ABSTRACT
Common sense recoils from any purely conventionalist theory of logic, from any view that the so-called laws of logic are arbitrary or merely convenient. The theory under consideration does no obvious violence to common sense. This chapter explains the application of the theory to formal logic. Inconsistency can occur, so long as the language in which we speak comprises incompatible predicates; the language-makers, who decide where the boundaries limiting the applicability of predicate-words are to be drawn. But this, although true, does not show that the possibility of inconsistency arises from our language-making decisions. To hold that logical laws are generated by our language rules iss to commit oneself to the view that there could be a ‘pre-logical’ language in which such language rules are laid down.
