like philosophy of mathematics (with some exceptions like [0]), philosophy of logic to me at least seems like it prefers dusty bones to fresh developments (if 40 years is fresh...). At the very least, modern logic and its myriad connections to other fields could shed light on whether it's even worth bothering to adjudicate the interplay of Quine and Dummet's metaphysical arguments. They might be completely irrelevant at this point in our understanding except as historical footnotes. Linear logic is in many ways a logic of logic. Both classical and intuitionistic logic can be decomposed into finer components in linear logic, which distills logical ideas into purer components of philosophical interest, like the exponentials. The links between linear logic and processes like computation makes it a much more interesting starting point for a discussion of metaphysics and logic: Its technical results tell us that not every bespoke Broccoli logic makes sense, that one can directly study the conditions of possibility of logic. It even has connections to fundamental physics [1]. > It's trivial that we can construct a plethora of axioms with their own definitions, the problem remains: to even adhere to those definitions one is exercising another intuitive logic—even in the case of computation which is an engineered construction to proxy this very intuition, otherwise we would have never been concerned with the linear properties necessary for computation to begin with. How are we to investigate this intuitive logic without probing the technical structure of logic and finding out what is really its essence? It's not, emphatically not trivial that one can cook up a bunch of axioms. Logic doesn't come from axioms, I think we agree about that, they are just an exigent way to surface it. There are most definitely inappropriate formulations of logic. For example, S4 is an OK modal logic of necessity and possibility but S5 is hardly a logic at all because it doesn't have cut elimination, the technical correlate of deduction. I think this attitude just serves to marginalize philosophy of logic. Technique and philosophy must be in dialogue or both will be marginalized. [0] https://www.urbanomic.com/book/synthetic-philosophy-of-conte... [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.0340 reply
omon 53 minutes ago [-]
The author cares about that, it's his abstract. In the same way a scientist would care about the precision and conclusions of results obtained from an older study--you are forced to use the original researchers had. Of course you can verify it with new tools, but what's the point if the research is systemically flawed to begin with? The childhood quote hammered into our ears continues to ring true: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."- Newton I agree that newer technical formal languages describing our own methods of sound predicate are useful, but that's excessive and even pretentious in this case. Would you use quantum computation to verify the result of addition on a classical computer? It adds nothing, especially when it is quantum computation that is being construed to emulate classical computation! >How are we to investigate this intuitive logic without probing the technical structure of logic and finding out what is really its essence? Its essence cannot be discovered, there are "exigent way[s] to surface it", but like experience, it's atomic. In the end the models will just become more comprehensive in terms of formalizing experience. Yet the experience of logic is the essence; how are you able to describe what makes up experience in terms of experience? If this is the purpose of these "tools" (it's not) then they ought not to be limited by objects of human experience, as the noumenon (the negation of experience) is not even guaranteed to be symbolic to objects of perception—by definition they are not. I would be flummoxed to find fundamental physics constructed, described, and extended from axioms through logic had no connection with logic. Philosophy of logic continues to discuss other logics, it is only that this particular article that it's of no concern to. reply
empath75 6 hours ago [-]
> Philosophy without technical input is sophistry, technical developments without philosophy end up answering questions of no interest. This is such a great formulation. reply
danharaj 6 hours ago [-]
I should say, definitely not mine. I don't know where I got it, or where they got it. reply qntty 8 hours ago [-] Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into logic, physics and ethics. Metaphysics was categorized as logic. reply
woodandsteel 5 hours ago [-]
Logic, to be of any use in the real world, must in some important ways match the reality of the world. So any system of logic assumes a metaphysics. And going the other way, reality must be such as to be able to have creatures who can think logically. This is one instance of a larger principle, namely the inherent mutual interconnectedness of the various areas of philosophy. So for instance, epistemology depends on reality being such that it can be known, and we can know about that reality only the sorts of things that a valid epistemology can determine. Similar mutual relations exist between every two main areas of philosophy. This mutual interconnectedness is a key reason for Neurath's insight that in philosophy you can't tear it all down and change it radically, but only modify it. reply
carapace 7 hours ago [-]
The first step in any logic is to make a distinction. This act is within the mind. The world itself is unknown except as sensory experience. Leaving aside the so-called "Hard Problem of Consciousness" for the sake of discussion, the fact that distinction happens in our heads means that all of our logic is contingent (as opposed to inherent) if our thinking is wholly internal to our brains. However... none other than Kurt Gödel believed that thinking about e.g. infinities involved a kind of perception of a "higher" world. "Science does not remove the Terror of the Gods." reply
dmfdmf 9 hours ago [-]
Logic is based on the principle of non-contradiction (identified by Aristotle). The principle, in all its various forms, is used to guide valid thinking (i.e. truth) because contradictions cannot exist which is its tie to metaphysics. reply
pmoriarty 9 hours ago [-]
"Logic is based on the principle of non-contradiction" That's merely one type of logic. There are others which can deal with contradictions. See the Wikipedia entries on Paraconsistent logic[1] and Dialetheism[2]. Logicians enjoy coming up with new logics that have any desired or interesting properties. They are not limited to staying within the bounds of classical logic. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism reply
hiker 9 hours ago [-]
The key to understanding logic constructively goes through type theory, not philosophy. I'll just leave this here https://78.media.tumblr.com/bfc158b432199a3e4f5de2ddc1bd7381... reply
curuinor 9 hours ago [-]
The progenitor of types was Russell, who considered himself a philosopher. reply
mbid 6 hours ago [-]
So you think the key for understanding constructive logic is to understand some peculiar syntax for a fragment of it. Ridiculous, but sadly quite typical among type theory cultists. reply
Sangermaine 8 hours ago [-]
>goes through type theory, not philosophy. You’re going to be very surprised when you look up the origins of type theory. reply
arto 9 hours ago [-]
Source, pretty please? reply
shawn 9 hours ago [-]
https://books.google.com/books?id=LkDUKMv3yp0C&pg=PA11&lpg=P... Homotopy Type Theory: Univalent Foundations of Mathematics reply
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