CFP: Topoi Special Issue: Expressivism about Logic

Paper submissions are invited for the special issue/collection of Topoi entitled: Expressivism about Logic. The special issue aims to explore different kinds of expressivism about logic, including (but not limited to) logical expressivism, inferential expressivism, non-cognitivism about logic, and related issues and views.

Special issue article publications often bring higher citations and visibility than regular papers and attract more relevant readership due to its scope. Topoi is indexed in the Web of Science under AHCI, currently in Quartile 1 and placed in the top-10 ranked Philosophy-Category journals, with a 2023 IF of 1,3 and CiteScore of 3,1.

Guest Editor(s):

• RYAN SIMONELLI (lead editor), Department of Philosophy, Wuhan University, China, Email: [email protected]

• ULF HLOBIL, Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, Canada, Email: [email protected]

DESCRIPTION:

In the past few decades, various kinds of expressivism about logic have been advocated. In broad strokes, such accounts aims to understand logical truths as in some way expressive of (the norms of) our practices or attitudes. This promises to resolve longstanding metaphysical and epistemological issues regarding the nature of logical truths and our epistemic access to them. Contemporary developments of expressivist positions about logic can be seen as stemming from two distinct “roots.”

According to the version of logical expressivism developed by Robert Brandom and prominently advocated, among others, by Jaroslav Peregrin, the function of logical vocabulary is to enable speakers to express the inferential relations between linguistic expressions that obtain in virtue of (or, indeed, constitute) their meaning. For instance, that something is red entails that it is colored, and it is incompatible with it being green, and so on. If we consider a linguistic community without logical vocabulary, we can see their knowledge of these inferential relations as implicit in what they do, inferring in certain ways and not others. If, however, such a community is given logical vocabulary, they can make their knowledge of these inferential relations explicit in what they say, saying for instance, “If something’s red, then it must be colored, and it can’t possibly be green.” The thought is that logical expressions such as the universal quantifier, the conditional, and negation, along with modal expressions, enable speakers to explicitly express these semantic norms.

Another root of expressivism about logic is expressivism in meta-ethics. Here, the crucial thought is that logical expressivism should be understood as a species of non-cognitivism about logical knowledge or logical statements. In arguing against such a view, Corine Besson characterizes it as the view that accepting a certain logical principle such as Modus Ponens is “not a cognitive state, but a pro-attitude towards drawing certain types of conclusions from certain types of premises.” While such a view may be open to the Frege-Geach Problem, Luca Incurvati and Julian Schloeder’s Reasoning with Attitude (2023) offers a response to the Frege-Geach Problem for expressivism about logic. There, Incurvati and Schloeder develop what they call an “inferential expressivist” position about logic, according to which the meaning of logical expressions such as negation is determined by the inferential relations that they bear to expressions of attitudes such as rejection.

In light of these recent developments, this volume will move the debate about expressivism regarding logic forward by including the most recent ideas of key players the debate as well as new ideas by philosophers and logicians across different approaches. We welcome both more philosophical and more technical submissions that develop or address issues relating to logical expressivist positions.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Logical expressivism

• Logical inferentialism

• Inferential expressivism

• Expressivism of other kinds regarding logic

• Logical bilateralism and multilateralism

• What is the expressive function or point of using logical vocabulary?

• What is the relation between materially good inferences (like inferences underwritten by lexical entailments) and logically good inferences?

• Do logically true sentences represent facts?

• Is knowledge that an inference is valid, together with knowledge of the premises, sufficient to rationally make the inference?

• Should logical expressivists be anti-realists about logic?

• Which (if any) constraints do commitments about the expressive function or point of logic put on theory choice in logic?

• What does it mean to express the endorsement of an inference in a sentence? What does it mean to express acceptance and rejection by embeddable locutions?

Submission DEADLINE: Please submit your paper by December 1st, 2025. Should you not be able to meet this deadline, please contact the Lead Guest Editor (contact details below).

Online SUBMISSION: Please use the journal’s Online Manuscript Submission System (Editorial Manager), accessible here Editorial Manager®. Do note that paper submissions via email are not accepted.

Author Submission’s GUIDELINES: Authors are asked to prepare their manuscripts according to the journal’s standard Submission Guidelines.

EDITORIAL PROCESS:

• When uploading your paper in Editorial Manager, please select “SI: Expressivism about Logic” in the drop-down menu “Article Type”.

• Papers should not exceed a maximum of 9000 words.

• All papers will undergo the journal’s standard review procedure (double-blind peer-review), according to the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance

• Reviewers will be selected according to the Peer Reviewer Selection policies.

• This journal offers the option to publish Open Access. You are allowed to publish open access through Open Choice. Please explore the OA options available through your institution by referring to our list of OA Transformative Agreements.

• Once papers are accepted, they will be made available as Online articles publications until final publication into an issue and available on the page Collections.

CONTACT: For any questions, please directly contact the Lead Guest Editor:

RYAN SIMONELLI, [email protected]