Fabien Schang

Fabien Schang is doctor in philosophy and Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Goiás (Brazil).
Co-author of two books and a number of international scientific papers, his works are centered on logic and epistemology. His research program of formal philosophy consists in applying logical tools to philosophical problems, including a formal semantics of oppositions or partition semantics.

 

Issue: 2:3/2:4 (The seventh/eighth issue)

It is claimed hereby that, against a current view of logic as a theory of consequence, opposition is a basic logical concept that can be used to define consequence itself. This requires some substantial changes in the underlying framework, including: a non-Fregean semantics of questions and answers, instead of the usual truth-conditional semantics; an extension of opposition as a relation between any structured objects; a definition of oppositions in terms of basic negation. Objections to this claim will be reviewed.

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Issue: 6:1 (The twenty first issue)

The logic of conditional is developed hereby in a series of papers, contributing to a historical and critical analysis of what the logical constant is expected to mean.

Issue: 6:1 (The twenty first issue)

An analogy is made between two rather different domains, namely: logic, and football (or soccer). Starting from a comparative table between the two activities, an alternative explanation of logic is given in terms of players, ball, goal, and the like. Our main thesis is that, just as the task of logic is preserving truth from premises to the conclusion, footballers strive to keep the ball as far as possible until the opposite goal. Assuming this analogy may help think about logic in the same way as in dialogical logic, but it should also present truth-values in an alternative sense of speech-acts occurring in a dialogue. The relativity of truth-values is focused by this way, thereby leading to an additional way of logical pluralism.

Issue: 9:3/4 (the thirty fifth/sixth issue)

Roman Suszko said that “Obviously, any multiplication of logical values is a mad
idea and, in fact, Łukasiewicz did not actualize it.” The aim of the present paper is
to qualify this ‘obvious’ statement through a number of logical and philosophical
writings by Professor Jan Woleński, all focusing on the nature of truth-values and
their multiple uses in philosophy. It results in a reconstruction of such an abstract
object, doing justice to what Suszko held a ‘mad’ project within a generalized
logic of judgments. Four main issues raised by Woleński will be considered to test
the insightfulness of such generalized truth-values, namely: the principle of
bivalence, the logic of scepticism, the coherence theory of truth, and nothingness.

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Issue: 13:3 (The fiftieth issue)

This special issue on Logic and Law consists of four research papers and one interview focusing on epistemological reflections on relationships between logic and law, whether in a reductionist or complementary approach. Logic aims to elucidate through formal frameworks, yet it often grapples with the intricate nuances of everyday legal discourse. While law endeavors to delineate permissible conduct within defined jurisdictions, it often encounters challenges stemming from the ambiguity of terms, leading to frequent judicial interpretations and the perception that proliferating exceptions undermines the efficacy of the rule itself.

Issue: 13:3 (The fiftieth issue)

The concept of legal gap is tackled from a number of logical perspectives and semantic methods. After presenting our own goal (Section 1), a first introduction into legal logic refers to Bobbio’s works and his formalization of legal statements (Sections 2 and 3). Then Woleński’s contribution to the area is taken into account through his reference to the distinction between two juridical systems (viz. Common Law vs Civil Law) and the notion of conditional norms (Section 4). The notion of reason is also highlighted in the case of Raz’s legal logic, thereby leading to a future connection with von Wright’s logic of truth and an analogy made with an anti-realist reading of truth-values and norms (Section 5). Our personal contribution is introduced through a reflection on how logic should deal with the logical form of norms (Section 6), before entering a number of crucial definitions and distinctions for the concepts of norm, legal statement, and promulgation (Section 7). The final point is a proposed semantics for legal statements, which is both many-valued and gap-friendly (Section 8). A distinction between a number of requirements for permission and forbiddance leads to a set of non-classical juridical systems in which non-permission and forbiddance are not equivalent with each other any more; this does justice to Woleński’s former distinction between Common Law and Civil Law, also leading ultimately to a non-classical square of legal oppositions in which several legal operators may collapse into other ones (Section 9).