Shahid Rahman

The Talking-Tree or Palaver Tree (Arbre à palabres) is a designated location (originally a large ancestral tree such as the baobab, but is also can be a grave) in many African traditions where the community come together to discuss in a peaceful and constructive manner, issues of common interest. It is conceived as an open gathering space of interactive communication lead by the stance that finding a compromise or solution is what makes us human. At times the interchanges taking place at a Talking-Tree may also transform into conflict management. This unfolds in several forms of argumentation including those that aim at deciding if some given accusation is or not justified. Moreover, the process will be usually coupled with the task of determining the consequences of the outcome of the argumentation. In the case of accusations the consequences, can involve either some form of punishment to one of the parties or some kind of compensation to the other party; or, more often than not, also both, punishment to the wrongdoer and compensation to the complainant. The main aim of our paper is to study the meaning explanation 1 underlying the most fundamental constitutive elements of argumentations involving accusations of wrongdoing mentioned above, namely proverbs, and in the context of the Baule tradition. 2 .More precisely our study will focus on the distinction drawn by Kouadio, Y. (2012) between witnessing and moral proverbs and their different roles in a justification process, of the specific kind mentioned above.

Preprint: The main aim of the present paper is to show that, if we follow the dialogical insight that reasoning and meaning are constituted during interaction, and we develop this insight in a dialogical framework for Martin-Löf's Constructive Type Theory, a conception of knowledge emerges that has important links with Robert Brandom's (1994, 2000) inferential pragmatism. However, there are also some significant differences that are at center of the dialogical approach to meaning.

The main aim of this paper is to study the notion of conditional
right by means of a dialogical approach to constructive type theory
(CTT). We will develop this idea in a framework where the distinction
between local-reason and strategic-reason leads to the further
distinction between two basic kinds of pieces of evidence, factual and
logical. The present paper is based on Rahman (2015). However,
though the underlying CTT-analysis is the same, the dialogical reconstruction
makes use of a new way of linking dialogical logic and CTT.

(work in progress)

Foucault's gauntlet

« Si la connaissance se donne comme connaissance de la vérité, c’est qu’elle produit la vérité par le jeu d’une falsification première et toujours reconduite qui pose la distinction du vrai et du faux . » Michel Foucault, Leçons sur la volonté de savoir, Gallimard-Seuil, Paris, 2011 (1re éd. : 1971)

"If knowledge is given as knowledge of the truth, it is because it produces the truth by the game of a first falsification renewed again and again which raises the distinction of true and false." Michel Foucault, Leçons sur la volonté de savoir, Gallimard-Seuil, Paris, 2011 (1re éd. : 1971)

CONCLUSION
Perhaps, Foucault's observation amounts to the simple remark that some of the so-called scientific justifications of institutionalized qualifications and anathemas that have important political and socio-economic consequences such as those involving notions as health, disease, or gender do not have the scientific backing they are purported to have (now scientific backing, I guess, must be understood in a rather standard or naïve sense of distinguishing between sciences and pseudo-sciences). This might in some sense be a sensible reflection, and it must be conceded that Foucault had the merit of undertaking extensive and thorough examinations of archives, protocols and reports buried in institutions of various kinds which animated his legendary charming style of writing. By all means, this is quite far away from constituting a revolutionary assault on the notions of (scientific) truth, knowledge and meaning, but, one can say, I think, that his work motivated and still motivates some new approaches to the epistemological examination of archives produced by institutions.   

If the reading proposed in the preceding paragraph seems a too meagre result and we are prepared to read Foucault's remarks as involving more thorny epistemological matters, there are of course other ways to delve into them:

On one hand I allow me to suggest studying the sceptics of the ancient Greek tradition, or the study of analogical dialectical reasoning within the Arabic Jurisprudence theories of the Middle-Ages (or more generally their theory of Argumentation that has been largely ignored also by the analytic approaches to Argumentation theory and Epistemic Logic), or if one dares to go so far the millenary Jain epistemological lessons on the Art of the Point of View provide plenty to learn from (this constitutes another gap in the recent studies on reasoning and knowledge). 

On the other one cannot escape the feeling that claims as those of Foucault, though they might be seen as involving interesting questions, many of them have been brought forward without awareness (or perhaps even because of lack of awareness) of the discussions that took place in depth and length in philosophy of logic and knowledge at the very same time he threw down the gauntlet towards traditional conceptions of epistemology – moreover, as a quick look on nowadays publications bring to the fore, such kind of  discussions are nowadays experiencing a creative impulse at a breath-taking pace (particularly so in the context of social sciences). 


True, analytic philosophers and some philosophers of logic stemming from analytic philosophy quite often ignore history of philosophy or even the history of the science they are purported to study, or more generally philosophical approaches foreign to their own framework – with the result that quite often they produced a rather superficial analysis of the links between knowledge and truth – however, this only points out, that it is time that we start learning each from the other

Furthermore, if the reader allows me to propose a big, perhaps too broad, conceptual (conciliatory) jump, that, I concede; can be seen as distorting some of Foucault’s main tenets; we might say that his perspectives might be understood as an invitation to join to recent developments on the interface normativity-rationality, such as the one of the dialogical framework. According to these insights knowledge, meaning and truth are conceived as the result of social interaction, whereby normativity is not understood as a kind of pragmatic operator acting on a propositional kernel that already is purported to encode knowledge and meaning,  but rather the other way round: the kind of normativity that emerges from social interaction which is attached to knowledge and meaning is constitutive of those notions. In other words, according to what I think that the dialogical framework and some of Foucault’s insights can share is the view that the intertwining of rights to ask for reasons and duties to furnish them provides the roots of knowledge, meaning and truth: this is what the normative conception of episteme is about.

Therefore, under this perspective; the sociological views on epistemology vindicated by Foucault are not seen here as launching a kind of naturalistic enterprise but rather as an invitation to participate in the open-ended dialogue that articulates the human pursuit of knowledge and collective understanding, since philosophy’s endeavour is immanent to the kind of dialogical interaction that makes reason happen.

Am I falsifying Foucault? Who knows …

El objetivo del presente artículo es mostrar como incorporar contenido en un marco pragmatista del significado como el desarrollado por la lógica dialógica. En un marco tal el significado de una expresión es comprendido como un conjunto de reglas de interacción que determinan cómo requerir y proveer razones para sustentar una afirmación que involucra esa expresión. La idea es de enriquecer la concepción dialógica de la lógica con la noción de lenguajes totalmente interpretados de la Teoría Constructiva de Tipos;By Shahid Rahman, Juan Redmond Nicolas Clerbout

Abstract The main aim of this paper is to study the notion of conditional right by means of constructive type theory (CTT) which provides the means to develop a system of contentual inferences rather than of syntactic derivations. Moreover, in line with Armgardt, we will first study the general notion of dependence as triggered by hypotheticals and then the logical structure of dependence specific to conditional right.We will develop this idea in a dialogical framework where the distinction between local reason and strategic reason leads to the further distinction between two basic kinds of pieces of evidence and where meanings is constituted by the interaction of obligations and entitlements.
The present paper is based on Rahman (2015). However, though the  underlying CTT-analysis is the same, the dialogical reconstruction makes use of a new way of linking dialogical logic and CTT.

He knew he was not one of them. He made this discovery by his studies on the history of philosophy and the homonyms of being. In his haste he promised to disclose the dissonances lurking in Leibniz's cosmic harmony and to expose the fractures in Descartes's architecture of adamant thoughts in ever changing bodies.  A famous professor suggested calling the century under his name. He was embarrassed:  others did not realize the difference.

Perhaps he could do as if he had the secret of building abstract machines,  but mathematics dislikes playing with putterers and is unmerciful with the trivial. Boriska's bell  rang true after all.  He must have regretted those paragraphs that put him naked in front of a mirror...

Abstract The Logics of Formal Inconsistency are logics tolerant to some
amount of inconsistency but in which some versions of explosion still hold.
The main result of this paper is to provide a reconstruction of two such logics
in the dialogical framework. By doing so, we achieve two things. On the
one hand, we provide a formal approach to argumentative situations in which
some inconsistencies may occur while keeping the idea that there may still
be situations in which some propositions are “safe” in the sense of immune to
the contradictions. On the other hand, we open a new line of study on these
logics, in the context of the game-theoretical approach to semantics born in
the 1960s, with various interesting prospectives some of which are discussed
at the end of this work.

The work of Souleymane Bachir Diagne has set a landmark in many senses, but perhaps the most striking one is his inexhaustible thrive to build multifarious conceptual links and bridges between traditions and to motivate others to further develop this wonderful realization of unity in diversity. Three main fields of his remarkable work are: history and philosophy of logic (Diagne (1989, 1992)), the renewal of Islamic thinking (Diagne (2001b, 2002, 2008, 2016)) and the specificity of the African philosophy (Diagne (1996, 2001a, 2007).


In the present talk I will focus on philosophy of logic, and more precisely on the algebra of logic of George Boole, that launched Bachir Diagne's (1989) academic carrier. However, the framework has bearings for the other both fields as developed in recent publications in collaboration. I will briefly discuss as an example of application the case of suspensive (muʿallaq) condition (taʿliq) in Islamic law and I might discuss this issue more deeply during the discussion, 

More precisely, the main objective of my presentation is to discuss a novel approach to both, the distinction between Boolean operators and inferentially defined connectives, and the interplay of the former with the latter. The epistemological framework underlying my discussion is the dialogical approach to Per Martin-Löf's (1984) Constructive Type Theory recently developed in Lille

I will illustrate the issues by showing how to generalize Boolean operators for finite sets within the dialogical setting and I will take the chance to put the framework into work by developing a demonstration of what is known as the fourth axiom of Peano's arithmetic ("0 is identical to no successor of a natural number": (x : ℕ) ¬Id(ℕ, 0, s(x))).
Such a demonstration gives us provides a nice example of the difference between, to put it in a dialogical terminology, asserting that the solution to a problem or enquiry is no, and asserting that there is no solution or answer to such an enquiry.

Furthermore, the dialogical setting, where an "empirical quantity" is understood as the outcome of a procedure triggered by a question specific to that quantity, provides a new perspective on Willfried Sellars's notion of Space of Reasons. More precisely, the dialogical framework proposed should show how to integrate world-directed thought (that displays empirical content) into an inferentialist approach. This suggests that the dialogical approach to Constructive Type Theory offers a way to integrate within one epistemological framework the two conflicting readings of the Space of Reasons brought forward by John McDowell on one side, who insists in distinguishing world-direct thought and knowledge gathered by inference and in the other by Robert Brandom who argues that such a distinction makes the notion of Space of Reasons collapse into the kind of empiricism it was purported to refute.

The general epistemological upshot from these initial reflections is that many of the worries on the interpretation of the space of reasons and on the shortcomings of the standard dialogical approach to meaning (beyond the one of logical constants) have their origin in the neglect of the play level (see Dutihl Novaes (2015) and Trafford (2017)).

The talk is based based on a joint paper (to appear 2018 in the Cambridge Journal of Arabic Sciences and Philosophy) with Muhammad Iqbal (Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8163 - STL- Savoirs Textes Langage, F-59000 Lille, France ; and Islamic University Antasari, Banjarmasin, Indonesia)),

One of the epistemological results emerging from this initial study, is that the different forms of debate, known in the Islamic jurisprudence as qiyās of co-relational inference, represent an innovative and sophisticated form of argumentation (jadal) that not only provide new epistemological insights of legal reasoning in general but they also furnish a fine-grained pattern for parallel reasoning and symmetry that can be deployed in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and that does not seem to reduce to the standard forms of analogical argumentation studied in contemporary philosophy of science.

More specifically the main claim is that the dialogical framework provides the right instrument to stress three of the most salient features of this form of inference :

(1) the interaction of heuristic with logical steps,
(2) the interactive feature of the meaning-explanation of the terms involved
(3) the unfolding of parallel reasoning as similarity in action.

These features show that co-relational inferences offer a model for cross disciplinary where maieutic, logic, epistemology and meaning interact for the development of collective understanding.

RESUMEN: Mediante un estudio dialógico de la noción de igualdad definicional de la teoría constructiva de tipos (TCT), se mostrará que tal igualdad, que en la TCT provee el criterio de identidad asociado a un tipo, puede comprenderse, desde el punto de vista lúdico, como resultado de una forma específica de interacción dialógica regida por la regla formal, más conocida recientemente como la regla socrática, que prescribe el uso de jugadas de espejo (copycat moves). Esto se ilustrará con el desarrollo dialógico de las partes esenciales de la demostración del axioma de elección de Per Martin-Löf, quien basó su prueba en la igualdad definicional entre la función que prueba el antecedente y la función que ocurre en el consecuente. PALABRAS CLAVE: identidad, teoría de juegos, regla socrática, jugada de espejo, interlocutor implícito SUMMARY: The main aim of the present paper is to show, by means of a dialogical study, that the notion of judgemental equality of Constructive Type Theory (CTT), which in this theory furnishes the criterion of identity of a type, can be understood from the game-theoretical point of view as the result of a specific form of dialogical interaction governed by the development rule known as formal rule or (more recently) Socratic rule, which prescribes the use of copycat moves. It will be shown, as an example, how to develop the core of a winning strategy for Per Martin-Löf's demonstration of the Axiom of Choice, who based his proof in the judgemental equality between the function in the antecedent and the function occurring in the consequent of the axiom.

With the article " Aristotle's natural deduction system " , published in 1974, J. Corcoran has contributed to spread a new insight into Aristotelian logical writings and of the theory of assertoric syllogism in particular. The main claim of this article is that, in the first chapters of the Analytic prior, Aristotle doesn't expose an axiomatic system that would suppose an underlying logic, as thought Łukasiewicz, but a natural deduction system, with metalogical dimensions. Our paper is based on a short monograph of Kurt Ebbinghaus, called " Ein formales Model der Syllogistik des Aristoteles " (1964), which set a landmark for the new insight mentioned above and that was developed within the conceptual framework of Paul Lorenzen's " Operative Logik ". Ebbinghaus develops a formal reconstruction that shows that Aristotle's perspective is a proof-theoretical one, not only in relation to the underlying inference system but in relation to the study of its metalogical features. The latter indicates a main distinction to Corcoran's own reconstruction. Indeed, while Corcoran's assumes that Aristotle's inferential systems is rooted on an underlying model-theoretical semantics (worked by Corcoran himself), Ebbinghaus understands the theory of syllogisms as being developed under the background of a " rule-based " approach where the main notion is the proof-theoretical concept of "admissibility" rather than completeness. In fact, Ebbinghaus' reconstruction proposes a pragmatist reading of Aristotle's syllogistic, which he links with the game-theoretical interpretation of dialogical logic that was in those days substituting the operative framework. Ebbinghaus' proposal, so we claim, not only seems to be definitely closer to Aristotle's views, than the model-theoretical semantics developed by Corcoran, but it also yields the theory of syllogism as a unified system. RÉSUMÉ. Avec l'article " Aristotle's natural deduction système " , publié en 1974, J. Corcoran a contribué à diffuser une nouvelle perspective sur les écrits logiques d'Aristote et sur la théorie du syllogisme en particulier. Dans cet article, Corcoran prétend établir que, dans les premiers chapitres des Premiers Analytiques, Aristote ne propose pas un système axiomatique, qui supposerait une logique sous-jacente, ainsi que le pensait Łukasiewicz, mais plutôt un système de déduction naturelle, avec des dimensions métalogiques. Notre propos est ici basé sur une courte monographie de Kurt Ebbinghaus, intitulée " Ein formales Model der Syllogistik des Aristoteles " (1964), où est fixé le canon de cette nouvelle perspective mentionnée plus haut et qui a été développé dans le cadre conceptuel de la « logique opérative » de Paul Lorenzen. Ebbinghaus développe une reconstruction formelle montrant que l'approche d'Aristote relève de la « théorie de la preuve », non seulement pour ce qui concerne le système d'inférence sous-jacent, mais aussi pour ce qui concerne les éléments métalogiques. C'est notamment à travers ce dernier aspect que se manifeste une différence majeure par rapport à la reconstruction de Corcoran. Alors que celui-ci pose que le système d'inférence d'Aristote est enraciné dans une sémantique de théorie des modèles (élaborée par Corcoran lui-même), Ebbinghaus comprend que la théorie du syllogisme a été développée à partir d'une approche de la signification par des règles (« rule based ») où la notion principale es "admissibilité, plutôt que complétude. En fait, la reconstruction d'Ebbinghaus offre une lecture pragmatiste de la syllogistique d'Aristote, qui était à l'époque en train de substituer le cadre de la logique opérative. La proposition d'Ebbinghaus, donc, tel est notre propos, parait non seulement beaucoup plus proche du point de vue d'Aristote que ne l'est la sémantique de théorie des modèles proposée par Corcoran, mais qui, de plus, permet de saisir l'unité systématique de la théorie du syllogisme. BIBLIOGRAPHIE.

Resumen Lo que distingue a los diálogos formales de los materiales es que en estos últimos la formulación de la Regla Socrática prescribe una forma de interacción que permite al Proponente basar la afirmación de una proposición elemental en identidades específicas a la proposición en cuestión. El objetivo del presente artículo es describir sucintamente la forma de producir diálogos materiales y al mismo tiempo discutir sus vínculos con el desarrollo de lenguajes totalmente interpretados en la Teoría Constructiva de Tipos (TCT). A modo de ilustración discutiremos brevemente la formulación de la Regla Socrática para el conjunto de números naturales, para la noción de identidad predicativa y para el conjunto de Booleanos.

[THE PRESENT PAPER WAS WRITTEN ALMOST 10 years ago. Though i continue to endorse the idea of scientific models as presrcriptions nowadys I think that the formal framework for this theory is the one constructive type theory, where objects prescribed by models are conceived as hypotheticals (see Rahman/Redmond (2015) in Unisinos]One important feature of Poincaré's conventionalism of geometry is linked to the relation between the abstract notion of space geometry and the representations of the free mobility of our bodies. In this sense «the group of rigid motions» identified by Helmholtz and Lie as the foundation of geometries of constant curvature is, according to Poincaré, an idealization of the primitive experience that acquaints us with the properties of space in the first place. 2 Furthermore, since Poincaré thinks that the only adequate candidates for physical geometry – the geometries of constant curvature – are equivalent from a mathematical point of view (they are homeomorphic), we can choose any one of these. Actually, according to Poincaré, the idealization involved in passing from our own local motions to the group of motions makes use of temporal intuition: our notion of the large-space structure of space assumes that our displacements are infinitely iterables and this assumes temporal intuition. 3 Thus, it looks as Poincaré's notion of convention assumes some kind of idealization process. Indeed, the notion of convention involved in this cases seems to assume that in relation to a target system the choice between two idealizations is determined by some kind of equivalence relation, which in our case is displayed

Recent developments in dialogical logic show that the CTT approach to meaning is very natural to those game-theoretical approaches where (standard) metalogical features are explicitly displayed at the object language-level. 1 Thus, in some way, this vindicates, albeit in quite of a different manner, Hintikka's plea for the fruitfulness of game-theoretical semantics in the context of epistemic approaches to logic, semantics and the foundations of mathematics. 2 In fact, from the dialogical point of view, those actions that the local rules associate with the use of logical constants, such as choices, are a crucial element of its full-fledged (local) meaning. Indeed, if meaning is conceived as being constituted during interaction, then all of the actions involved in the constitution of the meaning of an expression should be rendered explicit. They should all be part of the object language. The roots of this perspective are based on Wittgenstein's Unhintergehbarkeit der Sprache – one of the tenets of Wittgenstein that Hintikka explicitly rejects. 3 According to this perspective of Wittgenstein language-games are purported to accomplish the task of displaying this " internalist feature of meaning ". Furthermore, one of the main insights of Kuno Lorenz' interpretation of the relation between the so-called first and second Wittgenstein is based on a thorough criticism of the metalogical approach to meaning Lorenz (1970, pp. 74-79). 4 If we recall Hintikka's (1996b) extension of van Heijenoort (1967) distinction of a language as the universal medium and language as a calculus, the point is that the dialogical approach shares some tenets of both conceptions. Indeed, on one hand the dialogical approach shares with universalists the view that we cannot place ourselves outside our language, on the other it shares with the anti-universalists the view that we can develop a methodical of local truth.) shares this rejection with all those who endorse model-theoretical approaches to meaning. 4 In this context Lorenz writes : Also propositions of the metalanguage require the understanding of propositions, […] and thus cannot in a sensible way have this same understanding as their proper object. The thesis that a property of a propositional sentence must always be internal, therefore amounts to articulating the insight that in propositions about a propositional sentence this same propositional sentence does not express anymore a meaningful proposition, since in this case it is not the propositional sentence that it is asserted but something about it. Thus, if the original assertion (i.e., the proposition of the ground-level) should not be abrogated, then this same proposition should not be the object of a metaproposition, […]. Lorenz (1970, p.75) – translated from the German by S.R. While originally the semantics developed by the picture theory of language aimed at determining unambiguously the rules of " logical syntax " (i.e. the logical form of linguistic expressions) and thus to justify them […] – now language use itself, without the mediation of theoretic constructions, merely via " language games " , should be sufficient to introduce the talk about " meanings " in such a way that they supplement the syntactic rules for the use of ordinary language expressions (superficial grammar) with semantic rules that capture the understanding of these expressions (deep grammar). Lorenz (1970, p.109) – translated from the German by S.R.

The dialogical approach to logic is not a specific logical system but rather a framework rooted on a rule-based approach to meaning in which different logics can be developed, combined and compared. More precisely, in a dialogue two parties argue about a thesis respecting certain fixed rules. The player that states the thesis is called Proponent (P), his rival, who contests the thesis is called Opponent (O). In its original form, dialogues were designed in such a way that each of the plays end after a finite number of moves with one player winning, while the other loses. Actions or moves in a dialogue are often understood as speech-acts involving declarative utterances or posits and interrogative utterances or requests. The point is that the rules of the dialogue do not operate on expressions or sentences isolated from the act of uttering them. The rules are divided into particle rules or rules for logical constants (Partikelregeln) and structural rules (Rahmenregeln). The structural rules determine the general course of a dialogue game, whereas the particle rules regulate those moves (or utterances) that are requests and those moves that are answers (to the requests). 1 Crucial for the dialogical approach are the following points: 1. The distinction between local (rules for logical constants) and global meaning (included in the structural rules that determine how to play) 2. The player independence of local meaning 3. The distinction between the play level (local winning or winning of a play) and the strategic level (existence of a winning strategy). 4. A notion of demonstration that amounts of building a winning strategy 5. The distinction between material dialogues, dialogues that include a rule allowing copycat moves, and dialogues combining both.

We are just lunching an Anglophone Masters in Lille and would very much like this information to be spread and invite students to join us.
I am certianly involved in the teachings and propose systematic and historic studies in the intereface between knowledge and meaning, in my case, with a strong logical perspective
on philosophy of mathematics; philosophy of logic; cognition, philosophy of sicences, philosophy of language and epistemology, philosophy of law, argumentation theory. However, as apparent by the description, neither the teachings nor the research-subjects are confined to that fields. In fact the philosophical fields covered by the masters are very broad including contemporary perspectives on ancient philosophy, and French philosophy

: One of the epistemological results emerging from this initial study, is that the different forms of co-relational inference, known in the Islamic jurisprudence as qiyās represent an innovative and sophisticated form of reasoning that not only provide new epistemological insights of legal reasoning in general but they also furnish a fine-grained pattern for parallel reasoning that can be deployed in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and that does not seem to reduce to the standard forms of analogical argumentation studied in contemporary philosophy of science. More specifically the main claim is that a dialectical framework provides the right instrument to stress three of the most salient features of this form of inference: (1) the interaction of heuristic with logical steps, (2) the dynamics underlying the meaning-explanation of the terms involved,(3) the unfolding of parallel reasoning as similarity in action. They display what we take to be the main epistemological idea behind the qiyās, namely: the open texture of the meaning of normative statements subject to this kind of parallel reasoning.

[...] on devra cependant se garder de dissimuler l'ambiguïté de certains énoncés, et de vouloir esquisser un syst`eme unitaire [...] Pour nous au contraire, nous voudrions déclarer d'emblée que la forme de l'encyclopédie est la plus parfaite que nous puissions jamais atteindre ...

ABSTRACT This volume explores the relation between legal reasoning and logic from both a historical and a systematic perspective. The topics addressed include, among others, conditional legal acts, disjunctions in legal acts, presumptions and conjectures, conflicts of values, Jørgensen´s Dilemma, the Rhetor´s Dilemma, the theory of legal fictions and the categorization of contracts. The unifying problematic of these contributions concerns the conditional structures and, more particularly, the relationship between legal theory and legal reasoning in the context of conditions. The contributions in this work constitute the first results of the ANR-DFG joint research project “JuriLog” (Jurisprudence and Logic), which aims at fostering the cooperation between legal scholars and philosophers. On the one hand, lawyers and legal scholars have an interest in emphasizing the logical character of legal reasoning. In this respect, the present enquiry examines the question of how logic, especially newer forms of dialogical logic, can be made fruitful as a significant area of philosophy for jurisprudence and legal practice. On the other hand, logicians find in legal reasoning a striving towards clear definitions and inference-procedures that is relevant to their discipline. In order to fully understand such reciprocal relationships, it is necessary to bridge the gap between law, logic and philosophy in contemporary academic research. The essays collected in this volume all work towards this common goal. The book is divided in three sections. In the first part, the strong relation between Roman Law and logic is explored with respect to the analysis of disjunctive statements in legal acts. The second part focuses on Leibniz´s legal theory. The third part, finally, is dedicated to current interactions between law and logic.

... Cited By in Scopus (0). Permissions & Reprints. Hugh Maccoll and the birth of logical pluralism.Shahid Rahman and Juan Redmond. Available online 16 April 2008. Excerpt. Note:This is a one-page preview only. Enable JavaScript for PDF Excerpt to view it inline. LOADING... ...

2 Introduction and practice of science. While the positivists argued for a spontaneous, steady and continuous growth of scientific knowledge the post-positivists make a strong case for a fundamental discontinuity in the development of science which can only be explained by ...

Abstract:
While discussing his notion of objective knowledge Popper introduces the idea of dispensability of knowing subjects, the autonomy of knowledge and the argumentative function of language. The main claim of our paper is that, on our view, objective knowledge produced by argumentative interaction is not achieved by dispensing knowing subjects but by differentiating between the play and the strategic levels of argumentation, where a distinction should be drawn between a particular concrete knowing subject engaged in that interaction, say Karl, and an arbitrary one. Moreover, the theory of meaning deployed at the level of plays, the so-called local meaning, provides already some kind of objective knowledge, since it is player-independent and it does not reduce to the purely logical one of the strategy level. In fact, despite our criticism we think that Popper's discussion of the notion objective knowledge still deserves to be reflected on, particularly so in view of new results concerning the formalization of Brouwer’s Creating Subject and the dialogical interpretation of the notion of epistemic assumption.

Prefacio, Capitulo 1 y principio del capitulo 2 de la version en espaniol , correjida y aumentada (con importantes modificaciones), del libro publicado 2015 en Springer LINKING GAME-THEORETICAL APPROACHES WIHT CONSTRUCTIVE TYPE THEORY. Los capitulo 2.1 y 2.2 dan una buena introduccion autocontenida a la dialogica con varios ejemplos comentados. Incluye tambien reflexiones filosoficas sobre ciertos conceptos cruciales para la dialogica

Abstract: The main claim of the present paper is that both the ontological and the propositional level of identity can be seen as rooted in a specific form of dialogical interaction ruled by what in the literature on game-theoretical approaches to meaning has been called formal rule or copy-cat strategy or (more recently) Socratic rule. In fact the leading idea is that explicit forms of intensional identity expressed by means of an assertion are, at the strategic level, the result of choices of the Proponent, who copies the choices of his adversary in order to introduce a real definition. For short, on this view, identity expressions stand for a special kind of argumentative interaction. The usual propositional identity predicate of first order logic is introduced, systematically seen, at a later stage and it results from the identity established at the ontological level. Written forms of identity make explicit the argumentative interaction that grounds both the ontological and the propositional levels. More generally, the present paper purports to contribute to the study of passage from oral practices to its written forms, with special focus on the transition from interaction, to its expression and to its propositional rendering.

Spanish Review of The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition. Edited by Shahid Rahman, Tony Street and Hassan Tahiri
appeared in Topicos.
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781402084041
http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S0188-66492012000100013&script=sci_arttext

La tesis principal del presente trabajo es que la noción de igualdad de la Teoría Constructiva de Tipos tiene sus raíces en una forma específica de interacción dialógica, gobernada por lo que en la literatura sobre enfoques lúdicos de la teoría del significado llamamos jugada de espejo (copycat moves) o, más recientemente, la regla socrática. La idea principal es que las formas explícitas de igualdad intencional expresadas en un juicio resultan, a nivel estratégico, de las elecciones del Proponente copiando las elecciones de su adversario para introducir una definición real. Discutiremos esta noción centrándola en la prueba constructiva del Axioma de Elección (AE, que le valió en 2005 el premio Kolmogorov a Per Martin Lof). En efecto, nuestro análisis muestra, basado en una demostración dialógica de tal axioma, que el proceso de síntesis por medio del cual construimos el consecuente de AE, se obtiene de un análisis del antecedente de tal forma que la coordinación armónica entre construcción y análisis se expresa en el lenguaje objeto por medio de igualdades definicionales. En pocas palabras la función de elección del consecuente de AE será establecida definicionalmente como igual a aquella función que haga verdadera el universal del antecedente. Esa igualdad expresa el resultado del siguiente proceso: cualquiera sea la función que un oponente elija para afirmar el antecedente, puede

La tesis principal del presente trabajo es que la noción de igualdad de la Teoría Constructiva de Tipos tiene sus raíces en una forma específica de interacción dialógica, gobernada por lo que en la literatura sobre enfoques lúdicos de la teoría del significado llamamos jugada de espejo (copycat moves) o, más recientemente, la regla socrática. La idea principal es que las formas explícitas de igualdad intencional expresadas en un juicio resultan, a nivel estratégico, de las elecciones del Proponente copiando las elecciones de su adversario para introducir una definición real. Discutiremos esta noción centrándola en la prueba constructiva del Axioma de Elección (AE, que le valió en 2005 el premio Kolmogorov a Per Martin Lof). En efecto, nuestro análisis muestra, basado en una demostración dialógica de tal axioma, que el proceso de síntesis por medio del cual construimos el consecuente de AE, se obtiene de un análisis del antecedente de tal forma que la coordinación armónica entre construcción y análisis se expresa en el lenguaje objeto por medio de igualdades definicionales. En pocas palabras la función de elección del consecuente de AE será establecida definicionalmente como igual a aquella función que haga verdadera el universal del antecedente. Esa igualdad expresa el resultado del siguiente proceso: cualquiera sea la función que un oponente elija para afirmar el antecedente, puede

Henri Poincaré y El Ir y Venir de la Filosofía a las Matemáticas
Sobre Contenido, Arquitectura Conceptual y Juegos al Alcance Humano.

Notas para una Lectura Contemporánea


Shahid Rahman
Université de Lille (Francia), UMR 8163: STL, ADA


Resumen:
En los albores del siglo XX, cuando la formalización de la matemática alcanza su cúspide, dos preguntas filosóficas de raíces venerables agitaron las discusiones en torno a sus fundamentos,  una, de índole metafísica-ontológica y otra de índole epistemológica, a saber:

• qué es un objeto matemático y
• qué constituye conocimiento matemático.

Henri Poincaré, uno de los más destacados matemáticos del siglo y ciertamente de la historia; prefigura con su respuesta a la primera pregunta la teoría intuicionista de Leo Brouwer:

• el objeto matemático es una construcción.

Respecto a la segunda pregunta su respuesta:

• el conocimiento matemático consiste en el desarrollo de una Arquitectura conceptual que le otorga su contenido propio

no parece ser haber sido comprendida o apreciada en su época. Ambas respuestas conducen a Poincaré a rechazar la analiticidad de las matemáticas, la reducción de ésta a la lógica y la concepción puramente sintáctica (no interpretada) del lenguaje matemático, proveniente del formalismo de David Hilbert que se impone rápidamente después de la creación de la metamatemática por Kurt Gödel; Paul Bernays y Alfred Tarski. Más aun, Poincaré propone que la noción de prueba rigurosa en matemáticas sea concebida, no como una pura derivación formal, sino en analogía con juegos al alcance humano, como la construcción de un lenguaje con contenidos al alcance humano. Construcción, Arquitectura y lenguaje con contenidos al alcance humano establecen; de acuerdo a Poincaré, un entramado por medio del cual se define el concepto de intuición matemática.

En la literatura reciente sobré Poincaré y su debate con Bertrand Russell y otros logicistas se encuentran trabajos que discuten la relación entre la respuesta ontológica y la epistemológica y proponen pensar la Arquitectura como la construcción de una estructura conceptual y proposicional. El nuevo estructuralismo en filosofía de las matemáticas parece encontrar sus raíces en Poincaré. Sin embargo, no hay detalles de cómo concebir el desarrollo de una tal Arquitectura. Más precisamente algunas de las teorías contemporáneas en filosofía de las matemáticas como el estructuralismo de Stewart Shapiro, no conciben la estructura como una construcción sino que parten de una idea realista de estructura: la estructura matemática es un objeto abstracto platónico, ante rem. .

Los objetivos principales de mi presentación, que en realidad busca sentar las bases de un nuevo proyecto de investigación, es defender la idea que la noción de Arquitectura conceptual de Poincaré puede ser elaborada en el contexto de una reconstrucción del programa Constructivista de Erlangen por medio de la teoría constructiva de tipos actual desarrollada por Per Martin-Löf. Es más, intentaré mostrar que la reconstrucción mencionada, si se implementa dentro de un cuadro dialógico, ofrece

(i) una nueva perspectiva sobre el argumento de Poincaré contra la analiticidad de las matemáticas – si el tiempo lo permite estudiaré el caso del axioma de elección que es un teorema en la teoría constructiva de tipos.

(ii) una solución al desafío que presenta para toda teoría lógico-matemática constructiva la introducción de operadores que trivializan la teoría (tonk).

(ii) una nuevo enfoque a la tesis filosófica de Poincaré de que la Arquitectura de las Matemáticas requiere el desarrollo de un lenguaje con contenidos al alcance de las capacidades humanas.

Ciertamente que el proyecto es de envergadura , sin embargo es fascinante. El punto de vista dinámico en la lógica y las matemáticas ya ha dado frutos en la intersección entre lógica; computación y lenguaje, es ahora el momento de explorar sus posibilidades en los fundamentos de las matemáticas tanto en su contenido matemático como filosófico: conocimiento es conocimiento de contenidos después de todo. 

La idea general es de vincular el punto de vista dinámico con la convicción de Poincaré que las matemáticas son el resultado de la actividad creadora de la imaginación humana en el mismo sentido que la filosofía lo es.

Jain Pluralism, Individuals and Context Sensitivity
(Closure talk (30 October 2011) at the

/International Conference: *Significance and Interpretation*/ in the context of the project*/ Knowledge based Society/)


Baia Mare (România) , 27-30 October 2011

In classical India, Jain philosophers developed a theory of viewpoints (naya-vãda) according to which any statement is asserted always within and dependent upon a given epistemic perspective or viewpoint that on one hand restricts its interpretation scope and on the other hand will render the conditions for the assertion of the statement at stake.
The Jainas furnished this theory of knowledge with an (epistemic) theory of disputation that takes into account the viewpoint in which the main thesis has been stated. In a recent joint paper with Nicolas Clerbout and Marie-Hélène Gorisse just published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic we developed a dialogical reconstruction of such a theory formulated in an argumentative frame: the idea is not to understand jain theory of knowledge as the mere addition logic+epistemology+argumentation, but rather as a logic based on a notion of meaning that is exclusively based on argumentative notions. In fact we centred our study in the work of tenth century jain philosopher Siddharsigani however in her PHD dissertation Marie-Hélène Gorisse showed that is also applies to the work of Prabachandra (of the same century) and it does seem that the general features I will talk about are shared if not by all at least by most of the jain philosophers.
In nowadays terms, it would be quite natural to understand the notion of viewpoint from a modal perspective. Certainly, the viewpoint indexes are not part of the object language. Indeed, viewpoints are implicit epistemic contexts that bound the assertion of statements, not operators that extend the set of logical constants. Moreover, each viewpoint represents a type of epistemic access to objects of the domain of discourse. This (epistemic) type defines a precise frame of the way assertions involving descriptions of those objects are to be interpreted and justified. Thus, each viewpoint is not to be seen just as a set of propositions (as in the standard notion of possible world) but rather as a whole epistemological, ontological and logical Weltanschauung. Accordingly
• each viewpoint should be thought as a set of secenarios with their own logic and epistemology. That is, as set of scenarios compatible with one particular type of knowledge
• there must be rules that regulate not only how to go from one scenario to the other but also from one scenario that constitutes the set of a given view point to the scenario of a different one.
Nevertheless, the most striking feature of the jain pluralistic theory of knowledege is to reach a complete knowledge, a knowledge encompassing somehow all the main diverging viewpoints. This is as the base of the famous story of 5 blind men unable to realize that each of the different parts they are touching constitute an elephant. Thus, the issue at stake is not only to be able to discriminate each each point of view but rather to attempt to see them as constituting positions in an overall a structure: complete or real knowledge amounts to realizing that one give point of view is only one of the positions of a whole structure. But this agrees with one of the most recent conceptions of modal logic or more generally intentionality: intentional reasoning is about reasoning in a structure. And here we are at the very core of my presentation that amounts:
- To the discussion of a structure that admits such a plurality of interpretative view points. We will see that the jain epistemological structure offers a new metalogical concept for epistemic (or more generally for modal) structures that does not reduce neither to validity nor to satisfyability and that we in Lille, following a suggestion of Tero Tulenheimo, call gobal satisfiability.
-
- To the study of a notion of individual dynamic enough to adapt to each of the viewpoints.
The point of the exercise is to see what we can learn nowadays from the Jain approach to multiple interpretation in the context of a theory of knowledge.

From the 6 of june to 13 of june 2011, in the context of an interchange
-convention for research and teaching between the universities of
Libreville and Lille3 and in the context of a common project supported by the "Agence universitaire de la Francophonie AUF) , section Afrique central"
about "Philosophie, logique et autres formes épistémologiques dans les
traditions orales africaines Vers une logique anthropologique" I was
invited by the university Omar Bongo at Libreville both as

speaker at the workshop on " Philosophie et Cadres Sémantiques des
Traditions Orales", with the particpation of the universities of
Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, Université Congo Brazzaville and
Université Congo RDC; and

as "professeur invité" with the objective to teach 17 hours al the level
of L3 : "Philosophie" and at the level of Masters " Logique et
Epistémologie" (in fact the whole of the costs of the travelling and the
stay were  overtaken byt the AUF-project and the University Omar Bongo)


The experience yielded a stimulating interchange at the research and
teaching level and motivated to attempt to  extend our conventions
to  other African universities such as the unviersity of Congo
Brazavillle, who has some researchers engaged in the topic of
argumentation,  and to continue our project with the aim to work
towards the development and building of an international institute on
"Argumentation, Language and Knowldege in the African Traditions"

You find herewith a photo with some of the students of L3 ... a very
active and intelligent group of young students!

shahid rahman

NO-ARGUMENTS
Denials, Refutations, Negations and the Constitution of Arguments

(Argumenter avec le NON
Dénégation, réfutation, négation et la notion de Argument)

Shahid Rahman
(Université de Lille, UMR: 8163, STL)

(Draft 29 April 2011)

Abstract:
The main aim of the paper is to study acts of denials (the dual of acts of assertion) and negation-operators in argumentation contexts. In fact I would like to explore the systematic process by the means of which an act of denial (such as denying that a given sentence  holds) launches an argumentation process and how it relates to a sentence building negation-operator (such as ~ ) – the latter can be subject of an act of denial and constitute the main claim of a subsequent argument. .

The notion of denial I am aiming at does not include refusal of proposals, however it shares with such refusals the feature that the result is not the negation of a sentence. If I make the proposal “If you come to the cinema with me, I will give you a kiss” and you answer “No thank you very much!” you are in fact turning down a proposal and this act is not equivalent to the negation of the conditional sentence involved in the proposal: turning down my proposal is not equivalent at all with “You come to the cinema and I do not give you a kiss”.

More precisely, I will develop the idea that some basic acts of denial are constitutive of an important kind of argument – I will call those acts of denials antagonistic denials and the correspondent arguments antagonistic arguments: There is no antagonistic argument without a main claim, there is no main claim of an antagonistic argument without the corresponding act of denial of an assertion. In other words antagonistic arguments occur when there is an initial assertion that becomes a claim (the claim that the content of the initial assertion act can be grounded) by the very act of denying it and this interaction triggers the mutual interchange of defences and challenges. The process by which the initial assertion becomes a claim requires the willingness of the player, called the Proponent, to accept the commitment to ground the sentence involved in the act of denial of the contender (the Opponent).

It is important to point out that the result of an antagonistic denial is not a sentence but an interactive process called argument (the result of an argumentation process). When the result of an act of denial is a sentence then negation-operators come into scene. The various negation-operators are the result of casting an act of denial into a sentence (in the object language). These sentences however are not anymore the content of an act of denial but the content of a negative act of assertion that can be subject of claims and antagonistic denials. While antagonist denials trigger an argumentation process, negation-operators are components of an argument.

Dialogues and Defeasible Reasoning

Shahid Rahman

(draft 29 April 2011)


Abstract: The standard logical approaches to model argumentation forms that involve defeasibility stress either the point on the non monotonic property of the turn-style or introduce a specific conditional (or a combination of the two). In a game-theoretic approach this means that either it is a property of winning strategies or it is about the rules that define a new logical constant (particle rules). In the present paper we will make use of an alternative to the approaches mentioned about available to the dialogical approach. The dialogical approach, as developed in the appendix, distinguishes between

• the rules defining the constants (local meaning),
• the rules that determine how to play (global meaning) and
• the rules that delineate the ways to win (strategic level) if winning is possible
• the notion of winning at  play level from winning at the strategic level

In this context, defeasible reasoning is about introducing some restrictions on the rules on how to play (global meaning), it consists neither in introducing a new conditional (at the local level) nor in changing the winning-strategies. According to our view, defeasibility principle involves semantic features at the global level. More precisely, according to the dialogical approach, defeasibility amounts to the task of verifying that the proponent’s thesis is compatible with the last concession(s) introduced in the play. Notice that the theory of meaning underlying dialogical logic provides a uniform semantics that though it is neither model-theoretic non-proof-theoretic can capture the features of both of those approaches within one frame.

Moreover, this approach allows to distinguish John Pollock’s justification of a belief relative to the actual defeasible reasoning at a given stage from warrant which assumes the set of all possible inferences that can be drawn by an idealized player at a given stage. In the dialogical framework, while warrant corresponds to the strategic level (triggered by the extensive form of the play at a given stage) justification corresponds to the play level. Precisely the dialogical level where the semantics is generated and where Pollock’s notion of multiple assignments find its natural place.

It should be also pointed out that the dialogical framework provides to the development defeasible reasoning  a level beyond the one of play and strategy: the level of cycles linked to the notion of dialogue-defineteness Dialogical defineteness is the dialogical way to deal with Church’s theorem on the non-decidability of first-order logic.

The analysis of defeasible reasoning within the dialogical framework should help to build a link between the approaches of default-logic and the argument-based approach initiated by John Pollock [1987], which defines notions like argument, counterargument, attack and defeat, and defines consequence notions in terms of the interaction of arguments for and against certain conclusions.

Remarks on Dialogical Meaning: A Case Study
Shahid Rahman
(Université de Lille, UMR: 8163, STL)

Talk at the workshop on "Proofs and Dialogues" organized by the Wilhelm-Schickard Institut für Informatik. Tübigngen, 25-27 february 2011


Abstract
The dialogical framework is an approach to meaning that provides an alternative to both the model-theoretical and the proof-theoretical semantics.

The dialogical approach to logic is not a logic but a semantic rule-based framework where different logics could be developed, combined or compared. But are there any constraints? Can we introduce rules ad libitum to define whatever logical constant? In the present paper I will explore the first conceptual moves towards the notion of Dialogical Harmony.

Crucial for the dialogical approach are the following points

1. The distinction between local (rules for logical constants) and global meaning (included in the structural rules)
2. The player independence of local meaning
3. The distinction between the play level (local winning or winning of a play) and the strategic level (global winning; or existence of a winning strategy).


In order to highlight these specific features of the dialogical approach to meaning I will discuss the dialogical analysis of tonk, some tonk-like operators and the negation of the logic of first-degree entailment .

Leibniz’s Notion of Conditional Right
and the Dynamics of Public Announcement

Sebastian Magnier and Shahid Rahman
(Université de Lille, UMR: 8163 (STL)


In some recent papers [Thi08], [Thi10] and [Thi11] underlines the fact that the study of the notion of conditional right of the young Leibniz already shows the start of the interaction of logical and episte-mological perspectives characteristic of his mature work.
In this context, the originality of Leibniz’ proposal is to provide a logical analysis of the notion of conditional right. The idea behind is that conditional rights such be understood as a special kind of conditional sentences.
The main aim of our paper is to implement Thiercelin’s thorough insights on Leibniz’s analysis of the conditional right in the framework of a dialogical approach to the Logic of Public Announcement [vDvdHK08]
.
According to our view, on one hand:
• PAL furnishes a dynamic epistemic operator which models communication exchange between different agents that seems to be very close to Leibniz understanding of the dynamics between the truth of a proposition and the knowledge of the truth of that proposition (Leibniz calls the latter certification of its truth);

on the other hand, the dialogical approach provides:
• a semantics for the dynamic epistemic operator in the context of conditional right by means of which (i) the exchange between agents leading to a public announcement amounts to the (con-tractual) interaction of commitments of both the benefactor and the beneficiary of a condi-tional right (ii) the notion of certification is understood as an action, namely as a move where the beneficiary asks the benefactor to stand to his commitments, (iii) some restrictions specific to the logical nature of the head and the tail of the conditional right can be implemented by combining PAL with some features of linear logic within the same theory of meaning.

We are just lunching an Anglophone Masters in Lille and would very much like this information to be spread and invite students to join us.
I am certianly involved in the teachings and propose systematic and historic studies in the intereface between knowledge and meaning, in my case, with a strong logical perspective
on philosophy of mathematics; philosophy of logic; cognition, philosophy of sicences, philosophy of language and epistemology, philosophy of law, argumentation theory. However, as apparent by the description, neither the teachings nor the research-subjects are confined to that fields. In fact the philosophical fields covered by the masters are very broad including contemporary perspectives on ancient philosophy, and French philosophy

The present paper, that provides an introduction to standard dialogical logic, has mainly didactic purposes. Thus, the study of the metalogical properties has been left totally by side. However, two sections have been added for those readers willing to go through a technically more demanding material. The first one contains a technically rigorous presentation of standard dialogical logic the second one presents, some very recent work towards a logic with content, applied to modal logic, where modal logic is developed in a purely dialogical way: instead of worlds, we have contexts, constituted by hypothetical assertions and where transitions between worlds are understood as extending contexts by the means of questions.

http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/cahiers/?00002
« Ce livre offre aux non spécialistes une introduction à la fois claire et précise de l’œuvre décisive de Gottlob Frege. La plume de Markus Stepanians nous guide au cœur du réseau fascinant qu’a élaboré cet esprit, l’un des plus lucides de la philosophie contemporaine, au carrefour de la philosophie des mathématiques, de la logique et du langage. La pensée de Frege, que beaucoup reconnaissent aujourd’hui comme étant le père de la philosophie analytique, est malheureusement toujours loin d’être apprécié à sa juste valeur dans la littérature francophone. »

En guise de préface:
Frege par lui-même

Par Shahid Rahman

L’œuvre de Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) compte parmi les œuvres capitales de la philosophie contemporaine et elle constitue le pilier de la philosophie analytique.
En effet, si à l’origine l’œuvre de Frege partage des intérêts et des fondements théoriques avec l’école de Franz Brentano et de Edmund Husserl, elle a fini par prendre un cours différent et original qui a jeté les fondements de la philosophie analytique. Une philosophie dans laquelle, comme l’a bien signalé Michael Dummett , l’analyse logique du langage est considérée comme l’unique accès possible à la pensée. Cette idée permet à Dummett de proposer la même méthode d’analyse comme pont entre la science et la philosophie. La science est dès lors conçue comme un ensemble de phrases (sous mode assertorique) qui expriment des propositions, et la philosophie de la science devient ainsi l’étude des relations logiques entre ces propositions. Science et philosophie retrouvent par là même les relations internes qui s’étaient évanouies entre les cimes et les abîmes du post-kantisme. En outre, à travers l’œuvre de Frege, la logique retrouve le rôle aristotélicien d’instrument (organon) pour la re-cherche des propositions qui fondent les théories scientifiques. Frege comprend une telle fondation comme le processus logique par lequel se trouve établi le lien avec l’objet ultime auquel réfèrent les propositions: l’objet vérité. En somme, la science, selon Frege, c’est le lieu où logique et vérité  se rejoignent; sa philosophie est l’analyse qui met en évidence une telle jonction.
La singularité de l’œuvre de Frege que nous venons de souligner est telle qu’il est très facile de succomber à la tentation de l’aborder à partir de ses résultats et de ses conséquences, et ainsi d’expliquer son sens de l’extérieur. On part par exemple de la philosophie du langage ou de la philosophie de la science contemporaines, ou encore de la naissance d’une nouvelle philosophie de la mathématique, voire du débat actuel qui oppose réalistes platoniciens, réalistes modérés, conceptualistes, antiréalistes et pragmatistes, pour en venir à une qualification et à une classification censées situer l’œuvre de Frege dans la mosaïque de la pensée contemporaine. Markus Stepanians, l’auteur de la présente et excellente introduction à l’œuvre de Gottlob Frege, n’est pas tombé dans ce travers. Ce qui distingue le travail de Markus Stepanians de toutes les autres introductions, et qui justifie que le public de langue française y ait aujourd’hui accès, outre l’évidente nécessité d’une œuvre de cette qualité en français, est précisément de proposer au lecteur une interprétation interne .
Dans d’autres exposés célèbres de l’œuvre de Frege, un programme philosophique bien déterminé guide la lecture, parfois au détriment de la compréhension de la dynamique interne de la théorie de Frege . En effet, certains commentateurs entendent montrer que Frege était un philosophe du langage, d’autres, qu’il était un mathématicien, d’autres encore, qu’il était un kantien, d’autres enfin, qu’il était un platonicien. En s’en tenant à une interprétation interne qui s’oppose aux tentatives de ces commentateurs, Markus Ste-panians nous présente une introduction dans laquelle la genèse et le développement de la pensée de Frege sont considérés comme un entrecroisement de connexions systématiques. Par exemple, Markus Stepanians ne se contente pas d’exposer la théorie du concept de nombre de Frege, ainsi que sa philosophie générale du langage (sens et référence), il montre comment la dynamique interne de la théorie de Frege conduit celui-ci du premier aspect de ses recherches (théorie du nombre) au second (philosophie du langage), ainsi que la manière dont ces deux aspects se connectent avec le projet général de sa philosophie. Cette stratégie fait du présent livre une véritable introduction pour le lecteur non initié qui, sans elle, aurait certainement du mal à comprendre les liens profonds tissés par Frege entre les fondements de l’arithmétique, la logique, la sémantique et la philosophie du langage que Markus Stepanians présente avec précision et concision.

The  paper "Finiteness of Plays " by Nicolas Clerbout (Convenio de Desempeño HACS - UV, Valparaíso ) publishe in  the IFColog Jourl of Logis and their Application in April 2014, shows how Church's undecidability of FOL is expressed in dialogical logic by means of an infinite number of  finite plays the repetition rank  of which cannot be fixed uniformily

Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science 38
Juan Redmond · Olga Pombo Martins · Ángel Nepomuceno Fernández Editors
Epistemology, Knowledge and the Impact of Interaction
With this volume of the series Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science edited by
S. Rahman et al. a challenging dialogue is being continued. The series’ first volume
argued that one way to recover the connections between logic, philosophy of sciences,
and sciences is to acknowledge the host of alternative logics which are currently being
developed. The present volume focuses on four key themes. First of all, several chapters
unpack the connection between knowledge and epistemology with particular focus on
the notion of knowledge as resulting from interaction. Secondly, new epistemological
perspectives on linguistics, the foundations of mathematics and logic, physics, biology
and law are a subject of analysis. Thirdly, several chapters are dedicated to a discussion
of Constructive Type Theory and more generally of the proof-theoretical notion of
meaning. Finally, the book brings together studies on the epistemic role of abduction
and argumentation theory, both linked to non-monotonic approaches to the dynamics
of knowledge

The subject of this book are game-theoretically oriented
semantics, which provide an alternative to traditional
Tarski-style semantics, implementing Wittgenstein’s
idea of the meaning as use. The basic idea is that the
meaning is obtained in a game between two players,
one trying to defend and the other trying to falsify
the expression at stake. The notion of truth, or that
of validity, is based on the existence of a winning
strategy of the initial verifi er in a game. The direction
is the opposite of that in Tarski-style semantics: the
game starts with the entire expression and runs
until its component parts are reached. In this book
I will be interested in two different game theoretical
traditions: Game Theoretical Semantics, developed
by Jaako Hintikka and Gabriel Sandu, and Dialogical
logic, fi rst introduced by Paul Lorenzen and Kuno
Lorenz and further developed by Shahid Rahman and
his associates.