Pratt - Logic: inquiry, argument, and order

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Pratt, Scott L.
Logic : inquiry, argument, and order / Scott L. Pratt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-37376-7 (cloth)
1. Logic. I. Title.
BC71.P67 2009
160dc22

2009004195

For Alexander and Aaron

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank J. Brent Crouch, whose commitment to the study of the logic of Josiah Royce led to the beginning of this project; John Kaag, who served as my research assistant in the early stages; Jos Mendoza, who spent untold hours as my research assistant in the last stages of this project; and Aaron Pratt, who read and commented on the manuscript. I would also like to thank my colleagues John Lysaker, Mark Johnson, Erin McKenna, and Douglas Anderson, who asked key questions at crucial moments and provided ongoing encouragement. I would also like to thank the students who took Philosophy 325 at the University of Oregon and worked with successive stages of this book, providing invaluable feedback in the context of class discussion and outside class through helpful suggestions and questions that led to better presentations of the material. Finally, I would like to thank Scott Coltrane, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who provided the research support necessary to complete this work.

The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following for permission to reprint copyright material:

The author and publishers apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list, and would be grateful to be notied of any corrections that should be incorporated in the next edition or reprint of this book.

Franz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, identifies logic as the source of violence and oppression because it provides a framework for the division of the world into the colonizers or settlers and the colonized or natives. The colonial world, he says, is a world cut in two. The dividing line, the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations (Fanon, 1963, 38). Speaking of the experience of the former French colonies of Northern Africa, Fanon says The zone where the native lives is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the settlers. The two zones are opposed, but not in the service of a higher unity (Fanon, 1963, 38). Instead, the division between zones is sharp and affords no place to stand. Obedient to the rules of pure Aristotelian logic, he says, both [zones] follow the principle of reciprocal exclusivity (Fanon, 1963, 389). The division is not a division of equals, however. The exclusivitysettlers in one zone and natives in anotherprovides a framework for good and evil. While the settler zone reaps the benefits of the labor and land of the natives, the native zone is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how, and they die there, it matters not where or how (Fanon, 1963, 39). Once the world is divided, good, white, rich settlers reign over the evil, dark, poor. The reason for this state of affairs, according to Fanon, is neither the superiority of one group nor the result of some preexisting natural law, but rather a product of the logic of separation itself.