Book Reviews 391

Logical Pluralism, by JC Beall and Greg Restall. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 143. P/b 16.99.

This short book makes a succinct and provocative case for logical pluralism,
the thesis that there is more than one genuine logical consequence relation.
The authors helpfully summarise the position with the following claims
(p. 35):

(2) An instance of GTT is obtained by a specication of the casesx in GTT

and a specication of the relation is true in a case. Such a specication
can be seen as a way of spelling out truth conditions.
(3) An instance of GTT is admissible if it satises the settled role of consequence and if its judgements about consequence satisfy the three conditions in (4). A logic is given by an admissible instance of GTT.
Logical pluralism (which the authors endorse) is the claim that there
are at least two dierent admissible instances of GTT. Logical monism
(which the authors reject) is the claim that there is exactly one.
(4) The three further conditions on the consequence relations are necessity, normativity, and formality. Necessity is the condition that the truth
of the premisses necessitates the truth of the conclusion. Normativity
is the condition that if an argument is valid then one somehow goes
wrong accepting its premisses while rejecting its conclusion. Formality
is the condition that the validity of the argument depends on its form
rather than its content; this condition is explicated in four more specic ways (see below).
The basic idea, then, is that any relation determined by a specication of a
range of cases and what it is for statements to be true in them, and which
satises necessity, normativity and formality, satises all the conditions for
being a logical consequence relation. As Beall and Restall see it, more than one
candidate relation satises the conditions. Since there is no more to being an
acceptable logical consequence relation, pluralism follows.
The authors make the case for pluralism by focusing on four dierent
accounts of consequence which they claim satisfy the above conditions. The
rst is the standard Tarskian account according to which cases are Tarskian
models. This is the orthodox account of logical consequence, which most contemporary logicians and philosophers tend to see, monistically, as the single
true account. The second is the necessary truth-preservation account, according to which cases are possible worlds. The third is the relevance logic account,
according to which cases are situations, understood as in relevant logic. The
fourth is the constructive logic account, according to which cases are stages, as
in the standard semantics for intuitionistic logic. The relation is true in a case is
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(1) The settled core of the relation is a logical consequence of between conclusion and premisses is given by the Generalized Tarski Thesis (GTT):
An argument is validx if and only if, in every casex in which the premisses are true, so is the conclusion.

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the standard one for each of the four respective accounts. As is familiar, the
three non-standard accounts give rise to consequence relations extensionally
distinct from the classical one: for example, the necessary truth-preservation
account underwrites the validity of the classically invalid x is red; therefore x is
coloured; the relevance account deems the classically valid A and not A;
therefore B invalid if B is unrelated to A; and the intuitionistic account invalidates the classically valid not not A; therefore A.
The authors thesis is qualied in several ways, of which I will mention a
few. First, their pluralism is best understood as a thesis about the relation of
semantic (or model-theoretic) logical consequence rather than as the comparatively uncontroversial thesis that logical consequence can with equal acceptability be understood semantically or deductively (p. 36). Second, the authors
do not claim that the four mentioned instances are the only admissible ones.
In particular, free logic is mooted as another potentially admissible instance
(pp. 757), and second-order logic receives a stronger, though brief, recommendation (pp. 778). But not anything goes: for instance any logic (such as
the one advocated by Neil Tennant) that violates GTT by being either non-reexive or non-transitive is not an admissible logical consequence relation
(p. 91). Finally, the authors explain briey that their pluralism is not of the
Carnapian variety, since it arises within a single language rather than between
languages (pp. 79, 102). If we take a language to be a vocabulary together with
some grammatical rules, one implication of this view seems to be that taking
classical rst-order and second-order logic as admissible logical consequence
relations does not suce for pluralism, since these logics have dierent languages (the second permits quantication into predicate place, the rst does
not). The authors pluralism is thus considerably more radical than the familiar thesis that second-order logic spells out an acceptable notion of logical
consequence.
The last section of the book responds to a plethora of objections in quick
succession. The range of objections considered and the clarity and directness
with which they are addressed is most impressive. I found the major concerns
about pluralism which had been bubbling while reading the earlier sections all
set out in one form or another and then tackled, usually head-on. Some of
Beall and Restalls responses to the objections, however, do not seem to me to
get to the heart of the matter, of which more later.
Before that, a couple of interpretative worries. It is not clear why Beall and
Restall claim that the necessary truth-preservation account meets the formality criterion. This desideratum is spelled out in four ways: (i) logic is schematic; (ii) logic provides constitutive norms for thought as such; (iii) logic is
indierent to the particular identities of objects; (iv) logic abstracts entirely
from the semantic content of thought. The authors recognise (pp. 413) that
the necessary truth-preservation account fails conditions (i) and (iv), as the
earlier colour and redness example shows, and that it fails condition (iii) if, as
is prima facie plausible, there are necessary objects (the claim that any of these

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objects exists would on this account be a logical truth). They thus think that
the necessary truth-preservation account only meets condition (ii). But far
from concluding that this undermines the accounts satisfaction of an important criterion for being a logical consequence relation, they unexpectedly summarise the chapters main point by declaring that the account is on a par with
the orthodox Tarskian account: In this chapter, we have found pluralism: possible worlds [i.e. the necessary truth-preservation account] and Tarskian models
both yield admissible precisications of follows from (p. 48). It is never
clearly explained why satisfaction of just one of the four species of formality
suces for overall satisfaction of that constraint.
Equally curiously, Beall and Restall touch on the complaint that none of the
four logics mentioned above really deserves the title of logic because they are
existentially committed to the existence of at least one thing (pp. 757). Only a
free logic, so this objection runs, deserves the title of logic. Logic adores a vacuum. Their brief discussion of (varieties of) free logic in connection with this
point ends inconclusively, with the suggestion that the necessary truth-preservation account may perhaps come in two admissible versions: a free one and
an existentially committing one. As they put it, this would provide another
avenue for plurality (p. 77). But the main point, which is crying out to be
addressed, is whether or not lack of existential commitment should act as a
constraint on admissible instances of logical consequence. For if it should,
then none of the four contenders put forward as (equally) admissible instances
is in fact admissible. What has to be shown, therefore, is that ontological neutrality is not part of the settled core of logical consequence. Perhaps a pluralist
could reply that pluralism is not at all jeopardised, since one can always move
to the free versions of the four logics in question. Although this reply is of
course consistent with logical pluralism, it cannot possibly be Beall and
Restalls view, since a large part of their book is devoted to showing that the
standard, existentially committing versions of these four candidate logics all
give rise to an admissible logical consequence relation.
This leads me to deeper concerns about Beall and Restalls pluralism. As
explained, they do not take ontological neutrality to be part of the settled core
of logical consequence. Other standard desiderata, such as a priori knowability, are also excluded. The issue of axiomatizability, though mentioned, is
never properly treated. Similarly, they do not take it to be a constraint on the
proper account of logical consequence that it should give the best available
modelling of natural language arguments, or mathematical arguments an
important historical (and present) motivation behind the development of
modern logic. And general considerations of strength, simplicity, etc. do not
come into it at all. A major problem for Beall and Restalls case is thus that they
appear to have cut the settled core of logical consequence to the bone and
stripped it of its many crucial constituents.
The addition of further constraints genuinely threatens each of the four
accounts. As we have seen, ontological neutrality seems to rule out all four.

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The necessary truth-preservation account is ruled out by the a priori constraint (for example, on the mainstream view, which the authors agree with,
water is H2O is necessary but not a priori). The best-model-of-mathematicalreasoning constraint seems to rule out both the constructive and the necessary-truth preservation accounts, and also threatens the relevant account. The
best-model-of-natural-language-reasoning seems to threaten all the non-relevant accounts. And the criteria of simplicity and strength, which take into
account several of the previous criteria, have been thought by many (e.g.
Quine) to give the victory to classical logicperhaps not on a knockout, but
at least on points.
It is therefore disappointing not to nd a concerted discussion of why these
potential constraints are not part of the settled core. Beall and Restall are aware
of the problem, for they write: To cause problems for pluralism, one needs to
show that a given job (use in presentation of fundamental theory, or something akin to it) is an essential characteristic of consequence; that is, one needs
to show that a given application is required of any admissible instance of GTT.
As above (and throughout), we see no reason for imposing such a constraint
(p. 99). But what we need to hear from them is precisely why there is no good
reason. (Note also that Beall and Restall present a binary distinction: either
something is an essential characteristic or it is not. But one could take a more
nuanced view and think that the satisfaction of some constraints has greater
weighting than the satisfaction of others.) They insist throughout that applications to modelling natural language and mathematical arguments do not contribute to a particular candidates successful lling of the logical consequence
role; but as far as I can see, no convincing reason supports this claim. In an
important but all too brief couple of paragraphs (pp. 1034), the authors seems
to suggest that adding more constraints would overdetermine rather than
underdetermine the logical consequence relation: just as too few constraints
lead to logical pluralism, too few would lead to logical nihilism (my term), that
is, to no relation satisfying the constraints. But overdetermination may not be
such a worry after all, as long as one candidate relation ts the role better than
the others, albeit imperfectly. And once the set of constraints is expanded to
allow for possible conicts between them, logical pluralism becomes an
extremely precarious view: anything other than the exact equilibrium position
between the top two contendersany imbalance whatsoeveris enough for
monism.
A second major problem is that pluralism about logical consequence seems
to lead to a worrying pluralism about meaning. (It also seems to lead to a pluralism about truth, but I do not have space to address this here.) For suppose
you are a monist about the meaning of negation, that is, you think that negation has just one meaning. You presumably then think that there is a yes or no
answer to the question of whether the argument A; therefore A is valid.
But if you are a pluralist about logical consequence, you seem to be committed
to saying that A; therefore A is valid on the classical understanding of

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negation and invalid (or at least not valid solely in virtue of form) on the intuitionistic understanding of negation. Yet the meaning facts just do seem to x
the logical consequence facts: the meaning (meanings) of negation just does
(do) seem to determine the logical validity of A; therefore A. Thus it seems
that one cannot consistently combine meaning monism with pluralism about
logical consequence. Beall and Restalls position, however, is exactly this combination of views (see in particular pp. 978, 126, 128). (The authors note that
this objection has also been raised by Graham Priest.)
A thorough examination of the premiss that logical facts supervene on
semantic facts would take us into deep philosophical waters. Responding to
the objection more directly, Beall and Restall argue that classical and intuitionistic semantics can be seen as giving compatible accounts of negation. The
intuitionistic accountaccording to which A is true at a stage S i there is
no stage extending S at which A is trueyields the classical account when all
the stages are nal stages, that is, when no stage extends them or in other
words, when they are classical models (pp. 978). Thus the two accounts agree
on the meaning of negation. More generally, logical pluralism does not entail
meaning pluralism.
This reply strikes me as unsatisfactory. The extra range of cases in the intuitionistic semantics looks to be constitutive of the meaning of negation. One
cannot just say same meaning, dierent range of cases and happily conclude
that meaning monism is respected. The problem is that in this instance it
seems that a dierence in the range of cases just is a dierence in meaning.
Compare two accounts of the modal extension of the word wolley: the narrow one takes the set of wolley things to be all the physically possible yellow
things and the broad one the set of all metaphysically possible yellow things.
One cannot say that the broad and narrow accounts of wolley agree on the
words meaning and only give it a dierent (modal) range of instances (the one
extending the other). That dierence in range is precisely a dierence in meaning, since on the narrow account physically impossible but metaphysically possible yellow things are not wolley whereas on the broad one they are. In an
analogous (but of course not exactly parallel) way, the classical and intuitionistic semantics appear to give rise to dierent meanings of negation. At the very
least, then, Beall and Restall need to do more if they are to reassure us that different verdicts concerning the validity of A therefore A do not stem, as
they appear to, from dierences in the meaning of negation.
This book thus makes an interesting and forthright case for logical pluralism. But in the end I did not nd the case convincing, because its central
thesesthe sparseness of the settled core of logical consequence, the separation of logical pluralism from meaning (and truth) pluralismare in my view
problematic and not persuasively argued for. However persuasion is not everything, and Beall and Restall have produced a highly readable monograph
whose important topic, clarity, directness of argument and generally rst-rate
discussion commends it to philosophers attention.

396 Book Reviews

Wadham College
Oxford University
Oxford OX1 3PN
UK

alexander paseau

doi:10.1093/mind/fzm391

Minimal Semantics, by Emma Borg. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

Borgs engaging and accessible book, Minimal Semantics, explicates and
defends a position with regard to a lively debate taking place among contemporary analytic philosophers of language. On one side stands formalism,
which has its roots in the work of Frege, Russell, the early Wittgenstein, and
Carnap, and continues through into such approaches as the truth-conditional
theory of meaning of Davidson et al. (p. 15). The essence of the formalist position is a principle of compositionality according to which the meaning of an
uttered sentence is a proposition (or a set of truth-conditions), where the
encoded proposition is determined by formal features of the sentence, namely
(i) the contextually invariant linguistic meanings of the words it contains
(where words are individuated by formal properties like their orthographic or
phonetic features) and [(ii)] the way those words are put together (the syntactic or logical form of the sentence) (p. 19). On the other side stands dual pragmatics, which rejects the idea that truth-conditional or propositional content
can (usually) be recovered via formal methods alone (p. 6). Borg lists Sperber
and Wilsons relevance theory (Relevance: Communication and Cognition,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), Recanatis contextualism (Literal Meaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Kamp and Reyles discourse
representation theory (From Discourse to Logic, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993) as
having as their fundamental ethos the idea that pragmatic processes are
capable of acting twice: once prior to the delivery of a complete proposition
expressed (that is, prior to determining the truth-conditional content of the
sentence as uttered in a given context) and then once again to yield any implicatures of the utterance (i.e. any further, indirectly conveyed, propositions)
(p. 38). It is the prior, pre-truth-conditional, layer of pragmatic processes that
seemingly puts dual pragmatics at odds with formal semantics, for these primary pragmatic processes (to borrow Recanatis terminology) make contributions to the truth-conditions of an utterance that go beyond what is
determined by the formal features of the uttered sentence.
Borg presents two main arguments for preferring the formal account to the
dual pragmatic picture (p. 6): rst, she argues that formal semantic theories
cohere with a modularity account of our cognitive architecture (p. 6). Since
there are cogent independent reasons for endorsing such modularity, this
coherence provides evidence in support of the formal account. Second, Borg
argues that the phenomena alleged to require a dual pragmatic approach,
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2004. Pp. vii + 288. P/b 18.99.