Jean-Yves Béziau

Jean-Yves Béziau in Jerusalem, January 2016

Jean-Yves Béziau (French: bezjo; born January 15, 1965 in Orléans, France) is a professor and researcher of the Brazilian Research Council — CNPq — at the University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Béziau is a dual citizen of France and Switzerland (Ropraz, VD). He is a fluent speaker of English and Portuguese as well as his native French, and has published works in all of these three languages.

Career

A former student of (and frequent collaborator with) Newton da Costa, he works in the field of logic—in particular, paraconsistent logic, the square of opposition and universal logic. He holds a Master's degree in Philosophy from Pantheon-Sorbonne University on the allegory of the cave (advisor: Sarah Kofman), a PhD in Philosophy from the University of São Paulo on Logical truth (advisor: Newton da Costa), a MSc and a PhD in Logic and Foundations of Computer Science from Denis Diderot University (advisor: Daniel Andler). He has been working in France, Switzerland, Brazil, Poland and USA (UCLA, Stanford and UCSD ).

He is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of

as well as the area editor of logic of

He is the organizer of various series of events in logic around the world:

UNILOG 2015 Closing Session at Istanbul University, Turkey

Controversy: acceptability of offensive remarks about women and sexual minorities in academic works on logic

In March 2014, Béziau published a peer-reviewed article entitled "The relativity and universality of logic."[7] The paper distinguishes the use of the word 'logic' to denote reasoning itself and to denote a theory of reasoning, and questions whether either sense is relative or universal. In the part of the paper, entitled “Three roads to nowhere?” in view of this distinction he criticizes three lines of research: “logical pluralism”, “non-classical logics” and “cognitive scinece”.

In January 2016 there was a controversy about the section 4.1 of the paper entitled “The fashion of logical pluralism” where Béziau says:

The third criticism we can develop against logical pluralism is the atmosphere surrounding the expression “logical pluralism”. In 2000 I was invited to a workshop on logical pluralism in Hobart, Tasmania, organized by JC Beall and Greg Restall with the participations of Francesco Paoli, Otávio Bueno and AchilleVarzi. It was a friendly and relax meeting. At some point Greg said that “logical pluralism” was a sexy way of speaking. The adjective “sexy” has been popularized recently in the intellectual world, by a new generation of people not anymore restrained by puritanism or moralism, who enjoy using this adjective: sexy title, sexy talk, sexy expression. Sexy is for them the symbol of attraction; this makes sense in fact from the point of view of the philosophy of Schopenhauer for whom sexuality was an aspect of universal gravitation (The world as will and representation, 1818).
“Logical pluralism” is linked in another way to sexuality. The flag of homosexuality is the rainbow seen as a general symbol of pluralism opposed to the black and white dichotomy. It is a bit weird to promote plurality through a sexual activity between people of the same sex. It would be similar to promote democracy through dictatorship saying that democrats are open to every politicians including dictators. However supporting homosexuality is politically correct.
To be pluralist is a politically correct way of being. The expression politically correct has progressively flourished during the last 30 years. It is now being used to characterize what is correct or not in the same sense than morally correct was used before. Moralism now looks quite old-fashion, but politically correct is just a new skin for the old ceremony. What is correct or not has changed but the correctness mood is the same: political correctness shares with the old-fashioned moralism the same blind normative aspect. One has to think or behave in a way without really understanding why and if one disobeys she (to use a politically correct way of speaking, contrasting somewhat with the sexism of using “sexy expressions”) is considered as an eccentric or/and a dangerous female. And political correctness like the old moralism is full of absurdity and hypocrisy: for example, it is not politically correct to eat dogs; at the same time it is politically correct to eat cows; although it is politically correct to recognize the plurality of religions, the fact that for Hindus eating cows is not good.
Logical pluralism is fashionable and fashion is ephemeral and superficial, like a sexy young woman that 1 day will be a not so attractive old lady. [8]

Béziau's analogies were decried by several scholars as homophobic and sexist.[9][10][11][12] These scholars also questioned[9][10][11][12] the editorial practices that allowed such an article to be published in Synthese, a highly regarded journal. In response to this criticism, the editors-in-chief of Synthese (Otávio Bueno, Gila Sher and Wiebe van der Hoek) instituted a moratorium on new special issues: The editors in chief of Synthese are currently reviewing the Special Issue program, and they have instituted a moratorium on NEW special issue proposals for the duration of the review. The moratorium started on January 27, 2016 and is expected to last 2-3 months.[13]

Béziau has replied to the criticisms on his website, including comments by Bourbaki (collective scientific pseudonim), André Weil (1906-1998), Alexander Grothendieck (1928-2014), David Hilbert (1862-1943), Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), Gian-Carlo Rota (1932-1999), the Israeli logician Arnon Avorn, the Fields medallist Laurent Lafforgue, Helmut Newton (1920-2004), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), Robert Frodeman, Adam Briggle, Jaakko Hintikka (1929-2015), Editor-in-Chief of Synthese from 1965 to 2002, Jean-Luc Marion, Paul Halmos (1916-2006), Simone Weil (1909-1943), Angelus Silesius (1624-1677), and Dov Gabbay.[14]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ "Logica Universalis". SpringerLink. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  2. ↑ "Journal Rankings, Subject Area: Mathematics, Subject Category: Logic, Year: 2014, Order by: SJR". SJR: SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  3. ↑ "Journal Rankings, Subject Area: Mathematics, Subject Category: Logic, Year: 2014, Order by: Cites per Document (2 years)". SJR: SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  4. ↑ "Journal Rankings for ARC FoR: 01 — Mathematical Sciences". The Australian Mathematical Society. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  5. ↑ Béziau, Jean-Yves (2015). "Logical Autobiography 50". The Road to Universal Logic: Festschrift for the 50th Birthday of Jean-Yves Béziau Volume II. Studies in Universal Logic. Springer International Publishing. pp. 19–104. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-15368-1_2. ISBN 978-3-319-15367-4.
  6. ↑ "Logic PhDs". College Publications. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  7. ↑ Béziau, Jean-Yves (2014-03-20). "The relativity and universality of logic". Synthese 192 (7): 1939–1954. doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0419-0. ISSN 0039-7857.
  8. ↑ Béziau, Jean-Yves (2014-03-20). "The relativity and universality of logic". Synthese 192 (7): 1948. doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0419-0. ISSN 0039-7857.
  9. 1 2 Dutilh Novaes, Catarina. "In defense of journal editors who make mistakes". New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  10. 1 2 Schliesser, Eric. "Synthese, redux". Digressions&Impressions. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  11. 1 2 ., Audrey. "Homophobic And Sexist Rant In Synthese". Feminist Philosophers. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  12. 1 2 Ichikawa, Jonathan Jenkins. "No more free labour by me for Synthese". There is some truth in that. Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa's blog. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  13. ↑ "Synthese. Statement on Special Issues". Springer. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  14. ↑ Béziau, Jean-Yves. "Synthese de la Mayonnaise". Jean-Yves Béziau's Homepage. Retrieved 2016-02-08.

External links

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