Reflections on language and charity: a response to Stei’s “Logical Pluralism and Logical Consequence”

Abstract

In Logical Pluralism and Logical Consequence (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Erik Stei argues for logical monism, the view that there is exactly one correct logic, in opposition to logical pluralism and logical nihilism. The present review aims to challenge two premisses in the main argument of the volume. First, Stei argues that no version of pluralism based on a plurality of senses of the logical connectives succeeds in proving that logical vocabulary is genuinely plural in the required sense. Second, he also argues that pluralism cannot account for the rivalry between logics, which makes the position less charitable than it claims. I will give arguments against the two premisses after presenting the details of the main argument for monism that we find in the book.