Perspectives on Deduction: Contemporary Studies in the Philosophy, History and Formal Theories of Deduction

This book provides philosophers and logicians with a broad spectrum of views on contemporary research on the problem of deduction, its justification and explanation. The variety of distinct approaches exemplified by the single chapters allows for a dialogue between perspectives that, usually, barely communicate with each other.

The contributions concern (in a possibly intertwined way) three major perspectives in logic: philosophical, historical, formal. The philosophical perspective has to do with the relationship between deductive validity and truth, and questions the alleged conclusiveness of deduction and its epistemic contribution. It also discusses the role of linguistic acts in deductive practice, and provides a cognitive-didactic contribution on how we may learn through deduction. In the historical perspective, the contributions discuss the ideas of some major historical figures, such as Bolzano, Girard, Gödel, and Peano. Finally, in the formal perspective, the mathematics of deduction is dealt with mainly from an intuitionistic-constructivist or proof-theoretic point of view, with focus on “ecumenic” or internalistic approaches to logical validity, on the nature and identity of proofs, and on dialogical setups.

Chapter [14] is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

I obtained my Bachelor Degree in Philosophy at the "Federico II" University of Naples in 2009, and my Master Degree in Philosophy at the "La Sapienza" University of Rome in 2014. I achieved the Doctoral Degree in Philosophy in 2019, with a dissertation about Dag Prawitz’s theory of grounds under the conjoint direction of prof. Gabriella Crocco (Aix-Marseille University) and prof. Cesare Cozzo ("La Sapienza" University of Rome). I am currently teaching History and Philosophy of Science, Logic and Philosophy of Logic, and Philosophy of Mathematics, at the Science and Philosophy Departments of the Aix-Marseille University.

Broadly, I deal with mathematical logic and philosophy of logic. More specifically, I am interested into constructive logics and proof-theoretic semantics (particularly Prawitz’s semantics) stemming from the intuitionistic tradition. As a parallel project, I investigate whether Kreisel’s informal rigour and Goedel’s absolute provability can be read through the lens of contemporary constructivist approaches. A minor interest concerns a socio-epistemological study of scientific controversies.