Abstract

Metaphysical and epistemological commitments seem to determine the course of research in the field of logic as well as its theoretical interpretation. What we take the objects of logical investigation to be determines our views on how they are to be known, and our view of the possible types of knowledge in turn places restrictions on what kinds of things those objects could be. Perhaps it is true that logical studies can be pursued to great lengths without indulging in general declarations about the nature of reality or of human knowledge. But to say this is very far from admitting the possibility of “logic without ontology.” The thoughtful beginning student in logic quickly wants to know what it is he or she is really studying and what, precisely, it has to do with the real worlds. The slightest philosophical stimulation will lead him or her, further, to ask about the evidence supporting the various sorts of claims made as the course progresses, and about the methodology of logic from a scientific point of view. Rarely is any answer given to such questions, much less a reasonable and well elaborated one. Questions of this type are usually discouraged and avoided by text books and instructors, and there may even be some suggestion that to ask them evidences confusion and stupidity. But when they are pressed it turns out that logic as a field of knowledge and inquiry remains in chaos at its philosophical foundations. I mean by this that the leading investigators cannot agree—indeed, they disagree in dimensions categorial—concerning what the subject of logical knowledge is, and concerning the modes of logical knowledge.