How the laws of logic lie

Gillian Russell

doi:10.1017/epi.2024.4

How the laws of logic lie

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Abstract

Nancy Cartwright's 1983 book How the Laws of Physics Lie argued that theories of physics often make use of idealisations, and that as a result many of these theories were not true. The present paper looks at idealisation in logic and argues that, at least sometimes, the laws of logic fail to be true. That might be taken as a kind of skepticism, but I argue rather that idealisation is a legitimate tool in logic, just as in physics, and recognising this frees logicians up to use false laws where these are helpful.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	833-851
Number of pages	18
Journal	Episteme
Volume	20
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2024.4
Publication status	Published - 7 Mar 2024

Keywords

Logic
Anti-exceptionalism
Modeling
Science
Nancy Cartwright
Idealisation
Laws of logic
Natural language
Simulations

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10.1017/epi.2024.4

Published version - how the laws of logic lie
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Final published version, 194 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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How the laws of logic lie

Abstract

Keywords

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