Normativity of Logic

In this paper, I will argue that the dialogical account of the normativity of logic does not succeed, and that a different direction will be required. I first present a recent challenge by Russell (2017), which argues that on a three-fold distinction of degrees of normative entanglement, logic is only normative in the weakest sense. I then examine Dutilh Novaes’s (2015) recent dialogical account of normativity, and I sketch an alternative account that relies on a distinction between the broadest possible conception of logic and the narrower study of the many artificial language systems that tend to occupy most logicians’ attention. I urge that a conflation of these two activities is the source of many disputes concerning the normativity of logic. My primary objective in this paper is to show that accounts of the normativity of logic require a clarification of what logic is about.