On the plurality of logics, inferential affordances and normative abilities

In this contribution, I develop the metaphysical counterpart of a neo-pragmatist proposal to give a philosophical account of the plurality of logics, especially the emergence of non-classical logics. The goal is to connect two debates, one in the philosophy of logic and another in the metaphysics of affordances, that stand to gain much from each other. I will introduce and develop the notions of inferential affordances and normative abilities, inspired by Vetter (2018, 2023), to give a metaphysical counterpart for an inferentialist and expressivist view of logic (Brandom 1994, 2001, 2008). According to Gibson (1986), affordances are objective and real environmental opportunities to skillful agency. In this view, cognition is enacted by embodied and situated agents exploring affordances in their environment. For the epistemology of logic, we may apply this ecological insight as follows: we use non-classical reasoning to cope with inferential affordances objectively presented in our environment, by exercising our normative abilities and acting in the world. Inferential affordances are opportunities for us to apply our normative skills to restrict or allow logical rules. In this view, non-classical reasoning displays how our inferential practices have to cope with affordances that may aptly be taken as normatively restricting some classical rules of inferences and allowing for alternative inferential practices. Thus, logicians can study and systematize these norms, implicit in our daily inferential practices, expressing them in different formal and abstract systems. In this project, I will defend that logicians, on the inferentialist and expressivist side, build up formal systems to make explicit and systematize rules that express norms implicit in our skillful inferential practices, norms designed to manage, on the metaphysical side, different and objective normative affordances.

Keywords: Metaphysics of affordances, Ecological Psychology, Epistemology of Logic, Inferentialism, Expressivism, Neo pragmatism

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