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 Maîtrise in Philosophy from Pantheon-Sorbonne University on David Bohm's holomovement (advisor: Bernard d'Espagnat, recipient of the Templeton Prize in 2009 ), a DEA 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 (as of April 2016, 24 issues published by Springer International Publishing since January 2007; according to SCImago Journal and Country Rank, ranked in the 4th SJR quartile among the 23 journals in logic in 2014: 20th by the SJR rank and 13th if measured by "Cites per Document (2 years)", overtaking the 1st quartile Journal of Symbolic Logic by 0.01 cites per document; ranked C in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Ranking of journals)
• the South American Journal of Logic (as of April 2016, 2 issues published with open online access, not yet ranked)
• the Springer book series Studies in Universal Logic (as of April 2016, 11 books published, of which 2 books titled The Road to Universal Logic are the Festschrift for 50th Birthday of Jean-Yves Béziau; these 2 books include an 86-page autobiography of J.-Y. Béziau, as well as contributions of important logicians, mathematicians, historians, linguists and philosophers such as Wilfrid Hodges, Dale Jacquette, John Corcoran, Dov Gabbay, Lloyd Humberstone, Stephen Read, Jan Woleński, Larry Horn, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Irving Anellis, Otávio Bueno, Razvan Diaconescu, Brian Gaines, and István Németi)
• the College Publication book series Logic PhDs (as of April 2016, no books published since the series' announcement in July 2013)
• the College Publication Portuguese-language book series Cadernos de Lógica e Filosofia (as of April 2016, 1 book published)

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).

UNILOG 2015 Closing Session at Istanbul University, Turkey

Controversy:Logical Pluralism, Sexuality and Political Correctness

In March 2014, Béziau published a peer-reviewed article entitled "The relativity and universality of logic." 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 science”.

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.

The above passage was criticized by philosophers

• • Professor Dutilh Novaes, wrote the following "In defense of journal editors who make mistakes. All of you reading this will certainly have witnessed the uproar this week in response to a paper published in Synthese which is problematic, to say the least, for a number of different reasons. (It is worth noticing, as has been often noticed, that this paper has been online for 22 months, but presumably having appeared in the latest printed edition of Synthese, those on the Synthese mailing list will have received a notification, and someone actually took the trouble of checking the paper. From there on, it went ‘viral’ through the usual channels – Facebook, blogs etc.) In particular, it contains a passage with clear homophobic and sexist content. [But see UPDATE below.] But this is not the only issue with the paper, which overall seems to be below the level of scholarship that one would expect in a journal like Synthese.

[Full disclosure: I’ve known the author, JYB, for many years, and have attended a number of the events he regularly organizes. He was supportive of my career at its early stages. I know two of the Synthese editors-in-chief quite well, and the third I have close indirect contacts with (he is a regular collaborator of one of my closest colleagues). I have 5 papers published in Synthese, two of which are forthcoming in two different special issues.]

There is no question to me that this paper should not have been published in its current form. JY Béziau has made important contributions to logic earlier in his career, but in recent years his work has not been of the same caliber as his earlier work (this is also the opinion of a number of people I’ve talked to much before this episode). So purely on the basis of the paper’s merits, the decision to publish it in Synthese (whoever made the decision) seems to have been misguided. Adding to that the homophobic and sexist content, then the decision to publish it is not only misguided but also deeply disturbing. But the issue I want to discuss here is: what does this say about the editorial process in Synthese? Does this episode warrant calls for the resignation of the current editors-in-chief?

The first thing to notice is that the publication of articles that later on turn out to be based on subpar scholarship is very common, and affects even the most renowned journals (case in point: the famous article connecting autism with vaccination published in The Lancet, now retracted). In fact, the retraction of scientific articles is a very widespread phenomenon in recent years, and one is left wondering whether there is more bad science and scholarship being published these days, or whether there are more people paying closer attention. In other words, the publication of articles that turn out to be problematic or simply really bad in fancy venues is a more general phenomenon, and to think that Synthese is the only place where this happens (though admittedly two scandals of the sort with just a few years in between is not good…) would be a mistake.

What seems to happen is that Synthese publishes a much larger volume of articles than any other philosophy journal, and so the probability of something bad slipping through quality control is higher than in other venues. In line with what others have said, I too tend to think that they publish way too many special issues, many of which seem of dubious quality (speaking as the author of two papers in two forthcoming special issues!). At the same time, I see Synthese as one of the most interesting journals around in that they publish on a number of different topics, lines of research and methodological approaches. Not an issue of Synthese goes by that does not contain a few articles that spark my interest. (I tend to think that the so-called top 5 journals in philosophy focus rather narrowly on a number of topics and approaches, and are thus somewhat overly conservative in their profiles.)

For the most part, and I’ve heard this from many people who have dealt with the editors-in-chief either as authors or as referees, the EiC are conscientious and diligent: they work very hard on running the journal well. Having just come out of my 3-year term as one of the editors for the Review of Symbolic Logic, I can only say that the experience has completely changed my views on the whole journal publishing business. It is so incredibly hard to do a good job, and when things go well, no one says: well done, editor! (Well, on occasion I’ve had authors thanking me for the swiftness of the process.) When things go bad, however… (For example, as an editor I’ve rejected a paper which then went on to be published elsewhere and win a prestigious prize. My decision was based on careful referee reports, but it still seems to have been some sort of ‘mistake’ on my part.)

None of this is to minimize the disaster it is that this paper has been published, but I just wanted to add some support to the EiC who find themselves in such an ungrateful position. As an editor, you may make a thousand sound editorial decisions, and no one will notice (you are simply doing your job!), despite the extreme difficulty that every editor encounters with finding reliable referees who can produce a report in a timely fashion. One oversight, and the whole world falls apart around you. This being said, my practical advise to the Synthese EiC, if they are interested, is to take more people onboard: their volume of publication is such that it would be a full time job to keep track of everything that is going on among just the three of them. And of course, all three of them already have a full time academic job!

Generally, though, this episode also highlights something I’ve come to conclude some years ago, namely that the importance we give to publications in philosophy, when it comes to hiring and promotion decisions for example, is overblown. The whole (peer-refereeing) system is so fragile, so prone to biases of all kinds, that to take a person’s publication list as the sole metrics of their quality as a scholar is deeply mistaken. It is hard to break away from such an engrained attitude, but my recent practice in e.g. hiring committees has been to try to be less impressed by a few high-caliber publications, and more attentive to the overall qualities of the candidate. It’s up to all of us to stop fetishizing publication record, and if what it takes is to notice that a couple of bad papers get published (and presumably, many more good papers fail to be published), then there is something to learn for all of us from this episode.

UPDATE (26/01/2016): Having thought more about it since I wrote the post, I now think that the famous passage is infelicitous and clumsy rather than outright homophobic and sexist. Be that as it may, the comparisons in question (logical pluralism compared to homosexuality, and the comparison to a young woman losing her youthful beauty), even if made in a lighthearted way, (in my opinion) have no place in an academic article." in a philosophical blog;

• • Professor Ichikawa, who wrote"No more free labour by me for Synthese

Like most philosophers who are active on social media, I was amazed and horrified this week to learn from Feminist Philosophers about an article by Jean-Yves Beziau, nominally on logical pluralism, published in Synthese and containing irrelevant and incoherent sexist and homophobic ramblings. (See also the Daily Nous coverage/discussion here.) The article represents an extremely serious editorial failure; in my opinion, its publication is inconsistent with Synthese's status as a high-prestige philosophical journal. The editors need to apologize (really apologize) and retract the article. Unless and until that happens, I plan to exercise the little bit of personal power that I have in this matter, and refrain from contributing any more of my labour to a journal that has so dramatically failed to live up to its responsibilities.

So just what happened? The whole article is a mess, but the passage that has drawn the most outrage is this one: "Logical pluralism" is linked in another way to sexuality: it 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.

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 that 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 by 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. (pp. 1947–8) Set aside the dubious grammar and orthography, which I have transcribed faithfully. Set aside even the fact there is nothing argumentative or illuminating about this passage (or in my opinion, in the rest of the paper). Set aside the ableist metaphors, and the author's apparent ignorance of the connotations of the phrase 'politically correct'. Pause briefly to note that this is merely a rambling series of nebulous associations of thought and focus with me on the blatant homophobia and misogyny. Those with greater expertise should correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I'm pretty confident that Beziau's assertion that logical pluralism is 'connected to' homosexuality is mere assertion—it is connected only by his own rather bizarre train of thought. The connection he has in mind seems merely to be that he considers each a perversion, tolerated only because of an insincere commitment to an arbitrary moral standard. Beziau is arguing, in a paper about logical pluralism, against tolerating homosexuality.

Then he drops a completely gratuitous simile, identifying the value of women with their sexual appeal—and assuming that older women are unattractive and therefore without value. In a paper about logical pluralism.

This is not just bad taste, or 'politically incorrect', or a mere oversight in judgment. This is a toxic denigration of most people. Philosophers who spend their entire lives surrounded by the perception that their sexual identity is a perversion, or that their value is essentially tied to their appearance (which is essentially tied to youth) should at least have a break when reading philosophy journals. (At least articles about logical pluralism!) The so-casual-it's-supposed-to-be-obvious message is: if you're not a straight man, you're a deviant or an expiring sex object (or both). The publication of this article was a very serious harm to the discipline of philosophy.

Rightly or wrongly, journals play a very important role in academia. Publication in peer-refereed journals is the single biggest factor in hiring and promotion decisions. Journal editors, therefore, are in positions of tremendous responsibility; editors regularly make decisions that dramatically impact people's careers. This is especially true for journals like Synthese that occupy a high-prestige status. Publishing this paper bestowed a significant degree of philosophical prestige on repugnant and ill-considered ideas.

In this instance, the paper in question was part of a special issue, guest edited by Gergely Székely. The stated procedures for guest editing at Synthese (laid out in the Daily Nous post) involve the same refereeing standards as regular issues do, and involve peer review by the editors-in-chief—Otávio Bueno, Gila Sher, and Wiebe van der Hoek. The editors-in-chief are ultimately responsible for the publication decisions of the journal, as they themselves observed in a statement given to both Daily Nous and Feminist Philosophers: 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. Thank you very much for your concern and patience. While I appreciate the difficulties of timely coordination, it is disappointing to me that the most they've said is that they are sorry about any passive-voice offense caused. This is a very obvious case of a very inappropriate publication decision. There is no reason they shouldn't be apologizing for printing the article. Do they doubt whether it was a regrettable mistake? Then they lack the judgment necessary for their positions of responsibility. If they know it was a regrettable mistake, then the very first, instant step should be to apologize for it. And yes, a full accounting of how it came to be is also crucial. But mistakes of this magnitude do not occur in a properly functioning organization. Either someone in a position of high editorial authority read this material and decided it was appropriate to publish it, or it was published without having been read by such a person. Each possibility implies a serious problem with a journal that can make or break a philosophical career.

Journals depend on the free labor academics give them, as editors, authors, and referees. I cannot in good conscience contribute to a journal that is so clearly failing in its responsibility to the academic community. To do so would literally be to be part of the problem. (Students and untenured philosophers have little choice but to play the game and be part of the problem, but I am tenured.) So I will do what I can do: I'll make some noise about this issue, for instance by writing this blog post. I'll also refuse, until it's clear that the situation has been rectified, to contribute my labour to Synthese. I won't edit, referee, or write for the journal. (I have just withdrawn from their planned special issue on epistemic justification, to which I'd previously been committed.)

Some people will say that I should wait until the editors have provided a fuller explanation of how this paper came to be published. I don't want to wait, for two reasons. One is that it's too easy to lose attention, to forget, over time—if they say, give us a bit of time to figure it out, it's only just come to light today (though one hopes the editors-in-chief didn't only just learn what they've previously published!), the community may give them time until it forgets about it and focuses on the next big scandal. The other is that, for the reasons I've already articulated, it's clear that whatever the explanation is, the journal has misused its power in an unacceptable way.

As far as I'm concerned, at this time, Synthese is not a professional publication worthy of prestige or respect. To be one again it must, at least, apologize for publishing the article, and retract it. It also must demonstrate clear, substantial reform—probably with at least some people in positions of authority stepping down—to ensure that enormous errors of this kind aren't made again. Until this happens, I for one will have nothing to do with it.

I also encourage my tenured colleagues to consider whether they are comfortable supporting a journal that behaves in this way."

in his personal blog;

• • Professor Schliesser, who called it "blatantly sexist and homophobic in ways that add nothing to the underlying argument about the nature of logic" and added that the "situation would be much more complicated -- involving academic freedom, intellectual pluralism, etc. -- if the paper were aiming to defend sexism and homophobia in a philosophically rigorous manner";

These scholars also questioned 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.

Remark on the Controversy by Laurent Lafforgue, Fields Medal 2002

I recently noticed that some lines from a paper by JYB titled “The relativity and universality of logic” have become the object of a ridiculous and odious harangue that takes up more than half of his Wikipedia page.

− The paper, which I have read in its entirety, is at once both extremely interesting in its own right, and also for setting in perspective the author’s whole corpus of work over many years and defining a precise discipline which JYB has dedicated his efforts to establishing, which he calls “universal logic”. Based on a distinction between logic as reasoning and logic as a theory of reasoning, the paper defines “universal logic” as the general science of reasoning, a little like the way general linguistics is the science of what all human languages have in common.

− The paper spells out both the sense and the reference of “universal logic” by delineating its domain of study and at the same time justifying the choice of constituent words in its name, by evoking their semantic fields and those of neighbouring expressions.

− In a third part, JYB makes a critical comparison with three other more or less scientific expressions which are currently in use and to which he prefers “universal logic”: “logical pluralism”, “non-classical logics”, and “cognitive science”. Following the logic of his paper, he draws these comparisons both from the point of view of their content and objects of study, and from the point of view of the meanings and associations of their constituent words. It is by examining the semantic field of the word “pluralism” that he arrives at his observations about the contemporary field of “political correctness”, which he criticizes for sound reasons, as it represents a danger for the freedom of expression and of thought.

− I invite therefore the people who launched or contributed to the polemic against JYB, in particular those who despoiled his Wikipedia page with 30-plus lines of rant against 5 or 6 lines from one paper, to comment in the same proportion on the whole of this remarkable paper, and on the works and initiatives (such as the journal Logica Universalis which he founded, or the multiple congresses he has organized on this subject, etc.) whose meaning this article explicates.

Remark on the Controversy by Arnon Avron

I admit that I was strongly hesitating to write this message. I was afraid that if I write what I think, I'll also be immediately tagged as "Homophob" and "sexist", and I might even lose the friendship of some friends that I really love. But the very fact that I found myself fearing reminded me what such a fear means, and what kind of atmosphere is now created, sometimes by really good people. So I decided it is my *duty* to say what I think.

− I do not know what Beziau's general opinions are. All I am speaking here about is the content of the paper in question (which I read as a logician, meaning that I read what is actually written - no more, no less). So I declare that I find the reaction on "Feminist Philosophers" 100 times more frightening than the paragraph in Beziau's paper it was about. It is a Stalinist reaction. No less. How can anyone who actually reads it in a rational way describe it as "Homophobic And Sexist"? Or claim that Beziau "compares homosexuality to dictatorship"?? It reminds me the incident in Milan Kundera's book "the Joke" that led the hero of the story into a camp.

− To sum up: I do not want to live in a world where every word I write is checked by the party's censors who are looking for offending interpretations, and then punish severely when they happily find one!

− (Personally, I have enough of similar behavior now in my own country, where people who disagree with our dear government's policy in the occupied areas are immediately described by many, many people as anti-Semitic (if they are not Jews) or traitors (if they are like me).

Reply by Biziou

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.

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

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