Jaroslav Peregrin - major recent writings
BOOKS:
 | Normative Species: How Naturalized Inferentialism Explains Us, Routledge, New York, 2024 This book is about rules, and especially about human capability to create, maintain and follow rules, as a root of what makes us humans different from other animals. The leading idea is that scrutinizing this capability is able to tell us who we humans are and what kinds of lives we live. It elaborates Wilfrid Sellars' visionary observation that "to say that man is a rational animal, is to say that man is a creature not of habits, but of rules"; and it builds on the ideas of Sellars' and Brandom's inferentialism, in a novel naturalistic version. The main tenet of inferentialism is that our language games are essentially rule-governed and that meanings are inferential roles. I see the task of reconciliation of inferentialism and naturalism as centered around the problem of naturalization of rules. I argue that the most primitive form of a rule is a cluster of normative attitudes. We humans are specific by our tendency to turn our attitudes on the attitudes themselves, and to do so in a specific way, which turns our "second-order" attitudes into "normative" ones. This self-reflective structure characterizes our ability to create, maintain, and follow systems of interconnected rules. Furthermore, I shows how our most important system of rules—that constitutive of our language—helped to lead us to our current position of rule-following, ultra-social, rational, and discursive creatures. | |
  | Philosophy of logical systems, Routledge, New York, 2019 This book addresses the hasty development of modern logic, especially its introducing and embracing various kinds of artificial languages and moving from the study of natural languages to that of artificial ones. This shift seemed extremely helpful and managed to elevate logic to a new level of rigor and clarity. However, the change that logic underwent in this way was in no way insignificant, and it is also far from an insignificant matter to determine to what extent the "new logic" only engaged new and more powerful instruments to answer the questions posed by the "old" one, and to what extent it replaced these questions with new ones. Hence, this movement has generated brand new kinds of philosophical problems that have still not been dealt with systematically. Philosophy of Logical Systems addresses these new kinds of philosophical problems that are intertwined with the development of modern logic. Jaroslav Peregrin analyzes the rationale behind the introduction of the artificial languages of logic; classifies the various tools which were adopted to build such languages; gives an overview of the various kinds of languages introduced in the course of modern logic and the motifs of their employment; discusses what can actually be achieved by relocating the problems of logic from natural language into them; and reaches certain conclusions with respect to the possibilities and limitations of this "formal turn" of logic. | |
 | Reflective equilibrium and the Principles of Logical Analysis:
Understanding the Laws of Logic [co-authored by Svoboda, V.], Routledge, New York, 2017 This book offers a comprehensive account of logic that addresses fundamental issues concerning the nature and foundations of the discipline. The authors claim that these foundations can not only be established without the need for strong metaphysical assumptions, but also without hypostasizing logical forms as specific entities. They present a systematic argument that the primary subject matter of logic is our linguistic interaction rather than our private reasoning, and it is thus misleading to see logic as revealing “the laws of thought”. In this sense, fundamental logical laws are implicit to our "language games" and are thus more similar to social norms than to the laws of nature. Peregrin and Svoboda also show that logical theories, despite the fact that they rely on rules implicit to our actual linguistic practice, firm up these rules and make them explicit. By carefully scrutinizing the project of logical analysis, the authors demonstrate that logical rules can be best seen as products of the so called reflective equilibrium. They suggest that we can profit from viewing languages as “inferential landscapes” and logicians as “geographers” who map them and try to pave safe routes through them. This book is an essential resource for scholars and researchers engaged with the foundations of logical theories and the philosophy of language. | |
 | Inferentialism: why rules matter, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2014 The term "inferentialism", coined by Robert Brandom, has become a trademark of a certain position in the philosophy of language which claims that meanings identify with inferential roles - a radical departure from more traditional semantic approaches. Independently of this, the term is now cropping up in logic, in connection with positions prioritizing proof-theory over model theory and approaching meaning in logical, especially proof-theoretical terms. The book brings these two strands together: it reviews and critically assesses the foundations of Brandomian inferentialism, it proposes upgrades, and it clarifies its relationship to inferentialism in logic. Emphasis is laid on clearly articulating the general assumptions on which inferentialism rests, thus elucidating its foundations, followed by discussing the consequences of this standpoint, and then dealing with the most intensive objections raised against the standpoint. | |
 | Meaning and Structure, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001 In this book (which is a reworked English version of my Czech 'Význam a struktura') I argue that recent and contemporary (post)analytic philosophy, as developed by Quine, Davidson, Sellars and Brandom, is largely structuralistic in the very sense in which structuralism was originally tabled by de Saussure. I reconstruct de Saussure's view of language, link it to modern formal logic and mathematics and reveal close analogies between its constitutive principles and the principles informing the holistic and neopragmatistic view of language put forward by Quine & comp. I also indicate that this view of language is not incompatible with formal approaches to semantics. |
PAPERS:
 | Minshaping and rules, T. Zawidski, (ed.): Routledge Handbook to Mindshaping, Routledge, London, to appear | |
 | Whence correctness?, TOPOI, online first | |
| | The inferential construal of meaning, R. Nefdt, G. Dupre, and K. Stanton (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, to appear | |
| Normativity between philosophy and science, Philosophical Psychology 37, 2024, 1215-1239 | |
| Logic as a science of patterns?, Journal of Philosophy 121, 2024, 5-25 | |
| | GOGAR and logical theories, L. Koreň and P. Stovall (eds.): Why and How we Give and Ask for Reasons, Oxford University Press, Oxford, to appear | |
| | Establishing Logical Forms [co-authored by Svoboda, V.], Logic and Logical Philosophy 32, 2023, 421-442 | |
| Inferentialism naturalized, Philosophical Topics 50, 2022, 33-54 | |
| | Logica dominans vs. logica serviens [co-authored by Svoboda, V.], Logic and logical philosophy 31, 2022, 183-207 | |
| | Logic and human practices, M. Blicha and I. Sedlár (ed.): The Logica Yearbook 2020, College Publications, London, 2021, 162-182 | |
| Normative attitudes, L. Townsend, P. Stovall and H. B. Schmid (eds.): The Social Institution of Discursive Norms, Routledge, New York, 2021, 121-137 | |
| Do computers "have syntax, but no semantics"?, Minds and Machines 31, 2021, 305–321 | |
| Moderate anti-exceptionalism and earthborn logic [co-authored by Svoboda, V.], Synthese 199, 2021, 8781–8806 | |
| The complexities of syntax, R. Nefdt, C. Klippi and B. Karstens (eds.): Philosophy and Science of Language: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2021, 13-42 | |
| | Normative mindshaping and the normative niche, L. Koreň, H. B. Schmid, P. Stovall and L. Townsend (eds.): Groups, Norms and Practices, Springer, Cham, 2020, 85-98 | |
| | Inscrutability of reference and Quine's structuralism, F. Janssen-Lauret (ed.): Quine, Structure and Ontology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2020, 82-95 | |
| | Carnap's Inferentialism, Schuster, R. (ed.): Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Springer, Cham, 2020, 97-109 | |
| | Logic as a (natural) science, I. Sedlár and M. Blicha (eds.): The Logica Yearbook 2018, College Publications, London, 2019, 177-196 | |
| | Is inferentialism circular?, Analysis 78, 2018, 450-454 | |
| | Davidson and Sellars on "two images", Philosophia 46, 2018, 183-192 | |
| | Inferentialism: where do we go from here, O. Beran, V. Kolman & L. Koreň (eds.): From rules to meanings: New essays on inferentialism, Routledge, New York, 2018, 249-260 | |
| | Intensionality in Mathematics, M. Piazza and G. Pulcini (eds.): Truth, Existence and Explanation, Springer, Cham, 2018, 57-70 | |
| | Podíl TIL na "posvětovění" české filosofické logiky, Filosofický časopis 64, 2016, 831-848 | |
| | What is (modern) logic taken to be about and what it is about , ORGANON F 23, 2016, 142-161 | |
| | Should one be left or right Sellarsian?, Metaphilosophy 47, 2016, 251–263 | |
| | Social normativism, M. Risjord (ed.): Normativity and Naturalism in the Social Sciences, Routledge, London, 2016, 60-77 | |
| | Logical formalization and the formation of logic(s) [co-authored by Svoboda, V.], Logique & Analyse 233, 2016, 55-80 | |
| | Logic reduced to bare (proof-theoretical) bones, Journal of Logic, Language and Information 24, 2015, 193-209 | |
| | Rules as the Impetus of Cultural Evolution, Topoi 33, 2014, 531–545 | |
| | Criteria for logical formalization [co-authored by V. Svoboda], Synthese 190, 2013, 2897-2924 | |
| | Inferentialism and Normativity, M. Beaney (ed.): Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, 1082-1097 | |
| | There is no such thing as predication, Conceptus 40/2011, 2013, 29-51 | |
| | Inferentialism and the Normativity of Meaning, Philosophia 40, 2012, 75-97 |
WORK IN PROGRESS:
| | Inferentialism, logic and epistemology |