Seoyeon Park

Kripke’s ‘The Question of Logic’ ignited a surge of interest in the Adoption Problem, a challenge to the coherence of adopting a special subset of logical principles. However, from an exegetical standpoint the fixation on the Adoption Problem risks overlooking the central message of Kripke’s paper. His text contains broad and unusually forceful commitments about the nature of logic that cannot be justified by any lesson one could draw from the Adoption Problem. Partly on this basis, I argue that Kripke in fact presents two distinct challenges: the well-known Adoption Problem and what I call the Interpretation Problem. The Interpretation Problem suggests that the idea of adopting a logic by choosing one among several formal systems is ultimately incoherent. In particular, Kripke provides reasons to think that one cannot so much as interpret formal systems of logic, in the sense that one cannot specify how the formal systems can guide reasoning, unless engaging in reasoning that prejudges matters in favor of a system conforming to that reasoning. It turns out that the Interpretation Problem has extensive implications for the nature of logic that provide support for Kripke’s strongest claims about it.

Intentional states are ‘transparent’ in that we can know our own intentional states by considering only the external states of affairs represented by them. I delve into how we come to acquire beliefs about our own intentional states transparently and why they should be knowledge rather than mere beliefs. Transparency is grounded in the rational agent’s capacity for reason-sensitivity to engage in reason-based cognitions in accordance with rational norms. These reason-based cognitions presuppose implicit understandings of our attitudes toward the pertinent contents. I argue that it is these implicit understandings from which we come to acquire self-knowledge about our intentional states transparently.

Models help us explain and predict the behavior of complex systems. However, models typically contain idealizations, false assumptions about real-world systems. My goal is to clarify the role of models in scientific explanation. I claim that models enable the regularities underlying real-world systems to be epistemically accessible. My analysis of Galilean and non-Galilean models reveals that idealizations are necessary for the model to play this role. This means that models represent real-world systems in virtue of idealizations. I argue that such model-based representations are irreducible to more familiar kinds of representation, exploring when model-based representations are regarded as correct.

My goal is to clarify Kant's conception of logic as self-knowledge of the understanding as to the mere form of thought, considering its methodological consequence: logic develops through mere reflection. Reflection is a function of the understanding that results in the concept of a common feature of various representations. I first examine what it means that logic is the science of the mere form of thought as such. There are two forms of thought that render thoughts with different types of unity. The first is the synthetic form that determines how a thought ought to relate to its object. The second is the analytic form that constitutes the way a thought ought to be related to each other. I propose that Kant’s logic employs the reflection on higher-order representations about thoughts, which are themselves representations of objects, with respect to their forms. Referring to Jäsche Logic, I outline the process of this higher-order reflection for logic. Reflection as to the synthetic form generates transcendental logic, and reflection as to the analytic form yields pure general logic. My account will reveal that these two kinds of reflection correspond to transcendental reflection and logical reflection presented in Amphiboly.