Inferentialism Meets Feminist Logic

Abstract This paper’s aim is to investigate inferentialism in the light of feminist logic. While inferentialism emphasizes the social constitution of meaning and thus appears well aligned with feminist concerns at first sight, I argue that its current focus remains insufficiently attentive to socio-political power dynamics. A feminist-informed inferentialism must therefore move beyond a neutral conception of the “social” and incorporate the ways in which linguistic and inferential practices are shaped by political structures. In the second part of the paper, I consider more concrete implications for logical systems and show how specifically bilateralist representations of proof systems can accommodate feminist concerns. Drawing on Plumwood’s critique of classical negation as displaying hierarchical and oppressive structures, I argue for an alternative, namely a bilateralist version of Nelson’s paraconsistent logic of constructible falsity, . If retaining a primitive negation to express difference is desirable, then, I argue, the strong negation of offers a more promising foundation for feminist logic than classical negation.