Vol. 42 No. 1 (2022)
Thematic section

On the Adoption Problem and Meta-Logical Monism

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  • Mauro Santelli,
  • Joaquín Santiago Toranzo Calderón,
  • Jonathan Erenfryd
Mauro Santelli
IIF -SADAF - CONICET / Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Joaquín Santiago Toranzo Calderón
IIF -SADAF - CONICET / Universidad de Buenos Aires / Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Argentina
Jonathan Erenfryd
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2022.407

Published 2022-05-01

Keywords

  • Seguimiento de reglas,
  • Filosofía de la Lógica,
  • Filosofía del Lenguaje,
  • Teorías del razonamiento
  • Rule-Following,
  • Philosophy of Logic,
  • Philosophy of Language,
  • Theories of Reasoning
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

According to the Adoption Problem (AP) certain basic logical principles cannot be adopted. Drawing on the AP, Suki Finn presents an argument against logical pluralism: Modus Ponens (MP) and Universal Instantiation (UI) both govern a general structure shared by every logical rule. As such, analogues of these two rules must be present in every meta-logic for any logical system L, effectively imposing a restriction to logical pluralism at the meta-level through their presence constituting a “meta-logical monism”. We find a tension in the dual role that the “unadoptable rules” must play in Finn’s “meta-logical monism” rendering it ineffective to restrict logical theories and systems. Consequently, we argue they cannot be both analogues of MP and UI and inferentially productive. We conclude with a series of suggestions regarding where a more satisfying and robust interpretation of the AP could lie.

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