Chapter 9 - The problem of universals and the subject matter of logic

Summary

The semantic notions of truth and logical validity in predicate logic, being dependent on what the correlates of our universal terms are, demand at least a certain semantic clarification of the issue of universals. Apparently, the primary issue concerning universals is ontological. It should be clear that these objective concepts are non-conventionally objective. It should also be clear that the laws of logic in the framework are supposed to be fundamentally different from the laws of psychology. For while the former are the laws of the logical relations among objective concepts, the latter are the laws of the causal relations among formal concepts. Thus, whereas logic can be normative, prescribing the laws of valid inference, cognitive psychology can only be descriptive, describing and perhaps explaining the psychological mechanisms that can make us prone to certain types of logical errors.