Inference and Logic


Course Description

This course centers around two key questions: What is an inference? And, what is logic? Working through a draft manuscript on these topics, we'll explore a view which claims that answers to these questions are intimately related. In particular, it argues that logical puzzles provide invaluable illumination of the character of deductive inference, and that logic is fundamentally a certain constrained study of good deductive inference. Subtopics will (hopefully) include: the normativity of logic, the nature of good reasoning and the role of logic in regulating it, the constraints that logical impossibility may impose on the bounds of cognition, the role of a 'taking' or awareness condition in inference, the threat of Carrollian regress, and the grounds for and against taking Tarskian model theoretic machinery to model logical truth and consequence.


Syllabus

Handouts

Readings