More Reflections on Consequence

Abstract

This special issue collects together nine new essays on logical consequence: the relation obtaining between the premises and the conclusion of a logically valid argument. The present paper is a partial, and opinionated, introduction to the contemporary debate on the topic. We focus on two influential accounts of consequence, the model-theoretic and the proof-theoretic, and on the seeming platitude that valid arguments necessarily preserve truth. We briefly discuss the main objections these accounts face, as well as Hartry Field’s contention that such objections show consequence to be a primitive, indefinable notion, and that we must reject the claim that valid arguments necessarily preserve truth. We suggest that the accounts in question have the resources to meet the objections standardly thought to herald their demise and make two main claims: (i) that consequence, as opposed to logical consequence, is the epistemologically significant relation philosophers should be mainly interested in; and (ii) that consequence is a paradoxical notion if truth is.