Logical pluralism is the view that different logics are equally appropriate, or equally correct. Logical relativism is a pluralism according to which validity and logical consequence are relative to something. Stewart Shapiro explores various such views. He argues that the question of meaning shift is itself context-sensitive and interest-relative.

• Acknowledgements


• 1: Relativism, pluralism, tolerance


• 2: Varieties of pluralism and relativism for logic


• 3: Structure: an eclectic perspective


• 4: We mean what we say: but what do we mean?


• 5: Meaning and context


• 6: Theory and meta-theory; logic and meta-logic I: philosophical and foundational studies


• 7: Theory and meta-theory; logic and meta-logic II: meta-theoretic perspective


• Recap and conclusion


• References


• Index

Stewart Shapiro received an MA in mathematics in 1975, and a PhD in philosophy in 1978, both from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is currently the O'Donnell Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University. He specializes in philosophy of mathematics, logic, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of language, with a recent interest in semantics, and is the author of Foundations without foundationalism: a case for second-order logic (OUP, 1991), Philosophy of mathematics: structure and ontology (OUP, 1997), Vagueness in context (OUP, 2006), and a textbook in the philosophy of mathematics, Thinking about mathematics: the philosophy of mathematics (OUP, 2000).