The Impact of N.A. Vasiliev’s Imaginary Logic on Epistemic and Relevance Logic

Abstract

In his Imaginary Logic N.A. Vasiliev attempted to pave the way for a new logic, which considerably deviates from the traditional classical logic. Vasiliev initiates a free view on possible logical systems, a view which opens important perspectives for the development of different non-classical logics. Not convincing are, however, the reasons and justifications given by Vasiliev for the deviation of his imaginary logic from classical logic and his description of the relations between the new logic and the received Aristotelian logic. In the first part of my paper I want to concentrate upon such an analysis of Vasiliev’s views. Then in the second part I want to discuss how Vasiliev’s approaches can be made fertile, if one treats them in an epistemic context and replaces their ontological dimension by epistemic foundations. In this context special attention is devoted to the differentiation between internal and external sentential connectives and the impact of this differentiation on the development of epistemic founded different logical treatments of assent.