LOGIC AS APPLIED PHILOSOPHY

Is there a distinctive contribution which logic can make to the applied philosophy movement? Or, to put it another way, what is applied logic?

One answer is that provided by the Journal of Applied Logic, which describes its "unifying theme" as "logics arising from modelling the human agent." However, the focus of this work is primarily on the microstructure of human interaction. This can have considerable importance for computer science and allied disciplines, but seldom lends itself to the broader analysis of social or political issues. Similar considerations apply to many other applications of logic, such as in the physical sciences, or in biological systematics, or indeed to philosophy itself. 

Yet these applications do not exhaust the possible scope of applied logic. Rather, they reflect the dominance in logic, since the ground-breaking work of Boole and Frege in the nineteenth century, of formal methods chosen primarily for their applicability to mathematics. There are, however, counter-traditions in modern logic. Many systems of non-classical logic, such as relevance logics, are motivated by their fit to ordinary discourse. Informal logic departs further, by attempting to analyse and appraise arguments which cannot be captured satisfactorily in terms of logical form.

These alternative approaches have led to a variety of applications. For example:

* Casuistry. As Stephen Toulmin, one of the pioneers of informal logic has argued, more general conceptions of logic facilitate the rehabilitation of case-based reasoning in ethics. [1]

* Ethnography. Influential early anthropologists, such as Evans-Pritchard and LŽvy-Bruhl, claimed to identify non-western patterns of reasoning. Attempts have been made to cash out these claims in terms of non-classical logic. [2]

* Feminism. There are distinctively feminist critiques, and applications, of formal logic. [3]

* History. Proper appreciation of some historical phenomena requires analysis of formidably complex systems of rules. Logic has been applied to this task. [4]

* Psychoanalysis. Some psychoanalysts make significant appeal to formal logic in the articulation of their theories. [5,6]

I propose to survey some of these applications, exploring their interrelations, appraising their plausibility, and thereby assessing whether there is a distinctive logical contribution to applied philosophy.

REFERENCES

[1] JONSEN, A. J. & TOULMIN, S. E., 1990, The abuse of casuistry, University of California Press, Berkeley.
[2] LOKHORST, G. J. C., 1998, "The logic of logical relativism," Logique et analyse 41.
[3] FALMAGNE, R. J. & HASS, M., eds, 2002, Representing reason: Feminist theory and formal logic, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD. 
[4] BRAYBROOKE, D. et al., 1995, Logic on the track of social change, Clarendon, Oxford.
[5] RAYNER, E., 1995, Unconscious logic: An introduction to Matte Blanco's bi-logic and its uses, Routledge, London.
[6] SKELTON, R., 1995, "Bion's use of modern logic," International journal of psychoanalysis 76.

ANDREW ABERDEIN 
Humanities and Communication, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 West University Blvd, Melbourne, Florida 32901-6975, U.S.A. 
E-mail address: aberdein@fit.edu