Forms of Logic - Discourse, Diagrams, and Proof - Scotto Di Luzio (2002)

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FORMS OF LOGIC:
DISCOURSE, DIAGRAMS, AND PROOF
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Patrick R. Scotto di Luzio

September 2002
UMI Number 3085369
Copyright 2003 by
Scotto di Luzio, Patrick Raphael
All rights reserved.
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ii
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I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in
my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a
dissertation for the degree of Doctor, Udsophv,
John Etchemendy
(Principal Advisor'

dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Johan^van Benthem

______________
Kenneth/Taylor

£ LL,
Krista Lawlor
Approved for the University Committee on Graduate Studies:
iii
A bstract
In this dissertation, it is argued that the existence of sound diagrammatic formal systems
does not suffice to legitimate the use of diagrams in mathematical proof.
The dissertation begins with the motivation and development of a “pragmatic” theory
of argumentation in which proofs are taken to be artefacts used to discharge discursive
responsibilities. With this framework it is shown that traditional formal logic enforces a
distinctive model of everyday, informal argument. In particular, it is explained how formal
derivations can be taken to be idealized exemplars of proof in virtue of the degree to which
they may be used to discharge the discursive responsibilities of univocality, explicitness, and
fine-grainedness.
It is then argued that traditional formal derivations are able to fulfill this role due
to certain features of the linguistic representation systems they employ. Diagrammatic
representation systems lack these features or possess them to a lesser degree, and hence
cannot support the same idealized discursive activities supported by linguistic ones. To
the extent that philosophical practice implicitly privileges the idealizations of traditional
formal logic as being constitutive of proof, diagrammatic representations are thus doomed to
second-class status in argumentation. This suggests that the legitimization of diagrammatic
reasoning or proof would require a significant broadening of what is taken to be the proper
subject-matter of logic.
iv
A cknowledgem ents
This dissertation is one outcome of an exploration which began in the summer of 1995
when, as an undergraduate mathematics research student at York University, I was first
introduced to the topic of diagrammatic reasoning. In the intervening seven years, I have
benefited from the insight, support, patience, and kindness of so very many people. Here
I can only begin to express my profound gratitude for all the generous guidance I have
received.
I’ll start by saying how fortunate I am to have had John Etchemendy as my advisor.
Back in the early stages of my graduate career, John gave me the space to float ideas in the
philosophy of logic which were at once ambitious, unorthodox, and half-baked. These ideas
were also rather critical of some of his work, but John nonetheless engaged them patiently.
I am very grateful for the many illuminating and stimulating conversations which helped
me turn what was little more than gut feelings into (what I hope are) the more refined and
balanced arguments which found their way into the dissertation.
I also had a great reading committee. Johan van Benthem, Krista Lawlor, and Ken
Taylor provided invaluable feedback on my drafts and really pushed me to think beyond
the narrow concerns of traditional philosophy of logic. While not officially on the committee,
Reviel Netz also provided insightful commentary on early drafts and always encouraged me
not to water down my philosophical ambitions.
Keith Stenning deserves special mention as someone who, perhaps more than anyone,
was instrumental in shaping the dissertation’s ultimate approach to diagrammatic systems
(and logic more generally). It was in Keith’s seminax Seeing Reason where I was first
introduced to the idea that logic could be understood in discursive or pragmatic terms.
This insight led exactly to the conceptual framework which allowed me to articulate the
concerns I had regarding formal diagrammatic proofs. It's hard for me to imagine how I
could have written this dissertation without that guidance.
Thanks as well go to Walter Whiteley, the mathematics professor who got me hooked
on the topic of diagrammatic proof and who opened my eyes to the possibility of pursuing
a graduate degree; to Sol Feferman and Grisha Mints, for teaching me the value of formal
methods and for being supportive of this project; to Paolo Mancosu, for generously inviting
me to participate in his graduate seminar find allowing me to test-drive some of my ideas;
to David Beaver, for presiding over my oral examination and providing helpful comments
and encouragement; and to all my professors, both at York and at Stanford, who always
provided a wonderfully stimulating environment in which to do philosophy.
And of course, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friends at Stanford, many of whom
provided invaluable perspective on my “stuff,” and all of whom made the last few years
such a pleasure. I recall specific conversations with Ben Escoto, Anthony Everett, Stacie
Friend, Caspar Hare, Oliver Lemon, Darko Sarenac, and Yonatan Shemmer which pushed
my thinking further or helped me find a better way to present my thoughts. By introducing
me to the works of Brandom, Laura Maguire gave me the satisfaction and comfort of seeing
how my project might fit into a grander vision of philosophy. And I expect I will always
turn to Manuel Vargas as a neverending source of strategic wisdom. (To all those friends
with whom I did not talk shop: believe me, I’m thankful for that too.)
Finally, I would like to thank my family and especially my parents for being so supportive
of me throughout everything. I deeply appreciate every opportunity they have given me.
vi
C ontents
Abstract *v
Acknowledgements v
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Arguments, Proofs, and Derivations ............................................................... 1
1.2 Language and D iagram s.................................................................................... 2
1.3 The Significance of Logical Systems.................................................................. 4
1.4 The Big P ictu re................................................................................................... 6
1.5 Preview and P la n ................................................................................................ 8
2 The Pragm atics o f Proof 14

2.1 “What is an Argument?” .................................................................................. 16
2.1.1 Argument Interpretation and S t r u c t u r e ............................................. 16
2.1.2 Argument Assessment............................................................................ 18
2.1.3 Formal Derivations.................................................................................. 19
2.1.4 Open Questions RegardingInformal A rg u m en t.................................. 21
2.2 A Pragmatic G a r b ............................................................................................. 26
2.2.1 M o tiv a tio n .............................................................................................. 26
2.2.2 Trying it O n ........................................................................................... 29
2.3 Representation and Responsibility.................................................................. 36
2.4 S u m m a ry ............................................................................................................ 37
3 Formal Derivation as a Model of A rgum entation 39

3.1 The Irrelevance of Formal L ogic?..................................................................... 40
3.2 Two Conceptions of Formal Logic..................................................................... 44
vii
3.2.1 Logic as T o o l.......................................................................................... 44
3.2.2 Logic as M o d e l....................................................................................... 46
3.3 Case Study: First-Order Logic .......................................................................... 48
3.3.1 P relim inaries.......................................................................................... 49
3.3.2 Three Kinds of Responsibilities............................................................ 50
3.3.3 The Enforcement of S ty le ..................................................................... 59
3.3.4 The Idealizations of Formal Logic......................................................... 61
3.4 The Relevance of FormalL o g ic ......................................................................... 63
3.4.1 Formal Derivation as a Descriptive M o d e l.......................................... 64
3.4.2 Formal Derivation as a Normative M o d e l .......................................... 67
3.4.3 C o n clu sio n ............................................................................................. 71
3.5 Next Steps ......................................................................................................... 72
4 Pragmatic Constraints on Syntactic Ontology 74

4.1 The Pragmatic T w ist.......................................................................................... 76
4.1.1 A Derivation by Any Other N am e?...................................................... 77
4.1.2 Taking it to a Lower Level..................................................................... 81
4.2 Goodman’s Theory of N o tatio n ........................................................................ 84
4.2.1 Terminology .......................................................................................... 84
4.2.2 Two Syntactic R equirem ents............................................................... 85
4.2.3 Linguistic P ra c tic e ................................................................................. 89
4.3 Differentiating D iagram s.................................................................................... 91
4.3.1 Maps ...................................................................................................... 92
4.3.2 Other Diagrammatic Schemes............................................................... 96
4.4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 108
5 Enthymeme, Explicitness, and Expressiveness 109

5.1 Eliminating Enthymemes ................................................................................ Ill
5.1.1 The Depths of Grammar........................................................................ Ill
5.1.2 Explicitness R ev isite d .......................................................................... 115
5.2 Diagrammatic Semantics................................................................................... 121
5.2.1 Symptoms of D iagram m aticity............................................................ 121
5.2.2 Some Example S y ste m s ........................................................................ 127
5.3 Exploiting S p a c e ............................................................................................... 134
viii
5.3.1 The Content of S p a c e ............................................................................. 134
5.3.2 The Space of C o n te n t............................................................................. 138
5.4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 139
6 Artefactual Formality 141

6.1 Syntactic Building-Blocks................................................................................. 143
6.1.1 Levels of S tru cture.................................................................................. 143
6.1.2 Structural Reinforcem ent...................................................................... 144
6.2 Inferential Fine-grainedness.............................................................................. 147
6.2.1 Artefactual F o rm ality ............................................................................ 148
6.2.2 Other Analyses........................................................................................ 152
6.3 Case Studies in DiagrammaticInference.......................................................... 158
6.3.1 Shin’s Venn-I........................................................................................... 158
6.3.2 Barwise and Etchemendy’s Hyperproof................................................. 164
6.4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 170
7 Conclusion 171
7.1 A Lacuna in the Logical A p p ro ach .................................................................. 171
7.2 Discourses of L ogic............................................................................................. 174
Bibliography 177
ix
List o f Figures
4.1 Two Venn d ia g ra m s .......................................................................................... 99

4.2 The syntax of F G ............................................................................................. 104
4.3 Two ambiguous FG artefacts........................................................................... 105
5.1 Illustration of a free ride with Euler circles...................................................... 125

5.2 FG Construction R u le s .................................................................................... 132
5.3 Highlights of the Euclid 1.1 construction......................................................... 133
6.1 Prepositional introduction and elimination rules .......................................... 145

6.2 “Derived” prepositional r u le s ............................................................................ 147
6.3 First-order quantifier introduction and elimination r u l e s .............................. 151
6.4 Venn-I inference r u l e s ....................................................................................... 160
6.5 A path to ill-formedness in V e n n -I.................................................................. 162
6.6 An application of Unification........................................................................... 163
6.7 A “reorganizational” use of Unification............................................................ 163
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 A rg u m en ts, P roofs, and D erivations
Arguments abound. Courtrooms, lecture halls, newspapers, conversations—these are but

some of the venues where people attempt to demonstrate the truth of some claim. For
most philosophers working in the analytic tradition, it is a commonplace to suppose that
formal derivations—the objects one is trained to produce in logic classes—bear some sort
of important relation to the informal arguments one finds in such “everyday” contexts.1 In
particular, it is widely thought that derivations embody an idealization of deductive proof;
a formal derivation given within a sound logical system serves as a paradigmatic example
of deduction against which “everyday” arguments can be compared.
The honorific status of formal derivations vis a vis proof and argumentation is instituted
more by the implicit practice of the philosophical community than by any explicit articula
tion and defense by its practitioners.2 Consider, for example, the methodology advocated by
virtually every standard logic textbook for demonstrating the validity of a given argument
(here conceived merely as a set of premises and a conclusion). Even where the argument
1Unless otherwise stated , “argument" will be used in the familiar informal sense, rather than in the more
technical sense of a pair consisting only of a set of premises and a conclusion. Further, “formal” arguments
and “formal” language are those standardly treated in m athem atical logic, whereas “informal” ones are
those of natu ral languages like English. Of course, there are some in the Montague tradition who think th at
natural languages are formal ones (though very complicated), b u t I will retain my terminology if only to
em phasize the distinction.
2T his “universal” claim, of course, admits of exceptions. For instance, in the field of inquiry known as
argumentation theory or informal logic, formal derivations are quite decidedly not granted such a privileged
status; w ithin this community, it is almost universally thought th a t formal derivations offer a very poor
idealization of everyday reasoning.
Chapter 1. Introduction 2
in question is given in natural language, it is presumed that the ultimate demonstration

of its validity will be achieved through a formal derivation: the student—and budding
philosopher—is required to translate the premises and conclusion of the natural language
argument into some formal language, and then exhibit a formal derivation of the translated
conclusion from the set of translated premises, using the inference rules of that logic. In
other words, only through the demonstration of a formal argument’s validity is the valid
ity of the natural-language argument taken to be adequately shown. The prevalence of
such a methodology reflects and encourages a widespread tendency to deem formal deriva
tions to be the canonical demonstrations of validity which informal proofs can only hope to
approximate.
This tendency is given a more explicit airing in the oft-heard platitude that mathematical
proofs ought to be “formalizable.” Tymoczko puts it like this: speaking of “acceptable”
informal proofs, “[w]e can always find an appropriate formal language and theory in which
the informal proof can be embedded and ‘filled out’ into a rigorous formal proof’ (Tymoczko
1979, p.60). It is widely believed that, given an informal proof, there needs to be some tight
relationship between it and some formal analogue if the informal proof is “really” to be a
proof. This picture has almost “Platonic” connotations, with everyday proofs getting their
legitimacy at least partially in virtue of their relation to some ideal (i.e., formal) derivation.
1.2 L anguage and D iagram s
This picture also seems to underlie a particular strategy that has emerged in the debate
over the proper role of diagrams in proof and reasoning. Diagram-based argumentation
has been in disrepute among philosophers of mathematics since at least the mid-nineteenth
century, but some logicians have recently challenged this doctrine by developing logical
systems for treating certain kinds of diagrams.3 These systems have exactly the tri-partite
structure of traditional formal logics: rules are given to delineate the class of well-formed
representations, a mathematically precise semantics is provided, and proofs (i.e., formal
derivations) are defined to be sequences of well-formed representations according to certain
rules of inference. The systems are then shown to be sound and, in some cases, complete.
3For instance, Shin (1994) presents a logic for Venn diagrams; Hammer (1995) for higraphs, Euler circles,
and Peirce diagrams; Miller (1999) for Euclidean diagrams; and Luengo (1995) for a diagram m atic subsystem
of Hilbert’s geometry. O ther logical systems (e.g., Hammer 1994; Barwise and Etchemendy 1994) are
heterogeneous in th a t both sentential and diagrammatic representations are treated.
Such technical results are then to taken to have a rather sweeping philosophical upshot.
According to Barwise and Etchemendy (1995, p.214):
The importance of these results is this. They show that there is no principled
distinction between inference formalisms that use text and those that use dia
grams. One can have rigorous, logically sound (and complete) formal systems
based on diagrams.
Lemon and Shin (2002) draw a similar philosophical moral:
This type of result directly refuted a widely-held assumption that diagrams are
inherently midleading, and abolished theoretical objections to diagrams being
used in proof.
So once again, we find an implicit privileging of the formal over the informal, as it is in
virtue of their employment in formal derivations (as licensed by some logical system) that
the legitimacy of non-linguistic representation schemes is thought to be certified:
As with language, the diagrams used in real-life reasoning and representation

have a grammatical structure and a meaning, however ill-defined or ambiguous
in particular cases. When the grammar and semantics is specified carefully
enough, diagrams can be used in entirely rigorous proofs (Hammer 1995, p.26).
To continue with the Platonic metaphor: given the privileged status afforded to formal
derivations as paradigmatic examples of deductive inference, diagrammatic logical systems
seem to ensure that entry into the realm of “ideal'1 derivation is sufficiently meritocratic
and not arbitrarily limited to those which employ only linguistic forms of representation.
The existence of ideal diagrammatic derivations thus secured by such systems, we might
expect that “formalizability” would once again be invoked to characterize the adequacy of
everyday diagrammatic proofs, just as in the case of the more traditional, linguistic ones.
At first glance, then, it may appear that the formulation and study of diagrammatic
logics is in certain respects a conservative enterprise. There is innovation, of course, in that
the representations being studied aren’t linguistic. Nonetheless, insofar as the basic tech
niques and formulations being employed appear to be completely analogous to those used
for linguistic representations, there may be a tendency to view such study as, ultimately,
doing “logic as usual,” but just on a wider class of representations. Indeed, some have crit
icized this particular methodology for characterizing and vindicating diagrams—let’s call it
the “Logical Approach”—for not taking adequate account of the distinctly spatial features
of the representations (Lemon 1997; Lemon and P ratt 1997). Presumably, it’s precisely
those features (and their upshot in efficacy) which make diagrammatic representations of
particular interest in the first place.
Now, of course, the Logical Approach need not be the only one followed in the quest to
understand the use of various representation schemes. But it is initially a natural approach
to adopt if, as has actually been the case, there is a perceived need to legitimate such
study within philosophical circles, and to challenge the background assumption of many
mathematicians and philosophers that diagrams at best provide a psychological crutch
never to be relied upon in a genuine proof of a theorem. Shin, for instance, sees the
development of diagrammatic logical systems as a first step towards a broader understanding
of representation in general:
As long as we treat diagrams as secondary or as mere heuristic tools, we cannot

make a real comparison between visual and symbolic systems. After being free
from this unfair evaluation among different representation systems, we can raise
another interesting issue: If a visual system is also a standard representation
system with its own syntax and semantics, then what is a genuine difference, if
any, between linguistic and visual systems? The answer to this question will be
important not just as a theoretical curiosity but for practical purposes as well
(Shin 1994, p.10).
So Shin believes that once we have dispelled the worry that diagrammatic reasoning can’t
be rigorous (through the exhibition of respectable diagrammatic logics, for example), we
would be in a better position to address subtle questions about its nature and use.
1.3 T h e Significance o f Logical S ystem s
Two crucial questions to ask about this Logical Approach to vindicating diagrams, then,
are:
• Does the development of diagrammatic logical systems truly “level the playing field,”
legitimating the use of diagrams in both formal and informal proof?
• Can the Logical Approach help to illuminate what might be distinctive about the use
of diagrams in proof?
These are questions concerning the specific philosophical upshot of the existence of dia
grammatic logics. To answer such questions seriously and adequately, however, requires
a perspective that looks beyond the properties of this or that particular system. As we
have seen, the Logical Approach has employed what is ultimately a standard methodology
in the service of a rather novel philosophical end. In order to assess its success with respect
to its ends, one can’t help but look closely at the nature and appropriateness of the very
methodology it employs, and hence investigate the role that formal logic has played and
continues to play in the philosophical conception of proof:
• How has formal logic informed our understanding of informal argumentation more
generally? How should it?
This dissertation endeavours to provide a unified answer to these questions. I will argue
that formal logic as a whole has provided an important idealization of proof—precisely the
one paradigmatically exemplified by standard formal derivations—in which the employment
of linguistic representations turns out to be more appropriate than that of diagrammatic
ones. In other words, according to the pervasive logical conception of what the activity
of proving ultimately amounts to, linguistic representations support that activity better
than diagrammatic ones. Perhaps surprisingly, this result has little to do with whether
diagrammatic representations can be used “correctly” (that is, in a truth-preserving way).
Rather, what’s at issue is what can be accomplished by using such representations. It
turns out that most diagrams simply aren’t well-designed for a particular, theoretically-
motivated kind of communicative job, though they of course might be ideal for some other
ones. Indeed, our investigation will be very suggestive of what these other “jobs” might be,
and why we should be interested in them.
The Logical Approach to vindicating diagrammatic representations, then, can have only
partial success. It is true that diagrammatic logical systems succeed in demonstrating
that one is able to manipulate diagrams in a truth-preserving manner, and hence, one is
not doomed to deductive failure as a result of employing non-linguistic representations.
However, this in itself does not suffice to demonstrate that diagrammatic representations
are just as appropriately used in proof as their linguistic counterparts. Taking mainstream
logical practice as our guide, we will find that there is something distinctive about the
activity of proving which “in the limit” goes beyond mere truth-preservation, and which
favours the use of linguistic representations over diagrammatic ones. Ironically, it’s the
Logical Approach which will help to lay bare some of the crucial dis analogies between
diagrammatic and linguistic representation schemes which in turn serve to differentiate
their appropriateness for proofs. It’s precisely by its trying to squeeze diagrams into a
traditionally linguistic mold that some of these differences can be seen more clearly.
It should be noted that our “negative” result for diagrams is merely the flipside of a
“positive” one for standard (and de facto certain linguistic) logical systems. Our consider
ation of alternative kinds of representation schemes serves to motivate a positive account
of how formal logic relates to everyday argumentation, vindicating to a considerable extent
at least one aspect of current philosophical practice.
Remarkably, then, what at first seem to be two relatively independent sets of issues—
those involving the formal vs. the informal; and those involving the linguistic vs. the
diagrammatic—turn out to be related in important ways. It is in virtue of an account of
how formal logic idealizes everyday argumentation that a philosophically illuminating dis
tinction between representation schemes is brought to light. And it is by considering novel,
diagrammatic formal systems that the distinctive idealization of argumentation embodied
by traditional logical systems is brought into relief. It is this interplay which animates the
particular investigation pursued here.
1.4 T h e B ig P ictu re
Most of the dissertation consists in the working through of a perspective, one which, when
adopted, does most of the work of establishing the conclusions mentioned above. But
the devil, as they say, is in the details, and so we will need to engage in discussions and
investigations of rather narrow focus, having to do, for example, with this or that particular
logical system. As such, there is a danger of losing sight of how the various parts of the
dissertation are supposed to fit together as an overall argument. It thus might be of use to
catalogue in this section what I take to be the three main upshots of the dissertation, and
then to outline in the following section how the various chapters are supposed to contribute
towards this end.
The first intended upshot of the dissertation is this:
• It is fruitful to think of formal derivations in “pragmatic” or discursive

terms.
In other words, I claim that formal derivations can be understood in terms of their com
municative or discursive properties, and it is not a stretch to read the entire dissertation
as being devoted to illustrating what this might mean. It is worth mentioning for now
that the conception of logic advocated here diverges somewhat from what I take to be the
standard way of thinking about formal logic and formal derivations. The common tendency
is to treat derivations primarily, and perhaps even exclusively, as mathematical objects, as
cleanly structured, abstract entities. But without denying that they are cleanly structured,
abstract entities (which is part of why they’re so good to theorize over), I suggest that
they should also be seen as concrete, or at least, concretizable pieces of argumentation, as
objects that can actually be deployed in the name of some communicative or discursive end.
To talk about formal derivations in such discursive terms—as the sort of objects one would
actually present to an audience—may seem quite strange to someone accustomed to seeing
them exclusively as rarified mathematical objects. Much of this dissertation is devoted to
showing how it can be done, and why it is illuminating to do so.
In particular, this pragmatic understanding of formal logic affords us a way to compare
and contrast formal derivations with informal proofs on the one hand; and diagrammatic
proofs with linguistic ones on the other. It allows us to make illuminating comparative
assessments of logical systems—a natural thing to want to do if we are serious about un
derstanding the potentially distinctive role diagrams may play in proof and argumentation.
Shining a pragmatic light on formal derivations yields what I intend to be the dissertation’s
second main upshot:
• Linguistic formal derivations standardly have distinctive discursive prop

erties, ones which allow mainstream formal system s to offer a credible
idealization of everyday argumentation.
We are occasionally reassured that formal derivations offer an idealization of everyday rea
soning or proof. But rarely is it ever explained what exactly this idealization amounts to.
How is everyday argumentation idealized by formal logic? Which argumentative aspects are
being retained and amplified? Which ones are abstracted away? A pragmatic understand
ing of formal logic is shown to provide conceptual resources for answering these questions.
These answers in turn set the stage for the third main upshot, the one having to do with
diagrams in particular:
• Diagrammatic proofs, even formal ones, tend not to possess these discur
sive properties, or at least not all of them to the same degree.
More precisely, it can be shown that particular hinds of diagrammatic systems definitely
fail to possess some of the discursive properties especially distinctive of standard, linguistic
derivations. For this reason, the technical results appealed to by some defenders of diagrams
axe as of yet insufficient for achieving the broad philosophical goals they set out for them
selves. In the absence of some principled account of what it is exactly that formal systems
are expected to do for us (and by “us,” I mean, philosophers who are interested in the real-
world phenomena of proof, reasoning, and argumentation), the philosophical significance of
these systems remains an open question. In fact, if the purpose of the Logical Approach to
vindicating diagrams is to show that diagrammatic proofs can be just like linguistic ones in
all relevant respects, then this strategy can’t help but backfire. The development of formal
diagrammatic systems makes clear the fact that there are discursive and argumentative
tasks for which diagrams cannot, but language can, be used effectively.
Note, though, that such observations need not be taken to imply the wholesale dene-
gration of diagrammatic proof. Only to the extent that one upholds to the exclusion of
all others the particular idealization of proof and argumentation offered by standard, lin
guistic, first-order formal logic is one bound to interpret as negative and regretful the fact
that diagrammatic systems possess different discursive properties. What our investigation
suggests is that the legitimization of diagrams in proof can’t be achieved through some con
servative strategy of assimilation—by an attempt to show that they are just like the current
standard-bearers of formal logic. Rather, if it is to happen to all, their legitimization will
have to depend upon a significant recaiibration of what logic as a discipline is all about—in
what logicians and philosophers take to be worth explaining and worth understanding.
1.5 P rev iew and Plan
In C h a p te r 2 , 1 begin by introducing a general framework which grounds the comparative

assessments our inquiry demands, taking as a starting-point the bare-bones theory of argu
mentation presented by Terence Parsons in his paper, “What is an Argument?” There he
distinguishes two components to any argument. One is what he calls the reasoning struc
ture., consisting merely of the steps of the argument or proof—for instance, the sequence of
statements that gets written down when one is asked to produce a formed derivation. The
other main component is the setting—the axioms, assumptions, emd inference rides that are
presumed to be acceptable. For formal derivations, this is precisely what is supplied by the
logical system itself.
Parsons stresses that arguments may be assessed along either of these dimensions. For
example, one kind of assessment—what he calls a logical assessment—involves checking
that the reasoning structure of an argument is indeed faithful to its setting; e.g., that some
particular formal derivation in fact abides by the inference rules of the logical system in
which it is couched. But a different kind of assessment is also possible, whereby what is
evaluated is the appropriateness of the setting itself given particular argumentative ends,
independent of this or that reasoning structure. Called an epistemological assessment, this
is what one is up to when one says that, for example, intuitionistic logics are preferable to
classical ones, or that lingu is tic systems provide better proofs than diagrammatic ones.
With Parsons’ theory of argument assessment providing structure and motivation, a
rudimentary theory of argument interpretation is made to emerge by giving it a “prag
matic twist.” In particular, it is proposed that, when putting forward some proof in some
discursive context, a prover should be seen to be making two kinds of communicative de
cisions. One decision is the obvious one of deciding—line by line, statement by statement,
diagram by diagram—what her proof will consist in. But she also makes another decision:
she decides in which system to couch her proof in the first place. She can thus be held
accountable for the choices she makes in this regard. In particular, even though her proof
may be correct relative to the system in which it is couched, it may well be the case that
the system itself is inappropriate for certain discursive contexts. This is the key insight
from which our criticism of the Logical Approach to vindicating diagrams proceeds.
In C h a p te r 3 , 1 apply our general pragmatic framework to a particular formal system;
namely, first-order logic. It is here where we first see how the formal rules of first-order
logic end up having a significant discursive upshot. More specifically, it is argued that,
in writing down a correct first-order derivation, a prover can’t help but have achieved the
following three distinctive communicative acts.
First of all, partially due to the unique readability of first-order language (i.e., the
fact that every well-formed formula has a unique and effective syntactic parsing), a prover
succeeds in providing a univocal artefact. This, of course, is a feature not shared by English
or any other natural language. There exist, for example, recognizably correct English
sentences which do not have a unique syntactic parsing, and which are often semantically
ambiguous as well. Such ambiguity isn’t tolerated by first-order language, however, and it
is argued that this is one aspect of formal logic’s standard idealization of everyday proof
and argumentation.
Secondly, someone who presents a correct first-order derivation can’t help but be ex
tremely explicit in presenting the background assumptions whuse truth would ensure the
Chapter I. Introduction 10
truth of her argument’s conclusion. As is well known, formal derivations demonstrate the
validity of arguments; they are successful only if they admit of no counterexamples. This
is an absolutely striking feature of formal argumentation when compared to most of what
passes as good argumentation in everyday, informal contexts. Everyday English arguments
are very rarely held to such a high discursive standard—in the real world, it is rarely
demanded that the denotational and semantic constraints which govern traditionally non-
logical vocabulary be made explicit whenever some particular claim is put forward. And
thank goodness. Conversation would be quite tedious is people went around articulating all
their background assumptions. But according to the standard way of doing formal logic, any
derivation which implicitly appeals to denotational restrictions on the non-logical vocabu
lary is simply a bad derivation. Put more positively: in a good first-order derivation, there’s
no such thing as a “suppressed” premise—every semantic constraint needed to eliminate
counterexamples is expressed for all to see. This is a feat rarely accomplished in everyday
discourse.
Finally, the prover will have provided a proof which is syntactically fine-grained. First-
order derivations are detailed demonstrations whose transitions each amount to some simple
kind of syntactic manipulation. Thus, formal derivations don’t rely on inferential “leaps.”
They display, in slow motion as it were, the physical transformation of assumptions into
conclusions. Again, this contrasts with the argumentation of everyday life; often, the tran
sitions of an argument in English won’t amount to some simple formal manipulation.
I take these three distinctive features of standard formal argumentation to be of a piece.
They are all hard to accomplish in everyday life! Someone who aspires to present a correct
first-order derivation in effect takes on an extremely onerous discursive burden, quite unlike
the one usually undertaken in everyday discourse. Furthermore, there is a sense in which
such an onerous regime is enforced by first-order logic: in abiding by the usual inference rules
of first-order logic, one can’t help but undertake these distinctive discursive responsibilities.
Chapter 3 concludes with some thoughts concerning the sort of circumstances in which it
might be appropriate to make such onerous demands on a prover (and likewise for a prover to
accept them). It is suggested that formal derivations get their theoretical lustre in virtue of
their being objects tailor-made to discharge these jacked-up communicative responsibilities.
Because the objects it describes are well-suited for use in a particular idealized discursive
activity, formal logic can be seen to provide a credible model of argumentation.
Having introduced our main account of how formal logic relates to informal argumenta
tion, we proceed to use it to assess the fruits of the Logical Approach. In particular, for each
of the three discursive responsibilities just highlighted, we explore in more detail how it is
that first-order systems are able to enforce these responsibilities, and then we investigate to
what extent certain diagrammatic systems may be used to discharge them. In each case, we
will find that, quite often, diagrammatic systems cannot be used to discharge the onerous
discursive burdens enforced by most formal linguistic systems.
For example, in C h a p te r 4, it is shown that one common diagrammatic scheme—that
of metric maps—does not support the responsibility of univocality. This is despite the fact
that a fully precise syntax and semantics of maps can be developed. An investigation into
the metaphysics of formal logic helps to reveal a crucial fact that the mathematization
of logic has tended to obscure; namely, that the syntactic objects of standard linguistic
systems are the sorts of things that can be perfectly and recognizably instantiated. This is
a pre-condition not met by every diagrammatic scheme, but which is crucial for discharging
the idealized responsibility of univocality in proof.
In C h a p te r 5, I take what is often proposed to be a positive feature of diagrammatic
systems—the free inferential rides they afford; that phenomenon where, just by drawing
the diagram, certain conclusions can immediately be read off—and turn it on its head.
According to the mainstream idealization of proof which puts a premium on making explicit
the semantic constraints which delineate the space of possible counterexamples, to appeal to
free rides (as one is bound to do under particular diagrammatic schemes) is to do precisely
the opposite of what one is “supposed” to in a proof.
Finally, in C h ap ter 6, I consider how two representative diagrammatic systems end up
licensing derivations which aren’t maximally fine-grained in the traditional sense. In the
system of Venn diagrams, for example, geometric constraints guarantee that some deriva
tions will contain syntactic “leaps” of inference—some of the steps in a Venn proof cannot
be reduced to ones which are syntactically simple in the traditional sense. And in heteroge
neous formal systems like Hyperproof, the fact that one is dealing with inferences between
two distinct representation systems virtually ensures that the derivations they license won’t
amount to some gradual reshuffling of notation.
From these findings, it follows that not just any representation scheme is well-suited to
support the particular discursive activity idealized by mainstream formal logic. So while
logics are often thought to be “topic-neutral,” they certainly can’t be seen to be “discourse-
neutral,” or even “representation scheme-neutral.” The idealization of proof privileged by
formal logic—one of the sources of logic’s lustre, so to speak—relies heavily upon features
of the linguistic representation scheme it has taken to be canonical.
In the concluding C h ap ter 7, we consider directly the question of whether the devel
opment of diagrammatic logics succeeds in legitimating the use of diagrams in proof. In
light of the accumulated evidence, it is argued that the answer is: not entirely. While it is
conceded that diagrammatic logical systems show there to be no principled obstacle to the
sound use of diagrams, it is a mistake to conflate their soundness with their appropriateness
in proof. Distinctively diagrammatic representations are ill-suited for the one rarified ar
gumentative setting implicitly upheld by logical and philosophical practice as the primary
model against which all others are compared. Put another way, proofs with diagrams—
even formal ones—are in important respects rather more like the informal arguments we
normally confront in everyday life than the linguistic derivations the tradition upholds as
an ideal.
The upshot of this, of course, is not that diagrams are inherently inferior representations
tout court. Rather, it is that they are different, and in interesting ways. This may seem a
trite observation, but it is nonetheless one which offers diagrams’ defenders their best shot
at succeeding in their chosen task. For despite the best efforts of the Logical Approach, the
particular conception of proof which has dominated the logical scene really is one which
favours the use of linguistic representations over diagrammatic ones. The vindication of
diagrams, then, will require a shift in strategy away from the “assimilationist” Logical
Approach which tries to fit diagrams into the standard mold. Instead, a more promising
argumentative strategy would involve, first, a careful inquiry into the kinds of discursive
activities for which diagrams are distinctly appropriate, and second, a celebration of those
activities as ones equally worthy of theoretical treatment. This second step will be most
crucial, posing what I suspect to be the most significant challenge for diagrams’ defenders.
While few people would deny that different representation systems are especially well-suited
for different communicative acts, our investigation strongly suggests that mainstream formal
logic has privileged a select few of these discursive acts as being constitutive of proof,
implicitly relegating the remainder to be beyond the bounds of distinctly logical interest.
It is this implicit choice of theoretical subject matter—this decision of what counts as
“logical”—which needs to be undermined if diagrams are to be vindicated. Now that the
Logical Approach has shown that diagrams can be used in a truth-preserving way, the
task that remains is to describe the distinctive role diagrams can play in what will at once
be a broader and more refined philosophical conception of the pragmatics of proof and
argumentation.
Chapter 2
The Pragm atics o f P roof
Our purpose is, in part, to assess the upshot of the “Logical Approach” to characterizing
diagrammatic proof. There are two tasks for which we can ask whether this approach
has been successful: the legitimating of the use of diagrams in proof (both formal and
informal), and the determining of what is distinctive about their use. In this chapter, a
general framework will be introduced to guide our inquiry, but no transcendental argument
will be forthcoming for why this framework must be adopted over any other. The rest of
the dissertation is intended to serve as its defense, as an illustration of its usefulness and
informativeness. Other frameworks may prove to be just as fruitful, even for our particular
purposes. But any such framework should help us meet two challenges.
First of all, in order to assess the use of formal systems to legitimate or vindicate the
use of diagrams in proof more generally, an account is needed of the relationship between
the informal proofs one finds in everyday contexts (e.g., a proof presented in a mathematics
classroom, or published in a mathematics journal) and the formal derivations one is taught
to produce in logic classes. Without such an account, the “real-world” significance of sound
and complete diagrammatic formal systems is left obscure and their results not obviously
generalizable. Clearly, the practitioners of the Logical Approach expect these formal results
to have some upshot beyond the confines of the particular systems they treat. This requires
that formal systems be situated in a broader context, so as to make intelligible their overall
significance. So on the one hand, something needs to be said about what, if anything,
is special or distinctive about formal derivations so that they deserve their apparently
privileged status as a model of deductive proof. Yet, on the other hand, such derivations
should not be taken to be, so to speak, too special, lest they turn out to be irrelevant to
14
Chapter 2. The Pragmatics o f Proof 15
characterizing the informal proofs one encounters in everyday life. In other words, if one
hopes to make sense of mainstream philosophical practice, what is needed is a framework
that allows for the fruitful comparison and contrast of formal and informal proofs.
Secondly, this framework should also help to lay bare what could distinguish logical
systems in a way that is sensitive to the representation schemes that comprise their syn
tax. Unadorned, the Logical Approach appears to abstract away that which is distinctive
about particular representation systems. This in itself need not be an objectionable thing,
especially given the default underdog status that has been saddled upon certain systems
for at least the past two centuries and the subsequent need to “rehabilitate” their study.
But what we require is an approach which can potentially differentiate the appropriateness
of various representation schemes with respect to particular argumentative tasks.1 In this
way, the appropriateness of the Logical Approach to characterizing diagrammatic systems
(in particular) can be assessed.
I will now proceed to outline what I take to be such a promising framework. Our starting
point is provided by Terence Parsons (in Parsons 1996), where he offers a characterization of
argument which is schematic enough to accommodate both formal derivations and informal
texts.2 We will find, however, that Parsons’ bare theory leaves unresolved some pressing
questions regarding its application. For this reason, a supplementation to the theory will be
proposed. In particular, it will be argued that by giving the theory a “pragmatic garb” one
thereby gains access to conceptual tools which strengthen its explanatory potential. The
theory thus enriched, a distinctive strategy emerges for investigating the nature of proof
both formal and informal, one which is sensitive to the potentially differential contribution
made by the representation scheme(s) being employed. We follow through on that strategy
throughout the rest of the dissertation which, if successful, serves to vindicate the framework
outlined here.
^ o r all th a t has been said at this point, there may be nothing here to differentiate; perhaps no principled
criteria exist for distinguishing the proper use of diagrams from th a t of language. But our framework should
at least hold the promise of helping us find such criteria should they in fact exist.
2Similar but less sophisticated analyses can be found in Corcoran (1972) and Smiley (1995). Toulmin
(1958) offers an innovative theoretical model of informal argument th a t has been extremely influential in the
field of argum entation theory; however, we forgo any explicit appeal to Toulmin's model since the features
of argum entation it highlights (such as its distinction between d a ta and warrants, or its incorporation of
modal qualifiers and conditions of exception) are orthogonal to those of interest here.
Chapter 2. The Pragmatics of Proof 16
2.1 “W h at is an A rgum ent?”
Given our stated purposes, Parsons (1996) begins rather inauspiciously, with its first para
graph detailing some of the “substantial differences [...] between arguments and derivations”
which explain why “[formal derivations] are not what philosophers analyze when they an
alyze arguments” (p. 164). However, it will become clear that these quoted statements are
exaggerated even by Parsons’ own fights. More accurate is to say that derivations make
up but one particular kind of argument, and that a logical analysis of derivations provides
but one particular model of argumentation analysis. Indeed, Parsons goes on to include
the derivations licensed by first-order logic among the examples of arguments he considers
(p.172-3); so in fact derivations are arguments a la Parsons. And he says that “[pjart of
[his] task—the easy part—is to extend techniques available within formal logic to evaluate
arguments with structures similar to those of formal proofs” (p. 165). So the consideration
of derivations does provide a starting point from which his more general characterization of
argument is developed.
2.1.1 A rgum ent Interp retation and S tru ctu re
Parsons’ first step is to distinguish source arguments, “the premises, conclusion, and in
termediate steps that are overtly present in the text,” from the refined arguments which
are extracted through an often subtle and complicated process of scholarly interpretation
(p. 166). For Parsons, even determining the existence of a source argument involves inter
pretation of a m in im a l sort, as it is sometimes an open question whether a piece of written
or spoken text contains an argument at all. On a first pass, one locates a source argument
by pointing to the purported premises, conclusion, and reasoning steps taken in the text. It
is possible, however, that the argument thus identified lacks steps which the author expects
the audience to fill in, or the argument may be equivocal in various respects. So further in
terpretation may be required to yield an ultimately refined argument which is unambiguous
and has these implicit steps included.
The interpretive process is taken to be complete when it yields three components which
together comprise the refined argument: a reasoning structure, a setting, and a target. The
reasoning structure is simply what might be called the argument proper; i.e., the steps of the
argument along with indications of which steps are premises, which is the conclusion, and
which intermediate steps follow from which.3 But in order to accommodate the possibility
of evaluating the success of an argument, Parsons argues that more needs to be presupposed
than merely a list of steps and their relations. There needs to be a set of general assumptions
and inference rules that are presumed to be acceptable (a setting), and a proposition which
the argument is aiming to establish (a target).
Parsons assumes the interpretive process to have yielded a fully determinate argument
of this form, with no equivocation over its setting, target, or reasoning structure. Hence, the
amount of interpretive work needed to extract a refined argument from a source argument
can be considerable indeed. For example, it is rarely the case that the setting is articulated
explicitly in a source argument, as it is uncommon for a piece of text first to detail what
count as acceptable transition rules before proceeding to argue according to such rules. So
not only does interpretation potentially involve the filling in of some of the argument’s steps
in order to complete the reasoning structure. It also involves an articulation of what kinds
of steps count as acceptable; this is an articulation of the rules (the “setting”) by which the
reasoning structure will be assessed.
Parsons is eager to emphasize that this “filling in” process is a matter of scholarly in
terpretation, and not of logical assessment. Refined arguments do not result from source
arguments merely by the addition of whatever extra premises or transitions are needed to
eliminate all the gaps (given some setting), or alternatively by rigging the setting so that
there are no gaps in the first place; it is possible to have unsuccessful refined arguments.
Furthermore, it is possible for different refined arguments to be equally legitimate interpre
tations of the same source text. Parsons takes interpretation to be “typically underdeter
mined by all available evidence, evidence must often be balanced against counterevidence,
and there may be an ineliminable element of subjectivity to it” (p.166). Parsons highlights
the difficulty of the interpretive task only to set it aside, as the bulk of his paper is concerned
primarily with the structure of refined arguments, that which is available for analysis and
assessment only after the hard interpretive work has already been done.4
3For sim plicity’s sake and following Parsons’ own presentation (p.170, fn.8), the fact that a step can actu
ally consist of an entire subargum ent will be suppressed. This added structure allows for the straightforward
accomodation of reductio proofs, conditional proofs, and other familiar proof strategies.
4As we shall see shortly, this distinction between argum ent interpretation and argument assessment is
not nearly as straightforw ard as Parsons seems to suggest (or a t least to wish).
2.1.2 A rgu m en t A ssessm en t
A successful (refined) argument is one in which (p.171):
• Every premise is among the statements assumed in the setting.

• Every inference is in accordance with a principle of inference assumed in the setting.
• The conclusion is the target.
• The reasoning structure is noncircular.5
• There is no infinite regress of justifications for any step.6
The “success” of an argument is, for Parsons, a relatively straightforward and objective
matter. It involves what he calls a logical assessment of whether the reasoning structure
“follows the rules” of the setting; i.e., whether the assumptions and inference rules appealed
to in the reasoning structure are in fact amongst those licensed by the setting (and recall that
he is assuming the interpretive process to have already yielded a completely determinate
setting). As such, it is also a matter completely “internal” to the argument; what’s being
checked is the faithfulness of the reasoning structure to the setting, whatever the setting
may be.
But if we turn our attention to the appropriateness of the settings themselves, indepen
dent of reasoning structures, we have then moved on to what Parsons calls an epistemological
assessment of an argument (p.183). This involves in part an assessment of an argument’s
usefulness given a particular epistemological task. One is engaged in this sort of assessment
whenever one complains, for example, that an argument, though logically valid, proceeds
from implausible premises (Parsons says that many of Plato’s and Aristotle’s arguments
are like this) or employs question-begging rules (such as a classical logician using the law of
excluded middle against an intuitionist). Here, one is concerned with identifying the sorts
of constraints that ought to govern one’s choice of settings.
Parsons takes himself to have explicated in some detail what is involved in the more
straightforward, logical kind of assessment. He shows how the tri-partite structure of refined
arguments can be exploited to describe many of the traditional fallacies treated in informal
5Parsons defines a dependency path for a step in a natural way, tracing out the steps in the reasoning
structure on which it depends. T h e reasoning structure is circular if some such path for a step contains that
very step.
6I.e., there is no infinitely long, non-cyclic dependency path.
logic texts (p.174), and even some they ignore (p.179). However, with respect to episte
mological assessment, Parsons is much more tentative in what he has to say. He suggests
that “an argument serves an epistemological purpose when, on the spot, it gets you from
something (or some things) you did not doubt to something you did,” but he worries that
to take this as a criterion for argument appropriateness would be too “capricious” since
irrational people could persist in doubting pretty much anything. Even to say that one
should only consider what a reasonable person would doubt
may sound fine in the abstract but [is] almost impossible to recognize in the
concrete. Dubitability is an equal-opportunity assessor, which tends to treat
propositions alike; and when it does distinguish them, valid consequences of
principles tend to have less dubitability than the principles themselves, frus
trating the idea that we need to validate the more dubitable in terms of the less
(pp.184-5).
With a hint of regret, he writes: “The role of argument in epistemology is mysterious”
(fn.27, p.184).
2.1 .3 Form al D erivations
Our exposition of Parsons’ theory now complete, it is worth pausing to consider how it
applies in the particular case where the argument in question is in fact a formal derivation.
Here, the reasoning structure consists of the actual sequence of steps making up the deriva
tion, with each step labelled so as to indicate whether it is a premise, axiom, or the result
of applying some inference rule to previous steps (and if so, which ones).7 The target is
conventionally the last formula of the derivation. And the setting is provided in part by
the logical system whose axioms and inference rules license that derivation. In order to
line up the derivational validity of a formal argument with its success in Parsons’ techni
cal “logical” sense, it is necessary also to include in the setting the premises to which the
reasoning structure explicitly appeals. Where the logical system yields only derivations of
finite length in which each step can appeal only to earlier steps for support (such as in
systems of first-order logic and most others), a derivation from a (sub)set of premises to
some conclusion is successful precisely if each of its non-premise steps is licensed by that
system.8
7Parsons wavers on whether it is necessary for the labelling to indicate which inference rule is being
applied, though he does seem to believe th a t such detailed labelling is desirable (p.175, fn.15).
8It is convenient to assimilate the contribution to the setting made by the premises to th at made by the
logical axioms and inference rules of the system. This can be done by taking the set of inference rules to
Chapter 2. T he Pragmatics of Proof 20
We thus see that, indeed, a formal derivation is just a particular kind of argument, one
whose setting is provided by a logical system plus the premises explicitly appealed to. Note
especially th at the interpretive process associated with a formal derivation is rather trivial.
In striking contrast to other argumentative texts, the “extraction” of a refined argument
from the source argument is very easy, at least for anyone already competent with formal
systems: the reasoning structure just is the derivation, the target is simply its last line,
and the rules o f the setting come pre-packaged with the system. This in turn makes it a
relatively straightforward and well-defined matter to assess logically (in Parsons’ sense) a
formal derivation, as this is merely a matter of determining whether each of the steps of
the derivation abides by the system’s axioms and rules of inference—precisely what one is
taught to do in elementary logic classes.
Questions related to an “epistemological” assessment of logical systems, however, are
of a rather different nature. This is in part the kind of assessment undertaken when one
proceeds to consider a system’s meta-logical properties such as soundness and completeness;
here the axioms and syntactic inference rules that constitute a logical setting are measured
against the system’s own semantics. Mainstream logical practice is preoccupied with estab
lishing such results, and if all one expected from a setting is its faithfulness to a language’s
semantics, it would be tempting to think that the concepts of soundness and completeness
pretty much cover the dimensions along which such settings could be assessed.9
Of course, logicians study other questions as well, many of which are also relevant
to the epistemological assessment of logical systems. For example, the effectiveness of a
system’s rules is a topic of vigorous investigation, and for good reason: to insist that a
setting’s rules be effective is in effect to demand (quite reasonably) that an argument’s
correctness be checkable by straightforward means. Controversies over the acceptability of
include a Prem ise rule which licenses any formula whatsoever. T his would clearly be a degenerate inference
rule, given th a t its application makes no appeal to previous steps. However, its inclusion by no means
trivializes the system , for we could then say th a t a successful formal derivation from T to C is one in which
all the steps are licensed by an axiom or rule of the system, and in which all the steps “justified” by Premise
are formulas of T . By incorporating such a rule and making this adjustm ent to the criterion of success,
we can characterize the setting of a formal derivation more simply as the axioms and inference rules of the
logical system in w hich it’s couched, without our having to m ention explicitly the premises each time. (Here,
as below, axioms axe distinguished from premises in being supplied by the logical system itself, and thus in
force even when T = 0.) We will often adopt this shorthand in w hat follows.
9Such assessm ents count as “epistemological” under Parsons’ theory simply because they concern the ap
propriateness of settin g s, completely independent of any reasoning structures. Admittedly, this terminology
is somewhat stra in e d when applied to questions of soundness and completeness, though less so when applied
to those of th e n e x t paragraph.
particular axioms can often be interpreted as debates over the appropriateness of the settings
which contain them; consider the period of time when the existence of choice functions was
something a few mathematicians weren’t willing to take for granted. Similarly, the search for
proof-theoretic reductions between theories (a la Feferman (1993a), for example) can be seen
as an attempt to measure settings against each other, with an eye towards demonstrating
how an apparently stronger theory in fact takes no more for granted than an apparently
weaker one.
Parsons’ theory thus accommodates quite comfortably the case where the source argu
ment happens to be a formal derivation, and the setting a logical system. Furthermore,
his two kinds of assessment end up tracing out the familiar logic/metalogic distinction. It
is reassuring to see that, despite being designed to analyze informal argumentation, there
is nothing in Parsons’ theory inimical to the treatment of formal arguments as well. As
such, it offers a promising starting-point from which to investigate the relationship between
formal and informal proof.
2 .1 .4 O pen Q uestions R egarding Inform al A rgum ent
However, for this promise to be realized, it is imperative that certain pressing questions
be answered, questions which are not addressed by Parsons. Most importantly, it is very
obscure how his theory is to be applied in the nearly universal case where the source
argument being confronted is not a formal derivation. We just saw in the previous subsection
that the move from source to refined argument is almost trivial for formal derivations. Once
this move is made, Parsons’ criteria for argument assessment are clear and straightforward.
Regarding Argument Interpretation
The situation is quite different with almost any informal piece of argumentation one may
wish to consider. Parsons insists that such assessment is only properly conducted on refined
arguments; the informal source texts we usually confront just aren’t sufficiently structured
to allow us to make clear assessments, and so a process of “refinement” must be completed
before we are in a position to do so. Unfortunately, the theory leaves open just how this
refinement should proceed, and offers virtually no guidance for determining when or whether
it has reached its end.
Indeed, there appears to exist a whole spectrum of refinement strategies available, all
of which seem equally legitimate given the considerations raised so far. On one end, there
is what might be called industrial grade refinement, which takes a source argument and
works it almost beyond recognition into a formal derivation within a well-established for
mal system.10 Clearly, the interpretive process associated with such refinement is extremely
involved, not so much tweaking the source text (by adding a definition here or there, or
resolving the occasional ambiguity) as transfoming it wholesale, in effect translating it from
one language to another. And as is well known, this translation would also require extensive
supplementation: for it to have any chance of being deemed successful, the resulting formal
derivation would likely be orders of magnitude longer than the original source text. For
example, numerous “suppressed” premises would almost invariably have to be added; these
premises would likely detail salient background assumptions as well as the definitions of
terms or predicates.11 Furthermore, many derivational steps (some as mundane as appli
cations of conjunction introduction or elimination) will have to be included to fill in the
transitional gaps of the original argument. Under this picture, the source argument is often
but a poor reflection of the refined argument that lurks beneath.
On the other end of the spectrum is the minimalist approach to refinement, following a
“principle of least perturbation.” This strategy tries to keep the reasoning structure as close
as possible to the source argument, perhaps doing little more than labelling the premises,
target, and inferential relations among the original sentences. It would be reasonable to
expect adherents of this strategy to be rather liberal in the rules they include in the setting,
in a way compensating for their lack of tinkering with the original text. So whereas the
industrial grade strategy takes as its settings the rather austere ones pre-packaged with
logical systems (and thus must proceed to hammer the source argument into formal shape),
the m in im a lis t, strategy works in the opposite direction, tending to yield settings tailored to
match their respective source arguments.12 As such, a minimalist’s setting would happily
accept reasoning steps that are couched in natural language, even some which are so “coarse”
and “contentful” so as to correspond to a multi-step, multi-premise chain of inferences in a
standard logical system.
As an illustration of these strategies, consider the following source argument, treated in
Copi (1973), Smiley (1995), and possibly countless other places: Al is older than Bill, Bill is
older than Charlie; therefore Al is older than Charlie. Let’s further assume that this is indeed
l0This strategy would likely be upheld by advocates of the formalizability criterion for mathematical proof.
1lrrh u s, from this perspective nearly all informal arguments are severely enthymematic.
12At least to some extent. This tailoring of the setting wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to guarantee the
success of an argument.
a successful argument. Its industrial grade refinement would result in a reasoning structure
somewhat like this:
1. Vx Vy Vz ((Older(x,y)AOIder(y,z))—►Older(x.z)) Premise
2. Older(AI.Bill) Premise
3. Older(Bill,Charlie) Premise
4. Vy Vz ((Older(AI,y)AOIder(y,z))-*Older(AI,z)) V elim: 1
5. Vz ((Older(AI,Bill)AOIder(Bill,z))—>Older(AI,z)) V elim: 4
6. (Older( Al, Bill) AOIder(Bill,Charlie))—♦Older(AI,Charlie) V elim: 5
7. Older(AI,Bill)AOIder(Bill,Charlie) A intro: 2,3
8. Older(AI,Charlie) —►elim: 6,7
The target would be Older(AI,Charlie) and the setting natural deduction, first-order logic.
A minimalist refinement, however, would pretty much leave the source argument as is,
and so take the reasoning structure to be this:
1. Al is older than Bill. Premise

2. Bill is older than Charlie. Premise
3. Al is older than Charlie. Rule?: 1,2
The target would again be the last sentence, but now an interesting question arises over what
exactly the setting would be. Whatever it is, it would have to license directly transitions
like the one resulting in the third line, and so would contain rules which are in some sense
much more liberal than the ones found in first-order systems. Perhaps there would be a
rule like: From x is older than y and from y is older than z, one may derive that x is older
than z .13
And then there are other possible refinements which lie in between. For example, we
could adjust the minimalist’s reasoning structure by adding as a premise “Older than" is a
transitive predicate and in turn justifying the target immediately on the basis of this and
the two explicit premises. This refinement strategy approaches industrial grade in that it
advocates the addition of extra (“suppressed”) premises, but it does not go so far so as
to demand a translation into formal language or an adherance only to formal introduction
13Smiley (1995) advocates w hat he calls the “suppressed rule" strategy, which takes the argument “as it
comes" (p.731). So he is a minimalist in our sense. Smiley’s contrasts his suppressed rule strategy with the
more common “suppressed premise” strategy. Clearly, industrial grade refinement is one strain of this latter
strategy.
and elimination rules. I suspect that, if asked to provide one, most working philosophers’
“refinement” of the original argument would lie in this middle ground.
Given this variety of possible refinements, obvious questions emerge: Are any of these
strategies more appropriate than the others? Is there even a fact of the matter about which
refinements are faithful to which source texts? Unfortunately, the theory outlined so far
is silent on these questions. Parsons seems to think that this is not a serious problem (for
his theory, at least), as he describes such matters concerning “scholarly interpretation” to
be outside the “locus of logic proper” (p.185). However, while this separation of tasks
might make for clean theorizing, we should not accept it uncritically since its plausibility
appears to rely on a hidden and unwarranted generalization. As we have seen, there is an
absolutely straightforward and uncontroversial way in which Parsons’ theory accommodates
formal argumentation, as formal derivations are already in a paradigmatically “refined”
form. Their assessment (both logical and epistemological) is also a familiar and intelligible
matter, resting as it does on a venerable and sophisticated tradition of formal logic. But
given our purposes, clarity in the formal case is simply not clarity enough. If we are truly
serious about assessing informal arguments on their own terms, it is crucial that we have
some sense of how they lie in the theory. This means, at the very least, having some idea
of what their refinements ought to look like.
In the face of such a challenge, it is very tempting to adopt a Procrustean methodology:
given the range of possible refinement strategies, why not just adopt the industrial strength
version, and refuse to deem an argument sufficiently refined until it has become a formal
derivation in some well-established logical system? That way, we would be able to leverage
the powerful methods and results of formal logic even when assessing informal argumen
tation; the clarity of Parsons’ theory in the formal domain would then be extended to the
informal as well. Given any informal argument, “all” we’d have to do is find the formal
derivation that lurks beneath. In good mathematical style, we will have reduced questions
of its assessment to ones already solved.
Though such a methodology is in fact widely practiced (and advocated by nearly every
formal logic textbook which encourages students to “formalize” informal arguments so as to
test their validity) we will find good reason to reject its adoption. In particular, the coupling
of this methodology with Parsons’ theory yields an account of argument assessment which
is prejudicial with respect to the status of informal argument. To employ the industrial
grade refinement strategy is implicitly to deem all argumentation as “essentially” formal,
and hence to deny that there is really any such thing as an informal argument; instead,
under this view what we confront in our everyday lives are just informal “implementations”
of (essentially formal) arguments. However, not only is such a view prima facie implausible,
it also (and more importantly) closes off from the outset even the conceptual possibility of
there being anything interesting to say about the relationship between formal and informal
argumentation. As we shall see later in the chapter, by simply denying outright the existence
of full-fledged informal argumentation, such a conception is left unable to explain why it is
that formal derivations are afforded a privileged status in the philosophical conception of
proof and argumentation. To say that th a t’s because all arguments really just are formal
derivations (the only explanation that seems available to adherents of the industrial grade
refinement strategy) is quite clearly to beg the question here.
Regarding Epistemological Assessm ent
So given our purposes, we will reject as unilluminating a view that takes informal argu
ments simply to be unrefined formal derivations.14 But once the possibility of irreducibly
informal argumentation is fathomed, another issue becomes live, having to do with the cri
teria appropriate for their epistemological assessment. (Recall that this is the assessment
of settings, independent of any particular reasoning structures.) Once again, in the formal
sphere there is relative clarity: various well-defined questions about the appropriateness of
sets of axioms and inference rules can be asked, and have often been answered. For instance,
the appropriateness of logical systems can be studied relative to their languages’ semantics
(e.g., questions of soundness and completeness) or relative to mathematical domains (e.g.,
the appropriateness of the axiom of choice, or the decidability of the continuum hypoth
esis). Issues of checkability can be precisely investigated (e.g., with complexity measures)
and there are even means of comparing different formal settings with each other (e.g., by
proof-theoretic reductions or by model-theoretic expressivity considerations).
But in the informal sphere many pertinent questions seem to be of a significantly dif
ferent nature, as are the methods used to investigate them. As Parsons sees it, arguments
are often assessed according to whether they employ premises which are more dubious than
or are unknowable independently of the conclusion, or whether they use inference rules
14Parsons himself seems to reject th a t view too, given th a t some of his examples of (refined) reasoning
structures consist of natural language statem ents (p .174, p.178). So he thinks th a t at least some settings
may be “informal,” and hence are not logical system s in the traditional sense.
which axe themselves more dubitable than the point at issue. Parsons takes such talk of
dubitability and knowability to be irreducibly normative, and hints strongly that they may
even lack objective standing (p. 184). Parsons actively laments this state of affairs, and once
again aspires to shield off the “locus of logic proper” (which he takes to be objective and
non-normative) from such (fuzzier?) questions regarding the epistemological purpose and
assessment of argument.
As with interpretation, however, it is precisely such questions which we will need to con
front. In particular, we need a principled way in which we can compare formal and informal
argument, which is to say that we need some means of making comparative epistemological
assessments of their respective settings. This in turn requires finding a dimension along
which both formal and informal argumentation may reside.
2.2 A Pragm atic Garb
That dimension, I maintain, is to be found in the pragmatics of argumentation and proof.

I propose that arguments (both formal and informal) be seen simultaneously as a means
of implicitly accepting, and explicitly discharging, particular kinds of discursive or commu
nicative responsibilities. Furthermore, special attention will be made to the role played by
the artefacts—the actual written or spoken texts—caught up in the discursive activity of
arguer and audience. For the rest of this chapter, we will be concerned with presenting the
broad outlines of this proposal. It will take the rest of the dissertation to follow through on
its development and to appreciate its consequences.15
2.2.1 M o tiv a tio n
Consider the following quotation from Hammer (1995), where he discusses why one might
want to develop formal systems (and diagrammatic ones at that):
For suppose the validity of a proof involving a diagram is challenged. In defense

one would claim that each inference in the proof is valid. When asked to defend
this claim, one would spell out each of the inferences made in more and more
detail. Eventually, perhaps, one would specify the syntax of the statements and
lsT he account presented here has an undeniably “P ittsburgh” flavour. It is reminiscent of Brandom
(1994), where it is proposed that discursive acts be understood partially in terms of the undertaking and
discharging of commitments. (My account is largely independent of m ost of the details of Brandom 's story,
however.) Readers of Manders (in progress) will find familiar my account’s preoccupation with th e role that
artefacts play in argumentative activity.
their semantics, translating each step of the proof into this formalized system
and showing that each inference in the proof is valid in the system (p.26).
Here, formal derivations are thought to be in some sense the “ultimate” demonstrations of
validity. But in virtue of what would they be able to occupy this role? Note that they are
thought by Hammer to be the natural outcome of a particular sort of activity. By taking
a closer look at the (imagined) activity which spawns such objects, we may be able to get
some insight into their significance.
So let us proceed to consider the argumentative dynamics of the situation just described.
Implicit in it is the existence of two “characters,” a “prover” who is presenting a proof, and a
“skeptic” who is questioning its validity. Notably, the prover’s initial reaction to the skeptic
is to assert the validity of the steps of the original (informal) proof. When the skeptic then
reiterates his challenge, directing it now to these particular steps, the prover interprets this
as a request for a more detailed proof in which the steps of the original proof are replaced
by a series of finer-grained ones. The prover does not interpret this as a request for some
sort of direct justification of the original steps themselves. Even if the prover believes her
original steps to be valid (and presumably would be able to furnish independent reasons for
this), she nonetheless assumes that it would be inappropriate to defend the original proof
“as is,” and that the skeptic’s challenge (whatever it may be) is better met by providing
another proof with a finer grain.
Why might this be so? Perhaps it is generally easier to see the validity of finer-grained
transitions, and hence the skeptic’s challenge might be adequately met by providing a
sufficiently detailed proof. Such considerations suggest that what’s at issue in this argu
mentative context isn’t just the actual validity of a proof’s transitions. If validity were all
that mattered, then our imagined prover should be able to stick to her guns and re-assert
to the skeptic the acceptability of her original proof (assuming, of course, that it actually
employed only valid inferences). We might even imagine our prover indignantly instructing
the skeptic to figure out for himself why the original proof is in fact valid.
But this is not how the situation is imagined by Hammer to proceed. So what’s at
issue here can’t simply be whether the inferences of a proof are in fact valid, but must
also concern whether they are in some sense recognized to be valid. In facing the skeptic’s
challenge, our prover is implicitly taking on the responsibility to provide a valid proof of a
certain kind, one which “wears its validity on its sleeve” each step of the way. This in turn
fuels a process which (Hammer suggests) might end with the purported proof being replaced
by one within a logical system.16 Presumably, this latter proof can’t legitimately be the
target of further challenges on the part of the skeptic, or else our prover’s argumentative
strategy would have failed, leaving our characters on the brink of a regress. Thus, Hammer
envisages logical systems to be settings that provide a principled stopping-point, one where
a certain kind of ongoing skeptical challenge can be met. It is in virtue of this that formal
derivations (i.e., reasoning structures faithful to such settings) are taken to be effective in
meeting such a challenge.
All this, in one sense, still leaves us with a pressing question: in virtue of what would
a logical system be able to provide such a stopping-point? This question will preoccupy us
throughout the dissertation. For now. it is important to note that the proceeding consid
erations constrain what can count as an adequate answer. In particular, the gut-response
“its rules are sound” is rather easily shown to be insufficient. (For if it were sufficient, then
presumably the original proof, if valid, should have already been good enough to quiet the
skeptic.) Remarkably, a system’s completeness, usually considered its most interesting and
important meta-logical property, appears to be quite irrelevant to the sorts of considera
tions raised here, though it is possible to think of contexts where it would be of greater
significance. (For instance, if one thought that all proofs should be given in a single formal
system, then completeness becomes very important, as presumably one would want that
one formal system to be able to license every valid argument.)
Once proofs (of which formal derivations are a special case) are seen as objects caught up
in a certain kind of discursive activity, a collection of concepts other than the traditionally
“logical” ones become applicable, and may be used to characterize them. Of course, this
doesn’t require a complete displacement of the traditional concepts. Soundness is still a
sine qua non, and effectiveness (computer checkability) still seems relevant. But proofs also
become characterizable in terms of the strategies that may be adopted within the discursive
activities for which they are designed to play a role. In other words, we may begin to assess
proofs by assessing the argumentative strategies they betray.
But how may we assess a strategy? Our analysis of the Hammer quotation offers some
hints. One possible distinction is that of direct vs. indirect justification. Upon the initial
challenge, our prover could have chosen either to defend the proof as is (i.e., offer a direct
justification) or to replace the proof with a finer-grained relative (and hence defend it
l6Note th a t Hammer uses the idiom of “translation” instead of replacement, suggesting th a t he takes the
formal argument to be simply a restatem ent of the informal one. In the next subsection, we will find such
a view to be problematic, and an alternative route will be proposed.
indirectly). A second issue is more fundamental: whether to engage in further justification

at all. We saw that the prover is also free to stick to her guns and exhort the skeptic to do
the work himself of figuring out whether the proof is valid. And in fact, we might expect
that eventually the prover would say just that if the skeptic persists in his challenges even
after the prover has furnished what she takes to be a sufficiently fine-grained proof.
So one way that such strategies (and derivatively, the proofs they yield) can be charac
terized is in terms of the division of labour they take to be appropriate between prover and
audience. To present a proof is implicitly to accept responsibility for providing certain of the
materials that could go towards justifying a claim, a responsibility that is presumably dis
charged by that very presentation. It is this notion of responsibility which will offer the key
metric in our comparisons of formal, informal, diagrammatic, and linguistic argumentation.
2.2.2 T rying it On
Let’s now consider Parsons’ theory under this pragmatic light. It turns out that there is
a satisfying resonance between the pragmatic features just introduced, and the structural
features of his theory. Even better, once this pragmatic “garb” is put on we can start
making headway on those pressing questions the bare theory leaves open.
Two Kinds o f Discursive Act, Two Kinds o f Assessment
Within the context of Hammer’s imagined situation, we have distinguished two related but
ultimately distinct discursive acts wrapped up in the putting forward of an argument (or
what I’ll call the “argumentative performance”). One is the implicit acceptance of a par
ticular discursive responsibility: namely, to put forward certain of the materials that could
go towards justifying a claim. The other is the explicit discharging of that responsibility;
presumably th at’s what the actual text (or speech) provided by the prover is designed to
do.
The two major components of Parsons’ tri-partite analysis—the reasoning structure,
and the setting—track nicely the two simultaneous acts which comprise an argumentative
performance. The reasoning structure can be characterized as the “visible” part of the proof,
the product of the explicit act. It is the artefact that is furnished to discharge particular
discursive responsibilities. But to put forward a reasoning structure as something which
discharges responsibilities presupposes the existence of responsibilities being undertaken in
the first place. The terms of such responsibilities—their details—sire rarely articulated; they
are implicit in the performance, but are nonetheless necessary for the proof to be intelligible
os successful (i.e., for it to be seen as meeting those terms adequately).
These responsibilities are precisely what get encoded in an argument’s “setting,” the
set of assumptions and inference rules that the explicit text is supposed to abide by. The
assumptions and inference rules that constitute the setting are in fact what the prover takes
for granted, or more accurately, takes as granted. They are what the prover takes herself not
to be responsible for justifying, where her commitment to meet ongoing skeptical challenges
is taken to end. At the same time, the setting is constitutive of her responsibilities vis a vis
the reasoning structure; it constrains what the prover can properly “get away with” in the
text of the proof.
Now, given that an argumentative performance involves both the undertaking and dis
charge of discursive responsibilities, there are two dimensions along which such a perfor
mance can be assessed: either in terms of its success in discharging the undertaken respon
sibilities, or in terms of the appropriateness of the particular responsibilities undertaken in
the first place. These two dimensions are independent, in the sense that it is possible for
a performance to do well along one while doing poorly along the other. For example, a
proof may be successful “on its own terms,” yet with those terms themselves being subject
to criticism; the prover has indeed discharged the responsibilities she undertook for herself,
but she didn’t take on the appropriate responsibilities. In Parsons’ parlance, this is exactly
to say that her argument fares well according to a logical assessment (with its reasoning
structure faithful to its setting), but not according to an epistemological one (since the set
ting itself is for some reason inappropriate in the argumentative context). This would be a
case in which the arguer hasn’t accepted the appropriate “burden of proof”; her execution
is not so much mistaken as beside the point. Alternatively, it is also possible for a proof to
fail to live up to its own aspirations, even when those aspirations turn out to be laudable; it
may employ an appropriate setting, but its reasoning structure fails to conform to the rules.
The fault here is logical, not epistemological; the prover has taken on the proper burden
but falters nonetheless in the execution.
A pragmatic garb thus fits Parsons’ theory quite well. The two discursive acts consti
tutive of an argumentative performance are nicely accommodated by components of the
tri-partite analysis, and the natural ways these acts can be assessed are given explicit iden
tification in the bare theory. The theory now informed by a pragmatic interpretation, we
can proceed to look again at the worries originally left unaddressed.
Argument Interpretation R evisited
Recall that the bare theory was silent on how one should go about “refining” an informal
source argument, and we have seen that there exists a broad spectrum of refinement strate
gies available, ordered according to how much they take the reasoning structure to resemble
the original source text. Is there a principled reason to pick one side of the spectrum over
the other?
For guidance, let’s consider again Hammer’s imagined argumentative situation, and try
to use the enriched theory to make sense of it. The situation involves a “dynamic” process,
by which the prover offers a succession of proofs in the face of an ongoing skeptical challenge.
There seem to be two ways of using our theory to account for what’s going on.
One way of reading the succession of texts17 is to say that they reflect a process of
refinement in Parsons’ sense. Under this view, the prover is continually being challenged to
furnish a source text whose refinement (i.e., whose interpretation as a refined argument) is
straightforward and uncontroversial: perhaps the skeptic finds it difficult to determine from
the original text what the argument “really” looks like, and so demands from the prover
a more transparent artefact. The prover obliges, and endeavors to display the refined
argument (or at least the reasoning structure) which lies beneath the original text. It is
natural, then, for the end result to be a formal derivation since the refinement of such texts
is almost trivial, as we have already seen.
Alternatively, rather than take the series of texts to be something like successive refine
ments of the same argument, we could instead take them to be as a succession of related
but ultimately different arguments. Under this second option, the formal derivation at the
end of the process is not the same proof as the informal one challenged by the skeptic. The
prover’s response to the challenge is thus not to “refine” the original proof, but to replace it;
the refined argument underlying the formal derivation is distinct from the refined argument
underlying the original, informal text. (The prover’s defense of the original proof, then, is
only indirect. She concedes its inadequacy as is, but follows up with a related proof that
she takes to be beyond reproach.)
Is there anything to choose between the “refinement” and “replacement” readings? No
tably, Hammer’s own words (by which the formal proof is described as a “translation” of
the original) suggests the former reading, and this does seem to provide one natural way of
couching the situation within the terms of Parsons’ theory. However, we should take care
l7T he “texts” in question are in fact composed of diagrams, but I’ll keep to this terminology anyway.
to appreciate the consequences of this view. For according to the refinement reading, the
prover’s formal and informal texts differ only in how much they resemble the same refined
argument which lies beneath both of them; the two texts are “in essence” the same proof,
it’s just that the underlying reasoning structure is better displayed in one artefact over
the other. Recall that under Parsons’ theory only refined arguments are to be assessed,
whether it be logically or epistemologically. Since, by hypothesis, it is the same refined
argument which is underlying both the formal and informal texts, it follows that there can
be no difference in their assessment; the prover’s informal and formal proofs must rise and
fall together according to the theory. But if this is the case, then the skeptic in our imag
ined situation can’t be seen to be complaining about the original argument per se. He can
only be complaining about how it was originally written down, as it is ultimately the same
argument which gets written down later, only differently.
Now, while it is surely possible to read the situation in this way, we should check to see
whether such a reading provides a genuine explanation of what’s going on, or just a mere
“explaining away” of it. To interpret the skeptic’s challenge as concerned primarily with the
interpretations! transparency of the argument leaves Parsons’ theory explanatorily impotent,
for as we have seen, the theory is completely silent on interpretational issues. By taking the
relation between the prover’s informal and formal proof to be analogous to something like a
source and refined argument, one would in effect be forgoing the possibility of treating the
skeptic’s challenge seriously, that is, as a challenge directed to the argument itself, and thus
as something that ought to be understood by means of a theory of argumentation. But the
refinement view accounts for the situation only by outsourcing the explanation; it defers
to some other theory—presumably, a theory of interpretation—an account of why the final
text furnished by the prover is acceptable to the skeptic while the initial ones aren’t.
Contrast this with what would be going on if we adopted the replacement reading
instead. Under this reading, we would at least be able to entertain the hypothesis that it
was the original argument which failed to satisfy the skeptic, and that a new, better one (to
the skeptic’s eyes, at least) is what emerged by the end of the process. By taking the skeptic’s
challenge to be directed towards the actual argument, we give ourselves the opportunity of
using Parsons’ theory to get some traction on the situation. For example, as a very first
step, we can begin to inquire as to whether the skeptic’s complaints regarding the informal
proof reside at the “logical” or “epistemological” level.18 Such an investigation would be
l8In this case, it seems most appropriate to deem the skeptic’s complaints to be primarily epistemological;
completely idle should we adopt the refinement view instead, since under that reading there
would be nothing to choose between the informal and formal arguments (they're the same,
after all).
Thus, the choice between readings ultimately comes down to a choice of how ambitious
we want our theory to be, and with this choice comes a natural answer to the question
of which kind of refinement strategy to adopt. If we desire to use Parsons’ theory of
argumentation to acquire a genuine understanding of situations like the one described by
Hammer (as I think we should), then it is incumbent on us to adopt the replacement reading
over the refinement one, deeming the formal argument at the end of the process as a proof
different from the informal one which started it. This in turn naturally suggests an overall
interpretive strategy much closer to the minimalist end of the spectrum, striving as much
as possible to take a source argument “at face value” and to preserve its surface structure
in the refinement. Otherwise, by being disposed to see behind the source text loads of
structure unreflected by its surface, we risk falling into the trap of being unable to account
for why a more detailed text might actually constitute a better argument, and not just a
more transparent “implementation” of one. The interpretive stand that emerges is thus:
The reasoning structure is for the most part given already by the source text.
So argument refinement is more about finding and articulating the argument’s
setting than about searching for some hidden reasoning structure.
The methodological point being made here is worth dwelling upon, picking up on an earlier
thread regarding the pitfalls of industrial grade refinement. Intense logical training has
given many of us a good grasp of formal settings, and of particular ones at that (like
those of first-order logic). This familiarity fuels a strong temptation to squeeze informal
argumentation into that mold, as we try to leverage the clarity and expertise we have in
the formal domain. This manifests itself in a tendency to see “behind” the informal text
a reasoning structure as detailed as a formal derivation; since we already have some pre
packaged settings in mind, argument “interpretation” amounts only to finding a reasoning
structure accommodated by some such setting. But we have seen that such an approach,
though intelligible, has its costs.
his challenge appears to be not so much directed towards the prover’s implementation of the inference rules
(we’re never directed towards any particular logical error) as towards the acceptability of the transitions
themselves (perhaps they’re not fine-grained enough). In other words, w hat’s a t issue seems to be more the
original argum ent's setting itself rather than the reasoning structure’s faithfulness to it. Presumably, this is
the issue subsequently addressed by the prover’s formal proof.
First of all, it fails to take seriously the pragmatic significance of the prover’s argu
mentative performance. Presumably the prover thought that the actual text she furnished
would suffice to discharge the responsibilities she implicitly undertook. It is odd, then, to
come along and interpret as the “real” (refined) argument some reasoning structure that
is only remotely visible in the artefact. It is also just plain presumptuous to think that
what the prover takes for granted—and in particular what she takes as granted—in fact
coincides with the assumptions and rules of some pre-packaged logical system.19 Both of
these questionable moves are made by industrial grade refinement; it presumes a setting
for which there is potentially little evidence, and (as a result) needs to read in a reasoning
structure which in all likelihood looks quite different from the actual artefact the prover
thought would be good enough.
In addition to adopting interpretive methods which are suspect, industrial grade refine
ment also risks leaving our theory of argumentation partially paralyzed, unable to fulfill its
explanatory potential. For if an interpreter unreflectively reads the same (kind of) setting
into every argument he encounters, he forgoes from the outset the possibility of comparing
arguments according to the different settings they might each presuppose; he is unwittingly
drawn to assessing arguments mostly along the logical dimension, with the epistemological
aspect ceasing to be of distinct comparative interest (since the setting is presumed to be the
same or similar for all arguments).20 The setting confined in this way, questions regarding
the epistemological appropriateness of arguments are cast almost exclusively as questions
regarding their premises; little of distinctive interest can be said about the demonstrations
themselves since all arguments are being made to appeal to the same set of inference rules.
A potentially illuminating avenue of investigation is thus left unexplored.
It seems preferable to avoid this result. To do so requires a willingness to fathom the
existence of settings which are perhaps quite unlike those embodied by logical systems. This
surely complicates the interpretive (i.e., refinement) process to some extent, since finding
a setting no longer amounts to choosing amongst a small number of familiar, pre-packaged
ones (or, even more easily, just imposing one’s favourite). Rather, the task becomes one
of evaluating an argument “on its own terms,” which means having to find those terms in
l9Of course, the interpreter may believe th a t the setting “ought" to be one coinciding with some logical
system, and so takes this to be his justification for imposing it. But notice then th a t he is simply presuming
th a t the prover upholds the same argum entative norms he does, a presumption th a t can get in the way of
faithful interpretation.
20Notice how the completeness of a setting becomes absolutely critical, since the adequacy of a “one setting
fits all” strategy depends on th a t setting being able to validate every reasoning structure it “should."
the first place. This is not an all too easy thing to do. For only very rarely will an arguer
go out of her way to tell us the setting, laying out on the table exactly what principles axe
being presupposed in the reasoning structure that follows (perhaps we find this in the good
philosophy paper here and there); no, what the arguer takes for granted is almost invariably
implicit in the argumentative performance.
Fortunately, we can avail ourselves of some resources to help guide our search. For
example, we may draw upon our knowledge of the arguer’s background beliefs or of the
reasoning principles which were generally in vogue at the time the argument was furnished.
In other words, considerations external to the source argument may legitimately be brought
to bear on the issue. We should be careful, however, not to overlook what is likely our
best clue to the setting’s identity, and undoubtedly the most accessible one: the source
argument itself. Taking seriously the pragmatic significance of the text—that it was put
forward as an argument, and as a successful one at that—the obvious methodology is to
“work backwards,” interpreting the setting to be at least close to something which could
license the reasoning structure that was actually furnished.
This shows that what appears to be one aspect of Parsons’ view is undermined by the
pragmatic approach advocated here. As explained in the previous section, Parsons is eager
to distinguish issues of scholarly interpretation (the refinement of a source argument) from
those of its assessment, in particular its logical assessment. We can accept that these are
indeed two distinct theoretical tasks, but Parsons also seems to suggest that the assessment
stage is one that can be entered only after the interpretive process has been completed.
But this can’t be quite right. For except in those rare cases where the arguer goes out of
her way to delineate the setting before furnishing her reasoning structure, we are forced to
engage in an interpretive process by which our main piece of evidence for determining the
setting is none other than the reasoning structure itself, a structure which presumably was
designed to be faithful to it. A more familiar way of making this point is to remind Parsons
of the ubiquity and reasonableness of the principle of charity in interpretation. It need
not be the only principle invoked, and it need not always do the trick; some texts simply
strain our interpretive sensibilities and are undeserving of being deemed pieces of successful
argumentation. But from the pragmatic point of view, the presumption is that arguments
are put forward to be successful (though sometimes unsuccessfully), and this can be used to
help determine what it is that lies implicit behind the text. Logical assessment thus guides
scholarly interpretation.
Epistemological Assessm ent Revisited
With the help of a pragmatic perspective, we’ve been able to make progress on the question
of argument interpretation. We’ve motivated the adoption of a “minimalist” interpretive
strategy, and considered how the fathoming of informal settings holds explanatory promise.
The rest of the dissertation will be devoted to addressing the other main issue left untouched
by the bare theory; namely, how one can go about conducting “epistemological” assessments
of such settings; i.e., assessments of their appropriateness generally or in a particular context
or situation.
Recall that Parsons thought this kind of assessment to be rather mysterious, and seemed
pessimistic of the chances of accomplishing it in a principled and satisfying way. The
considerations of the previous subsection, however, give us some hope. We can characterize
settings in terms of the discursive responsibilities that are in effect undertaken by an arguer
who implicitly appeals to them. Settings can be compared by comparing the responsibilities
they enforce.
To follow through on this strategy requires that we be able to explain how it is that
settings (which, strictly speaking, are just sets of assumptions and inference rules) can be
said to “enforce” responsibilities in the first place. We begin to take up this task in the
next chapter. There we will consider how the standard proof rules of first-order logic have
a discursive, communicative upshot, one which may be surprising to those accustomed
to thinking of formal derivations primarily as abstract, mathematical objects. It is by
taking formal derivations seriously as arguments—as objects furnished within the context
of a communicative act—that we will be able to relate them to informal argument, the
everyday pieces of text which obviously are used for discursive ends.
2.3 R ep resen tation and R esponsibility
We began this chapter by outlining two desiderata for our framework. We have seen how the
minimalist interpretation strategy holds the promise of fulfilling the first of them; namely,
of providing a means of comparing and contrasting formal and informal argumentation. It
turns out that a parallel argument can be made for how this strategy also holds the promise
of fulfilling the second; namely, of providing a means of differentiating the appropriateness
of different representation schemes (such as diagrammatic or linguistic ones) relative to
particular argumentative tasks (such as proof).
Fortunately, to accommodate this second desideratum, there is no need to supplement

the framework. Even though Parsons makes no explicit mention of the representation
system as a possible “parameter” in his analysis of argumentation, its contribution is already
accounted for. In particular, it is naturally included in our notion of a setting, since implicit
in the requirement that settings specify the acceptable inference rules is the requirement that
they also specify the domain over which those rules may operate. Specifying this domain
is tantamount to describing the “language” of the argument; in other words, specifying the
representation system(s) it employs. Just as a setting whose rules operate over a formal
language is different from one whose rules operate over a natural one, a setting whose
rules operate over linguistic representations is different from one whose rules operate over
a diagrammatic one.21
Once again, when it comes to the comparative assessment of these different settings, it is
the notion of responsibility which will provide the common currency. Just as we can compare
formal and informal settings by comparing the responsibilities they enforce, we can compare
linguistic and diagrammatic representation systems by comparing the responsibilities they
support. We have yet to see how a representation system can be said to “support” a
discursive responsibility; the fulfillment of this promise is to be found in Chapters 4, 5,
and 6. There we will see how the responsibilities uncovered in Chapter 3 depend in large
part on particular features of the language of first-order logic, features not shared by other
representation systems.
2.4 Sum m ary
The framework introduced in this chapter, then, motivates an account of argumentation that
can be summarized as follows. By putting forward an argument, an arguer has implicitly
made a choice as to what she considers her responsibilities to be. The arguer can thus be
assessed as to whether she is successful on her own terms (“logically”), or whether she set
for herself the right kinds of terms in the first place ( “epistemologically”). The discursive
act’s implicit aspect is reflected by its explicit one: often the artefact itself is the best
evidence for determining the responsibilities which that artefact is designed to discharge.
Furthermore, the assumptions and inference rules that are appealed to in an argument
21We can also add heterogeneous settings into the mix: those which operate over both types of represen
tation systems.
(the setting) can be characterized in terms of the sort of responsibilities th at are de facto
undertaken as a result of appealing to them. Part and parcel with such assumptions and
rules is the representation system over which they operate, and which will impose its own
constraints on the kinds of responsibilities that may be undertaken.
It’s now time to set this account to work. In doing so, we will find a way to relate formal
derivation with everyday argumentation, and subsequently to assess whether the Logical
Approach has been successful in vindicating the use of diagrams in proof.
Chapter 3
Formal D erivation as a M odel of

A rgum entation
In this chapter, I offer a preliminary account of the relation between formal logic and in
formal proof, one which can begin to make sense of the honorific status afforded to formal
derivations by mainstream philosophical practice and pedagogy. In short, it is argued that
formal logic generally provides a credible model of argumentation. It is this account which
gets elaborated upon in subsequent chapters, serving to ground a related account of the
status of alternative representation schemes in proof. Eventually, we will find that many of
the recent diagrammatic systems that have been created to vindicate the use of diagrams in
proof do not live up to the model advocated here. This suggests that the defenders of dia
grams cannot rest content letting these formal systems ‘‘speak for themselves” with respect
to whether diagrams are appropriate in proof. At the very least, something must be said
about which aspects of proof and argumentation are adequately supported by diagrammatic
systems, for as we shall see, diagrams do not support the same ones linguistic systems do.
The chapter itself proceeds as follows. First, we sketch the problem our account is
supposed to address, rehearsing some criticisms that have been levelled against the role that
formal logic plays in current philosophical pedagogy, and showing how these criticisms, if left
to stand, serve to put current philosophical practice in question as well. Two conceptions
of logic’s role in argumentation are then outlined, and it is pointed out that these criticisms
seem to be based on one of them; it is suggested that we develop the other. To that end,
our positive account is introduced, applying the strategy advocated and motivated in the
previous chapter. We wrap up the main discussion of the chapter by sketching how this
39
Chapter 3. Formal Derivation as a Model of Argumentation 40
positive account can serve to vindicate mainstream philosophical practice and pedagogy,
thus showing that the criticisms against logic which we will have surveyed miss their mark
by misconstruing logic’s relation to proof and argumentation.1
3.1 T h e Irrelevance o f Formal Logic?
In Chapter 1, it was noted that formal derivations are afforded a special status in philo
sophical circles, serving as paradigmatic examples of argumentation. This special status is
reflected in (and perhaps even partially instituted by) the central place occupied by for
mal logic in Anglo-American philosophical pedagogy. However, some have questioned the
importance and relevance of formal logic, on the grounds that it offers little of use in the
‘“real world” of argumentation. In fact, a “counter-culture” of sorts—the discipline called
argumentation theory or (more provocatively) informal logic—has emerged whose members
display their opposition to the logical mainstream proudly.2
One criticism that has been levelled against formal logic, aiming right at its very heart,
is its adoption of classical validity as its central evaluative notion.3 Students in introductory
logic classes are taught to evaluate arguments solely in terms of their validity; i.e., solely
in terms of whether the truth of the premises guarantees that of the conclusion. But it is
pointed out by informal logicians that this standard benchmark of “successful” formal rea
soning is very rarely reasonably brought to bear on everyday argumentation. In everyday
contexts, validity is taken to be neither necessary nor sufficient for the “goodness” of an
argument. Not necessary, since we are prone to assess as “good” those arguments in which
the truth of the premises offers “good reasons” for (but do not guarantee) the truth of the
conclusion. Not sufficient either, due for example to considerations of relevance (dramati
cally flouted by the ex falso quodlibet), appropriateness (should the argument proceed from
implausible premises) or redundancy (as in the “stuttering” argument from P to P).
Formal logic’s connection to everyday argumentation is made even more remote by its
formal character. The arguments directly analyzed in logic classes aren’t given in natural
lThe line of thought pursued in this chapter is inspired by Stenning (forthcoming), where he advocates
a pragm atic understanding of logic. O ur discussions differ in detail, however, partly due to our divergent
(though related) goals. Stenning’s chief concern is with a psychological theory of hum an reason, and logic’s
role in it. Mine is with logic’s role in argumentation, and especially mathem atical proof.
2For example, critiques of formal logic are offered explicitly in Toulmin (1958) and Govier (1987). More
recent reconciliatory gestures include Walton (1990) and van Benthem et al. (1996).
3There are of course “deviant” formal logics, but they are treated as such, if a t all.
language; rather, they are given in some artificial, formal language. Natural language
arguments are evaluated, if at allr only indirectly, they are first translated into the formal
language; then it is the translated argument which gets tested. And even then, as pointed
out by Govier (1987, p.4), only the strangest natural language arguments get treated in this
way, not ever any of the sort one is likely to find in any real-life context. It is clear that
the “natural language arguments” one finds as exercises in formal logic texts are in fact
translations from some formal argument; that’s why they read so funnily, and are often so
ridiculous from the student’s point of view.
If the informal logicians’ complaints against formal logic were limited merely to its
pedagogical usefulness (especially with respect to general undergraduate education), then
the philosophical mainstream perhaps need not fret too much. But in fact, such criticisms
can be made to “percolate up” into a full-blown philosophical problem, having to do with
formal logic’s relevance to turf claimed closest to home. For one can imagine the defender
of formal logic conceding the spirit of the above remarks: yes, indeed, what is taught in
formal logic classes is quite remote from everyday argumentation; yes, it is quite unlikely
that an undergraduate taking such a class would gain any skills that could prove useful
in everyday life (except, of course, for getting an ‘A’ in his logic class); yes, perhaps the
logic curriculum should be expanded along the lines advocated by the “critical thinking”
movement to make it more useful to more university undergraduates. But our defender
would also be keen to stake out the bit of territory where formal logic is deemed by him
to be of central importance; we would imagine this territory to include mathematics and
perhaps even parts of philosophy, where (for example) classical validity is upheld as the
benchmark of successful argumentation, and where formal symbolism is part of the stock
and trade.
However, as hinted in the brief discussion of “formalizability” in Chapter 1, even in this
more restricted territory our defender cannot rest easy. For completely analogous criticisms
can be raised about the relation of logic to mathematical practice; or more specifically, about
the relation between formal derivations and the informal proofs one finds in mathematics
journals. Indeed, some “maverick” mathematicians have done just that.4
The first thing to note is that, lo and behold, formal derivations are almost nowhere
to be found in mathematical contexts. Apart from a logic class, a mathematics professor
would never dream of conducting a lecture by writing (or speaking!), say, a sequence of
4E.g., Hersh (1997), De Millo et al. (1979), and Davis (1972). The term “maverick” is Hersh’s.
Chapter 3. Formal Derivation as a Model o f Argumentation 42
first-order formulas, the only transitions of which are through natural deduction inference
rules.5 The proofs that get published in professional journals certainly aren’t in this form,
and they would be practically useless if they were, never m in d the human impossibility of
producing them in the first place. Even proof theorists spend most of their professional time
reasoning about formal derivations, not through them. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to
say that only students in logic classes ever actually go through the trouble of writing formal
derivations, and most of the time they’re wondering why on earth they’re being forced to
do it.
So real-life mathematics proofs aren’t formal; they are at best “formalizable,” or so goes
the common platitude. But it is worth pausing to consider what this could possibly mean;
what, in particular, the “able” part is signifying. If it is meant in a practical sense; i.e., that
it is humanly possible to come up with some formal counterpart to a given informal proof
(in that sufficiently dedicated teams of humans could do it!), then surely there are many
bona fide mathematical proofs which aren’t formalizable. The original (informal) proofs
are already getting unwieldy!6 If it’s meant in a more theoretical sense, that there is some
h u m a n ly inaccessible formal analogue to the real-life proof, then it is unclear what this says
about the value of either the original or the formal proof. In particular, it is obscure how an
informal proof can get any legitimacy from its relation to some non-actual but theoretically
possible derivation.
De Millo, Lipton, and Perlis (1979) suggest that it doesn’t. If anything, for them
‘“formalizability” is what emerges after the practical acceptance of an informal proof. Taking
seriously the social processes which underlie proof production (where formal methods are
only occasionally applied, if at all), they argue that “insofar as it is successful, mathematics
is a social, informal, intuitive, organic, human process, a community project” (p.272). At
no point, the authors contend, does formal deduction enter significantly into the process.
If anything, formalizability emerges as an afterthought, a property attributed to informal
proofs after they’ve done their good work:
After enough internalization, enough transformation, enough generalization,

enough use, and enough connection, the mathematical community eventually
decides that the central concepts of the original theorem, now perhaps greatly
changed, have an ultimate stability. If the various proofs feel right and the
5Well, perhaps a professor would dream it, but she certainly wouldn’t do it.
6W iles’ proof of Ferm at's Last Theorem readily comes to mind as a plausible example. See Davis (1972)
for argum ents against the likelihood of there being long, formal, and correct proofs.
results are examined from enough angles, then the truth of the theorem is even
tually considered to be established. The theorem is thought to be true in the
classical sense—that is, in the sense that it could be demonstrated by formal,
deductive logic, although for almost all theorems no such deduction ever took
place or ever will (p.274, emphasis in original).
For De Millo et al., “formalizability” is little more than a stamp of approval, reflecting
rather than contributing to a proof’s legitimacy and acceptance.
Not only is formal logic charged with irrelevancy, some even argue that it is antithetical
to the growth and flourishing of mathematics. Poincare found
nothing in logistic for the discoverer but shackles. It does not help us at all in
the direction of conciseness, far from it; and if it requires twenty-seven equations
to establish that 1 is a number, how many will it require to demonstrate a real
theorem? (from De Millo et al. 1979, p.275)
Poincare articulates a viewpoint shared by many working mathematicians who question the
practicality of formal methods.
Confronted by such viewpoints, the defender of formal logic may be tempted to retreat to
safer domain, content to affirm its relevance to proof-checking, as a final test of a theorem’s
reliability after all the creative work has been done. But then, the borders will have been
drawn in too far since, presumably, formal methods only apply to formal arguments. So
the defender would be stuck again having to confront the fact that there aren’t actually too
many of these formal derivations around to check. And if reliability were really the main
upshot of formalization, then the fact that it takes hard, informal work to formalize an
informal proof would appear to compromise the overall effectiveness of the formalization
project.
This may seem to be cause for despair. Indeed, from this unhappy state of affairs
one may be tempted to say: so much the worse for mathematics; the more tenuous the
link between an informal proof and some existing formal derivation, the less legitimate or
genuine is that informal proof. Under this view, the fact that it is generally unfeasible for
humans to produce formal derivations of interesting theorems is quite a regrettable thing;
mathematicians are simply “making do” by using informal proofs, unfortunately incapable
of doing much better.
The tenability of such a position can’t be ruled out of court, though it would have to
rely on a positive account of why formal derivations should be held in such high esteem, to
the exclusion of their poor informal (and distant) cousins. But even should this “positive”
account be forthcoming, one may balk at the pessimistic stance it appears to ground.
Mathematicians in general, though apparently doomed to wallow in the informal, seem by
their own lights no worse as a result. Thurston writes:
Our system is quite good at producing reliable theorems that can be solidly
backed up. I t’s just that the reliability does not primarily come from mathe
maticians formally checking formal arguments; it comes from mathematicians
t h in k in g carefully and critically about mathematical ideas (cited in Rav 1999,
p.36).
And similarly:
The point is not that mathematicians make mistakes; that goes without saying.
The point is th at mathematicians’ errors are corrected, not by formal symbolic
logic, but by other mathematicians (De Millo et al. 1979, p.272).
Not only formal logic, but also the epistemological anxiety it can foster, appear to be quite
irrelevant to everyday mathematical activity.
3.2 Two C on cep tion s o f Formal L ogic
The arguments offered in the previous section were rather quick and sweeping. However,
they do serve to place the burden of proof upon those who wish to uphold the institu
tion of formal logic both in the curriculum, and in the philosophy (and understanding) of
mathematics. In this section, a diagnosis is offered of the kind of thinking that drives the
philosophical mainstream into an uncomfortably defensive position. This in turn helps to
point the way out, a way we will begin to follow in Section 3.3.
3.2.1 Logic as T o o l
The criticisms aired in the previous section seem to rest on a limited conception of how logic
could earn an honorific status, a conception which the defenders of logic often unwittingly
adopt themselves. According to this conception, formal logic is relevant to a discipline,
and deserving of an honored status, only to the extent that it can be effectively wielded
by its practitioners to solve practical problems within that discipline. I shall call this the
conception of logic as tool.
A quick perusal of the criticisms quoted in the previous section serves to confirm this
diagnosis. Logic’s place in the general curriculum has been questioned on the basis of
its inability to provide a suitable method for evaluating real-life arguments. Logic texts’
half-hearted attempts to do so (e.g., those exercises where one is supposed to demonstrate
formally the validity of unnatural natural-language arguments) can’t help but seem desper
ate and futile given this “applied” orientation. By homing in on validity and employing a
clean formal language, formal logic ignores precisely what the student needs to be sensitized
to if she is to effectively navigate the nuances of everyday argumentation, or so the criticism
goes (see, e.g., Govier 1987, especially chapters 1 and 10).
Essentially the same kind of complaint underlies some of the skepticism regarding formal
logic’s role in mathematics. This is articulated especially clearly in Hersh (1997):
How does formal proof differ from real live proof? Real-life proof is informal,
in whole or in part. A piece of formal argument—a calculation—is meaningful
only to complete or verify some informal reasoning (p.57, emphasis added).
It’s as if logic’s relation to mathematics is exhausted by its ability to provide a machine for
mathematicians to use directly in solving some problem.
The most obvious “machine” that formal logic has offered to mathematics is of course
the computing machine. And it is undeniable that the impact of computers on mathematical
practice has been considerable. But it is equally clear that this has not served to displace the
practice by which proofs get produced and accepted. To be sure, some have been impressed
(even troubled) by what they take to be genuine mathematical innovation as a result of
computer use.7 But there remain vast numbers of mathematicians whose collective work
makes little to no use of formal methods or machines, even at the final proof stage. It is
not obvious that their work suffers as a result.
Logic as a mathematical discipline may offer other tools as well, which are occasionally
made available to and even used by the greater mathematical community. De Millo et al.,
for instance, cite Cohen’s concept of forcing as an example of an initially unfamiliar proof
technique which gradually became widely accepted as it got re-interpreted algebraically and
generalized.8 Another example (cited in Feferman 1979) might be “Kreisel’s Program” of
“unwinding” out of non-constructive proofs its constructive content; this was applied to
Artin’s solution of Hilbert’s (apparently non-logical) Seventeenth Problem.9 These show
7cf. Tymoczko (1979); Horgan (1993).
8One may protest th a t this is an example of the m athematical fruitfulness of set theory, not formal logic.
But clearly the interest in Cohen’s result was spurred in part by logical concerns.
9T he Problem being: if a real polynomial in one or more variables is positive definite, then it can be
represented as a sum of squares of rational functions.
formal logic to be on a par and free to interact with any other mathematical discipline.10
Notice, however, that such “practical” uses of formal logic, however significant they may
be, aren’t of the kind advertised (or at least: of the kind perceived to be advertised). The
supposed raison d ’etre for adopting a regime of formalization in proof is to ensure “rigour”
or “reliability.” The tedium of replacing informal proofs with formal derivations is widely
thought to be justifiable on the basis of some direct epistemic upshot, and a real epistemic
upshot at that. Any purely theoretical benefits are completely idle from this point of view.
For formalization to live up to its popular billing, mathematicians would actually have to
be better able to produce or verify formal derivations rather than informal proofs. But
humans being human (even with computer assistance), such a scenario just doesn’t seem
likely. As Kreisel (1985) notes:
Certainly, if one is operating on masses of meaningless symbols as one says, then

the possibility of formalization or mechanization is a pretty obvious requisite for
precision. But it would be odd, so to speak illogical, to conclude from this that
the reliability of an argument is enhanced by ignoring everything one knows
about the subject matter, and by treating it as a manipulation of meaningless
symbols! (p. 145, emphasis in original)
A tool that only does its job “in principle” is simply a bad tool for the job.
3.2.2 L ogic as M od el
Fortunately, there is another conception of logic available that can make better sense of
philosophical pedagogy and practice, while keeping intelligible the connection between for
mal derivation and informal proof. This is a conception that takes formal derivations (and
logical settings in Parsons’ sense11) to be idealizations of informal proofs (and everyday
argumentative settings). We might call this the conception of logic as model.
For this conception to ground an adequate defense, however, it must be clear in what
respects formal derivations are idealizations of informal mathematical proof. Perhaps sur
prisingly, there is very little in the literature (as far as I know) by way of a positive account.
l0Though of minimal professional interest to most working m athem aticians, logical results are of course
sometimes directly applicable to philosophical inquiry as well. Godel’s incompleteness theorem s are an
obvious example; another example (detailed in Feferman 1993b) is the impact of proof-theoretic results
(suggesting th e reducibility of “working” m athematics to Peano Arithmetic) on the Q uine-Putnam indis
pensability argum ents for mathematics.
u see C hapter 2.1.2
Even those who explicitly advocate the conception of logic as model tend to give it a neg
ative characterization, conceding what it is that logic leaves out rather than providing a
substantial description of what it retains. For instance, it is typical to read something
along the lines of the following: “Formal logic abstracts from the content of the premises
and conclusion of an argument, calling them propositions” (Walton 1990, pp.417-8). But
this is little more than to say that formal logic is the study of an argument’s “form.”
More headway is made in Feferman (1979), where he writes that the aim of a logical
theory is “to model the reasoning of, say, an idealized platonistic (set-theoretical) mathemati
cian or an idealized constructivist mathematician at work in [some area] of mathematics”
(pp. 177-8 in Feferman (1998), emphasis his). He notes that such a theory makes use of
formal systems to describe that activity.
We may wonder what motivates this adoption of formalism as part of the abstraction.
Feferman goes on (half-heartedly) to appeal to an analogy:
Logical theories have sometimes been compared to physical theories. In this

analogy, formal systems play roughly the same role for the former as differential
equations for the latter. Neither of these theoretical endeavors pretends to be
all-encompassing of ordinary experience. Indeed, the explanation of what each
kind of theory covers almost requires question-begging answers: logic deals with
the logical structure of mathematics as physics deals with the physical structure
of the world. An argument can be made (in each case) that it is the essential,
underlying structure of that part of experience which is being studied. Be that
as it may, the behavior of biological systems cannot be deduced from physical
principles and the creative and intuitive aspects of mathematical work evade
logical encapsulation.
But what is that argument alluded to in the second-last sentence? Without it, we are still
left with a predominantly negative or question-begging characterization of the province of
logic (as the “underlying structure” which remains after the “creative and intuitive aspects”
of mathematics have been abstracted away) as well as no direct justification for why formal
methods should be adopted.12 Feferman continues:
One part of the analogy with physics is not so apt. The experimental method
provides highly sophisticated, refined means to test physical theories and thence
lead to their corroboration, modification, or rejection. We have no such tests for
12An obvious response to this latter concern is th at formal methods are adopted fo r convenience. This
would be perfectly legitimate as far as it goes, but would nonetheless be insufficient to ground the honorific
sta tu s of formal argum entation. It would be prima facie strange to uphold as a model of proof (especially
normatively) something whose chief m erit is its amenability to being studied.
logical theories. Rather, it is primarily a matter of individual judgment how well

these square with ordinary experience. The accumulation of favorable judgment
by many individuals is of course significant (p. 178, emphasis added).
As is, presumably, the accumulation of unfavorable judgment, some of which has been can
vassed in the previous section. Without a positive account of what logic’s abstraction really
amounts to, we are left in a situation similar to that outlined in the previous subsection,
with the legitimacy of logic’s prestige defended simply on the basis of its alleged practical
acceptance or intuitive acceptability, this time as a model (rather than as a tool).
It should be unsurprising, then, that some are skeptical of the claim that logic “models”
mathematical proof given that not much guidance is offered for determining exactly what
aspects of the argumentation are putatively being modelled. Left to their own devices, it is
quite reasonable for some to be rather puzzled about the connection between what’s taught
in logic classes and what’s done in the world, and then to interpret the upholding of formal
proof as some sort of model to imply the wholesale denigration of informal practice. The
mathematician Reuben Hersh articulates well the challenge facing the defender of formal
logic, who should
explain in what sense formal systems are a model of mathematics. Normatively,

mathematics should be like a formal system? Or descriptively, mathematics is
like a formal system?
If descriptive, then it has to be judged by how faithful it is to what it purports
to describe. If normative, it has to explain why mathematics is prospering so
well while paying so little heed to its norms (Hersh 1997, p.215, emphasis in
original).
We shall now proceed to meet this challenge head on.
3.3 C ase Study: First-O rder Logic
In this section, I sketch an account of how logic provides a model of argumentation, applying
the pragmatic approach that was introduced in Chapter 2. In particular, I argue that formal
logic provides a model of onerous argumentation, in which the prover takes upon herself a
substantial burden in providing explicitly the materials that go towards demonstrating the
acceptability of a conclusion. The undertaking of such a responsibility is reflected in three
features of standard formal systems which are identified below; these features each get a
more detailed treatment in subsequent chapters.
3.3 .1 P relim in aries
Recall the proposal of the previous chapter. There it was suggested that arguments (whether
they be formal or informal) be characterized in terms of the responsibilities that are implic
itly undertaken by one who presents them. The nature of these responsibilities is reflected
in an argument’s setting which, in the case of a formal derivation, is precisely the axioms
and inference rules of some logical system.13 Our present task, then, is to follow through
on this proposal and determine the kinds of responsibilities enforced by the rules of formal
systems. In doing so, we will see in which respects formal derivations can be thought to be
idealizations of everyday proofs.
The particular logical system we will consider is, naturally enough, classical first-order
logic, virtually ubiquitous in formal logic courses and texts. Even if classical first-order
logic can no longer be considered the locus of much current logical research, it certainly
does play a central role in the education of logicians, and has arguably done so since the late
1930’s. This, along with its very considerable meta-theoretic interest,14 makes it reasonable
to expect classical first-order logic to be playing a paradigmatic role even for professional
logicians whose research interests strictly speaking lie elsewhere. In addition, it is almost
surely what philosophers and mathematicians have in mind whenever there is talk of formal
proof.15
Also following the textbooks’ lead, we will settle upon the usual natural deduction proof
system for this logic, with the inference rules organized in terms of the introduction and
elimination of the first-order logical constants. Those who go on to study the metatheory of
logical systems are quickly familiarized with other proof systems for first-order logic, each
with their own merits from a methodological point of view. But it is generally accepted that
the derivations in natural deduction systems have a structure that most closely resembles
that of informal proof and everyday reasoning, and so this is a reasonable choice for us to
make.
As it turns out, for the purposes of this chapter not too much hangs on these particular
choices. Our immediate goal is to articulate in what sense formal derivations in general
are idealizations of informal proof; most differences between logics or proof systems will
13We are continuing to gloss over the contribution made to the setting by the premises of an argument.
See footnote 8 of C hapter 2.
l4See, e.g., Lindstrom (1969) and Zucker (1978).
lsC hapter 7 of Shapiro (1991) contains an interesting historical account of the “triu m p h ” of first-order
logic over other ones.
be irrelevant at this level of granularity. Natural-deduction first-order logic is chosen here

simply because it is arguably the paradigmatic formal system, a t least in the minds of
those who are puzzled by its role in informal contexts. In the next subsection, we will
be content to extract from this particular standard and paradigmatic logical system those
properties which are in fact standard and paradigmatic; these properties are then reinter
preted along the pragmatic lines advocated in Chapter 2. Along the way, we will compare
such “logical” settings with the informal settings of everyday argumentation, thus coming
to an understanding of how derivations idealize proofs.
3 .3 .2 T h ree K inds o f R esp on sib ilities
So suppose someone (the “prover”) undertakes to produce a derivation in first-order logic.

As argued in Chapter 2, this is tantamount to her accepting certain responsibilities which
are reflected in the inference rules of the logic (and the axioms, if there were any). We
will now proceed to consider three kinds of responsibilities that the rules of first-order logic
enforce.
Univocality
Let us begin with the basics. The inference rules of first-order logic operate over some
first-order language. Such a language is “formal,” in the sense that its set of well-formed
formulas is precisely defined. In fact, it is inductively defined: there are sets of primitive
symbols (e.g., constant, variable, and predicate) whose elements are combined according to
inductive rules such that more complex terms and formulas are built out of simpler ones.
Related to this point is the fact that the formulas of first-order logic have the property
of unique readability: it is possible to unambiguously parse any given formula, and give a
unique construction of it in terms of the inductive clauses which define the overall set of
well-formed formulas.16 In the standard first-order notation, unique readability is achieved
in part through the use of parentheses, though they are in general not necessary.17
Unique readability helps to ensure that any attempted recursive definition of a function
over the structure of the well-formed formulas will in fact be successful; i.e., will result in
a well-defined function. Without it, the various ways of constructing a particular formula
from its constituents may allow the clauses of such a recursive definition to “clash” ; in effect,
16Unique readability also applies to the terms (variables, constants, and functions thereof) of the language.
I7They are absent in Polish notation, which also has the property of unique readability.
causing the “function” thus generated to yield more than one value for th at formula. This
prospect is nipped in the bud by unique readability; no such ambiguity in the functions can
arise, since the formulas have only one possible construction history in the first place.18
Unique readability is then put to work when it comes to providing the semantics of the
language. Given a particular model19 (which designates the universe of discourse and assigns
objects of the appropriate type to each of the predicate, constant, and function symbols)
and interpretation function (which assigns objects of the universe to the variable symbols),
each formula of the language is thereby assigned a unique truth-value in the following way.
First of all, the interpretation function is unambiguously extended to apply to all terms
of the language (made possible by the unique readability of terms). Thus extended, the
truth-values of the atomic formulas are given “directly” by the model, depending exactly on
whether the (types of) objects designated by its terms are in the extension of its predicate
symbol. The truth-values of more complex formulas are thereby generated by inductive
clauses which reflect the intended meaning of the logical symbols. Unique readability ensures
that only one truth-value per formula is thus generated.20
Do these features of the syntax of first-order logic have any pragmatic upshot? Indeed
they do. First of all. by using this language the prover implicitly takes on the responsibility
of using the language correctly. What this means is that the prover is committed to pre
senting only well-formed formulas in her argument; she fails in her endeavour to present an
acceptable derivation in first-order logic if any of its formulas aren’t well-formed according
to the syntactic rules.
At first, this may seem a trivial matter, but in fact mere grammaticality in first-order
logic goes a long way, in effect relieving the audience from having to perform a certain kind
of interpretive task. Given that well-formed formulas have the property of unique readabil
ity, and given that the prover has taken on the responsibility to present only well-formed
formulas, she has thus also de facto taken on the responsibility to present uniquely read
able formulas; i.e., to present syntactically unambiguous formulas. Since the semantics of
first-order formulas “rides” on their syntax (in the sense that the truth-value of a sentence
l8Sometimes this uniqueness restriction can be relaxed, but only when it turns out to have no semantic
im port; i.e., when an am biguity in the structure of a formula ends up causing no sem antic ambiguity.
l9Here “model” is being used as a technical term , to be distinguished from the informal use of “model"
earlier, as in, e.g., “logic provides a model of argum entation.” Hopefully, context will forestall confusion.
20It turns out th at the sem antic contribution of the interpretation function gets ‘•washed out" by the time
an entire closed formula is assigned its truth-value, so th at any other interpretation function would yield
th e same truth-value for th a t formula, given the same model. For this reason, mention of the interpretation
function will be suppressed in the ensuing discussion.
is determined by applying a recursive function over its syntactic construction), mere gram-
maticality also ensures semantic unambiguity: each well-formed formula in the prover’s
derivation will automatically have a single meaning once a model is fixed. Contrast this
with, say, the commitment to use English correctly. The commitment to use English does
not implicitly entail a commitment to avoid ambiguous constructions: there are grammat
ically correct English sentences that have multiple meanings depending on their parsing
(e.g., Peter saw the man on the hill with the telescope) or even despite a single parsing
{Everybody is the child of somebody). We can imagine the plausibility and acceptability of
English arguments riding on the way such ambiguities get resolved, and it becomes a task
for the audience to decide on a resolution in order to assess them; a charitable audience
would seek a resolution which makes the argument successful. The user of first-order logic,
however, relieves the audience from having to do such interpretive work, and in particular,
requires no charity in this respect.
In addition to unambiguous parsing, the syntactic and semantic conventions of first-
order logic also enforce unequivocation within a derivation. For any particular model, each
predicate and constant symbol is given only one denotation throughout a derivation; there
are no homonyms in first-order logic. This is another example of how a semantic feature
is made to “ride” (at least in part) on a syntactic one. Each occurrence of a particular
predicate or constant symbol will share one common meaning given a model. This too
relieves the audience of having to make certain kinds of interpretive decisions.
It should be noted, however, that the audience can’t be relieved of all interpretive re
sponsibilities. Most importantly, it is taken for granted that the audience has the ability to
differentiate each of the primitive symbols from each other, and to recognize their concate
nation into formula-sized units. These sorts of interpretive (or perhaps, “recognitional”)
tasks are by no means trivial, as the ongoing efforts at automating them demonstrate. How
ever, the chief interpretive work of the audience is relegated to this basic, recognitions! level.
Any higher-level tasks are either algorithmic (e.g., determining the construction history of
any given formula, in effect checking for its well-formedness) or de facto left for the prover
(as argued above).
To sum up then, by undertaking to produce a formal derivation, a prover implicitly takes
on the responsibility to use the formal language correctly, and to abide by its semantic
and syntactic conventions. Once a model is fixed, these conventions enforce a regime of
unambiguity and unequivocation, which in turn relieves the audience from having to perform
certain kinds of interpretive tasks. Simply using a formal language commits the prover to
undertaking certain responsibilities that are not automatically enforced by the use of natural
language.
One, however, may be worried that the italicized proviso of the previous paragraph
trivializes its significance. Since the denotations of the predicate and constant symbols do
change from model to model, isn’t this a source of equivocation or ambiguity that needs to
be resolved by the audience, presumably by their choosing and fixing a model?
The first step to answering this is to reiterate the point made above; namely, that once
a model is fixed, a kind of equivocation or ambiguity which appears in natural language is
simply made impossible in first-order logic. This is because the predicates and names of first-
order logic require at most what might be called type-based interpretation, as opposed to
the token-based interpretation required by natural language. The meanings of the symbols
in a formal language can be fixed at the outset (by a model); the semantics then enforces
an unequivocal interpretation. By contrast, natural languages simply don’t work this way;
the existence of homonyms and ambiguous sentence constructions allows tokens of the same
syntactic type (whether they be words or sentences) to be given alternate meanings, even
within the same discursive context.
The second step is to argue that the global “equivocation” that results from the varying
of models is ultimately made irrelevant should the prover be successful in presenting a
formal derivation. To see why this is the case, we will need to consider another kind of
responsibility that is implicitly undertaken by the presenter of a derivation. We will take
this up next. As it turns out, the prover’s undertaking of this responsibility in effect relieves
the audience from even having to interpret the language at all\ even the work of choosing
appropriate models is delegated to the prover, and not to the audience.
Explicitness
In endeavouring to present a derivation in first-order logic, the prover is committed to

employing correctly the inference rules of its proof system (which we are currently assuming
to be of the natural-deduction variety). These rules are truth-preserving, where “truth” is
model-relative: whatever grammatically faithful interpretation is given to the non-logical
vocabulary (i.e, whatever the model), the application of an inference rule to a set of true
formulae yields another true formula. In order to appreciate the pragmatic upshot to using
such rules, it is worth dwelling upon a notable feature of first-order logic; namely, its
differential treatment of logical and non-logical symbols.21

Consider the generative structure of its semantics. The purpose of a first-order model
is to provide the domain of discourse, as well as the denotations of the non-logical (i.e.,
predicate, constant, and function) symbols.22 It does not provide a specification of the
operations corresponding to the connectives or quantifiers. Whereas the contribution of
the non-logical symbols is mediated through the choice of model, the semantic work of
the logical symbols is “built right into” the recursive clauses which generate the truth-
values. In other words, the intended meaning of the logical symbols is hard-wired into the
logic’s satisfaction definitions, while the meanings of the non-logical symbols are provided
“externally” by a particular model.
This asymmetry is also reflected in the inference rules. In a natural-deduction system, for
each logical symbol there is exactly one rule for “introducing” it, and one for “eliminating”
it; there are no rules for introducing or eliminating any particular non-logical symbol.23
This choice of “subject-matter” for the inference rules is unsurprising; as it is precisely
the meaning of the non-logical vocabulary which gets varied from model to model, it is
natural to expect truth-preserving inference rules to appeal only to the meanings of the
logical symbols which are hard-wired into the semantics.
There are numerous pragmatic upshots to all this. First of all, a prover who uses the
inference rules of first-order logic is thereby limited to using only truth-preserving rules, in
essence forgoing from the outset a kind of argumentation which endeavors to demonstrate,
say, only the likelihood of a conclusion given the truth of the premises. The prover is hence
committing herself to a high standard of demonstration.
Secondly, truth-preservation is in fact truth-preservation in all models, not merely in
most models, or in some intended model. As such, formal derivations of a conclusion from a
set of premises show there to be absolutely no counterexamples amongst the class of models
countenanced by the logic; i.e., there is no model in which each of the premises is true but
the conclusion is false. Arguments validated in this way thus face up to a rather severe
kind of test. No matter how the non-logical vocabulary gets interpreted (even if it’s in a
2lThe following discussion is meant to be neutral on the (controversial) question of how one generally goes
about distinguishing logical vocabulary from non-logical.
22The identity symbol, if the language has it, usually gets treated as a logical symbol, with its extension
as a binary function hard-wired into the satisfaction definition.
23This observation may seem to apply only to natural-deduction systems, but an analogous distinction
can be made for o ther first-order proof systems. For example, in Hilbert-style systems (which employ fewer
inference rules b u t more axioms), the fixed parts of the axiom schema are all made up of logical symbols,
and any formula (containing non-logical symbols, of course) may be substituted for the variable parts.
way quite unintended by the prover, modulo rules of grammar), a formal derivation of the
conclusion from the premises ensures the truth of the former given that of the latter.
Hence, we have another example of how the commitment to use correctly the inference
rules of first-order logic implicitly commits the prover to doing more as well. The only
way the prover could apply the rules of first-order logic correctly and arrive at her desired
conclusion is by explicitly mentioning as premises enough semantic constraints on the non-
logical vocabulary to ensure that there are no counterexamples.24 This in turn relieves the
audience from having to “read in” any extra semantic content for the non-logical vocabulary
beyond that presented explicitly in some premise (should it want to be charitable, for
instance). In a successful first-order derivation, nothing with respect to the non-logical
vocabulary is left implicit that could make a difference vis a vis truth-preservation.
By way of contrast, the semantic contribution of the logical vocabulary is in one sense
taken for granted. Whereas the interpretation of non-logical vocabulary can vary from
model to model (thus requiring the prover to “control” what counts as a relevant model
through the explicit mention of premises), the semantic work of the logical vocabulary is
“hard-wired” into the semantics. This relieves the prover from having to make explicit
amongst the premises relevant constraints on the meaning of the logical vocabulary.
First-order logic’s differential treatment of its logical and non-logical vocabulary (as
reflected in its semantics and inference rules) thus delineates what the prover is responsible
for making explicit as a result of using this logical system. Roughly speaking, the (logical)
“hard-wired” part of the semantics (built-in to the recursive clauses of the satisfaction-
definition) is taken for granted by the prover, requiring no explicit mention in the derivation.
However, the (non-logical) part of the semantics that is contributed by some model (and
hence made to vary from interpretation to interpretation) can not be taken for granted; to
successfully present a derivation in this formal system, the prover must “control” the class
of models to be considered by making explicit as premises enough semantic constraints on
the non-logical vocabulary.
It should be pointed out that the rules of first-order logic do not outlaw certain “cheap”
ways of discharging this responsibility. Given a conclusion C, if one includes amongst the
premises C itself, then in a trivial sense the relevant semantic constraints on the non-logical
vocabulary will have been made explicit. (Only slightly less cheap would be to include in
24These “semantic” constraints are perhaps more accurately dubbed denotational ones, but I’ll keep to
my original terminology since it helps to emphasize the real semantic work done by the explicit statem ent
of premises (i.e., the work done to carve out the relevant class of models).
the premises instead P —>C and P, or P V C and - P .) Alternatively, the responsibility of

ensuring that no counterexamples exist can be discharged vacuously simply by forwarding
a set of contradictory premises (i.e., premises which are simultaneously satisfied by no
models); in first-order logic, the use of contradictory premises permits the derivation of
any conclusion whatsoever, which would appear to be an undesirable feature of the logic.25
But the possibility of discharging one’s responsibilities cheaply should not obscure the fact
that these responsibilities do need to be discharged somehow, that the endeavour to put
forward a formal derivation in first-order logic implicitly requires that enough non-logical
semantic constraints be stated to ensure that there are no possible counterexamples. The
existence of such a requirement in itself is by no means trivial; indeed, it is rarely enforced
in everyday contexts where the meaning of one’s vocabulary is mostly left implicit, and
where the bounds of relevant possibility are taken to be understood.
We are now in a position to tie up the loose end from the previous discussion on equiv
ocation. The employment of truth-preserving inference rules requires the prover to list as
premises semantic constraints sufficient to ensure that there are no counterexamples. In
other words, the premises can be seen as explicit “directions” which serve to outline the
class of relevant models. Within this class, it makes no difference which model is chosen,
since the conclusion is guaranteed to be true in that model should the derivation be correct.
Any model outside this class is irrelevant, since at least one of the premises is guaranteed
not to hold in it. It is thus in the following sense that the audience is relieved from having to
choose in some substantive way any model at all: in a successful derivation, the prover has
fixed enough of the meaning of the non-logical vocabulary so that what remain as possible
sources of equivocation have no effect on the truth of the conclusion.
Fine-grainedness
One fined property to note about the inference rules: they are “formal.” They are surely
recursive, in the sense that they can each be characterized fully and precisely as recursive
functions over the Godel numbers of formulas. As such, they are “computer-checkable” if
we accept the Church-Turing thesis. But in fact, something stronger can be stated in the
case of natural-deduction style systems: each of the rules corresponds to a rather simple
operation such as concatenation, truncation, or substitution over the syntax of formulas.
Consider, for example, an application of ^-introduction. This rule produces a formula
2SIndeed, some have proposed alternative logics (such as paraconsistent ones) which tie up such loopholes.
by concatenating a previous formula in the proof with the conjunction symbol followed
by another previous formula; it corresponds to an elementary formal operation on two
formulas. Similarly, given a conditional and its antecedent, -►-elimination (modus ponens)
works by “detaching” the consequent from the conditional. Finally, V-elimination works
on a universal formula by deleting the initial quantifier and variable, and substituting free
occurrences of that variable with some constant symbol. The other inference rules can be
characterized similarly; indeed, they can all be presented schematically.26 The introduction
and elimination rules cut up formulas at their natural joints according to their inductive
construction. This construction metaphor is taken seriously by the inference rules, treating
formulas as being composed of building-blocks which can get rearranged in truth-preserving
ways. The successive application of these inference rules, then, amounts to a series of basic
syntactic manipulations—the piecewise reshuffling of notation—by which a conclusion is
truly “derived” from the premises.27
It is worth contrasting these standard rules with recursive ones which do not correspond
to basic syntactic operations. Imagine, for instance, a system of prepositional logic which
has the usual syntax and semantics but only one rule of inference, Taut Con.28 This rule
licenses any tautological consequence of any set of preceding formulas in the derivation.
Thus, this system is both sound rind complete for the prepositional language, and its one
inference rule decidable as there is an effective algorithm, e.g. the truth-table method, for
determining whether any formula is a tautological consequence of a set of others. Indeed, the
use of such a system enforces all the discursive responsibilities of univocality and explicitness
we’ve canvassed so far. Yet the system also licenses rather strange “derivations”: given any
valid argument (conceived here as a set of premises and a conclusion), there is a formal one-
liner of a proof consisting simply in the listing of the premises followed by the conclusion,
justified by a single application of Taut Con. Hardly a derivation at all.
26T he quantifier rules are more complicated to sta te schematically, since they require substitutions th at
Ucut across” the recursive structure of formulas. B ut any particular application of the rule involves no more
than a substitution operation and either the addition or deletion of two symbols at the front of some formula.
27V-introduction (from <j>derive 0 V 0 , where <p and rji are themselves well-formed formulae) presents an
exception of sorts since a considerable chunk of th e end-formula “comes out of nowhere,” as it were. The fact
th a t the non-constructive part i/> of the end-formula can itself be any well-formed formula helps to defuse
any perceived disanalogy between this rule and th e others. This issue is taken up in more detail in Chapter
6.
28This rule is in fact implemented in Barwise and Etchemendy (1994; 1999) and is occasionally included
with a different name in other logical systems. In most cases, the rule is introduced explicitly as one
whose stated purpose is to license “short-cuts,” and only after the more traditional propositional axioms or
introduction and elimination rules of the system have been stated.
Returning back to the first-order language, we could consider the rule FO Con which
licenses any first-order logical consequence of a set of previous formulae. Such a rule isn’t
decidable, but it is semi-decidable: there is a decision procedure which will verify that a
formula is in fact a logical consequence of other formulae, but won’t terminate otherwise.
So we can imagine a proof system of first-order logic with this rule included. It too would
license one-line proofs: any traditional derivation in first-order logic could be replaced by
one which consists only of a single application of FO Con, and the correctness of the former
in the traditional system would ensure that of the latter in the FO Con system.29
Is there a clear distinction between the Con “derivations” and those of more traditional
systems like natural deduction? Well, one could imagine an audience which is offered a Con
feeling short-changed (conned, in fact!), as if the prover had shirked her commitment to
offer a demonstration of how the conclusion follows from the premises. Since such “proofs”
amount to nothing more than a listing of the premises and the conclusion, it seems fair
to say that, should the audience proceed to check such proofs by running the appropriate
algorithm on the formulas presented, it’s in fact they who end up doing most of the work
involved in demonstrating the validity of the argument; it’s the audience who ends up doing
the proving.
The Con systems, then, license coarse-grained proofs. Even when the application of the
Con rules can be reduced to a series of syntactic manipulations, these manipulations are,
so to speak, hidden from view when one looks at the systems’ (one-line) “derivations.” One
might even say that the Con derivations rather provocatively model what are often called
proof-sketches. They offer an assurance to the reader that, should he proceed to run the
appropriate algorithm on the premises and conclusion, he will indeed find the latter to follow
from the former. But th at’s all they do; despite pointing the reader in a certain direction,
they nonetheless leave most of the computational and verificational work undone.30
Standard natural-deduction systems, on the other hand, employ inference rules which
individually license only very simple syntactic operations on previous formulas in the deriva
tion. Hence, it will usually be the case that one needs to string a series of such steps together
in order to get from the premises to the desired conclusion. This is work delegated to the
prover; in stark contrast to the Con systems, standard first-order systems require that the
29It takes a certain bravado to use FO Con in a derivation, as it invites a checker to engage in an algorithmic
process which is guaranteed to end only if the rule were correctly applied in the first place.
30Of course, the prover might have done some of th a t work herself “in private.” W hether she did or not
is irrelevant to the division of labour being appealed to in th e derivation's presentation.
formal gap between premises and conclusion be bridged in the derivations themselves.
And in fact, this “bridging” gets done in excruciating detail. Since the only moves
allowed are those which correspond to schematically simple formal manipulations, the path
from premises to conclusion will often require very many of these little steps.31 In effect, the
standard inference rules of first-order logic ensure that what counts as a formal, first-order
proof is indeed a derivation in the true sense of the word, where what is displayed is the
gradual transformation of notation, each step of the way. In other words, these rules yield
proofs which are fine-grained. Indeed, the manipulations licensed by the standard rules
seem so elementary that it is difficult to imagine what an even finer-grained proof in the
first-order language would look like.
So a prover who avails herself only of the standard inference rules of first-order logic in
effect undertakes a responsibility to present a detailed proof. In contrast to the Con systems
which tolerate what amount to promissory notes (of the kind often found in informal proofs
where certain computational tasks are explicitly “left to the reader”), the standard inference
rules of first-order logic place a heavy computational burden on the presenter of the proof,
so that a significant amount of the computation from premise to conclusion is achieved
through the presentation itself.
3.3 .3 T h e E nforcem ent o f S tyle
We see, then, that at least three sorts of discursive tasks are wrapped up in the success
ful presentation of a formal derivation in first-order logic. First, in employing its formal
language, one must present unambiguous formulas and use terms unequivocally, at least to
a degree necessary to ensure the validity of the argument. Second, one must be explicit
about the semantic constraints on the non-logical vocabulary, stating in the open enough
assumptions to ensure the truth of the conclusion. Third, one must display a detailed for
mal computation, showing how the conclusion is derived formally from the premises. In the
argumentative setting erected by the inference rules of first-order logic, it is not a matter
of choice whether such tasks get done; they have to get done should one abide by the rules
of the proof system and produce a successful derivation. It is in this sense that the rules of
31A more precise measure of the “size” of these steps may be offered by complexity theory. The standard
inference rules of first-order logic are all of tractable complexity to check (at most quadratic), whereas Taut
Con is exponential (co-NP, in fact) and FO C o d isn’t even decidable. Looking ahead, however, it is unclear
how complexity theory would be able to offer direct measures for logical systems which employ diagrammatic
representations. This issue is discussed in Kerdiles (2001), and revisited here in Chapter 6.
first-order logic enforce certain argumentative responsibilities; part and parcel of keeping
to the rules is the completion of such tasks.
Thus, the inference rules of first-order logic are not “merely” sound, truth-preserving
rules. They function not only to ensure the validity of an argument, but also to constrain
the manner in which validity may be demonstrated. In other words, first-order logic offers a
formal calculus with a discursive upshot. To follow its rules is essentially to commit oneself
to producing a valid proof of a certain kind; it is to adopt a certain style of argumentation.
This is a style which invokes a particular “division of labour” between prover and au
dience. In discharging the three responsibilities highlighted above, the prover relieves the
audience from having to make certain kinds of interpretive decisions. For instance, the
audience is never put in a position to choose between two or more legitimate parsings of a
formula (given unique readability) nor to decide whether the meaning of a particular pred
icate or constant symbol has shifted over the course of the derivation (given the type-based
semantics of the language). However, in everyday contexts where arguments are given in
natural language, the audience is constantly confronted with having to do both. While it
is true that the resolution of ambiguities or equivocations can very often be an obvious
and routine matter (occasionally so much so that one does not even realize the need for a
resolution), the formal setting of first-order logic relieves the audience from having to do it
at all.
Similarly, since a prover must make sure that there are no possible counterexamples
to the argument, the audience of a first-order derivation is relieved from having to figure
out the “intended” interpretation of the symbols; the required semantic constraints on the
non-logical vocabulary have already been given explicitly as premises by the prover, so
the audience need not countenance any constraints on the non-logical vocabulary beyond
that which the prover provides. If the prover fails to provide enough constraints, she
thereby fails to produce what counts (in this setting) as a successful derivation in the
system. In fact, the non-logical vocabulary can even remain uninterpreted. Again, this
contrasts sharply with what an audience can be expected to do in everyday argumentative
contexts, where “background” assumptions can often be relied upon without ever having
to be made explicit. The audience can usually be expected to have some conception of the
domain being discussed, a conception which will help delineate the space of “relevant” or
“intended” models. Even when the audience doesn’t have a clear conception of the domain,
a particularly cooperative and charitable one would put some effort into trying to figure out
what the prover “is getting at.” No such charity, however, is encoded in the formal setting
provided by first-order logic.
And finally, since every transition in a standard derivation amounts only to a simple
formal manipulation, the computational work left for the audience is relatively trivial. Here
as well, the prover takes on more of a burden than in most everyday contexts, where lengthy
computations are rarely displayed in full detail, and in fact are occasionally explicitly left
as “exercises for the reader.”
Thus, in presenting a first-order derivation, a prover takes on responsibilities which are
considerably more onerous than the ones undertaken in everyday contexts. These responsi
bilities are in turn indicative of an overall style which seeks to minimize as much as possible
the interpretive work delegated to the audience. One may even say that, in presenting a
formal derivation, the prover is made to exercise tight control over the interpretive process.
With the distinctive responsibilities enforced by the formal rules comes considerable power
over the uptake of the argument, power which can be used for certain obvious ends. Be
cause very little leeway over its interpretation is left to the audience, a prover who presents
a first-order derivation ensures that her argument will be taken as she intended, which
presumably also helps to ensure that it will be taken as successful. In other words, by
relieving the audience of certain interpretive tasks, a prover thereby lessens the possibility
of being misinterpreted; her undertaking of such onerous responsibilities could serve as a
preemptive measure against the damage that would be done by an unskillful, uncharitable,
or otherwise deficient audience. The style of argumentation enforced by the formal rules
may thus be indicative of an overall strategy that has been adopted to secure a certain kind
of argumentative success.
3 .3 .4 T h e Idealization s o f Formal Logic
We Eire now in a position to characterize in a substsintial way the idealizations that Eire
made within the formEil setting of first-order logic. First of all, Eind most obviously, formal
derivations are ideEilizations of proofs. Formal derivations exemplify certain properties (uni-
vocality, explicitness, fine-grainedness) to a degree rarely found in informal argument. They
are what could reasonably be CEilled complete or fully articulated proofs.32 What’s more,
32Though it should be said: th a t we take such features to be the hallm arks of articulateness might simply
be because we already take formal derivations to be models of proof. Informal proofs are taken not to be
fully articulate precisely because they don’t exemplify these properties to the same degree.
correct formal derivations are guaranteed to be proofs of this kind. The well-formedness
and inference rules of the proof system not only serve to delineate what counts as a correct
derivation, but (in the course of doing this) also ensure that the derivations which pass the
formal test will possess the three properties highlighted here.
According to the pragmatic framework motivated in Chapter 2, however, it is not enough
to characterize such proofs in vacuo; proofs (even idealized ones) are objects which are
designed to discharge certain sorts of responsibilities. We have seen that, in simply en
deavouring to use a formal system correctly, there is a sense in which a prover can’t help
but make certain commitments. Notably, such commitments are rather like those made
in everyday argument. Everyday provers are almost always called upon to be somewhat
clear and unambiguous, to make explicit some of the assumptions that are being appealed
to, and to show in some detail how a conclusion follows from them. A prover who did
too little of these would quickly try the patience of her audience, and would be accused of
supplying an incomplete proof. Yet at the same time, provers are rarely called upon to do
such discursive “work” to the extent demanded by the formal setting, since in most contexts
the intended audience can often be expected to supply some of the work themselves, either
by actively resolving ambiguities, accessing background knowledge, or filling in some of the
computational steps. In short, one may say that the particular responsibilities discharged
by formal derivations are themselves idealizations of those undertaken in everyday contexts.
Hence, what is also being idealized in the formal setting of first-order logic is the discur
sive activity surrounding a derivation’s presentation. Such idealized proofs are designed to
be used in a peculiar context where the roles of the prover and the audience are well-defined
and compartmentalized. Should a prover present a formal derivation, it is expected that she
will undertake and discharge the responsibilities highlighted above; it is also expected that
the audience will not. As opposed to the more participatory and cooperative activity one
often finds in informal argumentative contexts, the activity envisaged here is uni-directional.
Formal derivations are truly demonstrations by a prover to an audience, as opposed to some
joint discursive enterprise.
Now, in characterizing the idealizations made by formal systems, we have used as an
obvious exemplar natural deduction first-order logic. Note, however, that our findings are
quite robust with respect to one’s choice of logical system; the features of first-order logic
we have isolated are those which are paradigmatic of formal logics more generally. Whether
the system be classical, intuitionistic, modal, dynamic, natural deduction, Hilbert-style,
sequent, or semantic tableau, the same observations are likely to hold; it is simply an
empirical fact that most mainstream formal systems enforce the discursive responsibilities
of univocality, explicitness, and fine-grainedness in much the same way natural deduction,
classical first-order logic does. Of course, it’s not as if one can’t find exceptions; there is no
claim to having articulated strictly necessary conditions for “logichood.” Rather, there is an
overwhelming tendency for formal systems to license only derivations of a certain discursive
character; this in turn makes it intelligible to attribute to formal logic as a whole a certain
idealization of argumentative practice.33
To sum up this section, then, mainstream formal logic offers an idealization not only of
proof and argumentation, but also of the discursive activity involved in both the presentation
and uptake of argument. Formal derivations are not only certain kinds of proofs. They are
also objects which are intelligible within (and are indicative of) a certain kind of discursive
practice, where the onus is placed almost exclusively on the prover to provide materials
that secure the truth of the conclusion. Contrary to a widespread tendency to see formal
logic as no more than a cold, combinatorial calculus, our investigation reveals there to be a
substantial discursive layer to the formalism. It is in virtue of this layer that the derivations
of formal logic can reasonably be taken to model a particular kind of argumentation.
3.4 T he R elevance o f Formal Logic
Recall that Section 3.2.2 ended with a challenge to one who would uphold the relevance
of formal logic to mathematics. There it was asked in what sense formal systems offer
an idealization of mathematics: are they supposed to provide a descriptive model of some
aspect of mathematical practice? Or a normative one which suggests how mathematics (or
mathematicians) should proceed? Hersh is skeptical that formal systems would fare well
under either construal; to him, informal proofs don’t resemble formal derivations, and yet
mathematicians are still doing good mathematical work (and writing good mathematical
proofs). However, I will argue in this section that formal logic offers a credible model
in both senses of the word. Formal systems in fact capture something quite distinctive
about mathematical practice, an aspect which facilitates its accomplishment of important
epistemological goals.
33As we shall see later in th e dissertation, it is precisely the deviance of diagram m atic systems from
the logical mainstream which casts doubt on the effectiveness of the “Logical Approach” to vindicating
diagram matic proof.
Much of the work needed to demonstrate this has already been done. In the previous
section, we explained in which respects argumentative practice is idealized by formal logic.
Now it remains for us to demonstrate the appropriateness of these idealizations for mathe
matics, first by identifying those aspects of informal mathematical practice which are most
naturally modelled by formal settings, and then showing that the modelling of such aspects
provides an illu m in a t i n g perspective on the practice as a whole.
Once the relevance of formal logic to informal, mathematical argumentation has been
established, it is then short work to demonstrate its relevance to informal argumentation
generally. For it cannot be denied that the informal proofs of mathematics themselves
exemplify a very important kind of argumentation. Insofar as formal logic offers an illumi
nating idealization of (one aspect of) mathematical practice, it can’t help but do the same
for argumentation in general.
Of course, to argue that formal logic offers an important, illuminating idealization is
not to argue that it offers the only one, or even the best one. I will not try to argue at all
for these stronger claims. In fact, the overall discussion of this chapter is consistent with
(and might even be suggestive of) the applicability of a plurality of methods to the study
of argumentation, mathematical or otherwise. Formal logic need not be the only game in
town, and its critics are justified in complaining that it can be (and probably has been)
used quite carelessly to characterize and distort phenomena for which it is inappropriate.
But if the considerations raised below are at all on the mark, then the proper course of
action is to supplement it with other approaches, not to jettison it. Though formal logic
abstracts away a whole lot of what may be interesting about argumentation, this shouldn’t
obscure the significance of what it in fact retains.
3.4.1 Form al D erivation as a D escrip tive M odel
As we saw in the previous section, formal logic not only offers an idealization of proof,
but also of the discursive context that surrounds its presentation. In particular, formal
derivations were shown to be objects caught up in a strikingly compartmentalized and uni
directional activity, where the burden is placed squarely on the prover to provide explicitly
materials that go towards the demonstration of a conclusion. In presenting a derivation,
the prover implicitly takes on particularly onerous responsibilities, the discharging of which
determines whether her proof is taken to be successful. In this idealized context, the prover
expects little discursive participation from the audience, and even less charity.
For comparison, consider what generally occurs in the real-life contexts where proofs are
submitted to some mathematical journal for publication. What gets submitted to a journal
is (supposed to be) a polished product, a final demonstration which is then subjected to
reviewers’ scrutiny. Notably, by this point, such proofs are generally not evaluated according
to whether they actually convince the reviewers of the truth of some conclusion. (Some of
the most celebrated proofs have been ones that “establish” a theorem which was already
widely believed.) Rather, it is the argumentation as a whole which gets evaluated. For
example, the reviewer may consider the proof to be incomplete if the prover employed
ambiguous locutions whose resolution is not obvious, or if she failed to make explicit a key
assumption, or did not show in enough detail how a particular step follows from previous
ones. Even should the reviewer know how such “gaps” in the proof could be filled, the
actual piece of text provided by the prover is nonetheless taken by him to be deficient and
in need of repair. One could say, then, that reviewers are professionally bound to withhold
a certain amount of charity; it is part of their role as critics not to give the prover too
much slack. The flip side of this is that the prover is not able to rely too much on her
audience’s ability to “make sense” of her proof; in this particular context, it is primarily
her responsibility to ensure that what she presents is taken to be sufficiently complete.34
Of course, what counts as a “sufficiently complete” text usually varies from reviewer to
reviewer, though occasionally their expectations are sufficiently homogenous to ground (or
be indicative of) a common convention. In any case, real-life reviewers never apply standards
as stringent as those enforced by first-order proof systems; they rarely demand that only
completely unambiguous locutions be used, that the necessary constraints governing each
piece of standardly non-logical vocabulary be explicitly stated, or that each step in the proof
be as tiny as possible. To do so would likely be condemned by all as tedious, unnecessary,
and unproductive. Nonetheless, one could imagine that, as reviewers got increasingly fussy
about what they would allow a prover to keep implicit, the proofs which would end up
passing their more difficult tests would begin to exhibit a structure very much like that
of formal derivations. In other words, as one heightens some of the demands that are in
practice placed on provers. one ends up getting “in the limit” an argumentative setting very
34It may be illuminating to think also of the discursive context surrounding a student’s submission of
some proof to his professor, where the proof is an answer to some stan d ard homework exercise. Clearly
in this situation, the professor isn’t looking to be persuaded of some theorem . R ather, she is approaching
the stu d en t’s text simply to evaluate it. There are many dimensions along which a proof-text can be
evaluated; the proposal of this section is th a t the particular package enforced by formal logic—of univocality,
explicitness, and fine-grainedness— is a reasonable one.
much like the ones enforced by formal systems.

Here is one sense, then, in which formal logic offers a descriptive model of mathematical
argumentation. There is at least one aspect of the real-world process of proof-making which
is recognizably amplified in the theoretical setting enforced by formal systems. Notably, it
is that aspect where the roles of “prover” and “audience” are strictly segregated, and where
the prover’s final product is subjected to an audience’s critical scrutiny. Formal derivations
are exemplars of the kind of proof which can withstand a particular sort of argumentative
challenge; they model informal proof insofar as proofs are used to meet such challenges.35
At this point, one may wonder why we should be particularly interested in a model which
amplifies this one aspect of argumentative practice. After all, everyday proofs are commonly
used to secure other ends as well, some of which might initially appear to be of much
more import and interest. For example, some proofs are used to persuade an antecedently
indifferent audience; this might even seem to be the main point of argumentation generally.
Proofs are also employed to guide further inquiry, perhaps by displaying a method or insight
that could be fruitfully employed in other fields (cf. the De Millo et al. quotation reported
in Section 3.1, p.42). Relatedly, proofs are often used to teach students and to increase
their understanding of some domain by demonstrating how some of its features follow from
others. For each one of these other tasks (and undoubtedly many others), the idealizations
enforced by formal logic do not seem to be especially appropriate or illuminating. Where
the goal is to persuade, inspire, enlighten, or teach, formal derivations are unlikely to be
exemplars of the kind of texts one would present.
However, to point out that mathematical practice is multifaceted, and that formal logic
does not model every significant aspect of it, is not yet to show that logic fails to capture
something of distinct interest. For one thing, it cannot be denied that the discursive context
surrounding the submission of proofs for publication—the one aspect we have seen to be
reasonably modelled at least in part by formal systems—is of immense significance to the
professional mathematician. The ability to produce proofs which are “sufficiently complete”
(in the sense idealized by formal derivations) appears to be a prerequisite for professional
mathematical competence, in that aspiring mathematicians would be well advised to develop
3SNoting how formal systems employ inference rules th at are truth-preserving in all models, Stenning
(forthcoming) takes formal logic to model what he calls adversarial communication. He imagines a situation
where one tries to interpret an argum ent in the least charitable m anner possible. A classically valid argument
would still be vindicated in such a situation. T he discussion of this chapter was initially much inspired by,
and provides additional support for, this broad characterization.
such a skill (along with others, no doubt).

One may think such a competence to be so fundamental as to be hardly worth high
lighting. But it should be noted that, at least at first glance, there appear to be other
respectable academic disciplines for which the development of such a skill is not so press
ing. As pointed out by the informal logicians (and argued at length in Toulmin (1958)),
what is upheld as good argumentation in other fields does not seem to possess the hallmarks
of good mathematical argumentation. For example, water-tight validity is not always in
sisted upon in the argumentation outside of mathematics, nor is as much a premium usually
placed on making explicit and precise the meanings of terms. Similarly, some disciplines
celebrate the possibility of there being multiple interpretations of single texts, commending
writers who can produce works with numerous “layers of meaning”; but this is of course
actively discouraged in mathematical contexts. While some careful sociological work would
be required to substantiate and make precise these broad generalizations, there is at least
some prima facie evidence that formal logic helps to capture what might be distinctive of
mathematical inquiry, and in particular, the sorts of criteria by which its “official” out
put (i.e., the material published in its professional journals) gets assessed. Should this
hypothesis be vindicated, there would then be a second sense in which formal logic offers a
descriptive model of mathematical argumentation: not only does it selectively amplify the
features of some particular argumentative setting, but it also serves to highlight precisely
those features which help to distinguish mathematical inquiry from other sorts of inquiry.
Contra Feferman, then, logical theories can be tested with respect to the appropriate
ness of their idealizations.36 Once one is armed with a positive characterization of how for
mal logic models mathematical argumentation, one can proceed to check quasi-empirically
whether formal systems faithfully mirror the phenomena they purport to. While we obvi
ously can’t pursue such sociological studies here, on the basis of the above discussion there
is good reason to believe that formal logic indeed offers a reasonable descriptive model of
argumentation (and especially, of mathematical proof).
3.4 .2 Form al D erivation as a N orm ative M od el
Hersh claims that there is very little formal logic to be found in actual mathematical rea
soning.37 This contention is used to ground his reductio of the proposition that formal logic
36Recall th e quotation reported in Section 3.2.2, p.47.
37Recall the quotations reported on p.45 and p.48
offers an appropriate normative model of mathematical argumentation. How could logic be

offering such a model, he asks, if mathematical practice is flourishing despite ignoring its
norms? By failing to appreciate the sense in which formal logic offers a credible descriptive
model of mathematical proof, Hersh is made to face an apparent dilemma: he believes that
he must choose between affirming the legitimacy of actual mathematical practice, and af
firming instead the desirability of “formal” argumentation. Hersh decides in favour of the
former; he defends actual practice in order to discredit what he takes to be false theorizing.
We have seen, however, that “Hersh’s dilemma” rests on a questionable presupposition.
He underestimates the extent to which mathematicians in fact do heed the norms of formal
logic. To be sure, mathematicians don’t employ formal languages, and their proofs do not
proceed on the basis of formal rules. But our case study of first-order logic shows that
much more is wrapped up in “formal” argumentation than the mere manipulation of formal
symbols. The inference rules of formal logic end up enforcing a style of argumentation as
well. It is a style which takes great pains to use unequivocal language, and to make explicit
the meanings of terms, the presuppositions being appealed to, and the transitions from
assumptions to conclusion. These are norms which do get embraced in actual mathematical
practice (especially relative to other disciplines); they faithfully characterize some of the
dimensions over which informal mathematical proofs are judged.
Remarkably, once Hersh's initial presupposition is undercut by a more refined con-
strual of how formal logic descriptively models informal proof, his celebration of actual
mathematical practice can be used to vindicate logic’s idealizations, providing a means of
understanding how logic could offer a normative model as well. If formal derivations do
resemble informal mathematical proofs in important respects (even serving to amplify some
of their distinctive features) and if the informal proofs are antecedently taken to be fruitful
and legitimate, then there is a straightforward sense in which informal proofs “ought” to be
like formal ones. Could it be that formal logic amplifies the very features of mathematical
practice which support its distinctive and considerable epistemological achievements?
The prospects for a positive answer look very good. Consider, for example, mathematics’
reputation for establishing necessary and incontrovertible truths. Here it is obvious how
the demonstration of such truths is facilitated by the adoption of validity as the central
argumentative benchmark. An argumentative culture which accepted anything weaker than
validity simply wouldn’t secure the right kind of results.
But we can ask further: how exactly is one to go about ensuring validity? What package
of other argumentative norms can be deployed in its service? Armed with the results of
our case study, we can see that formal logic itself offers the outlines of a plausible answer.
For at the end of Section 3.3.3, it was suggested that the responsibilities undertaken in
the course of employing a formal proof-system may themselves be constitutive of an overall
strategy designed to ensure a particular kind of argumentative success. By taking on a heavy
communicative burden (in effect relieving the audience of a heavy interpretive one), a prover
gains for herself considerable control over the uptake of her argument. The exercising of such
fine control may perhaps serve as a pre-emptive measure against the interpretive damage
done by an unskilled audience. But it can also be a means of ensuring that the argument
presented by the prover is able to withstand a particularly intense skeptical challenge. There
is good reason to expect the exercise of such control to be tailor-made for securing some of
the epistemological goals associated with mathematics.
For instance, the abstract and (for many) u n fa m ilia r nature of mathematical objects
makes it advisable for a prover to make explicit the assumptions which serve to constrain
the realm of relevant possibilities under which the truth of a conclusion may be assured;
otherwise, someone not sufficiently keyed in to what is being left implicit in the proof might
remain puzzled about the structure of the domain in question, come up with a purported
counterexample, and be left unconvinced of the theorem.38 Similarly, the assumptions
themselves ought to be stated clearly, and the terms used unequivocally, lest any slippage
in their interpretation compromise truth-preservation in a particular case. Finally, epistemic
limitations on the part of the audience (or even the prover) make it prudent to mediate
the gulf between premises and conclusion with finer-grained, more tractable transitions.
These all seem to be reasonable norms to uphold given the goals and subject matter of
mathematics; they are also the norms inextricably caught up in the inference rules of formal
proof-systems.
It is precisely because such norms are automatically enforced by the proof rules of
paradigmatic formal systems, that it makes sense to say that informal proofs “ought” to be
like formal derivations. In the rarified atmosphere of mathematical investigation, it becomes
crucially important for a prover to diminish the potential for “noise” in the interpretation
38This would seem especially likely to occur at the frontiers of m athem atical inquiry, where there wouldn’t
yet be a widely shared conception of the domain in question (even among experts). It is reasonable to
expect the explicitation of assum ptions to facilitate a convergence of conceptions, or at least a provisionally
shared understanding of a particular proof’s subject matter. (My thanks to K rista Lawlor for making this
suggestion.)
of her texts; given that water-tight validity has been adopted as the main argumentative
benchmark, a prover needs to take positive steps towards ensuring that her proof will
be token to be valid. In the limit, a prover could achieve this by presenting a formal
derivation, where the rules for its uptake and interpretation are just about as strict as for
its presentation.
In practice, a mathematician need not approach that limit so closely. She can generally
rely on interpretive conventions which partially relieve her of the onerous responsibilities
enforced by formal settings. Nonetheless, as a regulative ideal, formal logic models a kind
of argumentation which minimizes an appeal to such charity; its derivations are designed to
“stand alone” as successful proofs even in the absence of charitable readings. Formal logic
thus encodes a robust argumentative ethos, one which we should expect would facilitate the
achievement of certain epistemic goals. The considerations outlined in this section suggest
that the objectivity of mathematics—the resilience of mathematical results to skeptical
scrutiny—stems partially from the onerous argumentative burdens being undertaken by its
practitioners.39
It is for reasons such as these that it makes sense to teach formal logic even to those
who will never make direct use of it in their profession or field of study. Formal Logic 101
is much more than a crash course in the manipulation of symbols. It is also an intensive
introduction to a particular style of argumentation and discourse.40 It tunes students in to
a distinctively amplified set of expectations concerning what it takes to present a successful
argument. These expectations are, from one point of view, absolutely unreasonable; it would
be incredible to make such demands in everyday contexts. But then again, so is much of
what goes on in a military boot camp. In both cases, intensive training can have real-world
benefit even should the trainees never go on to do exactly what they were trained to do.
To the extent that it is reasonable to get students to think and write “mathematically” (at
least sometimes), one could do much worse than subject them to a course in formal logic.41
So here is a way of reconciling the normative pull of formal logic with its virtual absence
in actual proof. The relevance of formal logic to everyday argumentation (and especially
39Interestingly, the history of mathematics seems to corroborate this hypothesis. I t’s precisely when that
scrutiny has been most intense, such as during times of foundational crisis, that m athem aticians have felt
most compelled to take on an argumentative burden very close to that enforced by formal systems.
401 owe this key insight to K eith Stenning. See s tta for further discussion.
4lT here is a sense, then, in which formal logic offers a “tool” after all (though not exactly as in the sense of
Section 3.2.1). The model of argumentation offered by formal logic is something which can have “real-world
benefit,” even if formal logic itself isn’t being utilized directly for any particular task.
mathematical proof) is not to be found in the formalism per se. Bather, the formalism
serves primarily to amplify a particular style of argumentation which can support some of
the important epistemological goals of mathematicians. There is good evidence that this
style is in fact employed to a considerable degree in mathematical practice, at least relative
to other disciplines. The gulf between theory and practice is not as wide as the critics of
formal logic suggest.
3.4 .3 C on clu sion
We began this chapter sketching some of the considerations which cast doubt on the rele
vance of formal logic to everyday proof and argumentation. And indeed, if logic’s pride of
place in the philosophical conception of proof is to be justified on the basis of its providing
some method of proof (or proof-checking), then the prospects for an adequate defense look
dim; the natural language arguments and proofs we normally traffic aren’t directly amenable
to formal treatment, and the process of “formalization” used to bridge the formal/informal
gap appear to raise more problems than it solves. If all formal logic had to offer were tools
to be applied directly to arguments, then it would appear to offer little of practical use.
But we need not have such a limited conception of logic. Formal logic also provides a
model of argumentation, and this conception offers it a much more promising line of de
fense. By taking formal derivations to be discursive artefacts (i.e., as objects fumishable
by a prover to an audience), we are able to relate them to the real-life proofs we normally
confront, finding common dimensions along which they may all be compared. Looking at
logic under this light, we find there to be a surprisingly rich discursive layer riding atop the
formalism. Formal derivations are not just abstract mathematical objects. They are also
proofs of a very distinctive nature, artefacts well-suited for discharging certain rarified and
onerous responsibilities. That formal logic has at least some relevance to informal proof
and argumentation then becomes clear, for the particular discursive responsibilities dis
charged by formal derivations are rather straightforward amplifications of those undertaken
in everyday argumentative contexts.
Whether formal logic has enough relevance to everyday argumentation to merit its
current institution in the curriculum and in the philosophical understanding of mathematical
proof is a separate matter, one which can’t be completely settled here. But our positive
characterization of how derivation idealizes proof at least makes this institution intelligible,
and in a way that engages seriously those critics who question the methodological and
pedagogical value of formal logic. There is a real debate to be had here, one which can
progress only by taking clearer stock of the ways the discipline of logic may be appropriately
used.
3.5 N e x t Steps
In Chapter 2, it was argued that in order to begin to assess the “Logical Approach” to
vindicating diagrammatic proof, a framework is needed by which we can make two kinds
of comparisons. First, in order to make intelligible the broader philosophical significance
of recently-created diagrammatic systems, there needs to be some way of relating formal
derivations (and formal logic) to everyday informal proof, and we have just seen how the
“pragmatic” framework introduced in the previous chapter can be used to support such
an account. The next three chapters are designed to show how this framework also meets
the second desideratum; namely, to underwrite an account of the potentially differential
role that representation systems play in proof and argumentation. We will find that our
framework doesn’t force us to abstract away that which might be distinctive of diagrams.
Our strategy will be to take, one by one, the three discursive responsibilities discussed
in the current chapter—univocality, explicitness, and fine-grainedness—and investigate to
what extent the discharging of such activities is supported by the representation system
employed in the artefacts presented as proofs. For each responsibility, we will naturally
begin by considering the case where the artefact is a first-order derivation. We will tease
out the role played by first-order language in the discharging of that responsibility, and show
how the semantics and inference rules of first-order logic exploit the formal features of first-
order derivations in order to achieve particularly onerous discursive ends. We will then be in
a position to inquire whether some of the diagrammatic systems that have been marshalled
in the defense of diagrammatic proof share those same features. Sometimes they will, but
it will be striking how often they won’t; in many cases, diagrammatic derivations will be
found to be more akin to the informal proofs we normally confront than the first-order
derivations that are paradigmatic of formal logic.
In Chapter 7, the concluding chapter, we will take stock of these findings and use them
to assess the Logical Approach to vindicating diagrammatic proof. Recall that this Ap
proach considers the existence of sound and complete diagrammatic systems to provide a
straightforward, knock-down argument in favour of diagrammatic proof. We will find, how

ever, that the divergence in discursive properties between diagrammatic and paradigmatic
lin g u istic systems shows such an argument to be neither straightforward nor compelling.
By the end of the dissertation, it will be clear that many of the recently developed diagram
matic systems do not support the same discursive activities, and do not make the same
idealizations, as do standard first-order ones. As such, these diagrammatic systems cannot
straightforwardly inherit the story told in these pages about how formal derivations idealize
everyday proof.
The reader is reminded that until we get to the dissertation’s concluding chapter, all that
the subsequent discussions are designed to show is that certain diagrammatic systems do
not have particular formal features, and hence do not support the same particular discursive
activities, as do standard linguistic ones (of which first-order logic is paradigmatic). This in
itself is no knock on diagrammatic systems; merely being different from first-order logic is
no crime. So the reader should not interpret our emphasis on these differences to comprise a
criticism of such systems, or at least not yet. It is only when these systems are marshalled in
the name of particular philosophical projects that we can inquire as to their appropriateness,
as we shall do once enough of the results are in.
Chapter 4
Pragm atic Constraints on

Syntactic Ontology
In Chapter 2 , it was suggested that the representation system used in the furnishing cf an
argument (as displayed in its reasoning structure) can help us determine which discursive
responsibilities are encoded in that argument’s setting. An illustration of this was offered
in Chapter 3, where it was argued that first-order languages enforce a regime of univocality.
Simply in virtue of the language’s rules of grammar, the presenter of a derivation is made
to take on a significant discursive burden; namely, to present syntactically (and, given a
model, semantically) unambiguous formulas. This feature of unique readability relieves the
audience of the derivation from having to choose amongst competing interpretations of a
particular formula. The discursive context thus enforced by such a formal setting is unusual
indeed, as audiences of everyday, natural language argumentation are almost always called
upon to make the kinds of interpretive decisions made superfluous by the rules of formal
language.
Hence, there is reason to deem the unique readability of first-order formulas (and those
of other paradigmatic logical systems) to be much more than a theorist’s convenience, a nice
little mathematical property which helps the interesting metaproofs go through more easily.
Rather, unique readability contributes significantly to the kind of idealization being made
by logical systems of the discursive activity surrounding proof. It is partially responsible
for the lustre which formal derivations enjoy as models of argumentation.
It is worth asking, then, how it is that formal languages accomplish this feat, how it is
that they support the establishment of unique readability. One is tempted to account for
74
Chapter 4. Pragmatic Constraints on Syntactic Ontology 75
the unique readability of formulas by noting their recursive construction; in particular, in

terms of some effective one-to-one correspondence between formulas and their construction
trees. It should be clear, however, that a language’s recursive structure only explains the
unique readability of compound representations, antecedently taking for granted the “unique
readability” of the primitive representations from which the compounds are constructed.
Rarely is much attention paid to the (kinds of) representations inhabiting this basic, prim
itive level; in most logic texts and papers, it is just assumed that there is some number
of distinct primitive symbols (often of different categories) with the author accepting the
responsibility only of saying how these symbols are to be combined (i.e., concatenated) as
opposed to how they are to be individuated.
The purpose of the present chapter is to investigate the conditions under which a feature
like unique readability—in a sense deserving of its name—is made possible in the first place.
It turns out that the issue of individuation is not at all trivial, especially once one begins to
consider diagrammatic representation schemes and logics based on them. Our investigation
will show that one very widespread and “natural” diagrammatic system, metric maps (which
are idealizations, for example, of the road maps one would pick up at the local AAA
office), cannot support the same kind of idealized discursive activity that paradigmatic
(and linguistic) formal systems do. In other words, a “proof’ using such maps, I will argue,
would be significantly different from the proofs we take formal derivations to be idealizing
(where, of course, this difference goes beyond the mere fact that another representation
scheme is being employed).
However, not all intuitively diagrammatic systems are to be disqualified from such ide
alized employment in this way. We will find that other kinds of diagrams (such as Venn
diagrams and those used in ancient Greek geometry) share an affinity with formal linguis
tic systems in being able to support a regime of univocality, and thus contribute to the
sort of idealization made by logical systems. There is a sense then in which, at least from
the point of view of mainstream formal logic, metric maps (though common, natural, and
widespread) ought not to be thought of as “paradigmatic” diagrammatic representations
since they lack a key feature which many other diagrammatic schemes share with tradi
tional logical languages. Notably, this “defect” of maps does not stem at all from some
mismatch between syntax and semantics; it is not the sort of thing that would likely be
measured through an investigation into the soundness and completeness of a map-based
formal system. Rather, as a result of their “syntactic ontology” (to be explained below).
some map-based systems simply can’t be used in a certain way. We thus have further vin
dication of the “pragmatic” approach advocated throughout the dissertation, with another
illustration of how there is more to logic’s de facto idealization of argumentation than just
the validity (i.e., truth-preservingness) of its transitions.
The chapter proceeds as follows. We begin in Section 4.1 by dabbling in some meta
physics, showing how a pragmatic approach to logic offers constraints on what the abstract
symbols of formal logic should be taken to be. In particular, we will find that the math
ematical property of unique readability can support discursive univocality only if there is
something like a type-token relationship between the abstract objects officially treated by
the mathematics and the real-life artefacts we take as derivations. The nature of this rela
tionship is further explicated in Section 4.2 with the help of Nelson Goodman’s theory of
notation. Some conceptual machinery thus set up, we proceed in Section 4.3 to differentiate
some representative diagrammatic schemes according to how well they match first-order
logic’s particular idealization of language use.
4.1 T he Pragm atic T w ist
Unique readability, in the usual technical sense, pertains to the unique constructibility of
any particular formula: a “unique readability theorem” holds if each well-formed formula of
the language can be constructed in only one way according to the inductive clauses which
define the set of well-formed formulas. 1 Any such inductive characterization, of course, must
proceed from some base. For example, in any first-order language, compound formulas are
inductively built up from atomic formulas and from logical connectives and quantifiers, with
parentheses used to keep the construction one-to-one. Atomic formulas, in turn, are built
up from predicate symbols and terms. Finally, terms themselves are built up from function,
constant, and variable symbols. The usual methodology, then, takes the primitive symbols
(predicate, logical, constant, etc.) to be the smallest units from which all formulas of the
language are constructed.
From a purely mathematical standpoint, it appears not to matter all that much what
objects these primitive symbols turn out to be. (Indeed, to call them “symbols” may al
ready be needlessly picturesque.) For example, in his celebrated textbook (Enderton 1972),
1Presumably, unique constructibility is called “unique readability” due to the existence of an effective
procedure for discovering th a t construction.
Gnderton only requires that the primitive symbols be distinct from one another, and that
none of them be a finite sequence of others. After indicating their classification into different
sorts (e.g., connective, variable, predicate, constant, etc.) and supplying a convention for
naming them (e.g., ‘(’ for the left parenthesis, for the negation symbol, etc.), he proceeds
to use that convention to characterize and distinguish the different semantic and syntactic
roles played by these objects. As such, we are never “shown” the primitive symbols, and
indeed Enderton doesn’t take their identity to be fixed by their use; they can be, among
other things, “sets, numbers, marbles, or objects from a universe of linguistic objects” as
far as his mathematical treatment is concerned (p. 18).
However, as argued in the previous chapter, formal logic isn’t simply another piece
of mathematics, and formal derivations aren’t mathematical objects just like any other,
for then we would be hard-pressed to justify formal logic’s hallowed place in philosophical
pedagogy and practice. Rather, formal logic is supposed to shed some special light on the
real-world activities of proof and argumentation. Under the conception advocated here,
formal logic offers a particular model of argumentation, in which formal derivations are
understood to be artefacts whose presentation by a prover to an audience is designed to
discharge particular idealized discursive responsibilities. Given this conception, an obvious
question to ask is: what must these artefacts be like in order for them to be usable in the way
intended by the prover? By taking derivations to be the kinds of objects that are used for
certain ends, we might find there to be non-trivial constraints on what they (and the symbols
of which they are composed) can actually be. In other words, our pragmatic approach to
logic may motivate further constraints on the “syntactic ontology” of paradigmatic logical
systems, more so than what is required by the mathematics alone. 2
4 .1 .1 A D erivation by A ny O ther N am e?
Consider Enderton’s idiom of having the syntactic objects of logic named by particular
linguistic items. As mentioned above, this involves having the primitive symbols each being
denoted by things like ‘(’, ‘V’, and 'v \ . The naming convention is then extended to provide
names for formulas, so that ‘Vui(-iAui)’ names the sequence3 whose first component is the
2Note th a t syntactic ontology is not the same as (what it is sometimes called) “formal ontology.” Syntactic
ontology concerns the syntactic symbols of formal languages; formal ontology usually concerns the objects
inhabiting the domains of formal models.
3Here is another term (like ‘symbol’) whose connotations go beyond what is “strictly speaking” required by
th e m athematics. A sequence is just a particular kind of set (an ordered multi-set, in fact). Its structure can
universal quantifier, second component the first variable symbol, etc.; here what results
from the concatenation of the names of individual symbols is used to denote the sequence
consisting of those symbols, so ordered as their names.
The idiom of “naming” suggests that the relation between the denoting and the denoted
need not involve anything beyond the former referring to the latter. In particular, there
need not be any resemblance between the two. The linguistic item i— for example, refers
to the negation symbol, but what that symbol actually is can be, for all Enderton cares,
anything from an abstract mathematical object to a marble (though it ultimately should be
just one of those things). Furthermore, it seems arbitrary which particular linguistic item
ends up doing the denotational work. After all, that same negation symbol could just as
easily have been named by or ‘N \ say. And similarly for the other primitive symbols.
Now one might think that, strictly speaking, the same could be said of the relation
between, say, ‘Vui(-’Aui)’ and the formula (i.e., ordered multi-set) it denotes. In principle,
it seems that something like ‘Randolph’ could also be a name for that very same formula.
To be sure, the fact that ‘Randolph’ would refer to Vui(-’Aui) doesn’t at all arise from
Enderton’s naming conventions. Also, ‘Randolph’ doesn’t “display” the structure of its
denotation in the way that ‘Vwi(->Ai;i)’ seems to, thus making it more difficult for us to
discover what ‘Randolph’ refers to. But, one might say, these are “merely pragmatic”
differences between the names. What the mathematics is actually about is the (potentially
abstract) syntactic object denoted by ‘Vui(-'Avi)’, an object which possesses its relevant
structural properties regardless of what we decide to call it.
One could then go a step further and say the same of the relation between derivations
and their “names.” After all, a derivation is, mathematically, just a single object: a se
quence (i.e., ordered multi-set) of formulas. The name we tend to give one of these objects
is generally quite long, made up of rows of names of formulas which happen to be the com
ponents of the sequence. But again, the use of such long-winded names seems theoretically
unnecessary. As far as the mathematics goes, ‘Joe’ works just as well as a name: all that
matters is that the object itself—the derivation—be appropriately structured.
There thus appears to be nothing in the mathematics itself demanding that the syntactic
objects have the kind of names they do. Enderton’s “naming” idiom accommodates (if not
suggests) a view which considers it unnecessary for the linguistic items which denote the
be “reduced” to something accomodated by standard (unordered) set theory. For example, given Enderton’s
coding m ethod, the sequence (1,2,3) just is the set {{{{1}, {1,2}}}, {{{1}, {1,2}}, 3}}, something which
one m ight be less prone to call a “sequence.”
official syntactic objects of formal logic to have a structure mirroring that of their referents.4
We should check, however, whether such a view can do justice to our expectations of formal
logic as providing an appropriate model of everyday proof. Can we really get away with
thinking that there isn’t a tighter connection between the (potentially abstract) formal
derivations treated by the mathematics, and the linguistic items we actually traffic in?
Let’s look once again at the discursive context surrounding the presentation of proof
(see chapter 2). We imagine there to be a prover who endeavours to discharge some respon
sibility; namely, to provide materials that go towards justifying a claim. She does this by
presenting some artefact: paradigmatically, a piece of text consisting of rows of formulas—
something very much like what we would expect to find written in some completed logic
assignment or exam. Our detour through the purely mathematical conception of logic might
tempt us to say that the prover has merely provided the name of some mathematical ob
ject. Under this picture, the prover discharges her discursive responsibilities by presenting
something which refers to an object with the appropriate structure .5
However, if reference truly captured the nature of the prover’s responsibility, then pre
sumably she could present any other co-referential term, with equal effect on whether the
responsibility is thereby discharged. If asked to present a derivation of, say, (3xA x & 3xBx)
from (Aa&zBb), the prover could thus presumably get away with writing the following:
the first derivation of (3xAx & 3xBx) from ( A a k B b ) according to the following
lexicographic ordering of the primitive symbols: (. ). &, 3, A, B, a, b, x, ...
This term succeeds in referring to a derivation of the appropriate structure, since there do
indeed exist derivations of the sort being asked, determinately ordered once an ordering of
the primitive symbols is fixed. But surely we are loath to take the furnishing of such a term
to fulfill the prover’s discursive responsibilities. If she were writing an exam, it is doubtful
she would get full credit (or any credit!) for an answer like that.
Interestingly, the term displayed in the previous paragraph not only refers to some
derivation, but also strongly hints at a procedure by which someone (say, from the audi
ence) could build for himself the kind of artefact that was expected. (Using the indicated
lexicographic ordering, start writing down “derivations” in alphabetic order until an ap
propriate one is found.) Yet, despite the “effectiveness” of its description, the term is still
4I hasten to add th a t I’m not actually attributing such a view to Enderton.
5W hether it would do so rigidly (as is taken by some to distinguish names from other singular terms like
definite descriptions) isn’t relevant for our purposes, as the counterexample in the next paragraph shows.
thought to be inadequate. This shows how the responsibilities are divvied up amongst
participants in the discourse; it’s the prover’s responsibility to produce the right sort of
artefact, not just indicate to the audience some directions for doing so (as good as those
directions might be).
It would thus do no good for a smart-aleck prover to point out that there is “merely” a
pragmatic difference between the term displayed above and the more long-winded artefact
we expected. For her to claim such a defence only shows that our prover is missing the
whole point of the discursive enterprise she was participating in. Taking everyday discursive
practice as our guide (and why not?), it is difficult to deny that the use of such short-cut
terms is simply ruled out of court. It is an integral part of the “proving game” as it is
normally played that the prover furnish (and be expected to furnish) an artefact which
itself possesses the appropriate structure; namely, the structure of a formal derivation.
She is deemed responsible for providing what is more naturally taken to be an instantiation
of the mathematical object in question, not just a name of it, or even an effective singular
description of it.
We have couched our discussion so far at the derivation-level of discourse, showing there
to be a pragmatically irreducible, structural similarity between the artefacts we normally
take to be presented by a prover, and the formal derivations defined by the mathematics.
But the same sort of relation holds, mutatis mutandis, at the formula-level as well. It is
part of our conception of proof that the derivation-level artefacts themselves be composed
of parts each of which display the structure of the component formulas. Again, to think
that the function of these formula-level sub-artefacts is merely to refer is to misunderstand
the nature of the communicative situation in which they are being deployed.6
It is thus misleading to say that the pieces of text offered as proofs (and parts of proofs)
6The same argum ent also speaks against the acceptability of a prover furnishing instead some sequence
of Godel numbers, since such an artefact would not itself possess the desired syntactic structure (though,
once again, such structure would be recoverable from it). Admittedly, such a proof seems less “cheap” than
the singular description version treated above, perhaps because we have a hard time imagining the prover
coming up with a Godel-number version w ithout her also discovering the canonical one. On the other hand,
it is conceivable (barely) th a t the prover is a strange sort of alien genius who thinks directly in terms of Godel
numbers and for whom our canonical form is derivative. How would we “grade” her then? Even in such a
case, we may still hold the prover accountable for not providing the right sort of artefact. Relative to any
particular formal logic, a Godel-number proof would acquire legitimacy only through its effective relation
to the syntactic objects th a t are directly treated by the logic’s m athem atical theory. T hat there might be
another logical system (not ours!) whose sentences are our Godel numbers shouldn’t obscure this point. And
anyway, as discussed in Chapter 6, Godel-number dem onstrations will lack “artefactual formality,” a notable
discursive feature of canonical derivations. (My thanks to John MacFarlane for raising the Godel example.)
are merely the names of the syntactic objects officially treated by the mathematics, since
what a prover is generally expected to produce is something with a specific structure, not
something which refers to one. Fortunately, in thus finding Enderton’s naming idiom to be
somewhat unsatisfactory, we haven’t said anything to contradict the mathematics of formal
logic. (After all, inhabitants of a linguistic universe do count as amongst the possible
candidates for being the primitive symbols, according to Enderton.) Rather, our pragmatic
approach to logic has uncovered a conceptual relation between the syntactic objects treated
by the mathematics, and the linguistic objects by which we normally confront them. One
might say that we’ve hooked linguistic tethers to the mathematical objects, lest they float
too far away to inform our understanding of everyday argumentative practice.
4.1.2 T aking it to a Lower Level
Ultimately, it shouldn’t be too surprising th a t am artefact’s structure makes an important

contribution to the activity surrounding proof, as it is in virtue of being confronted by
that artefact that the participants of the discourse are able to play their roles in the way
they do. As we saw in Chapter 3, when the artefact in question happens to have the
structure of a formal derivation, the discursive upshot is impressive indeed, for the artefact
itself can relieve the audience from having to perform particular interpretive tasks. The
discussion from the previous subsection hammers home the point that, in order to have a
direct effect on the discursive activity surrounding proof, the syntactic structure treated by
the mathematics needs to percolate down to a level where it can be “seen.”
For example, consider again the discursive upshot of unique readability. Since there is
an effective procedure for determining the formula’s unique construction in terms of the
inductive clauses which define the set of grammatically well-formed formulas, the audience
is never in a position of having to choose legitimately among various syntactic parsings
of it. Given that this very same construction is exploited by the language’s semantics to
determine that formula’s interpretation (given a model), the unambiguous syntactic con
struction of well-formed, first-order formulas helps to achieve a kind of semantic univocality
as well.7 In using the language of first-order logic, the prover thus goes to great lengths
7A s mentioned in the previous chapter, it is easy to be dismissive o f the semantic univocality enforced
by unique readability given th a t its “univocality” is model-sensitive. Such a dismissal, however, fails to take
into account th e fact th a t these formulas are meant to be taken in the context of an entire derivation. (Other
than in this footnote, the significance of this contextual role will remain suppressed in this chapter.) The
derivation itself, if successful, makes explicit as premises constraints on what counts as a relevant model,
to control how each of the statements of her derivation are to be taken. By furnishing a
sufficiently structured artefact, she effectively limits the interpretive leeway made available
to the audience.
However, a prover who, in the name of univocality, wishes to exploit this feature of
formal language can’t rely on the mere fact that her artefact has the appropriate structure,
for she hasn’t fully succeeded until her artefact is taken as such by the audience. This in
turn depends upon other “interpretive” abilities (and activities) on the part of the audience,
which serve as the preconditions for her artefact having the intended impact. In particular,
to reap the discursive benefits of unique readability, it is crucial that the audience be able
(and willing!) to take the presented artefact in the way upon which grammatical structure
is built; namely, as a complex object composed of such-and-such primitive symbols con
catenated in such-and-such a manner. (It better not take the artefact to be some intricate
map, for example.) Such an ability is likewise presupposed by any implementation of some
effective algorithm which operates over some given well-formed formula and yields its syn
tactic construction tree. Once again, this ability to recognize each of the primitive symbols
and their concatenation into formula- and then derivation-sized units must operate over
the concrete artefact which is presented by the prover to the audience. It is precisely the
possibility of seeing the artefact as an instantiation of the object officially treated by the
mathematics which makes the mathematical property of “unique readability” deserving of
its name.
This ability is at once commonplace and remarkable. It involves little more than knowing
what it means to spell, and then recognizing the same spelling across various contexts. Such
a skill amounts to finding identity amongst marks of various sizes, shapes, colours, and
positions on the page. It is what grounds the completely straightforward sense in which:
Vx(AxlLBx), tfx(A xleB x), Vx(Ax&Bx) , and Vx(AxftBx) (not to mention countless possible
handwritten analogues, and maybe even: Vx[Ax ABx]) are all perfectly faithful inscriptions
of the same logical formula, despite obvious visual differences. In furnishing a derivation, a
prover expects the audience to see through some of her artefact’s idiosyncrasies and extract
from it its “spelling”; i.e., to see it as some particular sequence of the primitive symbols
that comprise the building blocks of that language. Only once this is achieved can the
unique readability of the formulas (in the mathematical sense) come into play and enforce
and its audience is invited, as it were, to pick a model meeting those constraints. Semantic univocality kicks
in once they have m ade their choice. Farther discussion of this is found in C hapter 5.
the univocality that is distinctive of formal language.

It is natural, then, to take the artefacts presented by a prover (and the individual
symbols comprising them) each to be tokens of some type, and to take these types to be the
syntactic objects treated by the mathematics. This is just another way of describing the
irreducible structural similarity between the artefacts we take to be instances of derivations,
and the more abstract mathematical objects which just are the derivations. Note that we
can’t go even further and collapse the distinction by saying that the official mathematical
objects just are the artefacts. The formula Vx(AxiiBx), for example, is treated by the
mathematics as a single object. We can’t quite say that some particular artefact (say, the
bit of ink in the previous sentence) is that object, for then we’d be committed to there
being only one such artefact (which is absurd, for here’s another one: Vx(Ax&cBx)). What
we would like to say instead is that there can be many different artefacts exhibiting the
same structure; there could be many tokens of the same abstract type.
Our pragmatic approach to logic thus suggests that the relation between the syntactic
objects treated by the mathematics and the artefacts through which we encounter them is
analogous to a type-token relation. Setting aside the metaphysical question of what exactly
such a relation amounts to, it is important to note that the existence of such a relation
has the potential of constraining “from below” the syntactic ontology of formal systems.
Recall that, mathematically speaking, all that matters with respect to Enderton’s primitive
symbols is that they be distinct and “basic” (i.e., not composed of each other). While there
is little question that a perfectly respectable mathematical notion of unique readability can
rest on such an austere conception of these symbols, we have just seen how our pragmatic
understanding of logic introduces a new twist. In order for unique readability to have a
discursive payoff in proof, it is also required that (inscriptions of) the primitive symbols
be taken to be distinct and basic. Otherwise, the univocality of first-order formulas would
remain hidden from that audience blind to the “alphabet” of the language. Thus, what
emerges is a pragmatic constraint on any formal system whose unique readability theorem
could be exploited in the name of univocality: for there to be any such discursive payoff
at all, it needs to be possible for the symbols to be taken as they “really” are. If we want
these abstract types to have any traction on real-life argumentation, it is crucial that these
types be fully “tokenizable,” and recognizably so.
4.2 G o o d m a n ’s T heory o f N o ta tio n
Nelson Goodman’s “theory of notation” (as detailed in section IV of Goodman 1976) offers
a helpful elaboration of the conditions under which symbol schemes meet such a constraint.
Goodman’s primary aim in developing this theory was to provide a detailed account of
the authenticity and identity conditions for works of art. In the present section, I will
demonstrate how it also sheds light on logic’s particular idealization of language use in
argumentation.
4.2.1 T erm in ology
For Goodman, inscriptions and characters correspond roughly to the tokens and types,
respectively, of (e.g.) linguistic expressions. An inscription is any mark (visual, auditory,
etc.) which “belongs to” (or, is an instantiation of) some character. (Some marks are not
inscriptions; i.e., do not belong to any character.) Characters are deemed by Goodman
to be special classes of inscriptions, though it is not necessary for us to adopt this par
ticular rendering of the token-type relation.8 It will suffice to deem the abstract symbols
of first-order logic to be examples of characters, whatever their exact ontological status
may be. However, it is still useful to define a character-inscription-class to be the class
of inscriptions of some single character (which, for Goodman, just is that character). The
class of inscriptions of first-order logic’s conjunction symbol would be one example of a
character-inscription-class.
A symbol scheme consists of characters, usually with modes of combining them to form
others. A chaxacter is atomic or compound according as its (possible?) inscriptions are
atomic or compound; an inscription is atomic if it contains no other inscription, compound
otherwise.9 The language of first-order logic is an example of a symbol scheme, with the
primitive symbols comprising its atomic characters, and any sequence of them comprising
its compound ones. (Further structure is required to pick out the “well-formed” compound
characters.)
in cid en tally , Goodman takes “class-talk” to be an informal short-hand for language more acceptable to
his overarching nominalism. He prefers to take tokens to be replicas of one another, doing away with the
type altogether (p .131, fh.3). In general, we are free to take the realist tone of Goodm an’s discussion as a
fagon de parler.
9T he parenthetical addition isn’t found in Goodman’s original definition (p. 142), but is m eant as a friendly
am endm ent to ensure th at never-inscripted characters are able to inherit the atom ic/com pound property.
W hether this amendment is friendly to Goodman’s nominalism is another m atter which I w on’t go into here.
Notational schemes axe symbol schemes which meet five basic requirements, two of which
are syntactic, three semantic. We concentrate here on the syntactic requirements, as it is
they which serve to explicate the pragmatic constraint discovered in the previous section.
4.2.2 T w o S y n ta c tic R equirem ents
Both syntactic requirements pertain to the relationship between inscriptions and characters.
Together, they flesh out how the unique constructibility of compound formulas can be taken
as such, yielding unique readability in a sense worthy of the name. We shall take up each
in turn.
D isjointness
• The character-inscription-classes of the symbol scheme must be disjoint: no mark

may belong to more than one character.
The first requirement of disjointness may seem rather trivial, but is in fact crucial for a
familiar communicative and interpretive strategy to work as advertised. This is the '‘se
mantics through syntax” strategy which takes interpretation to involve a two-stage process:
one figures out what was xuritten (or uttered) in order to figure out what was meant.
Such a strategy is most naturally motivated by considering the structure of paradig
matic formal languages like those of first-order logic. As has been noted many times by
now, the semantics of such languages “rides” the syntax; the inductive clauses through
which compound formulas are built are the very clauses through which they receive an
interpretation, given a model. Thus, there is a canonical way of determining the semantic
interpretation of any particular formula (again, given a model): one first determines the
syntactic structure of that formula, and then applies the corresponding semantic functions
(which reflect the meaning of the logical symbols) . 10 Because of the mathematical property
of unique readability (i.e., unique constructibility), this process yields a single result, and
hence the semantics as a whole is well-defined.
When coupled with the disjointness of character-inscription-classes, the “semantics
through syntax” strategy works like a charm on languages with unique constructibility,
yielding a very clean picture of the communicative and interpretive process surrounding
l0W ith formal languages, it is tem pting to say th at this is the only way th a t compound formulas get their
proper interpretation.
the use of formal language. (Indeed, I suspect the much-vaunted “precision” of formal lan
guages stems primarily from this picture.) Suppose for example th at a prover presents an
inscription of some first-order formula to some audience. Assuming that the audience takes
the artefact to be an inscription of that very same formula (and only that formula), and
furthermore knows how the syntax and semantics of the language works, then their seman
tic interpretation of that artefact is all but settled. In such a discursive context, the prover
can exercise pin-point control over the interpretation of her utterances or inscriptions; she
can count on her artefacts being interpreted each in a particular manner.
Consider what would happen, however, if it were possible for specific marks to be in
scriptions of more than one character. We can distinguish two ways this may be, depending
on whether the mark is atomic or compound. For example, suppose a prover could furnish
an artefact that looks like some formula of first-order logic, but with the audience having
the leeway to take some particular mark in that artefact to be an inscription of various
primitive symbols; we would then have a failure of disjointness at the atomic level. Alter
natively, failure would occur at the compound level if the prover’s artefact is such that the
marks of the primitive symbols could be taken to be combined in more than one way (e.g.,
if there is confusion over the order in which the primitive symbols have been concatenated,
or if the concatenation relation itself is considered bi-directional) . 11 In either case (and the
cases aren’t exclusive), the artefact as a whole would be an inscription simultaneously of
more than one (abstract) formula. No longer would the mathematical property of unique
readability guarantee a unique interpretation for that artefact, even given a single model.
Rather, there would potentially be as many legitimate interpretations for the one artefact
(each based on the abstract grammar) as there are formulas instantiated by it. Thus, with
out disjointness, the unique readability of first-order formulas would fail to percolate down
to their inscriptions, and the prover would no longer be able to count on their singular
uptake.
Disjointness is thus necessary for the accomplishment of a particular discursive goal;
namely, the singular uptake (“unique readability”) of inscriptions of formal languages. As
it turns out, it is also a pervasive feature of our use of written natural language, as we
treat virtually all written texts as instances of some unique sequence of letters. (At the
atomic level: even in those cases where perhaps due to blurriness, poor penmanship, or
11Such breakdowns a t the compound level are not so far-fetched. Right-to-left reading schemes exist, and
there may be inscriptions (like TAO, or even A a B) whose syntactic identity depends on the direction it is
read.
faded ink it is difficult to determine exactly which letter is instantiated by some mark, the
default expectation is that only one letter has in fact been instantiated. At the compound
level: for each language, there is a single established reading direction.) Since a unique
readability theorem doesn’t hold for natural languages, the determination of the spelling
of a piece of text cannot be parlayed into a unique determination of its meaning, or even
its parsing. Nonetheless, disjointness still helps to ground a criterion for its identity; it is
what allows thousands of different pieces of text (some handwritten, others typewritten,
still others typeset, etc.) to each be perfect copies of the same, single written work. 12
Articulateness
• The characters of the scheme must be finitely differentiated, or articulate: for every
two (distinct) 13 characters K and K ' and every mark m that does not belong to both,
it must be theoretically possible14 to determine that m does not belong to K or that
m does not belong to K '.
Articulateness is necessary (but not sufficient) for it being possible in general to determine,
for a mark, which character it is instantiating (if any). For suppose that articulateness
does not hold for some particular symbol scheme; i.e., that there exist characters K and
K ' , and mark m instantiating neither, such that it is impossible to determine that m is
not an instantiation of K and it is impossible to determine that m is not an instantiation
of K '. Thus, as far as anyone could possibly know, m could be instantiating either K and
K', despite the fact that it is doing neither. More simply: it would be impossible to pin
down which particular character m is an instantiation of, since there would be no way to
eliminate from contention two candidates which in fact are not being instantiated.
Thus, articulateness is also necessary for the practical achievement of unique readability,
at least generally. Suppose the prover furnishes an instantiation of some first-order formula.
The failure of articulateness would leave open the possibility of this artefact containing
some mark for which it is theoretically impossible to determine its character. As with
disjointness, this failure could occur at the atomic or compound level. Let’s say that it
l2Incidentally, it is this particular upshot of disjointness in which Goodman takes special interest.
l3Though Goodm an doesn’t make this explicit, it is clear th a t he intends the K and K ' to be distinct.
Otherwise, articulateness reduces to: for each character, it is theoretically possible to determine whether some
m ark does not belong to it. This is too strong a condition for Goodman, who wants to tolerate borderline
cases where it’s clear which character would be inscribed by some mark if the mark is an inscription at all,
though it be theoretically impossible to determine whether the latter condition in fact holds (p.134).
l4Goodm an writes th a t “ ‘theoretically impossible’ may be interpreted in any reasonable way; whatever
the choice, all logically and m athematically grounded impossibility . . . will of course be excluded” (p. 136).
occurs at the atomic level: as far as the audience can tell, the mark could be instantiating
one of a range of primitive symbols, and subsequently, the whole artefact one of a range
of formulas. (Alternatively, failure would occur at the compound level if the audience had
no way of determining the order in which the atomic marks should be combined.) Even if
disjointness holds (with the audience knowing to take the mark as an inscription of only one
character) there would be no resources by which the audience could determine once and for
all which character is in fact being instantiated. As a result, the “semantics through syntax”
interpretive strategy would be doomed to failure; there would be no way to determine what
was meant on the basis of what was written, since there would be no way to determine
what was written in the first place. The unique readability of the characters would thus
remain hidden from view, failing to manifest itself at the level at which they are actually
encountered.
Strictly speaking, the (possible) existence of one such mark is all it takes for a symbol
scheme to lack articulateness. Now, in that same scheme, there may be a great many
marks for which the determination of their characters is quite straightforward. So, for some
symbol schemes, the failure of articulateness could be a merely “local” phenomenon, more
the exception than the rule. In fact, if the scheme is such that, for every character, it is
always possible to produce a mark of it which is recognizable as such (i.e., if it is always
possible to engineer unequivocal inscriptions of each character), then not only is the failure
of articulateness localized, it is also in some sense avoidable: one could take care to use
only the unequivocal marks, with no loss in “expressive power.” The alphabet and usual
punctuation symbols of written natural languages like English comprise such a scheme; one
can use typesetting programs (or even just very neat printing) to produce texts which are
unequivocal as compound sequences of atomic characters.
However, it is also possible for a scheme to lack articulateness “everywhere”; i.e, for
a scheme to be undifferentiated throughout, so that for every mark, it is impossible to
determine which character (if any) it is instantiating. For example, consider a scheme
by which line segments differing at all in length are considered instantiations of different
characters. No matter how fine our measuring instruments, it would be impossible15 to
l5W h at sort of impossibility is this? It seems logically possible for there to exist measuring instruments
which have a margin of error of zero. But note th a t Church’s Thesis would be dubious in such a “possible
world.” Presumably, with such an instrum ent, we could read w ith perfect accuracy any graph with bounded
domain and range. Thus, it seems th at we would have the capability to “look up” the values of any bounded
function (some of which are not recursive).
determine for a particular segment its character. Whatever value we might come up with,
there would be infinitely many other values (e.g., within the measuring instrument’s margin
of error) whose candidacy cannot be eliminated. So while we may grant that the segment
has an exact length, we would never be in a position to classify it accordingly; in particular,
we would never be able to determine that two distinct segments are of the same character,
even if they actually are.
Thus, the concept behind articulateness admits of degrees, and we have just seen how
two schemes lie on opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, the standard alphabetic
scheme of English admits of perfect inscriptions which are recognizable as such; any sentence
(conceived of as a sequence of letters) can be written down perfectly so that the resulting
mark can be taken unequivocally as an inscription of that sentence, at least by those who
know how to recognize letters in the first place and in which order to read them . 16 On
the other hand, the line segment scheme introduced in the previous paragraph admits of
no such inscriptions; someone who wants to “write down” a particular character in that
scheme (say, the one corresponding to segment lengths of exactly 1.53 inches) simply can’t
do it. At best, he can hope to produce a mark (of length within e of 1.53 inches) for which
that character can’t be ruled out as one amongst (infinitely) many possible candidates.
4.2.3 L in g u istic P r a ctice
The standard alphabetic and punctuation notation (of English, say) fares about as well
with respect to Goodman’s syntactic criteria as can be expected from a system whose
regimentation stems more from everyday convention than from any precise dictum. In
practice, marks are taken to be instantiations of at most one character (whether they be
atomic letters, or compounds such as words, sentences, and paragraphs) and it is usually a
straightforward exercise to determine which one. 17 While it may be possible to dream up
particular linguistic situations which show disjointness or articulateness to fail (e.g., where
a particular piece of text could legitimately be taken to be an inscription of more than one
letter, or where it is impossible to determine which letter is instantiated by some mark on
I6T h at this seems like an amazing and mysterious feat shouldn’t obscure the fact th a t it happens all the
time!
l7This is so despite the fact th a t it is rather difficult to give non-question-begging criteria a t the atom ic
level for w hat exactly makes a m ark an inscription of some letter. The most promising candidate—some sort
of shape sim ilarity—would have to deal with the myriad of fonts and handwriting styles which vary from
person to person. (Even in th e relatively pristine world of typeset texts, it is not obvious how the shape of,
say, ‘a’ is more similar to ‘a ’ th an to ‘o’, ‘S', or ‘d ’.)
the page), such situations would comprise an odd-ball collection of very rare exceptions,
should they exist at all. It is simply part of our background know-how as readers that
certain physical artefacts (like street signs, books, billboards, treatises, menus, receipts,
posters, etc.) are treated in accordance with the two criteria. Such objects wouldn’t be
recognizable as texts if they (or we) routinely failed to conform to these syntactic “norms.”
Such know-how also underlies the use of the language of first-order logic, whose “alpha
bet” is a trivial variation of (e.g.) English’s. 18 We saw in the previous subsection that the
univocality distinctive of first-order formulas requires this know-how; the exercising of such
ability is a precondition for unique readability (as a mathematical property) to live up to
its name. Fortunately, it is a precondition met by everyday linguistic practice. In partic
ular, it is indeed possible to engineer perfect inscriptions of first-order formulas which are
straightforwardly recognizable as such: one can produce an inscription which is unequiv
ocally of one particular sequence of primitive symbols. With a formula’s basic sequential
symbol-by-symbol structure thus accessible, one can proceed to run a parsing algorithm
over it to recover its recursive construction.
Thus, the syntactic structure of paradigmatic formal languages has two distinguishable
components, each with their own distinctive characterizations. One component—the one
usually noticed in mathematical treatments—is described by a unique readability theo
rem, by which formulas are shown to be recursively, effectively, and uniquely constructed
from other formulas. The other component—the one formal language shares with nat
ural language—is described in part by the criteria of disjointness and articulateness, by
which the formulas and the primitive symbols from which they are constructed are shown
to be subject to constraints of instantiation. Unsurprisingly, this second component often
goes unnoticed, since it is an almost invisible feature of our mastery of reading, long ago
achieved. Nonetheless, it is a crucial aspect of formal logic’s idealization of language use
and interpretation.
We see then that, in using the language of first-order logic, the prover implicitly submits
to a particular distribution of discursive activities (responsibilities, even). On the one hand,
the well-formedness rules of the formal system (the grammar of the language) commit her
l8One superficial difference between the two is th a t many versions of the language of first-order logic
employ infinitely many prim itive symbols (e.g., infinitely many variables). This is not a serious contrast as
long as it is a countable infinity: the infinitely many prim itive symbols can be generated from finitely many
“pre-primitive” ones, so th at, say, 111976 is ultimately taken not as one symbol, but as the concatenation of
five. (The “official” m athem atical account is once again belied by the actual practice of textbook writers.)
to the production of an artefact sufficiently structured so as to allow a “semantics through

syntax” interpretive strategy to succeed. On the other hand, any such success requires the
audience to be disposed to taking the artefact in the way upon which syntactic structure
is built, as it is only through the stable recognition of the primitive symbols and their
concatenation into sequences that the artefact’s higher recursive structure is recoverable.
Whereas both formal and written natural language presuppose a fundamental kind of know
how on the part of the audience, formal language is distinctive in how much it is able to
achieve on the basis of this know-how: with the help of an algorithm, and as a result of the
prover’s efforts to produce an artefact whose formula-sized units are sufficiently structured,
the audience’s basic know-how can be parlayed into unique determinations of each formula’s
meaning.
4 .3 D ifferentiating D iagram s
In Chapter 3, it was argued that the unique readability of first-order formulas is an impor
tant facet of logic’s idealization of argumentation. We have just seen, however, that it is not
the mathematical property alone which grounds this aspect of the idealization. Rather, it
is only through the manifestation of unique readability in the physical artefacts presented
as derivations, that the precision and univocality distinctive of formal language have any
discursive upshot. One might say: the syntactic structure described by the mathemat
ics needs to be discursively implementable—its abstract types concretely tokenizable—for
it to facilitate univocality. In the case of first-order logic (and linguistic formal systems
generally), there is ample evidence that such structure is indeed perfectly implementable,
exploiting as it does some fundamental features of everyday linguistic practice.
In this section, we consider to what extent the same could be said for a collection of
diagrammatic schemes. As it turns out, many kinds of diagrams do indeed support a regime
of univocality, just like paradigmatic formal systems. However, at least one natural kind
of diagrammatic scheme does not. We will thus find our pragmatic conception of logic to
have some teeth, offering constraints on the kind of formal systems which deserve to be
considered full-fledged analogues of first-order logic.
4 .3 .1 M aps
One of the most common kinds of diagrammatic schemes is the cartographic map. What
one generally finds in such maps is information about some geographic area, such as the
sizes, locations, and names of such things as roads, parks, and buildings. Here, we will
narrow our focus to what one might call metric maps—maps “drawn to scale”—in which
some of this information is represented by the lengths, areas, and/or relative positions of
the map’s own icons. Road maps and atlases are paradigmatic examples.
T he M A P D System
Such maps are given a formal treatment in Leong (1994), where a diagrammatic formal
system called MAPD is developed and described in terms of its syntax, semantics, and
inference rules. The system’s “language,” called Ma p l , has as its syntactic primitives the
map template and some collection of icon-types.ig The map template is just the plane into
which particular icons (each of some icon-type) are embedded, and each icon-type is of one
of the following four kinds (and within each kind there may be many different icon-types):
• spot (e.g., O , • , o , )(, and ^ are all of different spot icon-types): primarily used to
denote buildings, cities, schools, freeway exits, bridges, etc.
• line (e.g., thin black line, thick black line, blue line, dotted line; all of which may
be curved): primarily used to denote roads, freeways, railways, contours, latitude,
longitude, etc.
• area (e.g., shaded area, blue area, green area, hashed area, checkered area): primarily
used to denote parks, oceans, countries, states, provinces, etc.
• boundary (e.g., thin black line, dotted line): primarily used to denote political borders,
or the boundaries of lakes, parks, etc.
A well-formed map is constructed by means of a construction sequence. Any such sequence

begins by picking two Cartesian points (xi,yi), (2:2 , 2/2 ) in the real plane; these points
define the rectangular boundaries of the map (i.e., its two diagonal comers). Then, the
construction sequence proceeds by introducing icons one-by-one to the bounded template.
l9To forestall confusion: an icon-type is not a type in the same way that Enderton’s primitive symbols
sire types (as argued in Section 4.1). Icons are “tokens” of some icon-type but they are not yet physically
instantiated; they are m athem atical objects lying in some MAPL map. It is such maps which are themselves
types in the sense of Section 4.1, and for which it can be asked whether they are instantiated by some
physical token.
As each icon is introduced, it is assigned a position in a mathematically natural and precise

way: each spot icon is assigned a particular point in the bounded template; each line or
boundary icon is assigned a continuous function from the unit interval [0 , 1 ] to the bounded
template; and each area icon a continuous function from [0 , 1 ] x [0 , 1 ] into the bounded
template .20 A map is well-formed if it is the last element of some such construction sequence.
The semantics of the system is model-theoretic in flavour, which we only sketch here.
First, an interpretation assigns to each icon-type some object-type. (For example, the
line icon-type THIN b l a c k LINE might be assigned to streets, and THICK BLACK LINE to
freeways. Similarly, the spot icon-type o could be assigned to freeway exits.) A region
(i.e., model) is defined as some rectangular subset [ai, 6 i] x [0 2 , 62 ] of the real plane, along
with objects that are assigned particular object-types and locations. (So objects which
are freeways or streets would be assigned curves within [0 1 , 61 ] x [0 2 , 62 ], while freeway
exits would be assigned specific points.) Given an interpretation, a region R is then said to
support some map m, if m accurately “scales” to some sub-region of R; i.e., tn can be moved
in the real plane and linearly stretched along the axes so that after this transformation each
icon’s position coincides with the location of some object in i?, with the icon-type and
object-type faithful to the interpretation (i.e., if the interpretation assigns streets to the
icon-type THIN b l a c k l in e , then the positions of such icons properly scaled will coincide
with those of the region’s streets). A semantic consequence relation between maps is thus
generated in the usual manner: £ <p whenever every region supporting each of the maps
in £ also supports </>.21
The inference rules consist of three familiar operations on maps: Submap allows one to
“crop” a map and thus derive a map which covers some subarea of the original one, Join
allows two maps to be put side by side to create a new one, and Overlay allows two maps
to be put on top of one another, as if they were on transparencies. (Join and Overlay can
only be applied subject to certain conditions, some of which are semantic.) These rules
turn out not to be complete, but they are sound.22 So while not every map which follows
from some set of maps can be derived in the system, any derivation actually licensed by the
system will be valid.
20For simplicity’s sake, I have om itted some details of the syntactic definition. For example, spot and line
icons may also be assigned an orientation (a direction it faces) and various textual labeb (like street names).
Furthermore: line, boundary, and area icons do not have to be connected in Leong’s system; they may have
up to finitely many unconnected parts (i.e., the position of the icon should be describable as the union of
the ranges of a finite collection of continuous functions from [0,1] (or [0, l]2) to the bounded template).
21Leong actually distinguishes two versions of th e support relation, each generating their own semantic
consequence relation. For our purposes, this distinction can be glossed over.
22For one of Leong’s two versions of semantic consequence, at least.
M A PD Proofs?
At this point, we may inquire as to the significance of such derivations. Does this math
ematical treatment of maps offer a credible model of proof 1 One might be tempted to
think so, noting the general structural similarity between the map-based formal system and
paradigmatic linguistic ones like those of first-order logic. If first-order logic can be thought
to model proof, why shouldn’t the same be said of MAPD?23
In Chapter 3, we highlighted particular discursive features of first-order derivations
which underwrite one account of how they idealize everyday proof. Should we find those
features to have been transferred over to the map-based system as well, we will have pro
vided ourselves a short-cut reason for thinking that the map derivations do indeed offer a
compelling idealization of proofs with maps. But if not, then we should still consider the
jury to be out with respect to the question. At the very least, we should not think that
simply because we have a piece of mathematics which appears to have the general trap
pings of a formal logical system (i.e., with a tri-partite structure of syntax, semantics, and
inference rules), we thus automatically have something which idealizes proof in the same
relevant respects as first-order logic.
In the current chapter, we have seen one way in which the mathematical theory of first-
order logic gets some traction on real-life argumentation: because the theory’s language has
the right sort of syntactic ontology, one whose members can be perfectly and recognizably
instantiated, the mathematical property of unique readability helps to support a regime
of univocality. That the language is perfectly implementable is crucial to the achievement
of this discursive goal; otherwise, there would be no principled way in which the unique
recursive construction of first-order formulas could ever be exploited or accessed by the
participants of a discourse. First-order derivations are not so abstract so that they can
never be written down or read.
The same, however, cannot be said about the derivations licensed by MAPD, as it is
impossible to produce an artefact which is a recognizably perfect instantiation of some m a p l -
map. As we have seen, the maps of MAPL are characterized as collections of icons’ positions
and types. The positions, in particular, are given precise values as points, curves, or areas in
the real plane, so that “moving” an icon even a tiny bit results in a (syntactically) different
23Leong himself doesn’t explicitly address this issue. So the argum ent th at follows isn’t directed against
him, but rather towards anyone who would take MAPD derivations to be straightforward examples of dia
gramm atic proof.
map. The real plane is itself dense: for any two points, there is another point between
them .24 Assuming a standard metric for the plane, it follows that for every e > 0 and every
point p in the plane, there are infinitely many points that lie within e of p. As a result,
no matter how carefully one tries to “draw” an abstract map (e.g., with ink on paper), it
is impossible to recover on the basis of any such drawing unique positions for the icons, or
even unique relative positions. For suppose one tried to draw a map which has two icons
exactly three units away from each other. Any such drawing would be indistinguishable
from one which has the icons 3 + e units apart, where e > 0 is within the measurement
error of our most accurate instruments. Thus, it cannot be determined (barring the use of
tricks like linguistic annotations!) whether the drawing instantiates the map whose icons are
three units apart, or one of infinitely many other maps which has them between 3 and 3 + e
units apart. More generally: given any determination of the icon’s positions made on the
basis of measurements made on some drawing, there axe infinitely many other neighbouring
positions whose selection would be equally legitimate since they he within the measurement
error of our most accurate instruments. Just like the line segment scheme introduced in the
previous section, MAPL is undifferentiated throughout: for any particular mark, there are
(infinitely) many characters that can’t be ruled out as possible candidates for being “the”
character instantiated by the mark.25
As a result, MAPD does not support the “semantics through syntax” strategy as cleanly
24The same holds true for th e rational plane, for which this argument is equally applicable.
25Two tangential points:
1. We have just seen how the syntax of maps fails articulateness at the compound level; we can’t
univocally pin down on th e basis of some drawing how the icons are syntactically related to each other.
B ut there are non-trivial issues regarding articulateness a t the atomic level as well, in particular with
respect to our recognition of different icon-types. It is im portant, for example, th a t an inscription of
a spot icon like not be seen as some collection of small line icons, or that some inscription of a line
or boundary icon (indicating, say, the border between two states) be taken as some very thin area
icon. The problem is th a t all physical marks occupy area, and so can be used to instantiate some
area icon. Fortunately, there are practical means by which one can reasonably hope to distinguish
the kind of icon. One could use four distinguishable colours for each of the four kinds of icons, for
example.
2. Regardless of our ability to classify them , it isn’t clear how any artefact could even just be a perfect
instantiation of some MAPL-map. (The failure may be ontological as well as epistemological.) Spot
and line icons of m a p l occupy breadthless points and curves, and hence it is not obvious how any
physical mark (coloured or not) could instantiate icons of this kind. The most promising account of
how this may be possible— by which the “centre” of a mark determines the icon’s exact position—
depends on the physical mark having a shape for which it even makes sense to say th a t it has a centre.
A sp o t of ink, viewed sufficiently blown up, almost definitely looks more like an amorphous (perhaps
even discontinuous) splotch than a neat circle.
as first-order logic. With an inscription of a first-order formula, one is able to determine

univocally what the inscription is an inscription of (both sequentially and recursively), and
then use that information to achieve a semantic interpretation. No such method could work
analogously with “inscriptions” of MAPL maps since it is impossible to say what a drawing is
a drawing of, at least univocally. The artefact (if well-drawn) can at best approximate some
family of MAPL maps, and hence can only approximately represent the regions supported by
those maps. Thus, someone furnishing such an artefact ought to give up any aspiration of
his being interpreted exactly, syntactically or semantically. The discursive responsibilities
undertaken by him better be different than those of the first-order prover, lest he be doomed
to failure. 26
Given that univocality is part of formal logic’s usual idealization of proof (as argued
in Chapter 3), we should be wary of taking MAPD derivations to be faithful diagrammatic
analogues of the derivations one usually learns in logic classes, since a key feature of the
discourse idealized by paradigmatic logical systems is not supported by MAPD. (As it turns
out, the system also fails to support the other discursive responsibilities of explicitness and
fine-grainedness.) This, of course, is not to say that some other story can’t be told for why
MAPD should inform our understanding of maps in proof and argumentation. Indeed, there
is a very clear sense in which MAPD offers one natural idealization of everyday map use, as
it is quite tempting to think of a map as a kind of “picture,” one which in principle can
be perfectly faithful to the domain it is supposed to represent. But our investigation shows
that this sort of idealization (the one made by MAPD) just isn’t of the same kind as the
one made by first-order logic, at least not in every relevant respect. As a result, it is not
obvious that these two formal systems should be used towards the same philosophical ends.
4.3.2 O th er D ia g ra m m atic Schem es
Metric maps lack articulateness since minute, imperceptible changes in the lengths and
positions of their icons result in a change of map: syntactic map identity is fragile with
respect to minute perturbations in the shapes and positions of the marks. In this subsection,
we consider three diagrammatic schemes which are not nearly as fragile; each of these
schemes can support a regime of univocality, and thus resemble standard linguistic schemes
in at least one important respect.
26It is no accident th a t some who are interested in developing a semantics of maps have felt compelled to
eschew bi-valence for a framework th a t accommodates approximation (e.g., Lemon and P ra tt 1999).
Hyperproof
Barwise and Etchemendy’s Hyperproof (Barwise and Etchemendy 1994) is a computer

ized system and textbook designed for elementary-level logic courses. The system itself is
heterogeneous, employing both a standard first-order language and a novel diagrammatic
scheme to reason about “blocks-worlds” in which objects of certain shapes and sizes lie
on a checkerboard. Since we have already seen how standard linguistic schemes support
univocality, here we restrict our attention to Hyperproof’s diagrammatic subsystem. The
system’s semantics and inference rules will be taken up in subsequent chapters.
A Hyperproof diagram simply consists of a collection of icon tokens situated on, or just
to the side of, an 8 x 8 grid; furthermore, an icon token may be labelled with one or more
constant symbols. Every icon must be one of sixteen types which are differentiated from
each other primarily according to shape and size:
Shapes: TETRAHEDRON, CUBE, DODECAHEDRON, PAPER-BAG, CYLINDER;
Sizes: SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE.
In particular, tetrahedron-, cube-, dodecahedron-, and bag-shaped icon tokens can be either
small, medium, or large, yielding twelve of the sixteen types. Cylinder-shaped icons are
treated slightly differently, as they only come in one size and are differentiated according to
whether they have a question mark, triangle, square, or pentagon superimposed on them
(thus yielding the remaining four types).
Differentiation of Hyperproof’s diagrammatic primitives turns out to be a very straight
forward matter, requiring a competence not unlike that of language use. The finitely many
shape-types and superimposed symbols are similar to letters in that it is possible, for ex
ample, to engineer cube-shapes so as to make them distinguishable from bag-shapes and
cylinder-shapes and question marks. (And, incidentally, no one is likely to confuse an icon
for the grid upon which it is placed.) Only the differentiation of icons according to size is
unfamiliar in a linguistic context; the fact that there are only three discrete sizes helps to
keep univocality within reach.
Compositional structure is also easily recoverable. Each icon token on the grid must
occupy exactly one of the sixty-four slots; this is straightforwardly drawn (on paper or on a
computer screen) by making sure that these instantiated icons are each completely within
one of the slots of the instantiated grid. Furthermore, at most one icon token can occupy
any particular slot, so it is easy to engineer artefacts in which the entire content of a slot is
not obscured. 27 It is also straightforward to recognize which icon tokens are off the grid;
these are the ones not put in a slot, just off to the side. Notably, the relative positions of
icon tokens off the grid have no bearing on syntactic identity; it’s as if they are all in some
sixty-fifth slot. Thus, compositional structure is completely characterizable in terms of an
inside-outside relation between icons and “slots.” This is topological structure, one we will
find to recur in other diagrammatic systems which support univocality.
It is worth comparing Hyperproof’s scheme to that of MAPL to see what facilitates
the support of univocality in one but not the other. After all, there is some sense in
which the schemes are quite similar: just as with metric maps, Hyperproof diagrams are
differentiated according to the positions of icons, and different icon types generally represent
different kinds of objects. However, Hyperproof diagrams differ from MAPL-maps in having
a much coarser “grain”: unlike in MAPL, it is possible to engineer univocally interpretable
instantiations of Hyperproof diagrams, since minute changes in the artefact are not generally
to be interpreted as differences in diagram.
This robustness of syntactic identity under minute perturbations of the artefact is crucial
to the system’s support of univocality. Suppose the syntax of Hyperproof were altered so
that the grid is eliminated in favour of some dense bounded plane in which icon tokens
are assigned particular coordinates, much like in m apl maps. We have already seen how
univocality would be jettisoned under a scheme, since the relative positions of icons could
never be precisely ascertained.28 Alternatively, if we retained the discrete 8 x 8 grid, but
instead augmented Hyperproof’s repertoire of icon types so that any difference in token
shape or size constituted a difference in type, then once again, univocality would no longer
be supported. For given a diagram with two icons of the exact same shape and size (and
therefore of the same type), it would be impossible to create a univocally interpretable
instantiation of it. Confronted with any such artefact, one would be left forever trying to
determine whether those two icon tokens are indeed of the same size and shape, or whether
one has some microscopic deviation from the other. It should be clear, then, that whatever
analogies exist between Hyperproof diagrams and metric maps in the way they depict their
domains, their differential reliance on infinitely-grained metric information makes for a
significant disanalogy in the way their respective syntactic objects are to be confronted,
and thus used.
27Hyperproof has both 3-D and 2-D displays of its diagrams. Occasionally, some slots are obscured in 3-D
mode, but never in 2-D mode.
28Univocality would be retained, however, if the syntax only recognized the topological property of tokens
as being either inside or outside the bounded plane.
Figure 4.1: Two Venn diagrams
Venn Diagrams
Venn diagrams are often used to facilitate syllogistic reasoning and to illustrate elementary
set-theoretic relations. Their utility is often thought to stem from the fairly tight homo
morphism which exists between the diagrams and the domains they represent (Barwise and
Etchemendy 1995; Barwise and Hammer 1996). For example, suppose there are n sets,
named Ai to An. In a Venn diagram, each set is assigned the region interior to some par
ticular curve, and the set’s complement the region exterior to that curve. It is in general
possible to shape and position the curves so that they produce a non-empty region for each
union or intersection of these sets, corresponding exactly to the combining or overlapping
of their respective regions. Under this scheme, every n-curve Venn diagram has exactly 2n
faces (or “minimal regions”) and there is a one-to-one, onto mapping between the faces of
the diagram and the 2n possible intersections of the form X \ fl • • •n X n, where X, is either
Ai or the complement of Ai.
By way of illustration, consider Figure 4.1. On the left is an example of a 3-curve (3-
set) Venn diagram. Loosely speaking, it has a “compartment” for each possible union or
intersection of three sets or their complements. (Analogously, a 4-curve Venn diagram would
have the same for four sets, as illustrated on the right.) A symbol like 0 can then be placed
in one of these regions to show that there is an object in the corresponding intersection of
sets, or a region can be shaded to indicate that the corresponding set is empty.
These diagrams are given a natural formal treatment in Shin (1994), where a formal
system called Venn-l is introduced. (This system is subject to minor modifications in
Hammer 1995 and Hammer and Danner 1996.) The well-formed diagrams (wfds) of Venn-I
are constructed from the following primitives:
• Rectangles
• Closed, non-intersecting curves
• Labels A i, A<i, ... for the closed curves
• Shading
• The symbol ®
• Lines ( “links”) to connect the ®’s
Just as with MAPL, the wfds are defined by means of a construction sequence. Every
sequence begins with a rectangle, supplying the outer “frame” of the wfd. The sequence
then proceeds with the addition of other primitive objects one-by-one inside the frame. A
labelled closed curve c can be added to a wfd D to yield another wfd, provided that c crosses
each minimal region of D exactly once, touches no ®’s, and has a label which is also new
(i.e., not already contained in D).29 Shading can be added to an entire minimal region of a
wfd (i.e., an entire face can be shaded) to yield another wfd. Similarly, an ® can be placed
completely inside some minimal region, or any pair of ®’s can be connected by a line (even
if they are already connected to other ®’s), to yield another wfd; such “chains” of <g>’s are
called ®-sequences.
Discussion of the formal semantics and inference rules of Venn-I will be taken up in
Chapter 6 . For now, we will investigate its syntax in light of Goodman’s criteria. First of
all, to support univocality it needs to be possible to distinguish the syntactic primitives of
the system; i.e., atomic marks need to be recognizable as one of rectangles, curves, labels,
shadings, ®’s, and links. For this to be so, what is required is:
• for labels and <g>’s: the standard linguistic competence associated with the production
and recognition of letters and numerals
• for shading: an ability to produce and see a30 difference in saturation
• for rectangles, curves, and lines: an ability to draw and recognize straightness (to
distinguish curves from the other two) and closedness (to distinguish links from the
other two) 31
29T w o notes about this clause. First, as we shall see shortly, it will be convenient to add the requirement
th at all curves which meet a t a point must intersect at th at point as well. Second, in Shin’s original
formulation of Venn-I, there are no labels for the curves. Instead, a counterpart relation is defined to provide
the identity criterion for curves across wfds (so th at a particular curve in one diagram is related to the same
set as some curve in another diagram). I use Hammer’s labelled version instead, in part because it is simpler
to describe, but also because without explicit labels in the syntax to relate curves across diagrams, Venn-I
would fail to meet a discursively im portant “formality” criterion developed in C hapter 6.
30But not every!
31Actually, this last ability is unnecessary, as explained in footnote 34 below.
It should be mostly uncontroversial that humans have such abilities, at least to a degree
sufficient to ensure that unequivocal inscriptions of each primitive can be engineered. The
recognition of straightness might give one pause, since in the physical world there are no
perfectly straight lines. However, as long as it is possible to distinguish what looks straight
from what doesn’t, Goodman’s disjointness and articulateness criteria are practically met for
atomic characters. We will see presently that the compositional structure of Venn diagrams
makes such determination easy.
Now onto the compound characters: the Venn wfds. It is notable that their identity
(unlike that of MAPD maps) does not depend upon any precise metric information; the
syntactic objects do not need to be assigned positional coordinates in a dense plane. Rather,
the compositional structure of wfds is sufficiently described in terms of the following features:
which curve has which label, the cyclic order each curve intersects the rest, to which curves
is each region interior or exterior, which regions are shaded, and which regions contain an
(^-sequence.32 In fact, with one exception, the placement of these objects is sufficiently
described in terms of their mutual intersection and containment relations, which are in
turn topological invariants that are preserved through any “stretching” transformation of
the plane upon which the diagram is drawn.33 The one exception is the labelling of curves,
which is most naturally described in terms of some “nearness” property. However, this
exception is minor and can be regimented away: if we add the requirement that each label
should lie on the curve it labels (and no others), then even unique labelling would be
preserved under topological transformation.
This feature helps make it possible to produce univocally recognizable tokens of Venn
wfds. Since the compositional structure of wfds is invariant with respect to topological
transformation, one can just draw the curves big enough (and the labels and ®’s small
enough) to get the space needed to ensure a univocal determination of these syntactic
properties. For example, one can make sure that the labels and ®’s touch only what
they’re supposed to touch, and that the regions are sufficiently large to make routine the
determination of whether they are empty, shaded, or containing some ®’s.
32Shin’s official definition of wfd makes no mention of th e cyclic order in which a curve intersects the
other. Why one would want to do this anyway is taken up in Chapter 6.
33Note that, with respect to the distinctly linguistic items of the diagram, the “stretching” transform ation
should apply only to their positions. The ®’s and labels may move around as a result of the transformation,
b u t their shapes m ust remain fixed (as if these items are lying on the plane, not t'n it).
The “enlargement” strategy just described succeeds to disambiguate the syntactic rela
tions amongst diagrammatic primitives provided the primitives themselves are identifiable
in the artefact. In other words, it needs to be the case that primitive structure isn’t ob
scured through composition. In linguistic systems, this requirement is trivially met since
the primary compositional operation is concatentation. However, in systems like Venn-I in
which primitive objects are placed on top of one another, there is potential for trouble. For
one thing, it is important that diagrammatic objects not obscure others, so, e.g., shading
can’t be opaque lest it hide objects underneath. Less trivially, it also must be possible to
identify which parts of the diagram belong to which wholes. If, as in Shin’s original defini
tion, curves in an wfd are allowed either to meet but not intersect, or to overlap and share
a curve segment, then in an actual diagram (i.e., in an artefact), curve “identity” may be
obscured: at an intersection point where a number of curve segments meet, it might not be
obvious which segments belong to the same curve. It may be possible for a single artefact
to instantiate two or more wfds depending on which curve segments are made to instantiate
which curves, and topological transformations would do nothing to change this.
Fortunately, tightening the definition of wfd in the way indicated in footnote 29 elimi
nates this possibility: by insisting that two curves intersect wherever they touch, each curve
segment in a diagram will belong to only one curve, and it becomes straightforward to re
cover at points of intersection which pairs of segments belong to the same curves. (Only
an even number 2 n of curve segments would meet at a point, so from a segment one could
count clockwise to the nth segment around that point to find the proper “continuation” of
its curve. This relation is preserved under topological transformation, since so is the cyclic
order in which lines meet an intersection point.) It turns out that no expressive power
is lost as a result of adopting the stricter definition since there exist numerous inductive
procedures for drawing arbitrarily many curves which intersect in the way demanded (e.g.,
Bowles 1971; More 1959; Polythress and Sun 1971; Fisher et al. 1988).
With this adjustment made, all th at’s left to check is the univocal uptake of the lines
that join ®’s. Recall that their straightness was highlighted as the most likely source of
equivocation, but in fact this is not a major cause for concern. One need use no more than a
straight-edge to link the ®’s of the 0 -sequences (and, incidentally, to draw the rectangular
frame of the wfd). In most cases, these marks will be sufficiently distinguished from the
other ones, and any remaining marks which look too straight can safely and easily be “bent”
some more (again as a result of the diagram’s topological compositional structure ) . 34

In summary: with some minor adjustments, Venn-I is able to support a regime of
univocality.35 Remarkably, Venn-I manages this even though no “unique readability theo
rem” holds for it. In contrast to first-order formulas, the mapping between construction
sequences and wfds is not one-to-one; the same diagram may be the result of numerous
distinct constructions (distinct, say, with respect to the order that diagrammatic objects
are introduced). The fact that univocality nonetheless remains indicates that what counts
as compositional structure in Venn-I doesn’t correspond exactly to what counts as compo
sitional structure in formal language.
T h e D iagram s of A ncient G reek G eom etry
It is instructive to consider one of the very first historical examples of mathematical proof:
the propositions of ancient Greek geometry. This important piece of “cognitive history” is
studied in Netz (1999), where it is explained how certain features of ancient Greek math
ematical practice supported the cognitive achievement which just is the doing of Greek
mathematics (and thus, the doing of proof). Diagrams played an integral role in this activ
ity; without them, the textual remainder would be unintelligible as proofs, both to us and
to them.
Luengo (1995) and Miller (1999) have each developed logical systems which to some
extent mirror the use of such diagrams. Though similar in flavour, Miller’s system FG
enjoys two advantages over Luengo’s DS1; FG is more expressive, and DS1 has been found
to be unsound (Miller 1999). The syntax of FG is sketched in Figure 4.2. Differentiation
of its primitives is for the most part straightforward, with the only likely stumbling block
involving the distinction between arcs and solid line segments: since the segments don’t
need to be straight, they can look like arcs. Fortunately, this nuisance can rather easily
34 Actually, there is a sense in which these final steps are optional, suggesting there to be some unnecessary
detail in th e characterization of the syntactic primitives. It turns o u t th a t one could do away with straightness
as a distinguishing feature, since the compositional structure o f wfds sufficiently distinguishes rectangles,
curves, and links from each other. The outer rectangle really need not be rectangular to be recognized as
the syntactic frame; it is sufficiently distinguished as the curve inside which all other objects are placed.
Furtherm ore, the links of an ®-sequence need not be straight to be seen as links; they are already syntactically
distinguished from closed curves by having ®’s on their end-points, since ®’s are not allowed to touch curves
anyway. T hus, wfds are really topological till the way down, perfectly drawable even w ithout a straight-edge.
Their compositional structure can be used to resolve any outstanding issues regarding the individuation of
their primitives.
35For sim ilar reasons, so do other diagrammatic systems like H am m er’s formalization of Higraphs and of
Euler circles (in Hammer 1995) and Peirce’s Alpha- and Beta-Logics (Hammer 1995; Shin 2000 respectively).
T he diagrammatic primitives o f F G are:

• th e rectangular box (supplying a diagram ’s outer frame)
• th e dot (for points)
• the connected, possibly curved solid line segment
• the connected, possibly curved dotted line segment
• th e arc, and
• the hash mark (used w ith th e arc to indicate the equality of lengths or angles).
A diagram D consists of some finite collection of (instantiations of) such primitives on the plane such that:
• all other objects lie w ithin a single box, and only solid line segm ents touch the box
• for any segment (solid or d o tted ), each of its endpoints lies on a d ot or on the frame, and the segment
itself doesn’t intersect any o th e r segment, dot, the frame, or itself except at its endpoints.
Let DOTS(D), SOLID(D), and D O T T E D (D ) be the set of dots, solid line segments, and dotted line segments
of D, respectively. Diagram D also has associated with it a set SL(D ) o f subsets of SOLID(D), and a set
CIRC(D) of ordered pairs (x, y) such th a t x € DOTS(D) and y C C IR C (D ). An element of SL(D), consisting
of some collection of solid line segm ents, is called a dline and represents a single straight line or line segment;
an element of CIRC(D ), consisting of a dot (its “centre”) and some collection of dotted line segments,
is called a dcircle and represents a circle. Every segment can be p a rt of only one dline or dcircle. D is
well-formed if the following hold as well:
• every dline and dcircle is connected
• if a dline touches a dot, it e ith e r ends at the dot or goes through it exactly once (i.e., dlines can end
inside the frame but can’t self-intersect)
• if a dcircle touches a dot, it goes through the dot exactly once
• for each dcircle (x, y), x lies in the interior of y
• no two dlines meet the box a t the same point (this simulates parallelism)
• any two dlines th a t meet at a d o t cross at th at dot; and if a dline and two dcircles meet a t a dot with
the dline crossing neither of th e dcircles a t the dot, then the dcircles don’t cross at the dot either
(these are “tangency" conditions)
• no two dlines intersect more th a n once; no two dcircles intersect more than twice; no dcircles that
share the same centre intersect a t all; and no dline intersects any dcircle more than twice
• for any two non-intersecting dlines, any third dline intersecting one intersects the other
• the ends of arcs either both lie on the ends of some dline, or b o th lie on dlines which meet at a dot
(i.e., arcs mark either line segm ents or angles)
• arcs have some positive num ber of hash marks on them
• hash marks lie only on arcs o r on solid lines between dots, but never on dots
Figure 4.2: The syntax of F G
Figure 4.3: Two ambiguous FG artefacts
be engineered away (with, say, the use of colour, or a different thickness of mark). As
for compositional structure, F G ’s well-formed diagrams are identified up to topological
equivalence, and inspection of its well-formedness clauses confirms that only intersection
and containment features are salient. We have already seen with Venn-I how univocality
can thus be facilitated through an enlargement strategy, provided the primitives remain
identifiable in the artefact.
Unfortunately, in general they won’t be. It is easy to construct artefacts that each
instantiate numerous well-formed diagrams. For example, consider the left diagram of
Figure 4.3. This artefact can legitimately instantiate two distinct diagrams, one in which
there is a single line segment with a dot on it, and one in which they are two line segments
meeting at the centre dot. Similarly, the diagram on the right provides no information
regarding which interior dot represents the centre of the circle.
The identification of diagrams up to topological equivalence helps to address this worry
to some extent: as Miller himself states (p.3), every well-formed diagram is (topologically)
equivalent to one in which two edges meeting at a dot are part of the same line or line
segment iff they lie locally on a straight line, and are part of the same circle iff they lie
locally on some circle (where by “locally” is meant: within some neighbourhood around the
dot). So given that FG diagrams consist of only finitely many diagrammatic primitives,
it remains possible to engineer drawings in which such information is recoverable (though
recovery may now require the aid of straight-edge and compass). One can in turn adopt
an interpretive convention by which local straightness and local circleness is used to decide
which edges belong to which fines and circles. Under such a convention, the left diagram of
Figure 4.3 is taken to have only one fine segment.
Note, however, that only local straightness and circleness can be appealed to; the global
versions do not hold generally. We can’t aspire to draw all fine segments straight and all
circles circular for, as shown in the Appendix to Miller (1999), to impose such conditions
virtually forces the system to be unsound. Unfortunately, this means that our interpretive
convention will generally fail to resolve the ambiguity of the second diagram. Since we can’t
count on engineering our dotted curves to be completely circular, there is no obvious way
to indicate “diagrammatically” just which interior dot represents the centre.
It appears, then, that F G comes rather close to supporting a regime of univocality; we
have only found “centrehood” to be beyond its grasp. In this regard, it is instructive to
consider how the diagrams of FG differ from the ones actually drawn by the ancient Greeks
(as described in Chapter 1 of Netz 1999).
Even before looking at the diagrams themselves, the first thing to note about Greek
proofs is their use of a heterogeneous representation system, employing linguistic formulas
as well as diagrams. In fact, Greek proofs generally had only one diagram, leaving much of
the deductive, step-by-step “work” to be displayed in the text. By contrast, FG (and DS1,
for that matter) is purely diagrammatic. FG partially “gets away” with avoiding textual
representations by employing hash marks instead, a notational device that doesn’t seem to
have been used by the ancient Greeks. Hash marks indicate equality of lengths and angles,
precisely the kind of information stated by the Greeks in their proofs.36 Symmetrically, the
Greeks used a notational device not incorporated into the syntax of purely diagrammatic
formal systems; namely, the use of linguistic labels for the points, lines, etc., of the diagram.
Labels provided a syntactic bridge between the diagram and the text, allowing the Greeks
to say about the diagram, for example, that the centre of some circle is some particular
point—crucial information we found not to be extractable from FG artefacts alone.
Another source of divergence between Greek diagrams on one hand and FG on the other
is their differential treatment of straightness. As we have already remarked, the solid lines
of FG diagrams need not be straight even though they represent straight lines. Indeed, this
is part of why there are so many clauses in Miller’s well-formedness definition: he needs to
make sure the solid lines act straight, even when they don’t look straight .37 Instead, the
straightness of a line in FG is indicated syntactically by its solidness, not its straightness.
The ancient Greeks, however, did not appeal to anything like a solid/dotted distinction,
and instead generally drew their straight lines straight (and circles circular). In fact, as
Netz points out (p.34), the use of technologies like the straight-edge and the compass was
an important aspect of their practice, helping to make intelligible some of the liberties they
36T he same can be said for the “arrowed” hash marks (e.g.,----- » — ) which, though not incorporated
into F G or DS1, are commonly used in high school geometry classes to indicate th a t two lines are parallel.
37Analogously for the dotted lines, which need to act circular without looking circular.
took in the writing of their proofs. Strikingly, the straightness of a line would rarely be given
explicit mention in the text of a proof even when it was absolutely required for the truth
of the proposition. The Greek geometers need not be embarrassed by this systematic and
seemingly egregious omission, for they had at their disposal a reliable, alternative means
of signaling such information. The drawing tools of straight-edge and compass were an
integral part of their expressive arsenal whose deployment allowed an important semantic
distinction to be syntactically marked.
So while the (unformalized) syntax of the original Greek diagrams goes beyond topology,
it doesn’t go much beyond topology, and in fact, only goes so far as could be supported
by simple technological aid. In any case, Greek geometers did not look to the diagram for
distinctly metric information such as the position of circles’ centres, the parallelism of lines,
or the relative magnitudes of lines or angles (unless this information could be represented
topologically, with one line/angle containing the other). The discussion throughout this
chapter sheds light on why. The expression of metric information by drawing to scale comes
at a severe cost: under such a scheme, there is absolutely no hope of ensuring the singular
uptake of the drawings, and thus no hope of sustaining the particular idealized discursive
activity distinctive of proof. The Greeks must have implicitly realized this, employing
an alternative representation scheme to pick up the expressive slack. Even when doing
Euclidean geometry, they knew better than to draw their diagrams in Euclidean space.
Incidentally, this observation helps to dissolve a puzzle regarding the Greeks’ use of
diagrams in indirect proof (i.e., proof by contradiction). Often, propositions would be
proved by drawing a diagram which depicts an impossible situation; in fact, the point of
the proofs would be to demonstrate that impossibility. This state of affairs should have
the air of paradox only to someone who believes that the ancient Greek mathematicians
designed their diagrams to exemplify all relevant Euclidean properties in the first place. It
is clear that they didn’t; indeed, there isn’t any way they could have without compromising
the very nature of their activity, and their achievement.38
38By calling the puzzle dissolved, I don’t wish to deny th a t there are plenty of fascinating and delicate
questions regarding th e use of diagrams in indirect proof. For example: just which features of “impossible”
diagrams have sem antic im port? which ones don’t? and which ones would have were it not overriden by
something in the text? There ought to be principled answers to these questions; after all, a long-lived and
venerable discursive practice was in fact erected on the basis of such diagram use. Manders (in progress) is
a very careful investigation along these lines.
4.4 C onclusion
According to the pragmatic approach of this dissertation, formal derivations are concretiz-
able objects designed to discharge idealized discursive responsibilities. By adopting this
viewpoint, we are provided a means of relating mathematical constructs like first-order
logic to the everyday phenomena of proof and argumentation. First-order derivations are
the sort of objects that can actually be furnished in a proof-context; their complete syn
tactic structure can be written down for all to see, with nothing lost in the journey from
abstract type-hood. Once on the ground, their inscriptions support a regime of syntactic
and semantic univocality; in fact this regime is enforced by the rules of formal language.
By contrast, informal language only enforces “letter-by-letter” univocality which cannot
generally be parlayed into a unique parsing of a sentences compositional structure or a
unique determination of its meaning.
If the goal of the “Logical Approach” to vindicating diagrams is to demonstrate how
diagrammatic systems are “just like” the venerated linguistic ones, then we have hit upon
one test that can be used to begin gauging its success. And we find that, indeed, many
diagrammatic systems do possess this discursive feature of standard linguistic systems, and
hence remain eligible to inherit the story told in Chapter 3 concerning formal logic’s role in
the philosophical conception of proof.
But not every diagrammatic scheme passes this test. The metric maps of MAPL, for
example, do not. This negative result turns out to be an exception in the space of dia
grammatic logics, but one which, ironically, serves to corroborate the pragmatic approach
pursued here. For some of the worry concerning the use of diagrams in proof can be at
tributed to the misconception that diagrams generally depict their referents in much the
same way that metric maps do, and hence are doomed to some sort of representational
imperfection. For example, it offends mathematical sensibility to “prove” a constructed tri
angle to be equilateral by actually measuring the sides of some diagram. But we have seen
that diagrams need not be treated like this; in fact, they weren’t in one of the earliest histor
ical examples of mathematical proof. The investigation of this chapter suggests that part of
what makes the activity of ancient Greek mathematicians recognizable as proof is precisely
their adoption of a univocal representational convention. I take this to be quasi-empirical
evidence for the conception of logic advocated here.
Chapter 5
Enthym em e, Explicitness, and

Expressiveness
In Chapter 3, it was argued that formal derivations are unusually explicit; the only way a
prover could use correctly the inference rules of a system is if she ends up stating enough
semantic constraints on the non-logical vocabulary to ensure that there are no counterex
amples. The flipside to this discursive burden is her silence regarding the system’s logical
vocabulary; its semantic contribution is left implicit, hard-wired into the recursive satis
faction clauses of the semantics. What vocabulary counts as “logical” or “non-logical” will
vary from system to system (at least extensionally) ; 1 hence, so will the scope of the prover’s
discursive responsibilities in this regard. Nonetheless, formal settings are distinctive in how
little they allow the prover to take for granted compared to the settings naturally associ
ated with everyday arguments, where there is usually some implicit appeal to the antecedent
interpretation of standardly non-logical vocabulary.
This pervasive feature of informal argumentation—the ubiquitous, implicit appeal to
“extra-logical” facts—is accounted for rather uncomfortably by traditional logical method
ology. At best, informal arguments2 are “saved” by being treated as enthymemes] “sup
pressed” premises must be brought to light so that the completed argument may be deemed
valid in some formal system. At worst, the informal arguments are left unadorned and
almost invariably found to be invalid, as there is likely to be some interpretation of the
l My use of scare-quotes is in deference to those who seek a principled demarcation of such vocabulary.
2In this chapter, “argum ent” will be used in the standard technical sense, referring only to a set of
premises and a conclusion. We will revert to the more common usage in Chapter 6.
109
Chapter 5. Enthymeme, Explicitness, and Expressiveness 110
“non-logical” vocabulary (no matter how far-fetched) that would make their premises true
and conclusion false. Thus, according to this standard view, informal arguments are doomed
to be deficient in some way or other: either incomplete or unsuccessful (or both).
Our pragmatic approach to argumentation, however, offers a third alternative, one which
allows informal arguments to be completely successful on their own terms with no need to
read in extra premises beyond that which is explicitly stated. This is accomplished by
packing more into what Parsons calls the setting, the axioms and inference rules which are
taken for granted in the argument. Rather than automatically read in the pre-packaged
settings that come with formal systems, we have the option of fathoming rules which are
much more liberal and wider in scope. In Chapter 2, we found good reasons for entertaining
this option. It is the option which most respects the pragmatic significance of the text as
actually furnished, taking seriously the prover’s expectation that her text is fully sufficient
to discharge her discursive responsibilities as is. It is also the option most likely to ground
a fair comparison of formal and informal proof, avoiding the rather chauvanist tendency to
measure the success of informal proofs in terms of how well they do a formal proof’s job.
The purpose of this chapter is to pursue this alternative approach some more and ex
plore its consequences. We will see that even when taking informal arguments to be at
least potentially successful on their own terms, we are nonetheless afforded an illuminat
ing account of what remains distinctive about formal derivations, once again supporting
their status as credible idealizations of argumentation. In a sense, we will find that we can
have our cake and eat it too. We can characterize what is special about formal derivations
without automatically denegrating the informal arguments we normally traffic in.
As in the previous chapter, we will then proceed to turn our attention to some recent
diagrammatic systems that have been developed to legitimate the use of diagrams in proof.
It turns out that many of these systems do not enforce a regime of explicitness to the
extent that paradigmatic, linguistic systems do. In this respect, the formal derivations
licensed by these diagrammatic systems are rather like the everyday informal proofs we
are accustomed to. Notably however, whereas even informal language could be used in an
explicitating fashion (so that it is possible to write informal proofs which are as explicit
as formal derivations), no such flexibility is to be found in the use of a large class of
diagrams. According to the consensus view of what it means for a representation to be
robustly “diagrammatic” in the first place, such systems simply can’t support the regime
of explicitness enforced by standard formal logic.
5.1 E lim inating E nthym em es
5.1.1 T h e D ep th s o f G ram m ar
Let’s revisit the sample informal argument considered in Chapter 2: AI is older than Bill, Bill
is older than Charlie; therefore AI is older than Charlie. There is a clear, pre-theoretic sense in
which this is a ‘Valid” argument, with the truth of the conclusion guaranteed by the truth
of the premises. However, a direct, sentence-by-sentence translation of the premises into
first-order language yields something like:
1. Oider(AI,Bill)
2. Older(Bill.Charlie)
with conclusion:
Older(AI,Charlie)
The translated argument clearly isn’t valid, at least in first-order logic, since there exists a
model in which the premises but not the conclusion come out true. For example, we can
take the domain to be the natural numbers, with AI, Bill, and Charlie denoting 1, 2, and 3
respectively, and Older the (non-transitive) relation {(1 ,2 ), (2 ,3)}.
As noticed in Brandom (1994), the putative disagreement between theory and intuition
is usually thought to be reconciled by deeming the original argument to be enthymematic
or incomplete. In particular, it is standard logical and philosophical practice to deem our
sample informal argument to be appealing implicitly to an additional premise; namely:
3. Vx Vy Vz ((Older(x,y)AOIder(y,z))—>Older(x,z))
It is thought that this premise is needed to capture the meaning of older than, or at least
enough of it to “save” the argument’s validity.3 And save it it does, for the augmented
argument is valid according to first-order logic. Our putative counterexample no longer
applies, since it is not a model in which the third premise comes out true.
Standard first-order semantics leaves predicates like Older uninterpreted; there is very
little in the “hard-wired” part of the semantics available to ensure that the predicates
are interpreted as intended (for example, in a way faithful to the meaning of English-
language counterparts). It should not be thought, however, that the semantics imposes no
3Copi (1973, pp.133-4) offers a representative discussion along these lines.
constraints on their interpretation; it remains a requirement that n-ary predicate symbols

be assigned sets consisting exclusively of ordered n-tuples whose components are in the
domain of discourse.4 A “model” which ventured to assign to Older an interpretation like
{1, (3,2), (2,3,1)}, or {(a. 1)} where a is not in the domain of discourse, is simply ruled out
of court.
It is very tempting to say that, with respect to the non-logical symbols, what is imposed
are constraints answering only to the role such symbols play in the compositional seman
tics; i.e., according to each symbol’s semantic type. 5 (In some languages, like first-order
ones, these semantic types correspond exactly with the grammatical categories invoked in
the wellformedness rules.) Almost by definition, these constraints are thought to be rather
minimal, just enough to ensure that the semantics is able to yield truth-values in some man
ner sensitive to a sentence’s compositional structure. For instance, in first-order language
such constraints ensure that Older will be assigned a binary relation and not a unary one,
since otherwise the assigning of an inappropriate kind of denotation would wreak havok
when put through the recursive satisfaction clauses of the semantics. These constraints,
however, don’t suffice to ensure that the denotation of Older will be transitive, despite the
fact it would need to be under any “intended” interpretation faithful to the predicate’s En
glish counterpart. This is why extra machinery, in the form of explicit premises, is needed to
carve out the intended space of models, which in turn helps our sample informal argument
go through.
Suppose, however, that we supplemented standard first-order systems in order to make
them somewhat more reflective of English grammar. In particular, suppose we incorporated
a “logic of comparatives” into the base logic, one which directly models the role that the ‘er’
suffix plays in English when applied to an adjective.6 One straightforward way of doing this
would be to take a standard first-order language and append to some of its unary predicate
symbols the er-suffix, yielding a stock of new binary predicate symbols. (So, for example,
if P is some unary predicate symbol of the original language, Per would be made a binary
predicate symbol in the new language.) Furthermore, we would hard-wire into the semantics
some reasonable constraints on the interpretation of the new symbols: they must denote
irreflexive, transitive relations, and (z, y) must be in the denotation of Per whenever x is in
4Analogous constraints are imposed on the interpretation of the function and constant symbols.
sThis is argued for in MacFarlane (2000).
6A version of this is contem plated in Quine (1986, p.77). Given his preoccupation with finding a (some
what) principled demarcation of logic, the moral he takes from this example is quite different from mine.
the denotation of P and y isn’t. These restrictions are motivated by the er-suffix’s raison
d ’etre in the language as a comparative-generator; any “model” which ventured to assign
to Per a denotation not meeting these conditions is simply ruled out of court, somewhat like
the structures which assign to predicates tuples of the wrong arity or objects outside the
domain of discourse. Finally, we could add some effective, truth-preserving inference rules
appropriate to the new suffix: for any terms a, b, and c, one would be allowed to derive
Per(a,c) directly from Per(a,h) and Per(6 ,c) (or from P(a) and ->P(c)); or to assert -iPer(a,a)
at any time .7
Under the usual way of seeing these things, adding a “logic of comparatives” to the
standard first-order machinery is completely inconsequential. This is because the extra
machinery' used to model the semantic contribution of English’s er-suffix can be simulated
away by “augmenting” the first-order language with new binary predicates of the plain
vanilla variety and adding a decidable collection of axioms which forge the intended semantic
connections between the new vocabulary and the original language fragment, serving to
delimit the relevant class of models. With these axioms (or some appropriate subset of
them) added to any argument which appeals to them, the old rules of inference suffice to
ensure that the augmented arguments can be shown to be valid if and only if indeed they
are. Thus, the resources available to standard first-order systems seem fully sufficient to do
anything a “logic of comparatives” can .8
Under the perspective developed in this dissertation, however, this “reduction” of com
paratives to first-order logic isn’t quite so inconsequential. For if we choose to read our
sample informal argument in a way more attuned to English grammar; i.e., as much like an
argument in the augmented formal language from:
1. Older(AI, Bill)
2. Older(Bill, Charlie)
to:
Older(AI, Charlie)
then we get a different verdict regarding the argument’s validity as it stands. In this case,
no explicit supplementation of the argument is needed in order to “save” it, for already
'W e could of course go further and build in some machinery designed for the est-suffix, but the er-
machinery is sufficient for our purposes here.
8For Quine (1986), this is a reason to reserve the word ‘‘logic’’ for first-order logic (pp.77-8).
there are no models which make the premises true and the conclusion false.9 Any “model”
which assigns a non-transitive relation to Older simply isn’t a model of the system; it isn’t a
set-theoretic structure faithful to the semantics of the augmented language. In other words,
relative to the space of models countenanced by the er-system, the prover’s text admits of
no counterexamples.
Thus, we get differing verdicts over the adequacy of the English argument depending
on how much “grammatical” structure we choose to read into it. If we read its sentences
as having only predicate-term structure with the predicates fully uninterpreted, then the
argument as it stands admits of counterexamples. But if in addition we take into account
the structure signalled by the er-suffix, then that very same piece of text does not. This is
because the er-system has cut out from contention precisely those “counterexamples” fully
embraced by the standard first-order system.
What is going on here is utterly familiar, a variation of which is noted in nearly every
contemporary formal logic textbook in order to motivate the move from truth-functional to
the more complicated first-order quantificational logic. It is widely recognized that merely
sentential structure does not suffice to carve out the class of arguments we take to be
perfectly valid, and this is taken as impetus to look deeper. However, whereas first-order
structure is usually where the story ends in most textbooks, our excursion through the logic
of comparatives shows that this need not be the case. The success of English argumentation
may ride on structural features not directly described by first-order logic. 10
It might be conceded that, for many theoretical and philosophical projects, there is
likely good reason to stop at first-order logic, and deem “enhancements” like a simple
logic of comparatives to be inconsequential notations! variants, adequately simulated by
some set of axioms. After ail, unlike the move from prepositional language to first-order
language, the addition of comparatives to first-order language does not bring with it any
increase in expressive power or, for that matter, ontology. (It’s not nearly so shocking
an enhancement as, say, the addition of full-fledged second-order quantifiers.) Neither
does it do anything to perturb the soundness, completeness, compactness, proof-checking
decidability, or any other heralded property enjoyed by first-order logic. So perhaps nothing
9Nor do any further reasoning steps need to be added if we allow the prover access to the er-specific
inference rules.
10These “structural features” need not be limited to obviously grammatical constructions such as compar
atives. Purely semantic features of predicates can also be of relevance when assessing English argumentation,
as we shall see in the next subsection.
grandly metaphysical hangs on constructions like the er-suffix. However, we have seen that,
down here on the ground, such constructions do make a difference when it comes to the
assessment of argumentative texts. I will argue that they are also suggestive illustrations
of the role that representation systems can play in argumentation more generally.
5.1.2 E x p licitn ess R ev isited
In Chapter 3, we characterized in broad strokes how the semantics and inference rules
of standard first-order logic can be said to enforce a regime of explicitness; in following
the formal rules correctly, one can’t help but state as premises enough constraints on the
interpretation of the “non-logical” vocabulary to ensure that there are no counterexamples.
The force of this characterization—the satisfaction of what we can call the “explicitness
criterion”—rests in large part on what (and how much) the system counts as “non-logical”
and “logical” ; i.e., what it leaves open as possible dimensions of variation in its models, and
what expressive resources are available for distinguishing them.
We have seen one way in which the regime of explicitness can be tempered. By adding a
grammatical construction whose semantic contribution can be simulated by a set of axioms
already expressible in the language, one can “build into” the logic’s semantics the elimi
nation of some (now-bogus) models, in effect making the task of meeting the explicitness
criterion easier since the stating of the corresponding axioms is no longer necessary. For
example, there is no need to state the transitivity of Older since it is already ensured by the
semantics; just using the er-suffix does the work to eliminate the potential counterexamples.
Explicitness vs. Syntactic Markedness
With respect to this particular example, one may protest that an “explicitation” of the
predicate’s transitivity is still enforced by the augmented system, this time by the er-
suffix rather than by some axiom. The idea here would be that, as long as transitivity
is syntactically marked somehow, the character of the explicitness criterion hasn’t really
changed much. Whether it is done by adding an entire statement to the argument or by
appending a suffix to a predicate is neither here nor there according to this criticism.
The problem with reducing “explicitness” to syntactic markedness, however, is that it
threatens to completely trivialize the concept. There is a sense in which, insofar as one
is using a language at all, almost everything will be syntactically marked in some way or
other. Consider a material conditional statement, one whose main connective is The
fact that it is a conditional, that its truth-value is a particular function of the truth-values
of its antecedent and consequent, is of course marked by the use of the ►
’ symbol; it is
presumably the which helps the audience decide that the formula should be read as a
material conditional and not, say, as a conjunction. But clearly, the ►
’ symbol does not tell
the audience what it is to read the formula as a conditional; e.g., what truth-function should
be applied to determine its truth-value. The symbol does not state anything of that
sort. In contrast, axioms explicitly state the conditions which constrain the interpretation
of the non-logical vocabulary they display; they do more than just signal that some such
set of conditions (left unspecified) are in force.
For a striking illustration of how much “content” can be squeezed into the use of a
symbol without that content being thereby stated, consider the following example from
Jane (1993). Suppose we have a first-order language of arithmetic with function symbols
‘+ ’ and ‘x ’. We can add to this language the quantifier Q, and hard-wire into the semantics
the following truth-condition:
Qxq(x) is true in a model if and only if the sub-model (.4, + , x ) is isomorphic to

the field of real numbers, where A is the set of objects in the domain satisfying
a(x), and ■+• and x are the interpretations of ‘H-’ and ‘x ’ respectively.
As Jane suggests, such a language could be quite appropriate for axiomatizing the real vector
field should we like to take the structure of the scalars for granted. Nonetheless, just how
much is thereby taken for granted is reflected in the fact that, in this language, the single
sentence Qx(x = x) (which ultimately asserts that everything is a real number) is all by itself
a complete and categorical axiomatization of the real field; there are no counterexamples to
any argument that has this as its premise and some true statement about the reals as its
conclusion. As such, this single formula achieves something which, even with infinitely many
axioms, is impossible in the original first-order language. But clearly, Qx(x = x) counts as
an “axiomatization” of the reals in name only. Though the appearance of the Q quantifier
“syntactically marks” the fact that the domain under discussion is isomorphic to the real
scalars, nothing about the real scalars is thereby stated. All of that structure is left implicit
in the semantics of the expanded language. 11
The same point goes through (though perhaps less dramatically) for languages in which
the meaning of Q remains first-order definable. If we add Q to a first-order language of set
11Jane goes on to argue analogously th a t second-order logic is an inappropriate setting in which to char
acterize set theory, since too much set theory is left implicit in the meaning of the second-order quantifiers.
theory and make Qxa(x) come out true in a model whenever the set of objects satisfying
q (x ) also satisfies the ZF-axioms (according to that model’s interpretation for ‘6’), then the
single statement Qx(x = x) does as much work as the infinitely many ZF-axioms in carving
up the space of models. Once again, Qx(x = x) serves only to indicate that the model under
discussion has a particular structure without saying anything to characterize that structure.
Incidentally, in order to increase the “implicit content” of a first-order language, the
adjustments made to it need not be anything as grandiose or systematic as the addition of
an extra grammatical construction or a fancy quantifier. One may also decide to keep the
language the same, but proceed to impose piecemeal (e.g., for particular predicate symbols)
constraints on their interpretation that go beyond what is minimally necessary for the
compositional semantics to run smoothly. 12 For example, with an eye towards tightening
the intended correspondence between a first-order language and English, one could proceed
to require outright that, say, Older and Bigger be assigned only transitive relations, and that
the denotation of Brother be a subset of Sibling, and so on. This methodology is implemented
in Barwise and Etchemendy (1999) where, in a partially interpreted first-order “blocks”
language, semantic constraints can be imposed to ensure that, for example, the denotations
of LeftOf and RightOf are inverses of each other, the denotations of Cube and Dodec are
disjoint, and the objects assigned to Cube are paired up in the binary relation assigned to
SameShape but not each with any object assigned to Dodec. 13 Again, these constraints are
syntactically marked only in the most minimal sense, simply in the fact that a particular
symbol (and not another one) is being used in this or that formula, and is implicitly being
held subject to this or that semantic constraint. Just as some sub-domain’s structural
correspondence to the real field is “marked” but not described by Jane’s Q quantifier two
paragraphs back, so too in some beefed-up semantics is, say, the transitivity of Older merely
marked by the very use of that predicate symbol. 14
12In fact, this is what is widely done with the equality predicate symbol, despite the fact th at its in
terpretation is eliminable in favour of some set of axioms (as noted rather uncomfortably in Quine 1986,
pp.63-4).
13An inference mechanism Ana Con is used to license reasoning steps which appeal to such constraints.
Incidentally, Dodec stands for “dodecahedron.”
l4Should such partially interpreted predicates be considered part of the “logical” or “non-logical” vo
cabulary? Their interpretations are constrained more so than others of the same sem antic type (broadly
construed), yet still vary from model to model. It seems unnecessary to me th a t this dilemma be resolved.
R ather, the im portant distinction is between w hat the semantics imposes as hard-wired constraints and
w hat it leaves open to variation in the models. W hether this lines up exactly with some binary partition of
th e vocabulary is relatively inconsequential for our purposes (though perhaps less so for others, such as the
search for some principled demarcation of logic).
Whether the adjustments made to first-order languages and their semantics are done
systematically or piecemeal, the upshot with respect to explicitness is the same: such hard
wiring absolves the prover from having to state over the course of her proof those constraints
that have been built into the semantics. The use of a semantically “loaded” symbol is not
the same as the explicitation of its content with axioms.
The Semantic Content of Formal Systems
So what counts as satisfying the explicitness criterion is relative to the content built into
the language’s “logical” and “non-logical” vocabulary; an argument’s success in this regard
depends on what has been hard-wired into the semantics and what has been left open as
possible dimensions of variation in the models. There is a widespread conviction in the
logical community that the “sweet spot” in this delineation (or at least one of them) is to
be found in standard first-order logic. In the idiom of this dissertation, this is to say that
the level of explicitness it enforces is somehow privileged.
For some, this is because the semantic content left implicit in first-order logical vocab
ulary is thought to be very minimal, and perhaps even nil. 15 It is beyond the scope of
our present investigation to sharpen and evaluate such claims. Given our purposes, it is
sufficient to note that we can impose a “partial order” on a class of languages and their
logics based on how the hard-wired parts of their semantics can be simulated (if at all) by
the addition of axioms to a standard first-order language. For example, the fact that our
logic of comparatives is “reducible” to standard first-order logic plus a collection of axioms
makes precise the claim that the use of the er-suffix implicitly appeals to some semantic
“content,” exactly the content expressed by the corresponding axioms. Similarly for the
Q-enhanced language (however interpreted in any particular language) and the unadorned
first-order language with partially interpreted predicates; their contentfulness can be mea
sured according to the inferential strength of the axioms that would have to be added to
standard first-order logic in order to simulate their use. We shall thus follow mainstream
philosophical practice in taking first-order logic to be the baseline by which the implicit
lsT his can be read into the various attem pts to demarcate logic, attem pts which often seek to privilege
first-order logic in particular (along with a small handful of others, if need be). One tradition points to
particular conservativity results when first-order constants are added to a language (e.g., Hacking (1979),
itself inspired by thoughts of Gentzen). Another tries to use some sort of invariance criterion as a means
of cashing out the alleged “subject-neutrality” of logic. See, e.g., van Benthem (2000), Feferman (1999),
MacFarlane (2000), and Sher (1991) for more discussion along these lines.
semantic content of other formal systems can be articulated . 16

With this partial ordering established, a clear sense can be made of the claim that
different (formal) languages, each with their own semantics, enforce a regime of explicitness
to different degrees. Standard first-order systems enforce this regime very rigourously,
more so than systems supplemented with er-suffixes, Q-quantifers, or partially interpreted
predicates. More semantic content is left implicit in the use of any of these latter systems
than in the use of the de facto baseline, first-order logic.
Now, in choosing to use a particular language (and its logic) to present her argument, a
prover implicitly submits to the particular regime of explicitness enforced by that language’s
semantics; she undertakes a responsibility to live up to that regime. As stressed in Chapter 2,
this opens up the possibility of assessing the prover’s argumentative performance according
to the appropriateness of the responsibilities thereby undertaken, independently of whatever
success she might have in meeting them. (This corresponds roughly to what Parsons calls an
“epistemological” assessment, as opposed to a “logical” one.) Sometimes such assessments
can be a complicated and delicate matter. Other times (e.g., should Qx(x = x) ever be
offered as a complete and categorical axiomatization of whatever is implicit in the Q) the
verdict is as clear as day.
The Semantic Content of English?
Let us return once again to our sample informal argument. Can we determine once and
for all whether it is indeed enthymematic? Our consideration of various formal languages
suggests that the question itself isn’t particularly well-posed, for whether the argument
requires supplementation to save its validity is relative to the amount of semantic structure
we choose to read into it.
From the perspective developed throughout this dissertation, the fact that our informal
argument is in English is an important datum. For a prover to use English is implicitly
to accept whatever discursive responsibilities are enforced by its grammatically correct use.
The existence of constructions like the er-suffix (and the reasonable use of transitions which
rest on them) suggests that the “logic” of everyday English does not enforce explicitness
to the same degree as the canonical logic of first-order language. This is because English’s
16Note th a t this partial order will not distinguish amongst languages more expressive than first-order
ones, nor does it straightforwardly accommodate languages whose models are significantly unlike first-order
models. Despite these limitations, our proposed metric turns out to be fully sufficient for the class of logics
treated in this dissertation.
er-construction can do some if not all of the work needed to delimit the space of “models,”
work which would otherwise be done by an explicit axiom in the standard first-order setting.
English gives its speakers the option of using such constructions (and it appears that in
our example the option has in fact been exercised), but no such short-cut is available in
standard first-order language. There is thus very good reason to deem our sample argument
not to be enthymematic. Relative to a logic which seems reasonably faithful to everyday
English use, the argument has no gaps as it stands.
Unfortunately, the situation isn’t quite so clear cut, since it is not an entirely straight
forward matter just what “logic” should be read into English in the first place. For as
noted earlier, it isn’t necessary that our sample argument be interpreted as employing the
er-construction. It remains an option to read its sentences as having only predicate-term
structure, a reading which in turn leaves the argument admitting of counterexamples (at
least if the predicates remain sufficiently uninterpreted). While the principle of charity
would for this reason frown upon such shallow interpretation, there may be contexts in
which charity itself is thought to be inappropriate. (Perhaps due to prior philosophical
commitments, one is to cringe at the “contentfulness” of er-based transitions. Or perhaps
the whole point of the argument was to make explicit as much content “as possible.”)
It is thus entirely intelligible for some hard-headed critic to insist that the argument is
incomplete as it stands, and that the transitivity of older than must be stated to fix it.
What are we to make of this critic? How might we understand his complaints? In
stubbornly exercising his option to read the English argument as if it were given in standard
first-order language—ignoring, as it were, the distinctively English part of the argument’s
English—the critic is not accusing the prover of making an error analogous to one that
might be made in the furnishing of a formal proof. The critic doesn’t seem to be complaining
about the incorrect application of a rule (like the substituting in for a bound variable) or
the “correct” application of a non-rule (like affirming the consequent). Nor can the critic
credibly accuse the prover of furnishing a gappy proof which requires supplementation, for
it is only through the selective suspension of English grammar that a gap is being perceived
in the first place. So the critic must concede that there is nothing especially wrong with the
prover’s reasoning or with her English. All th at’s left for him to complain about, it seems,
is the fact that her argument is in English.
To sum up so far:
We have seen that standard first-order logic enforces a distinctively rigourous regime of
explicitness, one against which the regimes of other systems can be compared. Amongst
formal systems, we can aspire to make such comparisons precisely by, for example, looking
at the classes of “simulating axioms.” Unfortunately, with natural languages the measures
may have to be fuzzier. Nonetheless, even without a definitive “logic” of English in hand
(as if there really is one) it seems clear that everyday English does not enforce explicitness
to the same extent as first-order logic, since English speakers have access to grammatically
acceptable devices whose simulation in first-order logic requires the explicit statement of
axioms. It is intelligible for a critic to question the use of such “short-cut” devices not only
on the basis of their correctness, but also in terms of their appropriateness. The use of
English itself may be interpreted as a sign that the prover hasn’t taken on the appropriate
discursive burden.
5.2 D iagram m atic Sem antics
Further perspective can be gained on questions of explicitness and enthymeme by shifting

our attention to a particular class of diagrammatic logical systems. We will focus on those
systems for which spatial properties are used to represent relations amongst the objects in
the domain, and for which the structure of space itself is exploited to gain some inferential
“free rides.” These rides are often thought by the defenders of diagrams to contribute to
the efficacy of diagrammatic reasoning; simply in representing certain pieces of informa
tion diagrammatically, some of their consequences are thereby drawn, thus facilitating the
process of inference. However, without denying the ubiquity of contexts for which such a
phenomenon would be desirable, the analysis we’ve developed so far in this chapter turns
this supposed benefit of diagrammatic systems on its head. Within the context of proof
idealized by mainstream formal logic, the problem with using diagrams is precisely that
some of their rides come cheap.
5.2.1 S ym ptom s o f D iagram m aticity
It remains a live question in the academic community investigating diagrammatic logics

what it is that makes a representation system “diagrammatic” in the first place. As with
the other demarcation question we’ve already come across—how to distinguish in absolute
terms the logical from the non-logical—we need not address this issue directly in order to
advance our own investigation. In any case, there appears to be some consensus regarding
the features of diagrammaticity, if not its foundations. Fortunately, the features are all we
need to apply our account.
Homomorphism
A good place to begin is with Barwise and Hammer’s definition of a “homomorphic” repre
sentation system, one in which there is some structural relation between the representations
and the objects being represented. The following conditions (from Barwise and Hammer
1996, p.71) are not meant to provide a sharp definition, but rather to highlight dimensions
along which formal representation systems may be more-or-less homomorphic (and thus,
according to the authors, more-or-less “diagrammatic”):
1. Objects in the model’s domain, the “target objects,” are represented by objects in the
representations, “icon tokens,” with different sorts of objects represented by different
types of tokens.
2. If 7r is an interpretation function of some model M , with representation r true in M
under 7r, then 7r preserves the grammatical structure holding amongst r ’s icon tokens
in the following ways:
(a) If icon tokens in r stand in some relevant relationship R, then there is a cor
responding relation R' holding amongst the target objects to which they are
assigned by ic.
(b) The converse holds as well.
(c) If a grammatical relationship R amongst icon tokens has some structural property
(such as transitivity, irreflexivity, asymmetry, etc.), then this same property also
holds of the relation R1 over the corresponding target objects under 7r.
(d) The converse holds as well.
(e) If a token t of some type T has some special property P, then n(t) is an object
of sort “7r(T)” with some special property “7r(P).”17
(f) The converse holds as well.
3. Every wellformed representation is true in some model.
Some of the debate over the demarcation of diagrams can be characterized as a disagreement
over which of these features should be taken as explanatorily primary or basic. Neither items
l7The quotes here Me scare quotes added by me; 7r need not be explicitly defined over T and P.
(1) nor (3) look particularly promising in this regard; many-sorted linguistic systems meet
condition (1), and some diagrammatic systems (like Venn-I) do not meet condition (3).
Rather, the “diagrammatic essence” of a system is usually thought to be found somewhere
in the conditions listed under item (2 ).
Directness o f Interpretation
Stenning (in, e.g., Stenning and Lemon 2001 and Stenning 2000) proposes to distinguish
diagrammatic systems in terms of the “directness” of their semantics, something naturally
under the purview of item (2a). Directness of interpretation paradigmatically obtains when
spatial relations amongst icon tokens by themselves indicate relations amongst the tokens’
referents. It is a corollary that a “directly” interpreted semantics of this sort will also be a
“uniform” one: the same spatial relation is given the same direct semantic interpretation
from instance to instance. For example, in maps with the usual orientation, all icon tokens
which are in the left-of relation signify target objects which are in the west-of relation . 18
Similarly, in Euler circle diagrams, the inclusion of one curve19 c inside another d always
signifies that the set corresponding to c is a subset of the set corresponding to d. Though
Stenning doesn’t do so himself, let’s describe systems whose semantics are direct in the way
just characterized as having “immediately” interpreted semantics.
Languages do not generally have an immediately interpreted semantics. Usually, the
spatial placement of linguistic “icon tokens” (i.e., object-referring icons such as constant
symbols) does not itself suffice to yield a uniform semantic interpretation .20 This isn’t to
say that spatial relations are irrelevant to linguistic semantics; the interpretation of, say,
Rbac does depend upon the sequential arrangement of the a, b, and c. However, while
being-concatenated-to is a spatial relation which figures essentially in the interpretation of
linguistic expressions, its contribution is mediated through what Stenning calls an “abstract
syntax”; the string of icon tokens bac has its semantic interpretation “completed” only
through its concatenation to some other (non-object-referring) symbol R. Furthermore, the
semantic completion of the very same spatial arrangement of icon tokens bac will generally
vary according to the relation symbol it is appended to; Rbac will generally mean something
l8I’m obviously ignoring complications like “insets” whose accommodation would distract us from the
point m ade here.
l0Despite the system ’s name, the curves need not be circular, simply non-self-intersecting.
20Exceptions are finite sta te languages, in which sequences of letters are interpreted “immediately,” usually
along a tem poral dimension (say, as a sequence of operations). Stenning doesn’t see this as a counterexample,
since he takes finite state languages to be essentially diagram m atic in character.
different from Pbac. As such, the spatial relation of being-concatenated-to amongst icon
tokens, though significant, contributes to the semantics only “indirectly.”
Stenning tends to say that it is the absence of an abstract syntax which distinguishes
diagrammatic systems from linguistic ones. So the notion of a directly interpreted seman
tics is usually given a negative characterization: a semantics is directly interpreted (i.e.,
diagrammatic) iff it doesn’t have an abstract syntax; i.e., iff it is not indirectly interpreted.
However, it is left somewhat unclear whether the absence of an abstract syntax guaran
tees that a system will thereby have an immediately interpreted semantics in the sense
introduced two paragraphs back. Put another way, it is not obvious whether all directly
interpreted systems (in Stenning’s sense) indicate relations amongst objects solely through
the spatial placement of icon tokens. If so, then directness could be given this positive
characterization as well. Stenning often goes back and forth between these two “negative”
and “positive” characterizations of diagrammaticity; this suggests that he takes them to be
equivalent.
Stenning also tends to emphasize how relations amongst objects are represented in a
directly interpreted semantics, saying little about whether a single object’s properties are
also represented in any distinctive fashion. For our purposes, it is convenient to extend
his account in a natural way, taking guidance from Barwise and Hammer’s criterion (2e).
In particular, it seems reasonable to take an immediately interpreted semantics also to be
one in which “spatial” properties of the icon tokens themselves represent properties of their
targets. For example, in Hyperproof the sizes and shapes of objects in the domain can be
represented with icons which themselves are of the corresponding size and shape; large cubes
by large cube-shaped icons, for instance. Linguistic icon tokens, however, don’t function
this way; the size and shape of constant symbols don’t generally represent any properties
of their referents. Now, whether Stenning would accept this amendment to his notion of a
directly interpreted semantics is not entirely clear; perhaps it is already subsumed under
his original account by taking “relations” to be possibly unary.
Unfortunately, it would take us too far afield to explore such issues further. For our
purposes, it suffices to have articulated a positive criterion which delineates a particular class
of diagrammatic systems. We will take a system <S to have an “immediately” interpreted
semantics if some of the (spatial, possibly unary) relations of icon tokens uniformly represent
particular relations of domain objects; such icon token relations are precisely the ones which
are immediately interpreted under S.
Figure 5.1: Illustration of a free ride with Euler circles
N om ic C o n strain t P ro jec tio n
Unlike S ten n in g , Shimojima (1996) focusses on item (2c) in his characterization of dia-
grammaticity. In particular, he takes “nomic constraints” to be the source of the main
representational and inferential properties distinctive of diagrams. Diagrams a re especially
efficacious when these constraints are appropriately “matched” with the domain being rea
soned about.
Consider, for example, the system of Euler circles, a formalization of which appears
in Hammer (1995). An Euler diagram consists simply of some collection of labelled non-
self-intersecting closed curves (two different curves may intersect each other, however). As
already mentioned, this system has an immediately interpreted semantics: closed curves
denote sets, and the placement of these curves suffices to express relations among their
referents. In particular, the subset relation between sets is represented by the inclusion of
one curve inside the other; disjointness by their curves’ mutual exclusion (each lying wholly
outside of the other ) . 21 So suppose we have an Euler diagram D with two curves a and b
such that curve a is inside curve b. According to the semantics, this diagram represents the
fact that the set corresponding to a is a subset of the set corresponding to b; i.e., diagram
D will be true in some model M under interpretation function 7r only if 7r(a) C n(b) in
M . Now let’s say we wanted to introduce to D a new curve c representing the fact that its
corresponding set is a superset of 7r(6 ). In accordance with the system, this is achieved by
having curve c surround curve b (so that the latter is in the interior of the former).
The key observation here, of course, is that in so drawing the new curve c to surround
curve 6 , one can’t help but have c surround curve a as well (as in Figure 5.1). The resulting
diagram D' thus also represents the fact that 7r(a) C 7r(c), despite it being the case that
21Some versions of the Euler system (as in Lemon and P ratt 1997) also take non-emptiness of set-
intersection to be represented by curve-intersection. T he Euler “system” is really a family of systems,
th e common core of which is all we are discussing here.
no particular action was taken to represent that particular fact. 22 Fortunately, for every
model of the Euler system, if w{a) C w(b) and ir(b) C 7r(c), then indeed 7r(a) C 7r(c). The
transitivity of curve-inclusion “matches” the transitivity of the relation it denotes; namely,
C. So what we are enjoying here is what Shimojima calls a “free ride”; the conclusion of a
valid inference is immediately represented through the joint representation of the premises.
More generally, this example illustrates that structural properties of space itself can
constrain the kinds of representations which are drawable in the first place. An Euler
diagram, after all, consists of some collection of curves drawn in the plane. In being so
drawn, the curves are subject to constraints of planarity which, amongst other things,
ensure that a relation like curve-inclusion will be transitive; in normal space, it is simply
impossible to have curve a drawn inside curve b, curve 6 inside curve c, and curve a not
inside curve c. Such constraints are “nomic,” somehow grounded in natural (topological,
geometrical, physical) law, not the sort of thing that can be overriden. (These are to be
distinguished from “stipulated” constraints over, say, the definition of well-formedness.)
Constraints (both nomic and stipulated) become projected in virtue of a representation
system’s semantics. This is to say: under particular representation schemes, it is impossible
to represent certain facts without thereby representing others. Sometimes this impossibility
is due simply to the stipulations of the language: in first-order language, one can’t express
that some relation is transitive without thereby exhibiting a “witness”; i.e, without writing
an expression like Vx Vy Vz ((RxyARyz)—»Rxz) which employs some particular relation symbol
R. Other times, the impossibility is “stronger,” imposed by basic facts of the universe once
a particular semantic scheme has been chosen. Shimojima proposes that diagrammatic
representation systems are distinguished from linguistic ones in virtue of the fact that at
least some of their projected constraints are nomic, resulting from sources other than our
stipulative conventions.23
Once again, we need not concern ourselves with the merits of Shimojima’s demarcation
as such. Rather, the important point to take from this discussion is that, in virtue of being
situated in space, representation systems are subject to constraints which may directly affect
what one is able to represent and, subsequently, how one is able to argue.
22Similarly, if instead we represented the disjointness of n(b) and ir(c) by drawing curve c completely
exterior to b, we are thereby left with a representation of the fact that r(a) and 7r(c) are disjoint too.
23Shimojima, of course, does not deny th at linguistic representations are subject to natural laws. His
hypothesis is only th a t such laws do not constrain what collection of facts can be represented in a single
representation. (I.e., in linguistic systems, the projected constraints aren’t nomic.)
5.2.2 S o m e E xam p le S ystem s
Stenning and Shimojima both highlight how the structure of space can be used in diagram
matic systems. Stenning helps to identify a particular representational strategy adopted by
many diagrammatic systems, in which relations amongst objects are represented by spatial
relations amongst icon tokens. Shimojima stresses that nomic constraints may kick in once
this-or-that representational strategy has been adopted. For our present purposes, there is
no need to choose between these two accounts of diagrammaticity. In fact, we may take
their insights to complement one another quite nicely.
For the remainder of this section, we revisit a trio of immediately interpreted diagram
matic systems with an eye towards making explicit some of the nomic constraints they
exploit. These examples help to illustrate the pervasiveness of the phenomena discussed by
Stenning and Shimojima.
Euler Circles
As already discussed, set-inclusion (i.e., the subset relation) is represented directly by curve-
inclusion in the Euler system. This is a happy choice, for both the relations of set-inclusion
and curve-inclusion are transitive. Furthermore, the fact that the subset and superset
relations are inverse to each other is nicely mirrored by an analogous relationship between
the relations of curve-inclusion and curve-surroundingness (i.e., curve c is interior to c' iff
d surrounds c, just as set C C C iff C' D C).
Disjointness is represented by the mutual exclusion of curves. The symmetry of dis
jointness is thus reflected in the curves’ being exterior to each other. The relationship
between disjointness and set-inclusion is also well-matched by that of curve-exclusion and
curve-inclusion. Just as it is impossible for a pair of (non-empty) sets to be at once disjoint
and in some subset relation, it is impossible to draw two curves that are at once mutually
exterior to each other with one surrounding the other.
If we add to the core semantics the clause that curve-intersection represents non-empty
set-intersection (as in footnote 21), then even more free rides are made available. Set-
intersection and curve-intersection are both symmetric; to represent a set intersecting an
other is automatically to represent the inverse. Furthermore, just as a pair of sets can’t
at once non-trivially intersect and be disjoint, curves can’t simultaneously intersect and be
mutually exterior to each other.
These observations suggest that Euler diagrams can be quite appropriate for the repre
sentation of sets. However, as stated forcefully by Lemon (in Lemon and Pratt 1997 and
Lemon 2002), there are severe limits to the expressiveness of the Euler system. There exist
logically possible relationships amongst sets that cannot be faithfully represented under
this scheme, since basic topological features of the plane constrain beyond those of set-
intersection the realm of possible curve-intersection relationships. At best, this mismatch
dooms a user of the Euler system to “blind spots,” unable to faithfully represent particular
configurations of sets. At worst, it may lead the user to draw a Euler diagram which, in
representing a given class of set-relations, must also represent other relations that do not
follow logically; a free ride to invalidity would be the result.
Hyperproof
Barwise and Etchemendy’s Hyperproof (Barwise and Etchemendy 1994) employs both di
agrams and first-order formulas to represent information about “blocks worlds.” On page
97 (Chapter 4.3.2), we began an investigation into the syntactic structure of its represen
tations, concentrating on its diagrammatic subsystem. We shall now continue our analysis
by considering the system’s syntax in relation to its semantics.
A Hyperproof blocks world consists of three kinds of objects: tetrahedra, cubes, and
dodecahedra. Each object is either small, medium, or large, and occupies a particular
location in an implicitly oriented 8 x 8 array. On the basis of these properties, many other
ones are thereby determined for the objects. For example, some objects will be left of or
in front of other ones, or share the same size or shape. One way Hyperproof allows such
properties and relations to be expressed is through its linguistic subsystem, which contains
the following interpreted predicates:
Unary: Tet, Cube, Dodec; Small, Medium, Large

Binary: SameCol, SameRow, Adjoins, LeftOf, RightOf, FrontOf, BackOf, Larger, Smaller,
SameSize, SameShape
Ternary: Between.
The denotations of these predicates are pretty much as one would expect given the meanings
of their English counterparts and the general structure of blocks worlds. (A formal treatment
is sketched in Barwise and Etchemendy 1995.)
Blocks worlds, however, are given more immediate representation through Hyperproof’s
diagrammatic subsystem. A Hyperproof diagram consists of a collection of icon tokens
situated on, or just to the side of, an 8 x 8 grid. Each icon token represents exactly one object
in the world, and each object is represented by exactly one icon token. Object-identity
is thus represented by token-identity, which in turn ensures that Hyperproof diagrams
immediately represent the number of objects in the domain (since this is exactly the number
of icons in the diagram).
Positions on the grid correspond exactly with locations in the array, and the placement
of an icon token in some particular grid-position represents its referent occupying the corre
sponding axray-location. Icon tokens positioned off the grid do not provide any information
about the array-locations of the corresponding objects. (The semantics ensures that they
do occupy array-locations, however. So placing icons off the grid is a technique for repre
senting partial information.) In other words, in a diagram with no icon tokens off the grid,
the locations of all objects in the domain are represented.
In such a diagram, spatial relations amongst icon tokens themselves represent relations
amongst the referents; thus we have the characteristics of an immediately interpreted se
mantics. In fact, spatial relations amongst tokens represent the very same relations amongst
objects in the domain. For example, let t and t' be two icon tokens on the grid of some
Hyperproof diagram D, and let 7r be an interpretation function from the icon tokens to the
domain of some blocks world W. (This function will be one-to-one and onto.) Then t being
left of tf in D indicates that tt(t) is left of n(t!) in W; in other words, if D is true in W
under 7r, then 7r(t) is left of ir(t') in W (and as a result, (7r(£), 7t(£')) is in the denotation
of LeftOf). Analogous remarks can be made for each of the spatial relations corresponding
to Hyperproof’s interpreted predicates (i.e., SameCol, SameRow, Adjoins, RightOf, FrontOf,
BackOf, and Between) as well as some that are not (such as, say, the binary relation of
being-three-slots-away).
Numerous free rides result from this tight structural correspondence between diagrams
and blocks worlds, since the constraints governing the positions of icon tokens on the grid
are exactly the constraints governing the locations of objects in the array. For example, in
both a real-world 8 x 8 grid and a blocks world 8 x 8 array, the relations of left-of, right-of,
front-of, and back-of are all transitive, asymmetric, and irreflexive; similarly, left-of and
right-of are inverses in either kind of world. So suppose diagram D from the previous
paragraph had off the grid a third icon token t" and let D' be the result of moving t"
somewhere to the right of t' on the grid. Then both t and t' (or at least their counterparts
in D') will end up being left of t". This is an instance of a free ride, since if is in fact
right of ir(tf) in W, then indeed both 7r(i) and v(t') will be left of v (t") in W as well.
Free rides also often occur in the representation of size and shape, since certain icon
tokens themselves exhibit the size and/or shape of the objects they represent. For example,
tetrahedron-, cube-, and dodecahedron-shaped icon tokens represent tetrahedra, cubes, and
dodecahedra, respectively. So two cube-shaped icon tokens will themselves be in the same-
shape relation, automatically representing the same to be holding between the objects they
represent. (And cube-shaped and dodecahedron-shaped icon tokens automatically have
different shapes, just like what would hold of their referents should the diagram be true
of the world.) Similarly, the syntactic rules ensure that the icon tokens will be either
small-, medium-, or large-sized relative to each other. As long as the icon tokens are not
cylinder-shaped (the significance of which will be discussed below), the size of an icon token
represents the size of its referent. So in a diagram D with icon tokens t and £', world W, and
interpretation function n, if t is small, t' medium, and so are ir(t) and x(tf) respectively,
then all of the following will also hold in W: ir(t) is smaller than n(t'), ir(t?) is larger
than 7r(t), and 7r(£) and 7r(f') aren't of the same size. All these facts are immediately and
automatically represented in D by the icon tokens t and tf themselves.
Hyperproof diagrams, then, are “very homomorphic” to the blocks worlds they repre
sent, sometimes to the point of isomorphism but, it should be stressed, not always. We have
already seen how the placement of icon tokens off the grid “hides” the location of their refer
ents. Hyperproof also has devices for hiding the size and shape of objects, the employment
of which brings down a notch the degree of homomorphism between diagram and blocks
world. Paper-bag-shaped icon tokens, for instance, hide the shape but not the size of their
referents, so they do represent size immediately but shape not at all. Cylinder-shaped icon
tokens hide size, and may represent shape: a “picture” may be placed on a cylinder-shaped
icon token indicating one of the three shapes actually possessed by blocks-world objects.
Devices such as paper-bags, cylinders, and off-grid placement help to remind us that, after
all, the diagrams represent blocks worlds without quite displaying them.
The G eom etry System FG
FG is a diagrammatic formal system for Euclidean geometry developed in Miller (1999).

Diagrams in this system consist of configurations of intersecting solid and dotted line seg
ments annotated with markers to indicate congruence. The class of well-formed diagrams
is described on page 104 (Figure 4.2).
The “models” of FG are geometric figures: a Euclidean plane M is simply a plane along
with finitely many points, circles, rays, lines, and line segments designated in it such that all
points of intersection between the designated circles, rays, lines, and line segments are among
the designated points. Note, then, that Euclidean planes have built in to them Euclidean
structure. In particular, there is a standard metric; all rays, lines, and line segments are
straight and have determinate lengths; and all circles have centres each equidistant and
interior to their corresponding points.
It doesn’t take much to turn a model into a diagram. Essentially, all one needs to do is
position a big enough frame to capture all the designated objects, add markers to indicate
congruence, and interpret any object touching the frame to be proceeding to infinity. More
precisely: given Euclidean plane M, pick a point pi for each designated line of M. Because
there are only finitely many pi, designated points, and designated circles, it is possible to
find a bounded area encompassing all of them. So let / be a rectangular frame enclosing
this area, and call the pieces of M ’s designated lines, circles, etc., lying between designated
points or points of / its designated edges. M ’s canonical unmarked diagram D is one whose
frame is / , whose segments are the designated edges of M within / (dotted if from a circle,
solid otherwise), whose dots are the designated points of M, whose dlines are the rays,
lines, and line segments of M, and whose dcircles are the circles of M. A canonical marked
diagram is one in which, in addition to the above, all congruent line segments and angles
of M are so marked with hash marks and arcs in D. In such a diagram, the dots, solid
lines, and dotted lines have the same topology as M, with M ’s relevant metric information
encoded in the additional topological structure provided by hash marks and arcs.
A Euclidean plane M satisfies some diagram D if M ’s canonical unmarked diagram is
topologically equivalent to D ’s underlying unmarked diagram, and anything marked equal
in D (i.e., with the same number of hash marks) is also marked equal in M ’s canonical
marked diagram .24 So, as is to be expected, M satisfies its own canonical marked diagram,
24I am suppressing here the contribution of the counterpart relation which, as in footnote 29 of Chapter
4.3.2, provides th e identity conditions for diagram m atic tokens across diagrams.
These rules may be applied so long as the resulting diagrams are well-formed. New dots may be
added at any new intersection point.
CO. A dot may be added to the interior of any region, or along any existing segment, dividing it
into two segments.
Cl. If there isn’t already one existing, a dline may be added whose endpoints are any two existing
distinct dots.
C2. Any dline can be extended to meet the frame.
C3. Given distinct dots c and d, a dcircle can be added with centre c that intersects d if there isn’t
one existing already.
C4. Any dline or dcircle can be erased; any solid segment of a dline can be erased provided the
remainder remains connected; any dot that doesn’t intersect more than one dline or dcircle
or doesn’t lie at the end of a dline can be erased. If a solid line segment is erased, any marks
marking parts of it must also be erased.
Figure 5.2: F G Construction Rules
and every Euclidean plane has a diagram representing it. (It is not the case, however, that
every well-formed diagram is satisfied by some model; one can draw “impossible” diagrams.)
To model standard ruler and compass constructions, FG has a set of construction rules
that can be invoked at any time in a derivation. They are fisted in Figure 5.2. Of special
interest is how the rules C1-C3 interact with the well-formedness conditions on p. 104. Each
of these construction rules licenses the addition of some object to a diagram; for example, a
solid line segment may be extended to a frame or drawn between two dots, or a dotted circle
may be introduced. Often, due to planar constraints, the new objects will intersect some of
the pre-existing ones. The well-formedness conditions in turn demand that dots be placed
at the new points of intersection. So the intersection of diagram-objects is an immediately
interpreted relation in FG, uniformly signalling the intersection of the corresponding objects
of some Euclidean plane M.
With these rules, one can simulate constructions such as Euclid’s of an equilaterial
triangle on any given fine segment (Proposition 1.1 of the Elements). In particular, given a
diagram D containing a solid fine with dots a and 6 on its endpoints, one can employ rule
C3 to draw a (dotted) circle c\ through b with centre a, and another circle co through a with
centre b. The preservation of well-formedness demands that new dots be placed at the two
points of intersection of c\ and ci- We choose one of these dots d and employ Cl to draw
solid lines between o and d, and between b and d .25 If desired, C4 can be invoked to remove
25Actually, the application of C l generates a diagram array which consists of all the topologically distinct
Figure 5.3: Highlights of the Euclid 1.1 construction
the constructed circles so that the triangle is all that remains from the construction. But
before doing so, one could prove that the resulting figure contains an equilateral triangle by
using inference rules which treat the introduction and elimination of hash marks.
As is well known, this construction depends on there being some point of intersection
between the introduced circles ci and ci. Since about the mid-1800’s, it has become a
commonplace to accuse Euclid of failing to ensure this, for his axioms and common notions
do not guarantee the existence of an intersection point. But now it should be clear that one
need not look only to his text for such guarantees. Rather, the fact that this construction
is being made to occur in the plane itself ensures that the circles intersect. In the parlance
of Shimojima, there are nomic constraints at play here that guarantee the satisfaction of
the pre-conditions on which the construction depends.
F G ’s construction rules are in fact sound in the sense that if model M satisfies diagram
D, and D' is constructive from D according to C0-C4, then M can be extended to a model
M ' which satisfies D'\ i.e., given M , one can add or delete points, lines, line segments, rays,
and circles without sacrificing Euclidean plane-hood so that what results satisfies D '. So
far, then, we see that the above construction on diagrams reflects a possible “construction”
on models (Euclidean planes). But in fact, an even stronger result holds. Let M be a
Euclidean plane containing a line segment s on which no triangle exists. Let D be its
canonical unmarked diagram and D' the result of executing the 1.2 construction on the
solid line in D corresponding to s. Now let M ' be the Euclidean plane that results by
executing on M the construction analogous to the one just done on D to get D'. Of course,
the same local, planar constraints which operate on the realm of (drawn) canonical diagrams
also operate on the realm of models. As a result, the two circles constructed on M will have
ways of introducing the new lines. (Recall that solid lines need not be straight, so they are free to wander
amongst the other items in the diagram.) In other words, the official construction splits off according to
every possible case. It tu rn s out th at C2 can be used to reduce all these cases back down to the desired
diagram, but we shall skip over such detail.
to intersect too, and D' turns out to be the canonical unmarked diagram of M'.
What we have here is one more example of a free ride. The only way to represent with
well-formed diagrams the Euclid 1.1 construction is to represent the circles as intersecting.
Fortunately, the forced representation of such “extra” information doesn’t lead to invalidity,
for it turns out that the circles in the model will have to intersect too.
5.3 E x p lo itin g Space
When the constraints governing artefact use match up well with the constraints governing
the objects being reasoned about, the rides thus generated can be quite useful for many
reasoning tasks. In such cases, some inferential “work” is done by the system itself, relieving
the user from having to do the same. If the diagrammatic system is in fact sound, then
its proper use ensures that the automatically generated information isn’t misinformation;
the rides are all to places that are logically warranted, so that arguments faithful to the
system's rules are valid.
5.3.1 T h e C on ten t o f Space
One way of isolating the good inferential work done by a diagrammatic system in some
particular derivation is to consider what a user would have to do if she furnished instead
some purely linguistic analogue, say, in first-order logic. More likely than not, a direct
representation-by-representation translation of the diagrammatic argument would not result
in something deemed valid by any standard first-order system. For example, suppose we are
given two Hyperproof diagrams, each consisting of exactly two icon tokens. In one diagram,
one icon is small and tetrahedron-shaped, the other cylinder-shaped with a question mark
superimposed; both icons are placed off the grid. In the other diagram, instead there exists
off the grid a cylinder-shaped icon with superimposed question mark, along with a large,
cube-shaped icon. These two diagrams most naturally correspond to the following two
sentences in Hyperproof’s linguistic subsystem:
1. 3x 3y (Small(x) A Tet(x) A x # y A Vz (z = x V z = y ))
2. 3x 3y (Large(x) A Cube(x) A x^y A Vz (z= x v z= y ))
Given the semantics of Hyperproof, a diagram consisting of exactly two icon tokens—one
small and tetrahedron-shaped, the other large and cube-shaped, both off the grid—is a
“logical consequence” of the first two diagrams. (A Merge rule, for instance, allows the
information contained in many diagrams to be merged into one.) But this diagram expresses
the following claim as well:
3x 3y (x ^ y A-iSameSize(x.y) A->SameShape(x,y))
In first-order logic, this sentence does not follow logically from the linguistic premises corre
sponding to the initial two Hyperproof diagrams. To ensure the validity of the linguistic ar
gument, some supplementation would be required. Presumably, this is most naturally done
by stating as additional premises axioms which forge the intended relationships amongst
the denotations of the predicates, such as:
A l. ->3x (Tet(x)ACube(x))
A2. Vx Vy ((SameShape(x,y)ACube(x))—>Cube(y))
A3. ->3x (Small(x)ALarge(x))
A4. Vx Vy ((SameSize(x.y)ASmall(x))—♦Small(y))
It can be verified that these additional premises allow the first-order argument to go through.
The user of a Hyperproof diagram, however, is relieved from having to make such addi
tional statements, for the only way to represent with a Hyperproof diagram the existence
of some small tetrahedron and some large cube (part of the content of premises 1 and 2 ) is
also to represent their being distinct objects of different shapes and sizes. Fortunately, this
doesn’t lead to invalidity; the “extra” information generated by the merged diagram is in
fact warranted by the system’s semantics. Simply in using the diagrammatic conventions
of Hyperproof (by which the sizes and shapes of certain icon tokens themselves represent
the sizes and shapes of their referents), the user is able to enjoy a “free ride,” relieved from
having to make explicit the constraints on which the ride depends.
Just how much is left implicit in the use of Hyperproof can be appreciated by consid
ering what a full-fledged simulation of it in first-order logic would look like. Hyperproof
worlds would become highly regimented first-order models with restrictions placed on the
denotations of particular predicate symbols. To fully capture the intended structure of a
blocks world, the denotational restrictions would have to include (and this is just a sample):
• the universe must have cardinality at most 64;

• the denotations of Tet, Cube, and Dodec must partition the universe, as must Small,
Medium, and Large;
• LeftOf and RightOf must be inverses, as must FrontOf and BackOf, and Larger and
Smaller;
• SameSize, SameShape, SameCol, and SameRow must be reflexive, symmetric, and

transitive;
• Larger, Smaller, LeftOf, RightOf, FrontOf, and BackOf must be transitive, asymmetric
and irreflexive.
The restrictions on the denotations of size and shape predicates can be straightforwardly
expressed through some first-order axiomatization. Remarkably, however, the denotations of
the locational predicates cannot be given a complete axiomatization using only the logical
symbols and the above predicates. This is because the particular locations (i.e., array
coordinates) occupied by the blocks cannot be expressed with this vocabulary, and yet such
locational facts turn out to have consequences which are so expressible.26 This expressive
limitation of the original stock can be overcome by adding even more interpreted predicates:
sixty-four unary ones for instance, each corresponding to a slot in the array and whose
denotation would be the set consisting of the object (if any) occupying the corresponding
slot. A complete (though unwieldy) first-order axiomatization of the blocks world would
then be possible.
Hyperproof is thus a system that is semantically “loaded” relative to the standard
baseline of first-order logic, much like the ones countenanced in Section 5.1. There we
found that in simply using a logic supplemented with, e.g., er-suffixes, Q-quantifiers, or
partially interpreted predicates, one narrows the class of possible counterexamples without
having to state the corresponding denotational constraints, constraints that would be stated
as axioms in any standard first-order analogue. For this reason, such systems don’t enforce
a regime of explicitness to the same degree as standard first-order logic. Neither, then, does
Hyperproof.
Similar results hold for the other diagrammatic systems surveyed in this chapter, and
indeed any that has an immediately interpreted semantics with projected nomic constraints.
For let S be some such system. According to the semantics of S, icon tokens in any diagram
D represent certain relations of target objects by means of their own spatial relations. Let
R \ , . . . , Rn be these icon relations, and R [,... ,R'n the corresponding target object relations
they represent (n need not be finite, though in practice it will be). So if Ri has arity a(i),
then for icon tokens t i , . . . , £a(j) in some diagram D and any interpretation function n from
26This is shown in Chapters 10 and 11 of Barwise and Etchemendy (1994).
icon tokens to domain objects in some model M, R ( t \ , . . . , fa(j)) holding in D represents

, 7r(ta(,))) holding in M; i.e., any D containing icon tokens £1 , . . . , ta^ in relation
Ri will be true in M under 7r only if i^ ( 7r(ti),. . . , tt(ta(j))) holds in M .
In virtue of being situated in space, the diagrams of S will be subject to physical and
geometric laws ( “nomic constraints”) which serve to constrain what are possible extensions
for each of the Ri. Let’s relate the predicate symbol Rj to each Ri and let $ (R i,. .. , R„) be
some collection of first-order sentences which pick out the constraints on the R enforced by
physical and geometric law. 27 (For example, if Rj were, say, curve-inclusion or being-left-of,
then Vx Vy Vz((Rj(x,y) A Rj(y,z)) —» Rj(x,z)) would be amongst the first-order consequences
of $ ( R i , . . . , Rn)0 Any diagram D representing the relations R[ by means of the R must
do so in accordance with $ ( R i , . . . . Rn). It follows that every diagram D in S (and hence,
5 as a whole) represents the R as if they too Eire subject to those constraints; i.e., no
diagram will be true in any model which has the R deviating from them. In other words,
$ ( R i , . . . , Rn) is satisfied by every model M which makes true at least one diagram, where
the predicate symbols Ri are now assigned the relations R[ in M.
$ ( R i , . . . , Rn) thus expresses the “content” implicit in the use of S's diagrams; if a
diagram is to be true in any model at all, it’s going to be true in one which satisfies this set
of formulas. So $ ( R i , . . . , Rn) is none other than a first-order axiomatization of the models
which serve as potential counterexamples to any argument couched in S . Arising as they
do from the nomic constraints being projected, there is usually nothing in the diagrams
corresponding to their statement; rather, diagrams enjoy “for free” the contribution of
$ ( R i,. . . . Rn) in carving out the space of models. The user of first-order language, however,
would have to do this work herself by making explicit with additional premises the content
of $ ( R i , . . . , Rn) should she endeavour to furnish faithfully some first-order analogue of any
argument valid in S. This is just to say that, as long as there exist some projected nomic
constraints (i.e., as long as $ ( R i , . . . , R n) is non-empty), a system with an immediately
interpreted semantics will not enforce a regime of explicitness so strict as that of standard
first-order logic.
27I t’s hard to imagine such constraints not being first-order definable for any workable system S . But
even if they aren ’t, the argum ent will still go through; the “implicit content” appealed to in the use of S
simply flies off the chart, much like in the case of the Q-quantifier by which Qx(x = x) is an axiomatization
of the real field (see p. 116).
5.3.2 T h e S p ace o f C ontent
Towards the end of Section 5.1.2, we considered how a partial order of logical systems can be
generated according to their implicit content; i.e., relative to the strength of the axioms that
would be appealed to in a standard first-order simulation. We saw how everyday English
argumentation might be more directly modelled by some of the more contentful systems,
lending credence to the view that English in its everyday use doesn’t enforce a regime of
explicitness as extensive as first-order logic’s. Informal argumentation almost always takes
more for granted than some first-order derivation.
We have also found that, insofar as they enjoy any “free rides” due to nomic constraint
projection, logical systems with immediately interpreted semantics are guaranteed, to be
more contentful than first-order logic, and hence will also fail to enforce explicitness to
the same degree as standard first-order systems. In this respect, derivations couched in
such diagrammatic systems—despite being “formal” in the sense of having a precisely de
fined syntax and semantics—are rather like the semantically loaded, informal arguments
we normally furnish and confront.
However, whereas English fails to enforce first-order explicitness, it nonetheless remains
able to support it. One is allowed to use and even interpret English as if it were a first-order
language: as a user, one could refrain from employing locutions which aren’t treated directly
by first-order logic; as an interpreter, one could refuse to read in grammatical structure
beyond first-order grammar. So the distinctive kind of discursive activity enforced by first-
order logic (as described in Chapter 3) is one that can be replicated in informal linguistic
settings; it just needn’t be.
The situation turns out to be quite different with diagrammatic representations, at least
if Shimojima’s demarcation proposal is at all on the mark. For Shimojima, what makes a
system diagrammatic is its projection of nomic constraints, constraints which delimit the
realm of physically realizable diagrams. These constraints get projected onto the class of
possible models, picking out only the models which themselves adhere to the “images” of
those constraints. This carving out of the space of models—the generation of the system’s
implicit content—is done automatically by every diagram of the system once the basics of
the semantic scheme have been set up; e.g., as in the case of an immediately interpreted
semantics, once the mapping between icon token relations and target object relations has
been decided. The diagrammatic rides that ensue, then, are not only free; they are also
forced. The diagrams’ semantic content can be made explicit only by abandoning the
representational conventions on which they rest. It follows that first-order explicitness isn’t
even supported by such diagrams.
5.4 C onclusion
In using a diagram, a prover helps herself to whatever free rides are thereby afforded; she
implicitly absolves herself from having to state some of the constraints which rule out a
particular range of semantic possibilities. Relative to certain inferential tasks, this need not
cause trouble; the existence of sound diagrammatic systems shows that the user of diagrams
is not doomed to invalid argumentation, and may even enjoy some cognitive perks to boot.
There is no denying that it is possible for diagrammatic proofs to be perfectly successful on
their own terms.
The terms themselves, however, remain subject to philosophical assessment. We saw in
Chapter 3 how first-order logic offers a natural idealization of the discursive activity sur
rounding proof and argumentation. By furnishing a robustly diagrammatic proof, a prover
implicitly declines participation in such an activity; she refuses to undertake discursive re
sponsibilities as extensive as the ones enforced by first-order logic. Though this decision
may be quite appropriate within many argumentative contexts, such outsourcing of inferen
tial work is precisely what is ruled out of court within the argumentative setting privileged
by mainstream logical methodology.
We have seen, then, how a prover’s choice of representation system can indicate a lot
about the kind of discursive task she takes herself to be completing. The decision to furnish
a derivation in formal first-order language is implicitly a decision to undertake a particularly
heavy communicative burden, whereas a considerably lighter load is undertaken by one who
decides to furnish a diagram instead. Even before going into the fine details of whether the
prover’s artefact suffices to discharge the responsibilities thereby undertaken, we can aspire
to differentiate argumentative performances according to the very criteria they set out for
themselves. On the basis of our investigation, we can deem “free riders” to have given up
on at least one kind of ideal from the outset.
No blanket verdict can be made for users of natural language, however. Natural language
has revealed itself to be a remarkably flexible instrument, able to support first-order explic
itness if need be, yet “naturally” used otherwise as well. The interpretation and assessment
of natural language argumentation thus remains a delicate matter, requiring sensitivity to
pragmatic nuance, and in any case only rarely settled by the text itself. However, it remains
clear that natural language is hardly ever called upon to do idealized argumentative service.
That assignment is for the most part reserved for formal language, undoubtedly contributing
to the lustre it enjoys in the philosophical conception of proof and argumentation.
Chapter 6
A rtefactual Formality
To this point, we have primarily concentrated on the statics of argumentation. We looked

at the role that syntax can play in the support of univocality, and saw how pragmatic
desiderata constrain which kinds of representation systems may be so employed (Chapter
4). We also considered how various semantic schemes differ on how much explicitness is
required from an argument’s premises to secure the truth of the conclusion (Chapter 5). Now
we turn our attention to what might be called the dynamics of argumentation, that aspect
which contributes to the sense in which arguments are demonstrations of the conclusion’s
truth. The inference rules of logical systems thus take centre stage.
In particular, we develop a notion of “artefactual formality,” one end of a spectrum along
which logical systems can be compared. Given its entirely syntactic character, this notion
may strike some as decidedly old-fashioned. 1 However, I will argue that it underwrites a
significant aspect of formal logic’s idealization of proof and argumentation. The concept’s
name is meant to evoke a recurrent theme of this dissertation: once again, we will find the
artefact—the actual piece of text furnished by the prover—being called upon in the support
of some discursive activity.
We shall begin with an explication of artefactual formality, continuing a thread begun in
Chapter 3.3.2. There it was argued that the natural deduction inference rules of first-order
logic enforce a regime of fine-grainedness, licensing only detailed proofs. Here, the notion
1Relative to contemporary debates, that is. T h at formality (and logicality more generally) is purely
syntactic was thought to be a live option in the mid-1900’s, at least until Prior (1960) introduced the
“tonk” connective whose purely syntactic incorporation into any language trivialized its derivability relation.
However, according to MacFarlane (2000), syntactic formality is a relative newcomer in the history of logic,
not to be found, for example, in K ant’s or FVege’s conceptions of formality.
141
Chapter 6. Artefactual Formality 142
of fine-grainedness will be articulated in terms of the step-by-step, “constructive” nature of

the syntactic manipulations which correspond to a system’s inference rules. It is suggested
that what in formal practice counts as a single inferential step is tied inextricably to the
syntactic structure described by a system’s well-formedness conditions.
We will then take care to distinguish the notion of artefactual formality from a host of
apparently related ones. If we confine our attention to linguistic systems, some of these
other characterizations seem to offer attractive refinements of the concept. However, it
will be argued that as they currently stand, they are ill-suited to deal with diagrammatic
inference systems, so we shall stick to artefactual formality as our core construal of the kind
of fine-grainedness enforced by paradigmatic formal systems.
Armed with this notion, we will find that some diagrammatic systems do not fully sup
port such a regime of fine-grainedness. For instance, certain geometric constraints condemn
a key rule of Venn-I, a natural formalization of Venn diagrams (Shin 1994), to lack artefac
tual formality to a significant degree. It turns out that certain demonstrations of validity in
Venn-I are forced to contain formal “jumps” in inference; there exist valid Venn-I arguments
(conceived of as a set of premises and a conclusion) all of whose derivations contain at least
one transition not corresponding to a simple syntactic manipulation. In other words, ac
cording to at least one natural construal of “grain,” such derivations can never be replaced
by finer-grained ones within the system.
This divergence from first-order idealization is even more pronounced in the case of het
erogeneous systems, those which employ both linguistic and diagrammatic forms of represen
tation. Here we will find that artefactual formality would demand that their representations
be individually heterogeneous, each containing both linguistic and diagrammatic elements.
This requirement is met only minimally by the syntax of Barwise and Etchemendy’s Hyper-
proof; its representations are predominantly homogeneous, either diagrammatic or linguis
tic, which virtually guarantees that some of the system’s most powerful inference rules will
lack artefactual formality. As such, neither Venn-I nor Hyperproof enforce the particular
regime of fine-grainedness enforced by mainstream formal systems, and in this way diverge
from formal logic’s usual idealization of proof and argumentation.
6.1 S y n ta ctic B uilding-B locks
6.1.1 L evels o f Structure
Given any logical system, the standard procedure for delineating its class of well-formed
representations is first to identify some set of syntactic primitives and ways of combining
them, and then to provide criteria for picking out which of the various combinations are
well-formed. In linguistic systems, the primitives consist generally of symbols sorted into
types (predicate, logical, constant, etc.) with concatenation being the primary mode of
combination. We noted in Chapter 4 that, in one sense, the structure of any linguistic
formula (well-formed or not) is sequential, fully described letter-by-letter in some linear
order. However, the inductive clauses which identify the set of well-formed formulas help
to impose further, compositional structure upon the language, describing such formulas as
each the product of some unique inductive construction.
It is worth pausing to consider the significance of the “construction” metaphor. We
can begin by noting the simple, almost physical nature of the operation which figures into
each of the inductive clauses. Each clause describes how, on the basis of a certain number
of inputs (usually just one or two well-formed formulas), the operation of concatenation is
successively applied to these inputs and a handful of logical symbols to yield an output . 2
Each inductive clause ultimately describes what amounts to nothing more than the symbol-
by-symbol copying of the inputs, positioned side-by-side in some specified order amongst a
connective or quantifier-variable pair and with parentheses sometimes mixed in to keep the
construction one-to-one.3 Notably, the inputs themselves are not internally altered in any
way. Rather, for the purposes of concatenation they axe treated as unanalyzed building-
blocks which quite literally get stuck together in some straightforward fashion to build a
new formula.
Given that there is a one-to-one relation between well-formed formulas and their in
ductive construction, it is also appropriate to deem their structure to be hierarchical. A
compound formula will generally be constructed from “smaller” formulas which themselves
have been constructed from still smaller ones, until an independently characterized level
of atomic formulas has been reached. We can thus assign to each well-formed formula a
2For example, if <t> and are well-formed formulas, then (4> —* t/>), -><£, and Vx<p are each decreed a
well-formed formula by some inductive clause.
C o n c a te n a tio n is also the operation involved in the construction of atomic well-formed formulas and
(inductively) of complex terms. Again, parentheses and commas often added interleaved for readability.
measure of its depth, counting how far a single decomposition path can be pursued: all
atomic formulas have depth 0 , and every compound formula has depth equal to one plus
the depth of its deepest component.4 We can also describe the stages involved in some
construction: if we say that a formula of depth n is also constructed at stage n, then it is
natural to describe its immediate components as having been constructed at stage n —1 ,
and so on down the line.5 To invoke another common metaphor, a formula <p lies at the
root of some tree tracing its unique inductive construction, with the depth of <f>being the
length of the longest branch, a branch beginning at stage 0 .
6.1.2 S tru ctu ral R einforcem ent
A unique readability theorem holds when the tree-like, compositional structure of a formula
is recoverable from its letter-by-letter, sequential structure. Of these two levels of syntactic
structure, it is usually the compositional which gets picked but as “the” structure, in part
because it figures so prominently in a formal language’s semantic systematization. Given
a formula, the clauses which delineate the class of models satisfying it “ride” the clauses
which generate its syntactic construction: whether a formula is satisfied by some model is
determined by satisfaction facts concerning that formula’s immediate syntactic components,
which in turn ride on satisfaction facts concerning their immediate components and so on,
until the realm of atomic formulas is reached whose satisfaction is determined directly by
the model. The hierarchical structure picked out by the well-formedness conditions, then,
is a “natural” one, directly exploited by the semantics as well.
This confluence of syntactic and semantic structure is perhaps quite familiar, contribut
ing to the theoretical elegance of formal languages. What isn’t often recognized, however,
is how the inference rules of paradigmatic systems also reinforce this structure. The rules
standardly taken to be most basic and natural happen to be ones whose very application
makes manifest the same compositional structure described by the syntactic well-formedness
conditions.
4I.e., if / is a compound formula constructed from formulas / ' and f" by one application of some inductive
clause, then d(f) = 1 + m a x (d (/'),d (/" )), where d is the depth function. (If / were just constructed from
/ ', then d(f) = 1 + d ( /') .) This is essentially the definition found in, e.g., Troelstra and Schwichtenberg
(1996).
sSo for example, Vx((Ax V Bx) &: Cx) has a 3-stage construction, with ((Ax V Bx) &: Cx) constructed at
stage 2, (Ax V Bx) and Cx each a t stage 1, and Ax and Bx each a t stage 0. Note th a t “stagehood” is relative
to a particular construction: an occurrence of Cx occupies stage 1 of Vx((Ax V Bx) & Cx)’s construction, but
stage 0 of Cx’s own.
[<t>\ [<t>] b0] b <t>\
bi bi [4>i
0 —0
[0] M
Notes on notation (adapted from Troelstra and Schwichtenberg 1996):

• Formulas within square brackets appear a t top nodes of the derivation, are discharged only upon
application of the rule, and become unavailable for further rule applications afterwards.
• O uter parentheses of formulas have been omitted for readability.
Figure 6.1: Propositional introduction and elimination rules
This is most clearly seen with the introduction and elimination rules of natural deduc
tion systems, and especially those involving the truth-functional connectives (Figure 6.1).
Consider, for instance, an application of ^-introduction, which licenses the derivation of
end-formula (0 k 0 ) from formulas 0 and 0 appearing earlier in the derivation and cited as
support. The end-formula is quite literally constructed from earlier ones; it is the result of
“applying,” with the cited formulas as inputs, one of the inductive clauses defining the set
of well-formed formulas. The same holds for applications of and <-»-introduction; in
each case, the rule licenses an end-formula which can be constructed in one step from some
of the formulas cited as support. These introduction rules all display in their application
the last stage of an end-formula’s syntactic construction.
The rule of v-introduction may seem to be somewhat exceptional in this regard, given
that a significant chunk of end-formula (0 V 0) is not to be found amongst the supporting
formulas. (In fact, with this rule there will be only one supporting formula cited: either 0
or 0). So, unlike the other propositional rules, its application doesn’t yield a determinate
outcome given particular inputs. However, its “inverse” is determinate: given the end-
formula, there are only two formulas eligible as its proper support.6 Furthermore, this rule
6So blindly applying the rule is indeterminate, but checking it is not. It is the latter which concerns us
here, since we are interested in characterizing the completed artefacts which are furnished to some audience.
is just like the other rules in its licensing of formulas just one construction stage away from
some supporting formula. As far as the well-formedness clauses are concerned, (<pV ?/>) is an
immediate descendant of whichever formula it is derived from, since both <p and ip appear
in the second-last stage of its construction tree . 7
Turning our attention now to the elimination rules, we once again have end-formulas
being “constructed” from amongst the supporting steps, though this time the operation is
generally one of truncation, moving up the construction tree of some input formula. For
example, an application of —►-elimination amounts to the “detachment” of consequent ip
from (<p —*■ip); similar descriptions apply to the elimination rules for &, and <->. In each
of these cases, the end-formula e is an immediate component of some supporting formula
/ (i.e., e appears in the second-last stage of / ’s construction tree). So applications of these
elimination rules amount to the “inverse” of some single construction operation, displaying
it upside-down, as it were. The one exception, v-elimination, requires an even more direct
relation between the end-formula and its support, as the rule licenses the copying of some
formula appearing in each of the supporting subderivations.
Of course, for some of these rules there will also be formulas which don’t figure into
the end-formula’s construction, but whose citation as support remains necessary for the
rule’s proper application. For instance, an application of -'-introduction requires that there
be within the cited subderivations two formulas, one of the form Xi the other ->x, and
there need not be any syntactic relation between x and the end-formula. Note that even
here the rule relies heavily on the hierarchical structure generated by the well-formedness
construction clauses, this time to pick out the relation between x and -■x, the former being
an immediate component of the latter. Similarly, V-elimination requires the citation of a
formula (<p v ip) and two subderivations alternately headed by <p and by ip. Here as well,
two formulas are compared to each other only in terms of whether one is the immediate
descendant of the other in some construction tree.
On the basis of these observations, we can conclude that the introduction and elimination
rules for propositional connectives meet at least the following criterion:8
S tru c tu ra l Faithfulness. The rules compare formulas in terms of their syntactic struc
ture; i.e., the structure described by the language’s well-formedness conditions. The
conditions under which a rule has been correctly applied is describable completely in
terms of such structure.
7Note th a t my use of “immediate” here isn’t the sam e as th a t of Chapter 5 (as in “immediately interpreted
semantics” ). I tru st th a t the chapter divisions provide adequate semantic insulation.
8VVe will soon find them to meet a stronger one as well.
<f>k(ii)kx)
"= &-Assoc
— V ~~*7p (4>&i))kx
-,(< (> v V') < j > v ( i p b x ) <t> V (V’ V x)
Note on notation: The double line indicates interderivability (the formulas may be inverted). Again,
outer parentheses have been omitted.
Figure 6.2: “Derived” propositional rules
The structure imposed by the syntactic well-formedness conditions is once again seen
to be a natural, recurrent one. The introduction and elimination rules “treat” formulas
according to their compositional structure; the correctness of their application depends
only upon structural relationships described by the inductive clauses of the well-formedness
definition. Put most straightforwardly: the propositional rules are schematic. They can
each be displayed using metavariables ranging over all well-formed formulas, with complex
meta-linguistic terms standing for formulas whose structure is reflected by the structure
of the term .9 For this even to be possible, it must be the case that the rules cut up and
reassemble formulas along their compositional joints.
Incidentally, many of the “derived” rules used in logic textbooks also meet the structural
faithfulness criterion. Take, for example, the rules corresponding to DeMorgan’s laws,
distributivity, and associativity (Figure 6.2). Each of these rules is most naturally given
a schematic rendering, which demonstrates how they appeal directly to the compositional
structure of the formulas to which they are applied.
6.2 Inferential Fine-grainedness
Having established the “naturalness” of the structure imposed by the well-formedness con
ditions, it seems quite reasonable to characterize inference rules in relation to that structure,
and in fact our doing so provides some insight on the kind of derivations those rules license.
A derivation, after all, consists merely of some series of rule-applications which ends at
some formula (the conclusion) and has other formulas (the premises) providing some of the
9E.g., when displaying the rule of ^-introduction as licensing (4>&zip) from <t>and from i/j, the meta
linguistic term ‘(0& V ')’ is made to refer to the formula resulting from the concatenation of (, 0, and
)•
initial raw syntactic material. 10 So the formal properties of inference rules are sure to have
some bearing on the character of the derivations they license; and hence, of the artefacts
which are the instantiations of those derivations.
6.2.1 A rtefa ctu a l Form ality
We noted, for instance, how an application of each of the propositional introduction and
elimination rules amounts to a particular transition along some formula’s construction tree.
On the basis of our observations from the previous section, we can conclude:
1. The sense of “derivation” enforced by the propositional inference rules is one of syn
tactic derivation, by which each end-formula—each inference in the derivation—is
literally constructed from parts of previous ones in some determinate manner (or vice
versa). What counts as parts of formulas and as constructions of them is described
by the well-formedness conditions of the system.
2. What counts as a primitive syntactic operation can also be motivated by the well-
formedness conditions, both in terms of what is taken to be the relevant syntactic
building-blocks, and also in terms of what is taken to be a simple syntactic transfor
mation or manipulation. Inference rules can be characterized according to how simple
(or “primitive” ) a syntactic transformation they allow.
The first point is a direct recapitulation of what was called “structural faithfulness” in the
previous section, couched now in terms of derivations rather than the inference rules that
license them. Formal derivations standardly display a series of formulas being composed
and decomposed in a manner consistent with compositional structure; when instantiated
by an artefact, they depict in discrete steps the physical transformation of premises and
discharged assumptions into the conclusion. Note that this characterization would apply
even if a derivation appealed to the derived rules of Figure 6.2.
It is the second point which serves to distinguish the canonical introduction and elimi
nation rules from the rest, and will be our main focus for the remainder of this chapter. Not
only do the propositional introduction and elimination rules cut up and recombine formulas
along their natural joints, they do so in the most minimal manner possible. They take
10Arguably, the assumptions which head subderivations (and which are “discharged” by the end of the
derivation) provide the rest of the raw syntactic “inputs.”
a “shallow” view of the formulas they treat, looking at most one compositional stage be
low the surface (where “compositional stage” is defined relative to the language’s canonical
well-formedness conditions). Remarkably, the usual propositional inference rules treats as
irrelevant the syntactic structure of a formula’s immediate components.
This feature has ramifications for the syntactic relationship between each inferred (i.e.,
non-assumption, non-premise) formula and at least one of the supporting formulas preced
ing it in a derivation; in particular, the two formulas will be syntactically immediate to one
another, just a single construction-stage apart according to the inductive well-formedness
conditions defining the syntax. So the formula at each derived step—the result of each dis
played inference—will be only a primitive syntactic transformation away from some earlier
one. Consisting of transitions which are about as simple as possible given the language’s
natural structure, the entire derivation will thus be one of maximal syntactic detail; i.e.,
the derivation, and any artefact instantiating it, will be syntactically fine-grained.
This is in slight contrast to derivations appealing to the derived rules mentioned at the
end of the last section. While these rules also cut up formulas along their syntactic joints,
they do so somewhat more “deeply.” They appeal to structure just slightly beyond the
second-last construction stage of the formulas involved, and as a result license syntactic
transitions involving more than a single move up or down some formula’s construction tree.
For example, the “construction path” from ~'{4> v ip) to ( —>0 & ~,'0), an application of one
of DeMorgan’s laws, requires two truncation stages up the input formula’s construction
tree to isolate the 4> and ib. followed by two concatenation stages down to get the end-
formula; numerous primitive construction steps are thus packed into the single inference.
This provides reason for considering derivations appealing to such rules to be marginally
less fine-grained than ones using only the introduction and elimination rules. For a much
more dramatic contrast, consider the Taut Con rule introduced in Chapter 3.3.2. This rule,
licensing any tautological consequence of the formulas cited as support, isn’t even schematic;
its application doesn’t amount to anything like a simple primitive manipulation of the input
formulas or end-formula.
The proposal of this chapter, then, has two components, generalizing from our observa
tions so far:
Inference as Syntactic D erivation. It is mainstream logical practice to characterize the

notion of inference as one of syntactic derivation. Without our committing to the
(clearly false) view that syntactic manipulation is all there is to correct inference,
we note that the inferences treated “in one step” by actual formal systems are ones
which can be given a completely syntactic (or “formal”) description. While a good
philosophy of logic might have no reason to rule out de jure the possibility of non-
syntactically based inference, formal logic has de facto done more or less just that.
Paradigmatic logical systems like first-order ones clearly treat inference in a primarily
syntactic, “derivational” manner. It is reasonable to take this reduction to syntax as
a major aspect of their idealization of inference more generally.
Im m ed iate Inference as Prim itive S y n tactic M anipulation. Given this idealization

made by formal systems, it is then natural to construe immediate inference in com
pletely syntactic terras; i.e., in terms which appeal to the step-by-step construction
of formal representations. This is borne out by mainstream logical practice: an “im
mediate” inference (a single application of a canonical inference rule) tends to be one
which amounts to a primitive, determinate, syntactic manipulation of representations,
where primitiveness is definable relative to the compositional structure imposed by
the well-formedness construction clauses. Formal logic as a whole tends to reduce
inferential immediacy to syntactic immediacy.
As throughout this dissertation, our concern isn’t so much to justify the kind of idealiza
tion being attributed to logical systems, but merely to call attention to its pervasiveness.
Dub a logical system artefactually formal to the extent that its inference rules amount
to determinate, syntactically immediate, structure-respecting manipulations of the repre
sentations they treat. While it is primarily a matter of quasi-empirical investigation to
determine to what degree logical systems are artefactually formal, it is no surprise to find
that paradigmatic linguistic systems are very much so. With its hierarchical (inductive)
structure, formal language simply lends itself to such treatment.
Let us now complete our investigation of natural deduction, first-order logic under the
proposed light. We’ve already seen how the propositional rules exhibit artefactual formality
in its clearest and most direct form, with each rule producing an end-formula which is a
single, determinate, syntactic shuffle away from input formulas. A slightly more complex
story, however, needs to be told in the case of the quantifer rules. Consider, for instance,
V-elimination. With this rule, one is able to derive from Vx<ji the formula 4>{x/t\, which
is the result of deleting the first two symbols of Vx (j> and substituting variable-free term
t for all free occurrences of x in <t>. While the deletion operation amounts to something
Vx<p[y*/x ] <f>[x/t] 3x<f> ip
Notes on notation (continued from Figure 6.1):

• <t>[x/y\ results from 4>by replacing free occurrences of x with y.
• Term t is variable-free.
• For V-I, we require y not free in any assumption (leaf) still open by th a t point.
** For 3-E, we require y not occurring in <£, not free in i>, and not free in any other assumption still
open along the right branch.
Figure 6.3: First-order quantifier introduction and elimination rules
we’ve already seen (being simply the movement one stage up a formula’s construction tree),
the substitution operation adds a novel twist as it “permeates through” the hierarchical
structure of the supporting formula, appealing instead to its letter-by-letter, sequential
structure, with certain determinate occurrences of the symbol x being replaced by those of
t. From the point of view of the syntactic well-formedness conditions, substitution is an
adjustment made only at the leaves of the formula’s construction tree; the constructions of
<pand <p[x/t] invoke exactly the same inductive clauses at each compositional stage, differing
only with respect to which atomic formulas get introduced as the initial inputs. At this
atomic stage, the syntactic adjustment is once again minimal, corresponding to the uniform
replacement of a single variable type with a single term type. As such, the formal operation
from <p to <P[xft\ can be taken to be reasonably primitive.
So an application of V-elimination amounts to simple adjustments being made at both
ends of the input formula’s construction tree. At the leaves, some of the atomic formulas
are changed by replacing a symbol x with another symbol t (or a sequence of symbols, if t
is complex). This adjustment seeps down the tree, leaving compositional structure exactly
the same except right before the root, where the tree is lopped off at the second-last stage.
Though this two-sidedness makes its application slightly more complicated than those of
the propositional rules, V-elimination’s view of its input formula remains shallow, appealing
to structure appearing only at the extremities of the formula’s construction tree.
The other quantifier rules can be characterized similarly (Figure 6.3). V-introduction
and 3-introduction also invoke substitutions at the leaves, along with an extension of the
input formula’s tree by adding one more construction stage at the root; 3-elimination war
rants the simple copying of a previous formula, subject to certain side conditions. In each
case, the syntactic distance between end-formula and some support formula ends up being
rather minimal. Thus, all the inference rules of natural deduction, first-order logic meet the
criterion of artefactual formality to a considerable extent, licensing only derivations that
can reasonably be taken to be syntactically fine-grained.
6 .2 .2 O ther A n alyses
We end this section by considering three alternative analyses of fine-grainedness, ones which,
for linguistic systems, offer credible refinements of the criterion of artefactual formality. We
will find, however, that none of them offers an adequate substitute for the notion developed
here, mostly because they cannot be applied to diagrammatic systems in any particularly
straightforward way.
Corcoran’s Analysis o f Rigor
Corcoran (1969) takes up directly the question of analyzing fine-grainedness, couching the
concept in terms of “rigor,” “gaplessness,” and “simplicity”:
In logic we do not aim to codify all proofs which occur but we idealize ... [W]e
do not want to codify great leaps of logical intuition—we want our rules to be
absolutely simple, i.e. we want to codify the proofs which have the maximum
amount of logical detail. In short we wish to codify the logically rigorous proofs
(p.162).
[I]t is one thing to for an inference to be sound and quite smother for it to be
logically simple, i.e. have no “gaps” in the reasoning. One may soundly infer a
very complicated theorem of geometry directly from the axioms but one would
hardly regard this as proving the theorems from the axioms (p.163).
Deduction systems which aim to license only gapless proofs must have rigorous rules of
inference; ones which, according to Corcoran:
1. are sound;
2. are effective (i.e., decidable);
3. achieve a maximum amount of logical detail; and
4. are simple.
Corcoran in turn proposes to characterize items (3) and (4) as follows. A rule achieves
a m a x im u m amount of detail if and only if it either introduces or eliminates exactly one
occurrence of some logical symbol; a rule is simple if and only if its application involves only
one kind of logical symbol throughout the end-formula and all supporting formulas. These
criteria are in fact met by the natural deduction, first-order rules; these rules are sound
and effective, and the rules for each logical symbol don’t appeal to the existence of any
other logical symbol (by inspection of Figures 6 .1 and 6.3). The derived rules of Figure 6.2,
however, all fail item (3), while DeMorgan’s laws and distributivity fail item (4).
It must be conceded that Corcoran’s analysis of “rigor” is more simple and straight
forward than the one offered by artefactual formality. However, there are two reasons for
privileging our notion over his, even if they turn out to issue the same verdicts over the
first-order rules. First of all, there is very little in Corcoran’s discussion to indicate why it
is that maximal detail is achieved by the rules which meet his specific criteria. The pri
mary motivation he offers is simply that they seem to offer the right yield. 11 Artefactual
formality’s appeal to a language’s “natural” structure offers a more principled account of
why inferential detail is wrapped up with the introduction and elimination of logical con
stants: their introduction and elimination correspond to single stages in the compositional
hierarchy described by their language’s syntax and semantics.
Given our purposes, an even more serious deficiency of Corcoran’s account is its speci
ficity to formal language. Couched as it is in terms of the introduction and elimination of
logical symbols, it offers little guidance on what “rigor” or fine-grainedness would amount
to for non-linguistic representation systems, or indeed any whose logical operators do not
correspond to specific symbols. The adaptability of the concept of artefactual formality—its
deference to the “natural” structure of representations as made manifest by their syntac
tic, semantic, and inferential description—will prove useful when it comes time to confront
distinctively diagrammatic systems.
Schematic and/or Functional Formality
It might be thought that another way to refine the notion of artefactual formality would
be to appeal directly to the schematic character of certain inference rules. We saw, for
11As an aside, Corcoran also mentions the elegance and m eta-theoretical fruitfulness of “simple” rules
(pp.172-3), b u t notes th a t such considerations sure secondary to the question of whether his criteria pick out
the desired property.
instance, how the propositional introduction and elimination rules can each be given a
schematic rendering, with metavariables running over particular syntactic categories. The
rule of Taut Con however, though recursive, cannot be displayed schematically; the rule
doesn’t amount to any particular syntactic configuration of the formulas related by the
rule. If it is their distinctively schematic nature which serves to distinguish the introduction
and elimination rules from “catch-all” ones like Taut Con—so that their end-formulas are
built out of the input formulas in a particular way—then perhaps the notion of schematic
formality should be taken to reside at the conceptual core of artefactual formality. 12
One merit of this proposal is that it automatically accounts for the determinateness of
artefactually formal rules, essentially reducing each of them (or their inverses) to some sim
ple function. For instance, the result of applying -►-elimination to a particular conditional
statement and its antecedent is completely determined, and indeed many of the proposi
tional introduction and elimination rules are purely functional as they stand. Most of the
other ones can be turned functional by distinguishing “left” and “right” versions of them:
e.g., given ((p&zip) as input, the rule of ^-elimination warrants just two possible formulas
depending on which conjunct gets chosen, and so it isn’t too much of a stretch to consider
this rule to be the combination of two functional ones. The one apparently exceptional rule,
V-introduction, is the inverse of a schematic function (or more precisely, a pair of them),
so checking its application is no more mysterious than checking, say, an application of &-
elimination. The quantifier rules are again slightly more complicated, turned functional or
inverse-functional with extra arguments for the terms being substituted in and for. By con
trast, Taut Con is neither schematic nor even close to functional in either direction; given
any particular set of inputs, there are infinitely many formulas warranted by Taut Con (and
given any end-formula, infinitely many possible supports), all sufficiently varied so that it
would be impossible to capture them all with some manageable collection of schemata.
But while schematic formality seems to highlight something important about the infer
ence rules we take to be canonical, it nonetheless fails to provide an adequate stand-in
for artefactual formality. For one thing, a rule’s being schematic doesn’t ensure fine
grainedness, as there exist some truth-preserving schemata which are very obscure and
l2I borrow the term “schematic formality” from MacFarlane (2000, pp.36-41). It should be stressed,
however, th a t my use of the term diverges from his. First of all, M acFarlane uses it in the context of
describing logical validity more generally (a la Tarski, for example), and not specifically with respect to
inference rules. Secondly, my use has a much more syntactic bent than M acFarlane’s (and Tarski’s).
which can’t credibly be considered to be maximally fine-grained. In fact, if Tarski’s analy

sis of logical consequence is correct, then every valid premise-conclusion pair is an instance
of some truth-preserving schema, one which might be quite complicated. 13 So a schema-
based account would have to be supplemented with further constraints in order to pick
out only those schemata which are sufficiently simple. Perhaps something like Corcoran’s
specific one-symbol proposal or, even better, the more general structural criteria described
by artefactual formality would do the trick.
So the schematic formality of rules does not in itself suffice to ensure fine-grainedness,-
but might it at least be necessary? Does it perhaps refine the structural faithfulness aspect
of artefactual formality (p.146)? As we noted in the previous section, the usual inference
rules of first-order logic take a “shallow” view of the formulas they treat, and hence rely
directly upon the hierarchical structure of first-order formulas for their generality. As long
as one has in view only the usual formal languages, it is tempting to think that all such rules
would have to be schematic; by assumption, these rules abstract away the deeper syntactic
structure of sentences, and hence should be fully describable using metavariables to stand
for subformulas or terms.
Notice, however, that for a rule to be schematic, it isn’t sufficient that metavariables
simply be used in the rule’s characterization; rather, they must be used in a particular way,
as placeholders in what is ultimately a display (and not just a description) of that rule.
Schemata exhibit the general form of schematic rules, so that applications of some such rule
are instantiations of the corresponding schema, paradigmatically obtained by systematically
substituting appropriate syntactic objects for the metavariables in it. Notably, after this
substitution is made, no more work is needed to display the rule’s outcome. By way of
contrast, consider the following non-schematic description of ^-introduction:
Given two formulas (f> and i f f , one may derive the formula which consists of the
sequence of symbols beginning with a left parenthesis, followed by the symbols which
make up <j> (their order preserved), followed by the conjunction symbol, followed by
the symbols which make up i f f , followed by the right parenthesis.
The outcome of some particular application of ^-introduction isn’t automatically displayed

13In brief, Tarski thinks that conclusion C is a logical consequence of premises P if and only if every
reinterpretation of the non-logical vocabulary is such that if all of P is true, then so is C. So every such
pair would be schematic; all of P 's and C 's non-logical vocabulary would occupy syntactic slots for which
the substitution of other vocabulary of the appropriate grammatical category would yield other such truth-
preserving pairs.
here through the substitution of formulas for the ‘0 ’ and lip', though it is in the rule’s more
canonical schematic presentation.
For a rule to have some schematic description in the standard sense, the representation
system over which it applies must be sufficiently hierarchical; it must be possible to present
“shallow views” of the system’s representations, so that an instance of a rule might be
obtained simply by substituting in for the appropriate metavariables. As we will soon see,
not all representation systems have a syntax which works like this, and hence schematic
formality in its familiar guise can’t provide an adequately general analysis of inferential
fine-grainedness, or even of structural faithfulness. Now. this isn’t to deny the possibility
of developing a broader notion of “schema” applicable to diagrammatic systems. But in
developing such a concept, it will be the general conceptual resources of artefactual formality
which might serve to explicate schematic formality, rather than the other way around.
Com plexity Measures
The final alternative we will consider here would classify inference rules according to their
complexity, a precise measure of the amount of “work” (the number of basic computational
steps) that would be needed in a worst-case scenario to verify that a rule has been applied
correctly. This measure is standardly made relative to the size of the input, so the complex
ity of a rule determines how efficiently a particular procedure for checking an instantiation
of the rule scales up as larger (e.g., deeper or longer) formulas get treated. The proposal
here would be to couch the fine-grainedness of an inference in terms of the “quickness” of
the algorithms available for checking it . 14
For example, the natural procedure for checking the propositional rules consists simply
in doing a symbol-by-symbol comparison of the formulas to see if they follow the pattern ex
hibited by the appropriate schema. 15 The quantifer rules require in addition a determination
of whether the term substitutions made in the end-formula satisfy those extra conditions
u One might like to replace “available” w ith “best” here, but (1) some problems are such that, for every
algorithm there exists another algorithm which works more quickly on almost all inputs (this is Blum’s
surprising “speed-up” theorem; see, e.g., C utland 1980, ch.12); and (2) it seems reasonable to insist that
the algorithms on which we base our findings are ones which Eire actually available (either to us, or to the
audience checking the inference).
15Actually, checking an inference could involve a variety of tasks, some of which it is reasonable to set aside
here. For example, one thing th a t could be verified is the well-formedness of all the formulas appearing in the
inference. However, in considering the complexity of the particularly “inferential” part of a system, it seems
appropriate to take this for granted and concentrate only on the task of determining for each particular rule
whether some end-formula is indeed licensed by th at rule given the formulas cited as support.
regarding freeness, substitutability, and occurrence elsewhere in the proof. Nonetheless,

all these tasks are of modest complexity, at most polynomially increasing as the size of
the inputs increase. The rule of Taut Con however, has a much higher complexity; to
verify that ip is a tautological consequence of <p\ , . . . , <pn amounts to determining the satis
fiability of (<p\ & • • • &c<pn & -Tip), which is an NP-complete problem for arbitrary formulas
ip, <pi, . . . , <pn. It is thus widely believed that the run-time of any algorithm verifying an
application of Taut Con must grow hyperpolynomially with the size of the inputs, which is
to say that it would require a lot of computational work indeed.
An analysis in terms of complexity theory holds the promise of bringing precision to the
question of inferential fine-grainedness, and I consider this alternative amongst the three
mentioned here to be the best candidate refinement of artefactual formality. 16 Though it
is beyond our present purposes to begin the carrying through of that promise (at least
with respect to its technical details), it should be stressed that, even should complexity
theory prove itself applicable to the characterization of fine-grainedness, it is likely to do so
only by building upon the more general considerations raised by artefactual formality, not
by completely replacing them. Complexity results, in their purest form, are mathematical
results; they have philosophical significance to the extent that they can be faithfully applied
to topics made subject to philosophical scrutiny. Given that complexity measures begin by
taking for granted a repertoire of “basic'1 computational steps as well as some particular
way of coding the inputs into a form over which the computation may proceed, one must pay
attention to whether these initial decisions support a reasonable idealization of whatever
task is being analyzed. This is precisely the sort of work which preoccupied the pioneers
of computation theory; as it turns out, they concentrated exclusively on processes which
most directly involve linguistic (or “symbolic”) representations.1' In the next section, we
16For a speculative example, consider the question of whether the propositional rules are “more” artefac-
tually formal than the first-order ones. Intuitively, the answer seems to be yes, and this judgement is in fact
supported by the la tte r’s higher complexity (itself caused primarily by the need to check variable-binding).
T he perspective obtained through complexity considerations suggests further that the propositional modal
rules occupy a middle ground between the traditional propositional and first-order ones; like quantifier rules,
they require “global” as opposed to merely “local” checks (D-introduction, for example, standardly requires
th a t all assumptions in force be “boxed” ) yet they don’t involve anything analogous to the variable-binding
check. Just how far a theory of inferential fine-grainedness could be underw ritten by investigations along
these lines is well worth finding out. (My thanks to Johan van Benthem for these observations.)
I7Of course, Turing (1936) is a prime example of this. Sieg (1997) argues that it was Turing’s attention
to symbolic processes in general which distinguishes his model of effective computation from others (like
Church's, Kleene’s, or Godel’s) which looked only at the processes directly related to evaluating number-
theoretic functions. Regardless of their relative merits, all these models took seriously the actual (physical)
processes involved in human com putation.
will encounter some of the raw conceptual data which might be used to assess any proposed
mathematical treatment of distinctively diagrammatic “computation.”
6.3 C ase Studies in Diagram m atic Inference
We will now proceed to apply the notion of artefactual formality to a couple of non-linguistic
inference systems, Venn-I and Hyperproof. We will find that neither of them fully support
the kind of syntactic fine-grainedness enforced by first-order and other linguistic systems,
and so in this respect they deviate from formal logic’s mainstream idealization of proof.
6.3.1 S h in ’s V e n n -I
Back on p. 100 (Chapter 4.3.2) we described the syntax of Venn-I, a formal system for Venn
diagrams. There, we noted that its well-formed diagrams (wfds) are constructed first by
introducing a rectangle, and then by adding other syntactic objects one by one within it,
with the position and shape of each newly added object constrained relative to that of the
other objects already in the diagram. In contrast to first-order formulas, the mapping from
construction sequence to wfd is not one-to-one. This does not pose a serious threat to
univocality, however, since the compositional structure of wfds is naturally described only
in terms of the topological relations that hold amongst its various primitive objects, and
not so much in terms of some hierarchical construction sequence.
Semantics
The system’s semantics lends support to this construal. 18 A model M in the system consists
of a pair (U. I), where U is some set (the domain or universe) and I is a function from the
set of all regions in wfds to subsets of U satisfying the following conditions: 19
1. I{r) = U if r is the entire region enclosed by a rectangle;

2. I{r) = I(s) if r and s are the entire regions interior to identically labelled curves (so
that curves with the same label in different wfds are assigned the same set);
18Here I will describe the more familiar, set-theoretic semantics described in Hammer (1995) rather than
the situation-theoretic semantics of Shin (1994). All the relevant observations made with respect to the
set-theoretic semantics apply to the situation-theoretic one as well.
l9Here ‘U ’ and ‘PI’ are doing double-duty by denoting binary functions over regions as well as over sets.
Hopefully, the reader finds such notational abuse tolerable.
3. if r and s are regions of the same diagram, then I(r U s) = I(r) U f(s);
4. if r and r are complementary regions of a diagram (so that r fl r = 0 and r U r is the

entire region interior to a rectangle), then I(r) = U \ / ( r ) . 20
A wfd D is true in M iff for every region r in D, if r is shaded then I(r) = 0 and if r
contains an 0 -sequence then I(r) ^ 0 .
Notice, then, that the semantics doesn’t at all appeal to the construction history of
diagrams to describe their truth-conditions relative to models. Rather, the compositional
structure that has semantic import concerns only the relations of overlap, intersection,
containment, and disjointness amongst primitive objects. This, as well as the partition of
primitive types (e.g., shading vs. 0 -sequence vs. distinct labels), is all that matters for the
semantics. One might say that the compositional structure of Venn diagrams is inherently
flat, as opposed to the hierarchical structure of familiar formal languages. So the inductive
definition of wfds does not underwrite its “natural” compositional structure the same way
the analogous definition does for formulas. Indeed, a wfd seems more naturally described
just as some collection of primitive objects whose mutual arrangement meet certain condi
tions.21 By squeezing this description into an inductive form, one does not thereby reveal
some deeper compositional structure; rather, what is laid bare by the step-by-step construc
tion of wfds is simply their analyzability in terms of the distinct diagrammatic objects they
contain.
Some Artefactually Formal Inference Rules
Recall that we found the canonical introduction and elimination rules of first-order logic to
be “faithful” to the natural syntactic and semantic structure of first-order language. With
some effort, an analogous observation can be made for some, but not all, of the inference
rules of Venn-I (listed in Figure 6.4), many of which amount to the introduction, elimination,
or modification of some small number of diagrammatic objects. Take, for instance, the
rules of Erasure o f part of an 0 -sequence and Spreading 0 ’s. Applying either of these
rules involves making a simple adjustment to some 0 -sequence in the input-diagram, so the
end-diagrams they license will differ from some previous diagram only with respect to one
20As Hammer points out (Hammer 1995, p.39), these conditions also ensure th a t / ( r O s) = / ( r ) n I(a ) if
r and a overlap, and th a t I ( r \ a) = /( r ) \ 1(a) if a is a proper part of r.
21Compare Miller’s definition of F G wfds (Figure 4.2, p.104), which is precisely of this descriptive form.
Erasure of a diagrammatic object D' is obtainable from D if D' results from the erasure o f a n
entire ^-sequence, th e erasure of th e entire shading of a region, or the erasure of any closed
curve and its label in accordance w ith the following condition: the shading of any m inim al
region of D which w ould fail to cover an entire m inimal region upon erasure of the curve m ust
also be erased, and if th e erasure of the curve would result in some ^-sequence having two ® ’s
in th e sam e minimal region, then one of those ® ’s m ust be erased and the two halves rejoined.
Erasure o f part of an ®-sequence D' is obtainable from D if D' results from the erasure o f
some ® of an ®-sequence th a t falls in a shaded region o f D, as long as the two halves o f th e
sequence are reconnected by a line.
Spreading ® ’s D' is obtainable from D if D' results from adding a new ® in some minimal region
of D and then connecting it to an ®-sequence of D (provided the sequence doesn’t already
have an ® in th a t m inim al region).
Introduction o f a basic region D can be asserted a t any point if D is ju st a rectangle, o r if D
consists ju st of a rectangle within which is a single labelled closed curve.
Conflicting- information Wfd D' is obtainable from D if D has a region that is both shaded and
in which occurs an ®-sequence.
Unification Wfd D is obtainable from D\ and D2 if th e following hold:
1. T he set of labels of D is the union of the set of labels of D\ and £>2 -
2. If a region r of either D\ or £ > 2 is shaded, then there is a counterpart0 of it in D which
is also shaded. Likewise, if any region r is shaded, then there is a counterpart in eith er
£>! or A> which is also shaded.
3. If an ®-sequence occurs6 in a region r in either D\ or D2 , then an ®-sequence occurs in
some counterpart of r in D. Likewise, if an ®-sequence occurs in some region r in D,
then an ®-sequence occurs in some counterpart o f r in D\ or Do.
“T he counterpart relation between regions is defined inductively. Basic regions r and s are counterparts
either if they are each entire regions enclosed by rectangles or if they are each entire regions enclosed by
identically labelled curves. If r i and si are counterparts, and S2 are counterparts, n and r 2 are of the
same diagram, and sj and S2 are of the same diagram, then r i U r 2 and si U 3 2 are counterparts, and so
are n and (where r is the region exterior to r but interior to its surrounding rectangle). It follows th a t
r i n r 2 and si n S2 , and r i \ r 2 and s 1 \ S2 will be counterparts as well.
4An sequence occurs in region r iff r is the smallest region such th a t each ® occurs in some minimal
region th a t is part of r.
Figure 6.4: Venn-I inference rules
diagrammatic unit. So it seems fair to deem these rules artefactually formal, licensing only
fine-grained transitions which respect the piece-by-piece composition of wfds.
Introduction o f a basic region allows a diagram to be built “from scratch”: either a rect
angle, or a rectangle with one labelled curve. Such diagrams are very simple, constructible
in at most two stages according to the well-formedness clauses. As such, they are rather like
the c = c axioms (c any variable-free term) which are assertible at any time in first-order
systems with equality. Given the syntactic simplicity of these representations (amounting
to ones constructed at or near the base case of the well-formedness definitions), we may
consider such rules to lie within the bounds of artefactual formality.
Conflicting information can also be explained away as an artefactually formal rule. This
may be surprising, given that it licenses any diagram whatsoever provided the input diagram
has a shaded region that contains an ^-sequence; so its application amounts to a formal
“jump” in the derivation, yielding a diagram that isn’t a primitive construction step away
from some previous one. This doesn’t constitute some egregious deviation from artefactual
formality, however, since the end-diagram is completely arbitrary and so may be taken to
be “constructed” in a degenerate sense. To see why, consider how the analogous kind of
inference would be made in a standard first-order system. In order to derive arbitrary
<t>from contradictory statements x and one would introduce as an assumption the
formula -xf>, derive the contradictory statements, and then discharge the assumption with
-<-elimination to yield <f>. In classical linguistic derivations, to-be-discharged assumptions
like -Kj> may appear at any time, yet system-wide artefactual formality is maintained since
the inferences that are then made on the basis of such assumptions proceed in a syntactically
gradual manner. However, this particular proof-procedure is unavailable to Venn-I users
since the negations of wfds aren’t generally expressible within the system. Conflicting
information compensates by introducing in one step the arbitrary diagram which would
otherwise be “constructed” by ->-elimination. As such, this diagram really can’t be thought
to be derived from previous ones in the proof, and so Conflicting information’s inclusion
in Venn-I no more compromises the system’s enforcement of fine-grainedness than does the
allowance of arbitrary to-be-discharged assumptions in first-order derivations.
The Path to Coarse-grainedness
In terms of artefactual formality, the Venn-I rules we have considered so far are rather
like the canonical inference rules of mainstream linguistic systems, licensing only gradual
Figure 6.5: A path to ill-formedness in Venn-I
syntactic transformations. The same verdict can’t be given for the remaining Venn-I rules,
however.
The rule of Erasure of a diagrammatic object is a one interesting case. When applied
to shading or <8 >-sequences, it is the model of artefactual formality, amounting to a very
simple and straightforward deletion operation on wfd artefacts. When used to erase curves,
however, this rule opens a can of worms which eventually forces Venn-I to sacrifice system-
wide artefactual formality for proof-theoretic completeness.
A problem with the rule’s original formulation is that it allows any curve in a wfd to be
erased, and hence permits the derivation of ill-formed diagrams from well-formed ones.22
This is illustrated in Figure 6.5; while it is true that the middle wfd can be constructed from
the left wfd by the addition of a single labelled curve, the original rule allows the middle
diagram to be transformed into the right diagram even though this diagram has redundant,
disjoint minimal regions (and thus is ill-formed). For n > 3, it will always be the case that
one can transform an n-curve well-formed Venn diagram into an ill-formed one by erasing
some curve. Fortunately, the rule can be modified to block this undesirable result without
sacrificing the completeness of the system (Scotto di Luzio 2001). The modification requires
that curve-erasure be permitted only if what results is well-formed.
Does the modified rule meet the requirements of artefactual formality? The structural
faithfulness criterion is indeed met, since the rule’s application ultimately comes down to
the deletion of some number of objects from a previous wfd. As such, the rule “respects”
the compositional structure of the input diagram by yielding what is more or less one of
its “subdiagrams.” However, the operation from diagram to subdiagram isn’t as simple
as one might hope: the extra conditions which accompany curve-erasure may require a
large number of diagrammatic objects to be deleted or adjusted in just one step (not just
22Numerous extensions of Venn-I (e.g., Venn-II (also in Shin 1994), Hammer’s heterogeneous Venn system
(Hammer 1994), and “spider” diagrams (Howse et al. 2000)) inherit this defect. Fortunately, they can also
inherit the patch described below.
Figure 6 .6 : An application of Unification
I— ►
Figure 6.7: A '‘reorganizational” use of Unification
the curve, but possibly some of the shadings and ®’s as well; see the rule’s description in
Figure 6.4). In some cases, all the shading and <S>-sequences of the input diagram would
have to be altered upon erasure of a curve to preserve both well-formedness and truth. This
is not especially paradigmatic of a simple syntactic manipulation: nor would we be prone
to call such transitions syntactically fine-grained.
The rule of Unification goes even further than curve-erasure in breaking the mold. This
is a rule which allows one to pool together into a single diagram the “information” contained
in two. Notably, the resulting diagram need not bear any direct topological resemblance
to either of the pair of diagrams that precede it; all that matters is that every piece of
information be preserved in the end-diagram. In the unification displayed in Figure 6 .6 ,
for instance, the topological relations between curves labeled A3 and A 4 are not preserved
since, e.g., they meet at two points before unification, and four points after.
A degenerate case of unification occurs when one of the pair of diagrams being unified
is in fact the “empty” diagram, consisting just of a rectangle. The rule then allows for the
complete reorganization of the other diagram. In particular, we could in effect relabel that
diagram and make the appropriate adjustments to the shadings and ^-sequences as required
by the rule. This is illustrated in Figure 6.7 (where • is used to indicate the shading of a
minimal region). Given the restriction on the erasure of curves which is needed to preserve
well-formedness, it turns out that such “reorganizational” uses of Unification are necessary
to preserve the completeness of the system; if one wishes to erase a curve from a diagram
(e.g., A 2 in Figure 6.7) to prove some consequence involving only the other sets, one may
first have to apply Unification to “redraw” the diagram so that the desired curve can be
safely erased.
From the point of view of artefactual formality, such redrawing constitutes a radical
departure from the kind of syntactic transition normally made in one step. While syn
tactic facts concerning the input diagrams completely constrain what counts as a legal
end-diagram, nothing like a simple operation on the input diagrams os artefacts (some
bit of addition, deletion, or substitution) immediately yields an instantiation of the end-
diagram. This use of Unification is somewhat akin to the use of Taut Con to “rewrite”
some formula into any tautologically equivalent form, no matter how different it may look
syntactically. We don’t normally take such transitions, though decidable, to be maximally
“simple.” But whereas every such application of Taut Con can in principle be replaced
by some sequence of finer-grained transitions, no analogous story holds for Unification rel
ative to Venn-I’s current stock of inference rules. Nor is it likely that some finer-grained
replacements can be found. The geometric constraints which condemn certain curves to be
unerasable on pain of ill-formedness pretty much force Venn-I to have a redrawing rule on
pain of incompleteness. So Venn-I does not, and in an important sense, cannot support a
regime of syntactic fine-grainedness in the same way linguistic systems standardly do.
6.3.2 Barw ise and E tch em en d y’s H y p e r p r o o f
Hyperproof is a logical system which supports heterogeneous reasoning, involving both

linguistic and diagrammatic representations. We discussed its syntax and semantics in
earlier chapters (Chapter 4.3.2. p. 97; Chapter 5.2.2, p. 128); we now turn our attention to
its inference rules.
The Linguistic Subsystem
Hyperproof expands on the usual repertoire of first-order introduction and elimination rules
in three ways. The first way concerns only its linguistic subsystem: Hyperproof has three
“short-cut” rules—Taut Con, Log Con, and Ana Con—which license the derivation of some
tautological, first-order, and analytic consequence, respectively, from whatever formulas are
cited as support. The first two rules thus allow in one step what would otherwise require
many using the standard natural deduction rules; the third even squeezes in the work done
by an axiomatization of certain interpreted predicates like RightOf, SameShape, etc. As we
have already seen with Taut Con, none of these rules corresponds to some simple operation
on the formulas they treat, and hence they all fail artefactual formality.
Let’s isolate for a moment the linguistic subsystem of Hyperproof (call it Hyperproofc)
and consider the derivations it licenses. The availability of the Con rules guarantees that
some of these derivations will contain formal “leaps” in inference. In fact, at least in
principle, every valid premise-conclusion pair can be proved in one line, simply with an
application of Log Con or, if the argument’s validity depends on the meanings of the in
terpreted predicates, Ana Con.23 So Hyperproofc clearly does not enforce a regime of
fine-grainedness. However, given that every application of a Con rule is reducible to a series
of traditional rule-applications (plus a listing of axioms, for Ana Con), Hyperproofc does
support such a regime; one has the option of furnishing maximally fine-grained proofs within
the system. (In this way, Hyperproofc rather reflects everyday English usage, as discussed
in Chapter 5.)
The Heterogeneous Rules
Returning now the full system, the second class of novel inference rules consists of the
heterogeneous ones which license transitions between diagrams and formulas. For in
stance, given a diagram as support, the Observe rule allows one to derive some first-
order sentence expressing some piece of information displayed in the diagram. So sup
pose the diagram contains a medium-sized, cube-shaped icon labelled c, with no other
icons to the left of it. Then with Observe, one may derive in one step the formula
3x (Cube(x) & Medium(x) &x=c&Vy ->LeftOf(y,x)).24
The Apply rule works in the opposite direction; from a diagram and a sentence, one
can use this rule to derive a diagram which accords with both. So if instead we already
had in the derivation the above first-order formula as well as a diagram D containing some
cylinder-shaped icon labelled c with nothing to the left of it (recall th at cylinders “hide”
the size and occasionally even the shape of the objects they represent), we could derive
the diagram D' which is just like D except that the cylinder-shaped icon is replaced by a
cube-shaped, medium-sized one, still labelled with c.
Hyperproof’s third set of novel rules, dubbed “enabling” rules by the authors, allows
23These rules, of course, are not decidable, so no computer implementation of Hyperproof (or Hyperproofc)
could really check all such applications.
24Hyperproof has a rather liberal policy regarding parenthesis use, tolerating some syntactic ambiguity
modulo semantic equivalence.
declarations to be asserted in the proof. One example is the Close rule, which allows a
declaration of Case Closed at a step if some contradiction has been detected. Notably, the
contradiction cited need not be of the traditional (<£& -><f>) form, though this still counts
as one possibility (which the authors call an instance of “Syntactic Close”). One may
also issue the declaration by citing a set of formulas which together are incompatible with
some diagram..25 In such a case (suggestively called an instance of “Semantic Close” by
the authors), there need not be cited anything as explicitly contradictory as a <f>and a -i<f>.
Rather, all the rule demands is that the set of sentences simply be incompatible with the
situation depicted by the diagram, no matter how unobvious this may be.
It should be clear that none of these rules comes close to meeting the criteria of artefac
tual formality, since applications of these rules do not correspond to any simple syntactic
manipulation (or comparison) of the representations in play. For instance, no amount of
formal manipulation of a diagram will get you the sentence justified by Observe; the dia
gram just isn’t made of the right kind of stuff! Similarly, there is no hope of reducing Apply
or Semantic Close to some simple syntactic comparison of a diagram and some formulas.
In each of these cases, the inference that is licensed, though sound and decidable, fails to
have the syntactic fine-grainedness enforced by paradigmatic logical systems.
Digression: Heterogeneous Venn Diagrams
Given that Hyperproof is a heterogeneous system accommodating two syntactically distinct

representation systems, it isn’t surprising that the inference rules mediating the two aren’t
each reducible to some simple syntactic manipulation. It might be thought that hetero
geneity in itself precludes the possibility of having artefactually formal rules, but in fact
this is not quite the case. If there is a sufficiently robust syntactic “bridge” between the
two representation systems, then the artefactual formality of the distinctly heterogeneous
rffies remains a possibility.
By way of illustration, consider the heterogeneous system presented in Hammer (1994).
This system combines first-order logic with a slightly modified Venn-I. The well-formed
formulas of this system are just the usual first-order ones, while its well-formed diagrams
differ from Venn-I wfds only in the following respects:
25Actually, according to Hyperproof conventions, every step in a derivation autom atically has exactly one
diagram accessible from (or “active” in) it, so no explicit citing of a diagram is needed to apply the rule.
1. The labels of curves have to be of the form Ax 0, where 0 is a well-formed, first-order

formula with at most x free. These labels are called set terms.
2. In addition to 0-sequences, diagrams may also contain c-sequences where c is some
constant symbol. These c-sequences look and behave just like 0-sequences except for
the replacement of c’s for 0 ’s.
The semantics of the diagrams is adjusted accordingly. The region internal to a curve
labelled Ax0 is assigned the set of objects in the universe satisfying 0, and the clauses
regarding shading and 0-sequences remain the same. A c-sequence lying completely within
some region means that the denotation of c (under a standard first-order term assignment)
is one of the objects lying in the corresponding intersection of sets.
To allow inference between formulas and the modified Venn diagrams, Hammer adds
distinctly heterogeneous rules to the stock of standard Venn-I and first-order rules. For
instance, given a formula 3x0 and a diagram containing a curve labelled with set term
Ax0, the 3-Apply rule allows one to add to the diagram (i.e., copy the diagram and add)
an 0-sequence occupying at least the region inside the curve labelled Ax0. Similarly, the
3-Observe rule allows one to infer 3x 0 from some diagram which has a curve labelled Ax 0
with some 0-sequence inside. Analogous rules are available for dealing with c-sequences (in
which case the formula has the form 0(c)), and dual rules are available for the universal
quantifier.
Remarkably, these new rules rather comfortably meet the criteria of artefactual formal
ity.26 In each case, a rule application involves no more than a syntactic comparison of some
formula and some set term in a diagram, followed by a check to see whether a single dia
grammatic object (a shading, 0-sequence, or c-sequence) occupies the corresponding basic
region. Clearly, artefactual formality is facilitated here by the syntactic bridge between
formulas and diagrams provided by set terms.
The Filling-in of H yperproof
So we can isolate one reason for why Hyperproof’s current stock of heterogeneous rules
fails to be artefactually formal. Though Hyperproof as a whole is a heterogeneous system
containing two different representation systems, the individual subsystems are themselves
homogeneous, with very little syntactic overlap. The only direct “bridge” between the two
260 f course, the artefactual formality (or lack thereof) of the “old” rules inherited by the Hammer system
remains the same.
is the set of constant symbols; these symbols of course appear in formulas, but can also be
used to label icons in a diagram. However, this bridge is much too flimsy to support in any
directly syntactic sense the robust inferences licensed by Observe, Apply, and Close. So as
it currently stands, Hyperproof does not support a regime of syntactic fine-grainedness.
Noticing how the Con rules offer bona fide short-cuts relative to the rest of the linguis
tic rules, we might wonder whether it would be possible to extend Hyperproof by adding
other, simpler rules which “analyze” the heterogeneous transitions already licensed by the
system.27 If so, then rules like Observe, Apply, and Close could be seen to be Con ana
logues, offering short-cuts whose application could be replaced in favour of some series of
syntactically finer-grained ones.
In fact, such a supplementation is possible. The trick is to exploit the small degree of
syntactic overlap that already exists between the different representation systems. In par
ticular, the modest syntactic bridge offered by the constant symbols can be used delicately
to facilitate the piece-wise transfer of information across the systems. We would then be
able to exploit the artefactual formality possessed by Hyperproof’s standard linguistic rules
to yield a derivation which is syntactically fine-grained throughout.
The first thing to do is to extend Hyperproof’s language with sixty-four unary predicate
symbols, one for each slot in a diagram. We also make available to the user a full first-order
axiomatization of the Hyperproof blocks-worlds (as discussed in Chapter 5.3.1). Now we
are able to express linguistically any information contained in a diagram, and with the
axiomatization we are able to use just the standard first-order introduction and elimination
rules to derive any of its first-order consequences.
With the linguistic subsystem ready for use, we next add to Hyperproof two sets of
heterogeneous rules: P-Observe and P-Apply for each interpreted unary predicate symbol
P (i.e., where P is one of Cube, Dodec, Tet, Small, Medium, Large, or one of the sixty-four
new positional predicates). These rules are designed to have very restricted application,
relating diagrams only with atomic sentences of the appropriate kind. For example, the
formula Cube(c) is derivable from a diagram under Cube-Observe only if the diagram’s icon
token labelled c (should it exist) is cube-shaped. Similarly, given a sentence Small(c) and
a diagram D with a cylinder-shaped icon token labelled c, one may use Small-Apply to
derive a diagram just like D except that the icon-token labelled c is replaced with a small
sized one of the appropriate shape. Due to Hyperproof’s representational conventions (by
27This possibility was raised by Keith Stenning (private communication).
which each object in the domain is represented by exactly one icon token), an application
of any of these rules will pertain to only one icon token of some diagram (i.e., the support
diagram for P-Observe, the end-diagram for P-Apply). Furthermore, that icon token will
have to be labelled. So applying these rules amounts to no more than checking whether a
single determinate icon token, picked out by its label, has a particular syntactic property.
As such, these rules each meet the requirements of artefactual formality; the syntactic
“manipulation” involved requires no more than replacing one icon token with another, or
writing one atomic sentence with the appropriate constant substituted in.
Also add to the system a Diagram Weakening rule which takes a diagram D and applies
one of the following operations on a single icon in D:
• move it off the board;

• replace it with a bag-shaped icon of the same size; or
• replace it with a cylinder-shaped icon which has super-imposed on it a question mark
or the appropriate shape “picture.”
In other words, with an application of Diagram Weakening one can hide an object’s position,
shape, or size. Given th a t its application involves the adjustment of just one icon token, it
too counts as artefactually formal.28
With Hyperproof extended in this way, we now have a means of finding finer-grained
replacements for any heterogeneous inference in the original system. Suppose, for instance,
that we want to “analyze” an application of the original Observe rule, by which some formula
F has been derived from diagram D. We could do this by transforming icon-by-icon the
information contained in D into some linguistic analogue, and then do whatever linguistic
transformations are needed to construct the desired end-formula F. More specifically, we
could assign temporary labels to all the non-labelled icon tokens of D (Hyperproof has
an Assume rule for doing this), and then, for each icon token, apply up to three different
P-Observes to derive atomic formulas describing its size, shape, and position. On the basis
of the blocks-world axiomatization, we could then use the usual linguistic inference rules
to derive F , while discharging all our extra labelling assumptions with Hyperproof’s Name
rule (which works much like 3-elimination).
Applications of A pply, Close, and indeed any heterogeneous inference can be “elim
inated” in a similar manner. (For Apply, one can use applications of P-Apply to slowly
28Note that we could replace Diagram Weakening with Position-, Shape-, and Size-W eakening if we wanted
to impose more determ inacy to the rule applications.
build up the desired end-diagram, and then use Diagram Weakening if necessary. For Close,
we can observe enough linguistic consequences to allow us to use the linguistic rules to de
rive an explicit contradiction.) This method, of course, involves nothing more than the
reduction of diagrammatic inference to linguistic inference, something which appears abso
lutely antithetical to Hyperproof’s raison d ’etre. Nonetheless, by exploiting the little bit of
syntactic overlap that exists between its two representation systems, we have discovered an
extension of Hyperproof which supports the kind of syntactic fine-grainedness enforced by
canonical linguistic, systems.
6.4 C onclusion
The inference rules of mainstream linguistic systems tend to be of a kind. They aren’t
merely sound and decidable; rather, their application almost always amounts to some sim
ple manipulation of the concrete artefacts which are the instantiations of formulas. The
artefactual formality of paradigmatically “formal” rules underwrites a reasonable sense in
which formal derivations can be thought to be fine-grained demonstrations—lengthy proof-
objects which display the slow, syntactic transformation of premises to conclusion. While
this “constraint” on mainstream formal logic is hardly the result of some conscious decision
on the part of logicians, it is nonetheless a remarkably pervasive feature of their practice,
one which colours formal logic’s contribution to the philosophical conception of proof and
argumentation.
The two diagrammatic case studies of this chapter help to put into relief the kind of
idealizations made by mainstream linguistic systems. Both Venn-I and Hyperproof contain
rules whose application does not correspond to the sort of simple manipulations paradig
matic of canonical introduction and elimination rules. As such, the artefacts they license
as proofs are allowed to contain syntactic “jumps” in inference, and hence do not have
quite the discursive character that formal derivations normally do. In failing to enforce
a particular regime of syntactic fine-grainedness, Venn-I and Hyperproof diverge from the
idealization of argumentation instituted by mainstream formal logic. Once again, we find
the innovation of these systems to go beyond the mere fact that they treat non-Iinguistic
representations. These formal systems also license a use of representations quite distinct
from the one standardly modelled by formal logic.
Chapter 7
Conclusion
In the last three chapters, we saw how various diagrammatic systems fail to support one
or more of univocality, explicitness, and fine-grainedness—three discursive responsibilities
which are enforced by first-order (and indeed, most other) linguistic systems. So our in
vestigation has uncovered specific ways that diagrammatic schemes differ from standard
linguistic ones. Of course, it is unsurprising to find some difference between diagrammatic
systems on one hand, and linguistic ones on the other. The purpose of this concluding
discussion is to indicate why such a difference matters when it comes to assessing whether
the Logical Approach to vindicating diagrammatic proof has been successful. In doing so,
we cannot help but touch on the question of why such differences matter to logic itself.
7.1 A L acuna in th e Logical Approach
In Chapter 1, we noted how formal logic occupies an honorific place in philosophical peda
gogy and practice. Setting aside for now the question of to what extent this place has been
earned, it is hard to deny that it is simply part of the philosophical air to think that formal
systems offer an important and illuminating characterization of proof and argumentation.
Indeed, this sentiment is so pervasive that it is adopted even by many who endeavour to
challenge logical orthodoxy.
The practitioners of the Logical Approach are a case in point. Though seeking to
undermine a widespread philosophical view (namely, the one which relegates diagrams to a
secondary role in mathematical proof), they nonetheless employ a mainstream methodology
for achieving this goal. They begin by taking for granted the importance and relevance of
171
Chapter 7. Conclusion 172
formal systems to debates concerning proof and argumentation more generally, and proceed
on the assumption that these mathematical systems may be appealed to in the support of
particular philosophical ends.
In fact, they argue as if the existence of sound and complete diagrammatic logics offers
the coup de grage in the debate over the acceptability of diagrams in proof. Recall the
quotations from the Introduction (emphasis mine in ail cases):
The importance of these results is this. They show that there is no princi
pled distinction between inference formalisms that use text and those that use
diagrams (Barwise and Etchemendy 1995, p.214).
This type of result directly refuted a widely-held assumption that diagrams are
inherently misleading, and abolished theoretical objections to diagrams being
used in proof (Lemon and Shin 2002).
When the grammar and semantics is specified carefully enough, diagrams can
be used in entirely rigorous proofs (Hammer 1995, p.26).
Remarkably, there tends to be very little discussion in defense of these crucial inferences.
They simply take the existence of sound diagrammatic systems to provide decisive evidence
in favour of the use of diagrams in proof.
But throughout this dissertation, we have found reason to question exactly this sort of
inference, and indeed even more. Even before wondering what specifically diagrammatic
systems might tell us about the legitimacy of diagrams in everyday proof, in Chapter 3 we
found ourselves puzzling over the relevance of any formal system to real-life argumentation.
That formal logic has some sort of relevance seems clear, but how it does is something which
hasn’t been given all that much articulation. As it is simply unsatisfying to take formal logic
to be providing some practical method (or “tool”) for judging the real, informal arguments
we actually encounter, we were left looking for a more nuanced account. Fortunately, we
found that the pragmatic framework introduced in Chapter 2 can be used to ground one
such account, with first-order logic paradigmatic of how mainstream formal systems provide
a particular model of argumentation.
This model is one which puts a premium on the undertaking of onerous discursive
responsibilities. Mainstream formal systems enforce a kind of argumentative ethos by which
provers endeavour to achieve difficult communicative acts. According to this ethos, putting
forward a successful derivation involves more than just “following the rules” of some sound
formal system; it also amounts to undertaking a discursive burden quite unlike the ones
usually adopted in everyday contexts. This suggests that if we take formal systems like
first-order ones as our guide, then what makes something a proof (as opposed to some
other kind of discursive act) involves much more than the soundness of its inferences. It
must also involve a demonstration which is remarkably univocal, explicit, and fine-grained.
Armed with this understanding, we were able to dig deeper and investigate in sub
sequent chapters what it is about the use of first-order systems which supports such a
discursive undertaking. We found that the ability to discharge the idealized responsibilities
of univocality, explicitness, and fine-grainedness is crucially dependent upon one’s choice
of representation system. In the case of first-order derivations, particular features of first-
order language are exploited in the service of such discursive endeavours—and indeed it
is straightforward to see that these features are ones shared by virtually all mainstream
formal languages.1 Even if only due to a kind of linguistic hegemony, formal logic has come
to underwrite a remarkably uniform idealization of proof and argumentation.
But if we now return our attention to the diagrammatic systems on which the Logical
Approach rests its case, we find that in light of the account just proposed, the intended coup
de grage is in fact an Achilles heel. For these diagrammatic systems fail to inherit many of
the features which support formal logic’s mainstream model of proof. What emerges is a
marked and telling contrast between the “families” of linguistic and diagrammatic systems.
The properties which are pervasive almost to the point of invisibility in linguistic systems are
simply absent in many of the flagship diagrammatic logics. In fact, we saw how particular
kinds of diagrammatic systems are guaranteed to lack one or more of the relevant structural
features.2 Insofar as we take formal logic as a whole to be providing a unified idealization of
argumentation, we can’t help but declare these diagrammatic systems to be curious outliers,
supporting discursive responsibilities more like the ones adopted in everyday contexts than
the idealized ones of most formal language.
Of course, the defender of diagrams could complain that we have rigged the game, first by
privileging first-order logic to the extent that we have, and then by criticizing diagrammatic
systems for their divergence from it. But even should this charge stand, it ought provide
1Examples of these features include: the articulateness and unique readability of formal language (Chap
ter 4), the division of “logical” and “non-logical” vocabulary (C hapter 5), and the syntactic formality of
canonical inference rules (C hapter 6).
2Recall th at m etric maps can’t support univocality (C hapter 4), systems with immediately interpreted
semantics can’t support first-order explicitness (Chapter 5), and Venn diagrams can’t support a kind of
syntactic fine-grainedness (C hapter 6).
the defender little comfort. For in taking first-order derivations to be paradigmatic of proof,
we haven’t done anything particularly unusual or provocative; we have merely followed the
party line of mainstream philosophical practice—a practice which can be marshalled some
defense, as we saw in Chapter 3. If the subsequent negative verdict on diagrams isn’t to
be the final word on the matter, then there needs to be some explicit argument for why
it is inappropriate to privilege first-order derivations to the extent—and in the particular
way—that we have. The fact that, to date, no such argument has been made prominent
seems to me a significant lacuna in the Logical Approach to vindicating diagrams.
To put the point another way: given the current state of the field, the onus should be
on the defender to articulate an alternative conception of proof which holds the promise
of vindicating the use of non-linguistic representations. By failing to provide explicitly a
clear and distinctive conception of what kinds of proofs they seek to vindicate, diagrams’
defenders leave us little choice but to interpret them as deferring to some default, main
stream conception. Unfortunately, this “default” conception is itself rather amorphous and
ill-defined. And to the extent that it can be characterized as the one encapsulated by first-
order logic (as seems reasonable to do given its institution in philosophical pedagogy and
practice), diagrammatic logical systems can’t help but come up short.
Thus, our investigation finds the Logical Approach not to have fully succeeded in its
aims, as it is simply not obvious how the existence of sound diagrammatic systems decides
the question of whether diagrams can be used legitimately in proof. To answer that question
adequately, a battery of deep and difficult issues concerning the nature(s) of both formal
and informal argumentation will have to be addressed. This is a major task for which the
furnishing of mathematical systems alone will not be adequate.
7.2 D iscourses of Logic
It should be noted that the Logical Approach has had some successes as well, not the least
of which is the demonstration that one isn’t doomed to deductive failure as a result of
using diagrams. All the diagrammatic systems we canvassed are sound in that their rules
of inference are truth-preserving. This is an important victory for diagrams’ defenders,
undercutting some of the worries that diagrams are somehow “inherently” misleading. Pro
vided one is careful enough to follow the right rules in the right circumstances, the Logical
Approach has shown that it is indeed possible to use diagrams correctly.
It is a mistake, however, to think that soundness is all there is to proof. Soundness might
be a necessary condition for an argument to be considered a genuine proof, but it certainly
isn’t sufficient. Our investigations strongly suggest that any adequate conception of proof
(and of argumentation more generally) must also be sensitive to the pragmatic factors which
are in play. Remarkably, this observation holds even when one considers the austere world
of formal logic. Despite its pretentions, the mathematics of formal logic hasn’t managed
to abstract away the pragmatic aspect of proof. Nor should it, for the pragmatic aspect
is exactly what allows these mathematical systems to be recognizable as idealizations of
argumentation in the first place.3
Recognizing the pragmatic aspect of logic opens up a new argumentative strategy for
diagrams’ defenders, or indeed anyone who strives for a more comprehensive theory of proof
and argumentation. For by now it should be clear that the seemingly humdrum abstractions
of formal logic are not discourse-neutral, and hence not neutral with respect to choice of
representation system either. Simply in virtue of adopting the traditional logical gloss
on what argumentation consists in—a sequence of formulas from some inductively defined
language whose transitions are instances of truth-preserving introduction or elimination
rules—one has already stacked the deck against many forms of argumentative, inferential, or
persuasive discourse. As this gloss has been tailor-made for one particular kind of discourse
and representation system, it seems that the vindication of diagrams in proof and inference
would have to reside at least partially in the broadening of logical methodology.
Consider, for example, the virtually universal tendency to study recursively defined
languages for which a unique readability theorem holds. Doing so is a matter of course for
logicians, a “triviality” almost never thought to be worth noting. Indeed, it is tempting
to think that working with such languages is simply what one does when doing formal
logic. But this seemingly innocuous methodological decision implicitly serves to privilege
univocality as characteristic of argumentative discourse. While this may be an entirely
appropriate abstraction for some domains, it’s not obvious that it would be for many others.
Perhaps a more pointed example would be the standard decision to characterize proofs
3It might be thought th a t the particularly discursive factors isolated here are somewhat less significant
when it comes to characterizing the phenomenon of reasoning as opposed to th a t of proof. Presumably, the
be-all and end-all of correct reasoning is truth-preservation, apart from any communicative element (though
this too may be doubtful). W hatever the merits of this claim, it only serves to emphasize the importance of
making the distinction between proof and reasoning clear. In fact, the practitioners of the Logical Approach
have tended to employ these two concepts somewhat interchangeably, which may provide partial explanation
for why they have been so quick to take the existence of sound diagrammatic systems to be decisive evidence
in favour of diagram m atic proof.
as sequences of representations, and (relatedly) to characterize inference as syntactic trans

formation. When treating linguistic practice, this seems to be a choice reasonably faithful
to the overt sentence-by-sentence structure of informal text. But a moment’s reflection
shows such an abstraction to be not as well motivated for the discursive activities surround
ing many diagrammatic representations. Consider the use of maps, for example. Hardly
ever does one employ anything like a syntactic transformation when reasoning from a map.
The main “operation” is one of information extraction, so that what’s at play is usually a
single representation which rarely gets altered. Arguably, the same can be said for common
uses of Venn diagrams; one usually presents (or is confronted with) a single Venn diagram
representing all the relevant information, not a series of diagrams each representing parts
of it.
Along these same lines, recent work on the logic of conceptual graphs has included the
development of “projection” calculi by which logical consequence between two graphs is
demonstrated not through some sequence of syntactic transformations, but through the
presentation of a structure-preserving homomorphism (Kerdiles 2001, Ch.3). “Proofs” in
this sense thus amount to the drawing of arrows from conclusion graphs to premise graphs.
From the traditional standpoint this may seem a radical innovation, but it might also be
the abstraction best suited for modelling the inferences naturally made with these repre
sentations.
Such considerations suggest that the non-prejudicial study of alternative representation
schemes will require methods and techniques other than the ones found in the traditional
arsenal of formal logic. This is not as bland a claim as it may initially seem. For with
a broadening of logical methods will also have to come a broadening of logic’s subject-
matter. Throughout this dissertation, we have seen how maps, graphs, and other sorts
of diagrams are in important ways different from traditional formal derivations. The use
of these diagrammatic objects can’t be quite like the use of formulas in proof, for if it
were then we shouldn’t have been able to detect the discursive differences we did. Given
that these differences can’t help but make diagrams seem somewhat less “logical” from the
traditional point of view, bringing them into the fold will require not only the development
of new logical techniques, but also a real extension of what is considered “logical” at all. It
would involve none other than a recalibration of the discipline of logic to better match a
phenomenon as it exists in all its forms.
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2 The Pragm atics o f Proof 14

3 Formal Derivation as a Model of A rgum entation 39

4 Pragmatic Constraints on Syntactic Ontology 74

5 Enthymeme, Explicitness, and Expressiveness 109

6 Artefactual Formality 141

4.1 Two Venn d ia g ra m s .......................................................................................... 99

5.1 Illustration of a free ride with Euler circles...................................................... 125

6.1 Prepositional introduction and elimination rules .......................................... 145

1.1 A rg u m en ts, P roofs, and D erivations

Arguments abound. Courtrooms, lecture halls, newspapers, conversations—these are but

in question is given in natural language, it is presumed that the ultimate demonstration

1.2 L anguage and D iagram s

Lemon and Shin (2002) draw a similar philosophical moral:

As with language, the diagrams used in real-life reasoning and representation

As long as we treat diagrams as secondary or as mere heuristic tools, we cannot

1.3 T h e Significance o f Logical S ystem s

• It is fruitful to think of formal derivations in “pragmatic” or discursive

• Linguistic formal derivations standardly have distinctive discursive prop­

1.5 P rev iew and Plan

In C h a p te r 2 , 1 begin by introducing a general framework which grounds the comparative

The Pragm atics o f P roof

2.1 “W h at is an A rgum ent?”

2.1.1 A rgum ent Interp retation and S tru ctu re

2.1.2 A rgu m en t A ssessm en t

A successful (refined) argument is one in which (p.171):

• Every premise is among the statements assumed in the setting.

2.1 .3 Form al D erivations

2 .1 .4 O pen Q uestions R egarding Inform al A rgum ent

Regarding Argument Interpretation

1. Al is older than Bill. Premise

Regarding Epistemological Assessm ent

2.2 A Pragm atic Garb

That dimension, I maintain, is to be found in the pragmatics of argumentation and proof.

2.2.1 M o tiv a tio n

For suppose the validity of a proof involving a diagram is challenged. In defense

indirectly). A second issue is more fundamental: whether to engage in further justification

Two Kinds o f Discursive Act, Two Kinds o f Assessment

Argument Interpretation R evisited

Epistemological Assessm ent Revisited

2.3 R ep resen tation and R esponsibility

Fortunately, to accommodate this second desideratum, there is no need to supplement

2.4 Sum m ary

Formal D erivation as a M odel of

3.1 T h e Irrelevance o f Formal Logic?

After enough internalization, enough transformation, enough generalization,

3.2 Two C on cep tion s o f Formal L ogic

Certainly, if one is operating on masses of meaningless symbols as one says, then

Logical theories have sometimes been compared to physical theories. In this

logical theories. Rather, it is primarily a matter of individual judgment how well

explain in what sense formal systems are a model of mathematics. Normatively,

We shall now proceed to meet this challenge head on.

• Linguistic formal derivations standardly have distinctive discursive prop

straightforward, knock-down argument in favour of diagrammatic proof. We will find, how

Barwise and Etchemendy’s Hyperproof (Barwise and Etchemendy 1994) is a computer