The Epistemology of Logic

This chapter shows that unrestricted inferentialism/conventionalism leads to a naturalistically satisfying account of our a priori knowledge of logical validity. The chapter first lays the groundwork by discussing the general question of what conditions arguments need to meet in order to lead to knowledge of their conclusions. Following Boghossian, the chapter then argues that inferentialism/conventionalism is particularly well posed to allow rule-circular arguments to lead to a priori knowledge of the validity of our basic rules. Restricted inferentialists were often forced to complicate and sometimes abandon their accounts of logical knowledge in the face of bad company. By contrast, unrestricted inferentialism has no problem at all with bad company. All told, conventionalism gives a naturalistic account of our a priori knowledge of logic.