Abstract
Without attempting to define what is meant by a ‘logic’, it seems reasonable to say that, however many ‘logics’ there are, they are ‘logics’ by virtue of their concern with what makes an argument sound. In the case of ‘deductive logic’, the concept of a sound argument is that of an argument which is such that if its premisses are true, its conclusion must be true. A good deductive argument is one which is not only sound (valid) but has true premisses, and hence a true conclusion.
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I say ‘not independently observable’ because there is a dependent sense in which, e.g., the motion of an electron is observable - cf. gas and bubble chambers - but observable in a sense which involves a tacit appeal to the theory.
This use of ‘accept’ must be distinguished from the ordinary sense in which one ‘accepts’, for example, the statements (testimony) of others. I use ‘accept’, in the first instance, as roughly equivalent to ‘come to believe’. Believing and coming to believe are things that one does only in that broad sense in which anything expressed by a verb not in the passive voice is a ‘doing’.
For a more detailed account of probability statements and arguments which explores the inter-relationships between the various modes of probability see my ‘Induction as Vindication’, Philosophy of Science 31 (1964), pp. 197–231.
A finer grained analysis of the context ‘It is reasonable to accept that p’ would require careful use of the distinction between rules of action and rules of criticism developed, among other places, in ‘Language as Thought and as Communication’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29 (1969), pp. 528–535.
Most recently in Chapter VII of Science and Metaphysics, Routledge and KeganPaul, London, 1968.
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Sellars, W. (1969). Are There Non-Deductive Logics?. In: Rescher, N. (eds) Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel. Synthese Library, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1466-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1466-2_5
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