LLC Seminar: Irene Binini

In the history of logic, numerous attempts have been made to establish norms for valid reasoning from impossible premises or hypotheses. Alongside these efforts, scholars—particularly during the Middle Ages and the early modern period—developed a range of distinctions between different kinds or degrees of impossibility. These taxonomies were typically employed in logical discussions concerning what follows from an impossible: since not all impossibilities are alike, determining what can validly follow from an impossible premise requires first specifying the kind of impossibility involved. A central distinction to emerge from this tradition is that between impossibilities that are epistemically fruitful—those that can yield new knowledge or understanding when used in valid reasoning—and those that are epistemically sterile, leading only to trivial or uninformative conclusions. I argue that this distinction plays a systematic role in medieval accounts of inference from impossibilia, by constraining the inferential principles applicable to different kinds of impossible premises and, in particular, by limiting the scope of the ex impossibili quodlibet principle. Epistemically fruitful impossibilities were typically understood as those that, despite their impossibility, could nonetheless be conceived or imagined. This study first surveys medieval and early modern classifications of impossibility, and then examines the notion of imaginable impossibility and its role in logical and scientific reasoning across several disciplinary contexts. The analysis shows that these historical taxonomies of impossibility were not merely descriptive, but functioned as normative tools for regulating reasoning from impossible assumptions.

https://www.llc-philosophy.unito.it/events/llc-seminars#h.27d80xoz6oqm

15:00-17:00, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo