Chapter 9 - Closing Remarks

Summary

This final chapter summarizes the main arguments given in the book. The central aim has been to defend logical monism–the view that there is only one correct answer to the question of whether or not a given argument is valid–against the challenges raised by the logical pluralist. The first task was to get clear on what, exactly, those challenges amount to. It turned out that pluralism, understood as the thesis that there is more than one correct logic, is not necessarily a controversial view. In some readings, it is obviously true. Crucially, logical monism, properly understood, needs no defense against those readings. But there are other versions of logical pluralism that do conflict with logical monism. Those are the readings I call revisionist. The account offered in this book allows for the obviously true readings of logical pluralism while resisting the revisionist approaches pursued by some pluralists. The basic tenets of this account are (i) that there is exactly one notion of extra-systematic logical consequence and (ii) that there is exactly one logical theory that provides the best account of this notion.