Book Review of Jody Azzounis Tracking Reason Essay -- Azzouni

Jody Azzouni, bring in ReasonIn many ways, Tracking Reason resembles Jody Azzounis previous book,Deflating Existential Consequence. The subject matter of apiece lies at the interfaceof metaphysics, logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy oflanguage. The style is both entertain and clear. The emplacements argued forargon so controversial as to sound almost insane. And in so far the arguments providedare illuminating, and manage to make the positions seem almost like harshsense. Both books are worth reading both for specialists and those enkindlein a clarifying (if idiosyncratic) take on these issues.In the previous book, Azzouni argued for a type of fictionalism about mathematics.But rather than following Hartry Field in denying the indispensabilityof mathematics, he simply argues that the indispensability of a form of plow(and even the rightfulness of existentially quantified sentences) is not a sign of ontologicalcommitment. This position helps motivate some of the positions in thecurrent book, but I theorize it isnt necessary.Tracking Reason advances several separate, but related positions in its threeparts. However, for some reason the subtitle has them in the wrong secernate -Part I argues for a special deflationary account of truth (and deals at lengthwith the semantics and regimentation of natural language) Part II argues thatthe role of mathematical proof is to indicate a derivation in some mechanicdeduction system and Part III argues that these two positions are (despiteappearances) compatible with a non-syntactic view of consequence as a type oftruth-preservation. separate I and II are relatively independent, and I think keisterprofitably be read on their own. Part III depends mo... ...f semantics (topological and Kripke) that are sound andcomplete for S4 modal logic. The fact that we only know of unity semanticsfor propositional logic has misled us into thinking that its models are moresignificant than they sincerely are.As I menti wholenessd earlier, this book is modular enough that it may be worthreading parts of this book independently of the whole thing. Although Azzounisays that overmuch of the material of the nine chapters of this book derives from ten3papers (cited in the introduction to each of the three parts), they seem to havebeen edited and coordinated enough that a reader interested in just one topic mayprefer to read the relevant Part (I or II) of this book rather than the separatepapers that it is based on. But for anyone interested in the relationships betweentruth, proof, and consequence, I recommend reading the entire thing.