more from Ian Hacking

Single Idea 13837

[catalogued under 5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives]

Full Idea

My doctrine is that the peculiarity of the logical constants resides precisely in that given a certain pure notion of truth and consequence, all the desirable semantic properties of the constants are determined by their syntactic properties.

Gist of Idea

With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically

Source

Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §09)

Book Reference

'A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic', ed/tr. Hughes,R.I.G. [Hackett 1993], p.238


A Reaction

He opposes this to Peacocke 1976, who claims that the logical connectives are essentially semantic in character, concerned with the preservation of truth.