Book Review of Jody Azzounis Tracking Reason Essay -- Azzouni

Jody Azzouni, Tracking Reason In many ways, Tracking Reason resembles Jody Azzouni’s previous book, Deflating Existential Consequence. The subject matter of each lies at the interface of metaphysics, logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of language. The style is both entertaining and clear. The positions argued for are so controversial as to sound almost insane. And yet the arguments provided are illuminating, and manage to make the positions seem almost like common sense. Both books are worth reading both for specialists and those interested in 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 indispensability of mathematics, he simply argues that the indispensability of a form of discourse (and even the truth of existentially quantified sentences!) is not a sign of ontological commitment. This position helps motivate some of the positions in the current book, but I think it isn’t necessary. Tracking Reason advances several separate, but related positions in its three parts. However, for some reason the subtitle has them in the wrong order - Part I argues for a special deflationary account of truth (and deals at length with the semantics and regimentation of natural language); Part II argues that the role of mathematical proof is to â€Å"indicate† a derivation in some mechanical deduction system; and Part III argues that these two positions are (despite appearances) compatible with a non-syntactic view of consequence as a type of truth-preservation. Parts I and II are relatively independent, and I think can profitably be read on their own. Part III depends mo... ...f semantics (topological and Kripke) that are sound and complete for S4 modal logic. The fact that we only know of one semantics for propositional logic has misled us into thinking that its models are more significant than they really are. As I mentioned earlier, this book is modular enough that it may be worth reading parts of this book independently of the whole thing. Although Azzouni says that much of the material of the nine chapters of this book derives from ten 3 papers (cited in the introduction to each of the three parts), they seem to have been edited and unified enough that a reader interested in just one topic may prefer to read the relevant Part (I or II) of this book rather than the separate papers that it is based on. But for anyone interested in the relationships between truth, proof, and consequence, I recommend reading the entire thing.