Sabina Dominguez Parrado

Logical contextualism is the view that ‘valid’ is a context-sensitive expression. An often-invoked motivation for this view is that, unlike traditional forms of logical pluralism, it appears to avoid the so-called collapse problem. In this paper, I argue for a twofold conclusion. First, I argue that the key tenets of logical contextualism require further development before the view can be fully assessed. Second, I argue that, even if we set this issue aside, logical contextualism rests on an untenable assumption: that each context determines a unique logical consequence relation. I then show that, once this assumption is rejected, logical contextualism’s solution to the collapse problem is unsatisfactory. My overarching conclusion will be that logical contextualism is a less promising view than thus far appreciated.

According to a prominent argument, logical pluralism arises due to the ambiguity – or other semantic features – of natural language expressions such as 'valid' or 'follows from'. In this paper, I show that this argument is unsuccessful. First, I argue that there is no compelling linguistic evidence for the claim that 'valid' and its cognates are ambiguous. As a result, logical pluralism cannot arise from the ambiguity of these expressions. Second, I point out that semantic considerations are generally ill-suited to yield an interesting version of pluralism. The upshot is that logical pluralists cannot appeal to the semantics of 'valid' and its cognates to argue for their view.

The papers contained in this collection were presented at the 24th Amsterdam Colloquium, organised by the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam, December 18–20, 2024. The Amsterdam Colloquia aim at bringing together linguists, philosophers, logicians, cognitive scientists, and computer scientists who share an interest in the formal study of the semantics and pragmatics of natural and formal languages. Besides the general programme, the 2024 edition featured two workshops. First, “Dynamic and Inquisitive: Themes from the Work of Jeroen Groenendijk”, dedicated to the memory of Jeroen Groenendijk. Second, “Identifying and Explaining Universals of Semantics”. The 2024 edition also included the Beth Lecture, jointly organised with the E.W. Beth Foundation. The programme included 7 invited talks, 34 contributed talks, and three poster sessions with 24 contributed posters.