El rol normativo de la paraconsistencia

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze the epistemic argument in favor of paraconsistency. In a nutshell, this argument claims that an agent might believe a contradiction without being necessarily committed to every sentence, and therefore one should reject the Explosion principle. Here, I describe the criticism made by Steinberger (2014), who considers that the argument is wrong. Steinberger claims that this argument becomes ineffective once we admit that the normativity of logic is “wide-scoped”, i.e., we can always choose between abandoning the premises or accepting the conclusion. In this paper I respond to Steinberger, by taking into account some normative concepts that have been mostly ignored so far in the discussion: the concept of commitment and the concept of basing permission. I show that if we take these notions into account, the epistemic argument in favor of paraconsistency works again. This follows from the fact that both commitment and basing permissions work in a “narrow-scoped” way, i.e., one is committed to some beliefs on the basis of other beliefs, and one infers some sentences on the basis of other sentences. If we express the normativity of logic with these concepts, we can challenge the logical principle of Explosion. For it is not reasonable to be committed to every sentence, or to infer every sentence, on the basis of believing a contradiction.