Peirce considered the principal business of logic to be the analysis of reasoning. He argued that the diagrammatic system of Existential Graphs, which he had invented in 1896, carries the logical analysis of reasoning to the furthest point possible. The present paper investigates the analytic virtues of the Alpha part of the system, which corresponds to the sentential calculus. We examine Peirce’s proposal that the relation of illation is the primitive relation of logic and defend the view that this idea constitutes the fundamental motive of philosophy of notation both in algebraic and graphical logic. We explain how in his algebras and graphs Peirce arrived at a unifying notation for logical constants that represent both truth-function and scope. Finally, we show that Shin’s argument for multiple readings of Alpha graphs is circular.

Maddy gave a semi-formal account of restrictiveness by defining a formal notion based on a class of interpretations and explaining how to handle false positives and false negatives. Recently, Hamkins pointed out some structural issues with Maddy’s definition. We look at Maddy’s formal definitions from the point of view of an abstract interpretation relation. We consider various candidates for this interpretation relation, including one that is close to Maddy’s original notion, but fixes the issues raised by Hamkins. Our work brings to light additional structural issues that we also discuss.

We construct four binary consequence systems axiomatizing entailment relations between formulas of classical, intuitionistic, dual-intuitionistic and modal (S4) logics, respectively. It is shown that the intuitionistic consequence system is embeddable in the modal (S4) one by the usual modal translation prefixing □ to every subformula of the translated formula. An analogous modal translation of dual-intuitionistic formulas then consists of prefixing ◊ to every subformula of the translated formula. The philosophical importance of this result is briefly discussed.

We outline an intuitionistic view of knowledge which maintains the original Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov semantics for intuitionism and is consistent with the well-known approach that intuitionistic knowledge be regarded as the result of verification. We argue that on this view coreflection A → KA is valid and the factivity of knowledge holds in the form KA → ¬¬A ‘known propositions cannot be false’.

We show that the traditional form of factivity KA → A is a distinctly classical principle which, like tertium non datur A ∨ ¬A, does not hold intuitionistically, but, along with the whole of classical epistemic logic, is intuitionistically valid in its double negation form ¬¬(KA ¬ A).

Within the intuitionistic epistemic framework the knowability paradox is resolved in a constructive manner. We argue that this paradox is the result of an unwarranted classical reading of constructive principles and as such does not have the consequences for constructive foundations traditionally attributed it.

We define and study quasidialectical systems, which are an extension of Magari’s dialectical systems, designed to make Magari’s formalization of trial and error mathematics more adherent to the real mathematical practice of revision: our proposed extension follows, and in several regards makes more precise, varieties of empiricist positions à la Lakatos. We prove several properties of quasidialectical systems and of the sets that they represent, called quasidialectical sets. In particular, we prove that the quasidialectical sets are ${\rm{\Delta }}_2^0$ sets in the arithmetical hierarchy. We distinguish between “loopless” quasidialectal systems, and quasidialectical systems “with loops”. The latter ones represent exactly those coinfinite c.e. sets, that are not simple. In a subsequent paper we will show that whereas the dialectical sets are ω-c.e., the quasidialectical sets spread out throughout all classes of the Ershov hierarchy of the ${\rm{\Delta }}_2^0$ sets.

The Revenge Problem threatens every approach to the semantic paradoxes that proceeds by introducing nonclassical semantic values. Given any such collection Δ of additional semantic values, one can construct a Revenge sentence:

We present several formal theories for the arithmetic of the even and the odd, show that the irrationality of $\sqrt 2$ can be proved in one of them, that the proof must involve contradiction, and prove that the irrationality of $\sqrt {17}$ cannot be proved inside any formal theory of the even and the odd.

In (Anglberger et al., 2015, Section 4.1), a deontic logic is proposed which explicates the idea that a formula φ is obligatory if and only if it is (semantically speaking) the weakest permission. We give a sound and strongly complete, Hilbert style axiomatization for this logic. As a corollary, it is compact, contradicting earlier claims from Anglberger et al. (2015). In addition, we prove that our axiomatization is equivalent to Anglberger et al.’s infinitary proof system, and show that our results are robust w.r.t. certain changes in the underlying semantics.

In this paper, I first outline Aumann’s famous “no agreeing to disagree” theorem, and a second related theorem. These results show that if two or more agents, who have epistemic and credal states that are defined over algebras that do not include any self-locating propositions, have certain information about one another’s epistemic and credal states, then such agents must assign the same credence to certain propositions. I show, however, that both of these theorems fail when we consider agents who have epistemic and credal states that are defined over algebras that do include self-locating propositions. Importantly, these theorems fail for such agents even when we restrict our attention to the credences that such agents have in non-self-locating propositions. Having established this negative result, I then outline and prove three agreement theorems that hold for such agents.

Inferentialism claims that the rules for the use of an expression express its meaning without any need to invoke meanings or denotations for them. Logical inferentialism endorses inferentialism specifically for the logical constants. Harmonic inferentialism, as the term is introduced here, usually but not necessarily a subbranch of logical inferentialism, follows Gentzen in proposing that it is the introduction-rules which give expressions their meaning and the elimination-rules should accord harmoniously with the meaning so given. It is proposed here that the logical expressions are those which can be given schematic rules that lie in a specific sort of harmony, general-elimination (ge) harmony, resulting from applying a certain operation, the ge-procedure, to produce ge-rules in accord with the meaning defined by the I-rules. Griffiths (2014) claims that identity cannot be given such rules, concluding that logical inferentialists are committed to ruling identity a nonlogical expression. It is shown that the schematic rules for identity given in Read (2004), slightly amended, are indeed ge-harmonious, so confirming that identity is a logical notion.