Jean-Yves Béziau

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Jean-Yves Béziau at Montreux, June 2007

Jean-Yves Beziau (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. Beziau 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.

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 the journal Logica Universalis, the South American Journal of Logic, the Springer book series Studies in Universal Logic, the College Publication book series Logic PhDs and book Encyclopaedia of Logic as well as the area editor of logic of the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

He is the organizer of various series of events in logic around the world: UNILOG - World Congress and School on Universal Logic (Montreux 2005, Xi'an 2007, Lisbon 2010, Rio de Janeiro 2013, Istanbul 2015), Square of Opposition (Montreux 2007, Corsica 2010, Beirut 2012, Vatican 2014), Logic in Question (Sorbonne, Paris 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015).

In 2014, Beziau published a peer-reviewed article entitled "The relativity and universality of logic."^[1] The paper distinguishes the use of the term 'logic' to denote reasoning itself and to denote a theory of reasoning, and questions whether either sense is relative (like cultural mores) or universal (like mathematical systems). He argues that some currently fashionable schools of thought (such as logical pluralism) treat logic itself as non-universal, which results in absurdities.

In Jan 2016, selections of Beziau's logic article were subject to criticism after being circulated on social media. Toward the end of the article where he argues that: "To be pluralist is a politically correct way of being", and compares political correctness to moral correctness. The potentially offensive lines included those in which Beziau makes statements that commentators are unsure whether to take as satirical or serious, for instance:

Logical pluralism is connected to homosexuality. 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.^[2]

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.^[3]

Beziau's analogies were decried as containing "a passage with clear homophobic and sexist content",^[4] and led commentators to question the editorial practices that allowed it to be published in Synthese, a highly regarded journal.

In response to this criticism, on 21 Jan 2016, the editors-in-chief of Synthese (Otávio Bueno, Gila Sher and Wiebe van der Hoek) published an apology stating: We are truly sorry about any offense caused by the special issue article published in Synthese. We are strongly committed to feminist and LTGB values. We take full responsibility for every article of published in Synthese, and are committed to learning lessons from every problem that arises. We are now looking into the problem, and although we would like to react as soon as possible, we also want to do a thorough investigation and discuss this with all concerned.^[5] They also explained that this particular paper was not sent to the editors in chief after the guest editor had entered his recommendation into the editorial management system.^[6]

Later, some commentators have toned down their criticism to stating that the passage in question simply has "no place in an academic article" and "is infelicitous and clumsy rather than outright homophobic and sexist".^[7]

Beziau has replied to the criticism, including to "being crucified on Wikipedia", on his personal webpage with a long two-part statement, which includes poems, images, and videos, at times hardly relevant to the criticized passages, as well as quotations from various people, including those communicated in person and, hence, unverified. The first part of his reply regards the general situation with the freedom of speech and professes a disbelief "that peace on earth will be reached by the fight of different groups defending their "own" rights". The second part addresses the accusation of sexism by questioning whether it is "outrageous to say that one day [a woman] will not be anymore sexy" and asserting that for a woman it "is a kind of death. But not the final death. And anyway is natural death outrageous? This is part of life. What is outrageous is artificial death." The accusation of homophobia is not addressed directly. Instead readers are invited to "do the job themsleves [...], as a kind of home work."^[8]

Selected publications

• "What is paraconsistent logic?" In D. Batens et al. (eds.), Frontiers of Paraconsistent Logic, Research Studies Press, Baldock, 2000, pp. 95–111. ISBN 0-86380-253-2
• Handbook of Paraconsistency (ed. with Walter Carnielli and Dov Gabbay). London: College Publication, 2007. ISBN 978-1-904987-73-4
• "Semantic computation of truth based on associations already learned" (with Patrick Suppes), Journal of Applied Logic, 2 (2004), pp. 457–467.
• "From paraconsistent logic to universal logic", Sorites, 12 (2001), pp. 5–32.
• Logica Universalis: Towards a General Theory of Logic (ed.). Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2005, Second Edition 2007. ISBN 3-7643-7259-1
• "Logic is not logic", 'Abstracta' 6 (2010), pp. 73–102.
• "The power of the hexagon", Logica Universalis, 6 (2012), pp. 1–43.
• "History of truth-values", in D.M.Gabbay and J.Woods (eds) Handbook of the History of Logic, Vol. 11 - Logic: a history of its central concepts, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2012, pp. 233–305
• The Square of Opposition: a General Framework for Cognition (ed. with Gillman Payette). Bern: Peter Lang, 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0537-2
• "The new rising of the square of opposition", in J.-Y.Béziau and D.Jacquette (eds), Around and Beyond the Square of Opposition, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2012, pp. 6–24.
• "Preface" of Universal Logic : an Anthology - From Paul Hertz to Dov Gabbay, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2012.
• La pointure du symbole (ed.). Paris: Petra, 2014. ISBN 978-2-84743-048-6
• "The relativity and universality of logic", Synthese, 192 (2015), pp 1939–1954.
• Conceptual Clarifications - Tributes to Patrick Suppes (1922-2014) (ed. with Décio Krause and Jonas R. Becker Arenhart). London: College Publication, 2015. ISBN 978-1-84890-188-9

References

External links

• Jean-Yves Beziau's personal homepage
• The Road to Universal Logic - Festschrift for 50th Birthday of Jean-Yves Béziau Volume I
• The Road to Universal Logic - Festschrift for 50th Birthday of Jean-Yves Béziau Volume II
• Logical Autobiography 50
• Logica Universalis
• Studies in Universal Logic
• Logic PhDs
• Encyclopaedia of Logic
• South American Journal of Logic
• World Congress and School on Universal Logic
• World Congress on the Square Opposition
• Logic in Question