Many Logics, One Methodology: A Plea for Logical Pluralism in Formalised Reasoning (preprint)

This position statement looks back on two decades of work on shallow embeddings of non-classical logics in classical higher-order logic (HOL), a line of research that expanded into a range of logic embeddings in HOL and inspired the LogiKEy logic-pluralistic knowledge representation and reasoning methodology. This paper advances the case for logical pluralism at object-logic level within a unifying meta-logical framework such as LogiKEy, grounding the argument in computational metaphysics. More broadly, it advocates principled support for logical pluralism in modern proof assistants, and cautions against logical imperialism -- the rigid adoption of a single foundational logic for large-scale theory developments -- which impedes the interdisciplinary reuse that LogiKEy is designed to enable.

Computer Science and Metaphysics: A Cross-Fertilization

Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to unearth philosophical insights that are either difficult or impossible to find using traditional philosophical methods. Computational metaphysics is computational philosophy with a focus on metaphysics. In this paper, we (a) develop results in modal metaphysics whose discovery was computer assisted, and (b) conclude that these results work not only to the obvious benefit of philosophy but also, less obviously, to the benefit of computer science, since the new computational techniques that led to these results may be more broadly applicable within computer science. The paper includes a description of our background methodology and how it evolved, and a discussion of our new results.