LAUSR

Logic has traditionally been considered a normative discipline in that it is taken to guide us in deductive reasoning. There is currently an intense debate over how exactly logic’s normative role on reasoning should be conceived. There is likewise an intense debate over virtues and weaknesses of logical pluralism, namely the idea that there are rival and yet in some sense equally correct logics. This special issue aims at bringing these two debates together by discussing a number of questions that have not yet been extensively explored, such as: In what sense and to what extent is logic normative for reasoning? If, as the logical pluralist would have it, there is a plurality of equally correct notions of logical consequence, what norms govern deductive inference? How does that affect logical and mathematical practices? Is logical pluralism ultimately a stable position? These and other questions will be discussed and addressed by the twelve original essays featuring in this Special Issue. The first five essays – by Matti Eklund, Andrea Sereni and Maria Paola Sforza Fogliani, Erik Stei, Nathan Kellen, Filippo Ferrari and Sebastiano Moruzzi – offer critical assessments of logical pluralism in connection with normative and metatheoretical issues. The remaining essays – by Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen, Teresa Kissel-Kouri and Stewart Shapiro, Pilar Terrés Villalonga, Andy Yu, Paul Simard-Smith, Matteo Plebani, and Gillian Russell – offer positive contributions aimed at stabilising logical pluralism, especially in connection with normative challenges, and exploring new directions for logical pluralism. Matti Eklund’s ‘Making sense of logical pluralism’ kicks off the Issue by tackling the question of how best to understand the debate between logical monism and logical pluralism. Eklund reviews a number of suggestions and rejects them on the grounds that they render the debate trivial or otherwise philosophically uninteresting. He argues that a promising way of rendering the debate philosophically interesting is to find a canonical purpose for logic such that the monist is someone who holds that