Recently, it has been proposed to understand a logic as containing not only a validity canon for inferences but also a validity canon for metainferences of any finite level. Then, it has been shown that it is possible to construct infinite hierarchies of ‘increasingly classical’ logics—that is, logics that are classical at the level of inferences and of increasingly higher metainferences—all of which admit a transparent truth predicate. In this paper, we extend this line of investigation by taking a somehow different route. We explore logics that are different from classical logic at the level of inferences, but recover some important aspects of classical logic at every metainferential level. We dub such systems meta-classical non-classical logics. We argue that the systems presented deserve to be regarded as logics in their own right and, moreover, are potentially useful for the non-classical logician.

Given a three-valued definition of validity, which choice of three-valued truth tables for the connectives can ensure that the resulting logic coincides exactly with classical logic? We give an answer to this question for the five monotonic consequence relations $st$, $ss$, $tt$, $ss\cap tt$, and $ts$, when the connectives are negation, conjunction, and disjunction. For $ts$ and $ss\cap tt$ the answer is trivial (no scheme works), and for $ss$ and $tt$ it is straightforward (they are the collapsible schemes, in which the middle value acts like one of the classical values). For $st$, the schemes in question are the Boolean normal schemes that are either monotonic or collapsible.

In this paper, in connection with the program of extending the Curry–Howard isomorphism to classical logic, we study the $\lambda \mu$ -calculus of Parigot emphasizing the difference between the original version of Parigot and the version of de Groote in terms of normalization properties. In order to talk about a satisfactory representation of the integers, besides the usual $\beta$ -, $\mu$ -, and $\mu '$ -reductions, we consider the $\lambda \mu$ -calculus augmented with the reduction rules $\rho$ , $\theta$ and $\varepsilon$ . We show that we need all of these rules for this purpose. Then we prove that, with the syntax of Parigot, the calculus enjoys the strong normalization property even when we add the rules $\rho$ , $\theta$ , and $\epsilon$ , while the $\lambda \mu$ -calculus presented with the more flexible de Groote-style syntax, in contrast, has only the weak normalization property. In particular, we present a normalization algorithm for the $\beta \mu \mu '\rho \theta \varepsilon$ -reduction in the de Groote-style calculus.

We explore the problems that confront any attempt to explain or explicate exactly what a primitive logical rule of inference is, or consists in. We arrive at a proposed solution that places a surprisingly heavy load on the prospect of being able to understand and deal with specifications of rules that are essentially self-referring. That is, any rule $\rho $ is to be understood via a specification that involves, embedded within it, reference to rule $\rho $ itself. Just how we arrive at this position is explained by reference to familiar rules as well as less familiar ones with unusual features. An inquiry of this kind is surprisingly absent from the foundations of inferentialism—the view that meanings of expressions (especially logical ones) are to be characterized by the rules of inference that govern them.

The aim of the paper is to argue that all—or almost all—logical rules have exceptions. In particular, it is argued that this is a moral that we should draw from the semantic paradoxes. The idea that we should respond to the paradoxes by revising logic in some way is familiar. But previous proposals advocate the replacement of classical logic with some alternative logic. That is, some alternative system of rules, where it is taken for granted that these hold without exception. The present proposal is quite different. According to this, there is no such alternative logic. Rather, classical logic retains the status of the ‘one true logic’, but this status must be reconceived so as to be compatible with (almost) all of its rules admitting of exceptions. This would seem to have significant repercussions for a range of widely held views about logic: e.g., that it is a priori, or that it is necessary. Indeed, if the arguments of the paper succeed, then such views must be given up.

This paper shows that any propositional logic that extends a basic substructural logic BSL (a weak, nondistributive, nonassociative, and noncommutative version of Full Lambek logic with a paraconsistent negation) can be enriched with questions in the style of inquisitive semantics and logic. We introduce a relational semantic framework for substructural logics that enables us to define the notion of an inquisitive extension of λ, denoted as ${\lambda ^?}$, for any logic λ that is at least as strong as BSL. A general theory of these “inquisitive extensions” is worked out. In particular, it is shown how to axiomatize ${\lambda ^?}$, given the axiomatization of λ. Furthermore, the general theory is applied to some prominent logical systems in the class: classical logic Cl, intuitionistic logic Int, and t-norm based fuzzy logics, including for example Łukasiewicz fuzzy logic Ł. For the inquisitive extensions of these logics, axiomatization is provided and a suitable semantics found.

Although much technical and philosophical attention has been given to relevance logics, the notion of relevance itself is generally left at an intuitive level. It is difficult to find in the literature an explicit account of relevance in formal reasoning. In this article I offer a formal explication of the notion of relevance in deductive logic and argue that this notion has an interesting place in the study of classical logic. The main idea is that a premise is relevant to an argument when it contributes to the validity of that argument. I then argue that the sequents which best embody this ideal of relevance are the so-called perfect sequents—that is, sequents which are valid but have no proper subsequents that are valid. Church’s theorem entails that there is no recursively axiomatizable proof-system that proves all and only the perfect sequents, so the project that emerges from studying perfection in classical logic is not one of finding a perfect subsystem of classical logic, but is rather a comparative study of classifying subsystems of classical logic according to how well they approximate the ideal of perfection.

In the present paper we prove that the poset of all extensions of the logic defined by a class of matrices whose sets of distinguished values are equationally definable by their algebra reducts is the retract, under a Galois connection, of the poset of all subprevarieties of the prevariety generated by the class of the algebra reducts of the matrices involved. We apply this general result to the problem of finding and studying all extensions of the logic of paradox (viz., the implication-free fragment of any non-classical normal extension of the relevance-mingle logic). In order to solve this problem, we first study the structure of prevarieties of Kleene lattices. Then, we show that the poset of extensions of the logic of paradox forms a four-element chain, all the extensions being finitely many-valued and finitely-axiomatizable logics. There are just two proper consistent extensions of the logic of paradox. The first is the classical logic that is relatively axiomatized by the Modus ponens rule for the material implication. The second extension, being intermediate between the logic of paradox and the classical logic, is the one relatively axiomatized by the Ex Contradictione Quodlibet rule.