University of São Paulo, Brazil
Almost a decade ago, the Béziau Affair happened. That was when some professional philosophers resorted, not to academic articles, but to blog posts in attributing the derogatory predicates, “to be homophobic”, “to be sexist” and “to be irrational”, to at least one out of four objects:
a) Jean-Yves Béziau, a French Swiss philosopher who works at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
b) The 2014 publication in a special issue of Synthese of an essay on philosophy of logic authored by Béziau.
d) Some of this essay’s excerpts.
How should one proceed when deciding whether any of stated predicates is attributable to any of these objects? This question has not been addressed, even though the stated derogatory predicates are still often attributed to a), b), c), d) or even to the universal logic project championed by Béziau. Given so, what this presentation proposes is to tackle the stated question by approaching varied issues related to apparently unconnected areas like philosophy of logic, metaphilosophy and geopolitics. It is spelled out that an alternative approach has advantages vis-à-vis the ones of the stated posts, say, those of distinguishing a), b), c) and d); proposing criteria for the attribution of derogatory predicates; aiming to articulate a plausible reading of Béziau’s essay; identifying this essay’s metaphilosophical features; addressing this essay’s objections to logical pluralism in light of the universal logic project etc.