Meaning, Use, and Diagrams

My starting point is two themes from Peirce: his familiar pragmatist conception of meaning focused on what follows from an application of a term rather than on what is the case if it is correctly applied, and his less familiar and rather startling claim that even purely deductive, logical reasoning is not merely formal but instead constructive or diagrammatic — and hence experimental, and fallible. My aim is to show, using Frege’s two-dimensional logical language as a paradigm of a “constructive” logic in Peirce’s sense, that taking this second theme into account in one’s interpretation of the first yield a very different, and arguably more fruitful, conception of meaning than is usually ascribed to Peirce, not only a different conception of the role of inference in meaning than is found in, say, Brandom following Sellars, but also a very different understanding of the role of pragmatics in semantics than is standard in social practice theories

Logic in Revolution

Logic in Revolutio

THE TRUTHS OF LOGIC AND LOGICAL TRUTH

A principal aim of Chateaubriand’s Logical Forms II: Logic, Language, and Knowledge is to clarify and defend what Chateaubriand describes as the ontological conception of logic against the standard model-theoretic or “linguistic” view. Both sides to the debate accept that if logic is a science then there must be logically necessary facts that this science discovers, Chateaubriand arguing that because logic is a science, there must be logically necessary facts, and his opponent that because there are no logically necessary facts, logic cannot be a science. I argue that we can go between the horns of this dilemma by showing that, although logic is a science, it does not follow, as Chateaubriand assumes, that there are logically necessary facts. There are truths of (the science of) logic; there are no “logical truths”. Resumo: Um dos objetivos principais de Logical Forms II: Logic, Language and Knowledge de Chateaubriand é clarificar e defender o que ele descreve como a concepção ontológica da lógica, contra a visão predominante, modelo-teórica ou “lingüística”. Os dois lados do debate aceitam que, se a lógica é uma ciência, então deve haver fatos logicamente necessários que esta ciência descobre; Chateaubriand argumenta que, porque a lógica é ciência, deve haver fatos necessários que ela descobre, enquanto seus oponentes argumentam que, porque não há fatos logicamente necessários, a lógica não pode ser uma ciência. Eu argumento que podemos tomar uma via intermediária entre estes dois lados do dilema mostrando que, ainda que a lógica seja uma ciência, não se segue, como Chateaubriand assume, que existem fatos logicamente necessários. Existem verdades da (ciência da) lógica; não existem “verdades lógicas”.Palavras chave: Chateaubriand. Frege. Permissão para inferência. Verdade lógica. Intuição matemática. Peirce

The mental health impact of perinatal loss:A systematic review and meta-analysis

Perinatal loss can pose a significant risk to maternal mental health. There is limited data on the strength of association between perinatal loss and subsequent common mental health disorders (CMHD) such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic symptoms (PTS). A systematic review and meta-analysis identified studies with control groups, published between January 1995 and March 2020 reporting validated mental health outcomes following perinatal loss. We identified 29 studies from 17 countries, representing a perinatal loss sample (n = 31,072) and a control group of women not experiencing loss (n = 1,261,517). We compared the likelihood of increased CMHD in both groups. Random-effects modelling on suggested that compared to controls, perinatal loss was associated with increased risk of depressive (RR = 2.14, 95% CI = 1.73–2.66, p &lt; 0.001, k = 22) and anxiety disorders (RR = 1.75, 95% CI = 1.27–2.42, p &lt; 0.001, k = 9). Compared to controls, Perinatal loss was also associated with increased depression (SMD = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.20–0.48, p &lt; 0.001, k = 12) and anxiety scores (SMD = 0.35, 95% CI = 0.12–0.58, p &lt; 0.003, k = 10). There were no significant effects for post-traumatic stress (PTS) outcomes (k = 3). Our findings confirm that anxiety and depression levels following perinatal loss are significantly elevated compared to “no loss” controls (live-births, non pregnant from community, or difficult live births). Elevated depression and anxiety rates were also reported for those who experienced loss during later stages of pregnancy. Assessing mental health following loss is a maternal health priority.</p

Diagrammatic Reasoning in Euclid\u27s Elements

A quite detailed account of how diagrammatic reasoning works in Euclid, the role of definitions, postulates, and common notions, the nature of generality involved, and the precise role that diagrams play in demonstrations. --author-supplied descriptio

Reading Rorty: A Sketch of a Plan

This paper, initially written for a conference on Rorty\u27s work, was invited as part of the launching of this new journal. In it I discuss themes in Rorty and Plato\u27s Theaetetus concerning truth and knowledge, and argue in particular that just as there are three quite different levels of discourse in the Theaetetus so we need to recognize that there are three analogous levels of discourse in Rorty\u27s discussions of truth. --author-supplied descriptio