Logic, language and reality

Abstract

While John Stuart Mill assimilated the logical principles into empirical laws, the logical empiricists held that logical truths were analytical, deprived of empirical content and true by convention. In “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” Quine advocated a pragmatic reading of logical truths and argued that the only difference between them and the hypotheses of scientific theories was that scientists are more reluctant to change the former in case of a conflict with experience. But in later writings he admitted the possibility that logical truths reflect structural traits of the world and become self-evident. In this paper it is argued that both the logical empiricists’ and the Quine’s earlier views about logical truths are misguided. Consequently, it is claimed that logical truths have an ontological scope and are necessary in order to preserve the intelligibility of our discourse.

Key words: empiricism, analytic sentences, logical truth, ontology.