PR 638: Are There Grounds of Logical Necessity?

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An examination of the grounds of logical necessity is offered by taking its lead from Barry Stroud’s challenge to the possibility of articulating satisfactorily any such grounds in full generality. The intelligibility of logical aliens is also considered, and different conceptions of such aliens, some more radical in their treatment of the issue than others, are examined as well. Logical aliens are beings whose thinking goes beyond the limits of thought, presumably with a logic different from our own. I argue that logical aliens are either something straightforward and unproblematic or something we cannot recognize as logical. In either case, there are ways of accommodating such aliens despite the fact that the search for grounds of logical necessity is ultimately misguided.