A Study of Beall and Restall's Logical Pluralism

In this paper we will consider the idea of logical pluralism with emphasis on Beall and Restall's (2006) account of pluralism. We begin by specification of logical exclusivism, logical relativism and different accounts of logical pluralism and their difference with Beall and Restall's account of logical pluralism. We show that Beall and Restall believe in a kind of semantic logical pluralism according to which there are different plausible interpretations of the "case" in Traski's definition of validity. On the other hand, they also believe the so-called idea of normativity of logic. According to the idea, the notion of logical validity has normative implications for evaluation of arguments in natural language. Our key claim is that the latter claim undermines Beall and Restall's logical pluralism, that is, the normativity of logic collapses their logical pluralism into logical exclusivism. The study of different formulations of the normativity of logic is less considered on debates relating to logical pluralism. Along with considering logical normativity, we will criticize Beall and Restall's pluralism.