چكيده لاتين
Throughout the history of philosophy, it has commonly been assumed that logic constitutes an “exception”: unlike the empirical sciences, logic was considered “rational” or a priori, and the truths it uncovers were thought to be eternal and immune to revision. This assumption was taken as self-evident by philosophers from the dawn of philosophical thought until the modern era. A prominent example is Immanuel Kant, who in his works treated the dominant logic of his time—a version of Aristotelian logic—as a science that had reached its ultimate state of completion.
However, with the advent of modern logic, Aristotelian logic entirely lost its traditional and historical dominance. Subsequently, a new view emerged among a number of philosophers, arguing that logic does not differ fundamentally from other sciences and is, in other words, no longer an exception. This doctrine, known as “anti-exceptionalism about logic,” was first seriously advanced by W.V.O. Quine and continues to have both proponents and opponents among analytic philosophers today.
The central research question of this study is the relationship between logic and empirical evidence. The thesis focuses, first, on revisiting the philosophical arguments for and against the empirical nature of logic, and second, on explicating the mechanism through which logic connects to empirical evidence.
In this dissertation, after reviewing the philosophical and historical foundations, we will examine Kant’s views in the philosophy of logic and reconstruct his arguments for the exceptional status of logic. We will then provide a critical reassessment of Quine’s arguments for anti-exceptionalism about logic. Finally, we will offer a novel defense of the theory of anti-exceptionalism about logic, one capable of responding to potential objections.
The methodology of this research will be primarily philosophical analysis, supplemented to some extent by historical inquiry. The main contributions of this research include: the first comprehensive reassessment of Kant’s philosophy of logic in the Persian language; a critical re-examination of Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and the identification of its fundamental yet largely overlooked flaws; and most importantly, the presentation of a new defense of anti-exceptionalism about logic that offers a more robust account of the relationship between logical theory and empirical evidence.
