The Logic of Inconsistency

Fülszöveg

It is often said that consistency is an absolute requirement of rationality—that violations of the 'law of noncontradiction' destroy any possibility of rational thought and discourse. The book argues the untenability of such a view. It explores the idea that rationality can be maintained even in the context of inconsistent world-pictures.
The model used is that of possible but notstandard worlds—worlds which are inconsistent or descriptively incomplete. It is shown how such worlds can be construed as products of ordinary possible worlds in such a way that the rules for cogent argumentation concerning inconsistent situations can be derived and verified semantically. The resulting account of the differences between rationally manageable inconsistencies and those which make rational argument impossible is applied to clarify various philosophical issues, including that of the ontologlcal status of standard and nonstandard possible worlds.
The treatment, though technical, is... Tovább

Fülszöveg

It is often said that consistency is an absolute requirement of rationality—that violations of the 'law of noncontradiction' destroy any possibility of rational thought and discourse. The book argues the untenability of such a view. It explores the idea that rationality can be maintained even in the context of inconsistent world-pictures.
The model used is that of possible but notstandard worlds—worlds which are inconsistent or descriptively incomplete. It is shown how such worlds can be construed as products of ordinary possible worlds in such a way that the rules for cogent argumentation concerning inconsistent situations can be derived and verified semantically. The resulting account of the differences between rationally manageable inconsistencies and those which make rational argument impossible is applied to clarify various philosophical issues, including that of the ontologlcal status of standard and nonstandard possible worlds.
The treatment, though technical, is Informal, but the reader interested in the formal details will find them offered in appendices.
Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Besides editing the American Philosophical Quarterly he is the author of Conceptual Idealism, The Primacy of Practice, Methodological Pragmatism, A Theory of Possibility, Scientific Progress and Cognitive Systematization
Robert Brandom is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Universi^ of Pittsburgh, and has published articles in the American Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Journal of Philosophy and the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. Vissza