Richard Sylvan
Encyclopedia
Richard Sylvan was a philosopher, logician, and environmentalist
.
, and his early work is cited with this surname. He studied at Victoria University College of the University of New Zealand (now Victoria University of Wellington
), and then Princeton University
, before taking positions successively at several Australian institutions, including the University of Sydney
. From 1971 until his death in Bali, Indonesia, he was a fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University
in Canberra
.
Sylvan was married to the philosopher/environmentalist Val Routley
(later, Val Plumwood), with whom he worked closely for twenty years before their separation in 1982. An overview of their extensive collaborative work and life, emphasising their work in environmental philosophy, can be found in Hyde's 2009 "Two in the Bush: The environmental philosophy of Val Routley/Plumwood and Richard Routley/Sylvan". After his divorce from Plumwood, he married Louise Sylvan (née Merlin) in 1983 and adopted the last name Sylvan (an English word meaning "of the forest") to reflect his love of the forest and commitment to environmentalism
.
. In 1972, Sylvan (in a paper co-authored with Plumwood) proposed a semantics for certain relevant logics that had been developed by American philosophers Nuel Belnap
and Alan Ross Anderson
. Together with Robert K. Meyer, Routley turned this into a semantics for a huge range of logical systems.
Their work in logic work helped make ANU a center for the study of non-classical logic in general. Routley's work had particular influence for Graham Priest
, a well-known proponent of non-classical logic; Sylvan and Priest edited a well-regarded volume on the topic. And Priest in turn influenced Sylvan. They met in 1976 at the Australasian Association of Logic conference in Canberra at a time when Sylvan (then Routley) was teetering on the edge of acceptance of the view now known as dialetheism – the view that some contradictions are true. Some contradictions of logic and set theory were to be accepted for what they were, true contradictions. Not long after meeting Priest, then investigating a logic capable of handling such true contradictions, Sylvan also unequivocally endorsed the view.
Sylvan's studies ranged over a variety of topics in logic
and the philosophy of logic
. He wrote important papers on free logic
, general modal logic
, and natural deduction
systems. However, much of his most important work in logic was dedicated to relevant logic, for which he authored numerous papers (both technical and expository).
From early in his career (and for many years after), Sylvan defended a sophisticated Meinong
-inspired ontology (which he called "noneism"), first presented in his 1966 paper, "Some Things Do Not Exist." After several more papers in the 1970s, the theory was given a book-length treatment in 1980, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. The view — also defended in recent years by Priest — utilizes a modal theory
including "impossible worlds" to deal with supposed objects, like the "round square." Sylvan's formulation is logically consistent, and avoids certain paradoxes associated with Meinong's original ontology; although, like many Meinongian views, it faces criticism due to its presumed ontological implausibility.
More detail on his work in logic and metaphysics can be found in Hyde's 2001 "Richard (Routley) Sylvan: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics".
(following Arne Naess's shallow/deep distinction). Author of the famous Last Man Argument in his groundbreaking 1973 paper "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental Ethic?" he went on to articulate and defend a typically unorthodox and carefully-argued account of the intrinsic value of the non-human, natural world. For this he was sometimes considered a defender of deep ecology
, but he was in fact very critical of what he saw as much woolly thinking inherent in the movement and was very wary of what he saw as an unfortunate influence from North America with elements of nature mysticism. (Deep ecologists sometimes nonetheless persisted in counting him one of their own, acknowledging his criticism by describing him as "the bad boy of deep ecology".) In a covering note to his 1985 "Critique of Deep Ecology", read to an audience that included deep ecologists Arne Naess and Bill Devall, he declared:
"I could not find my way to accept deep ecology as formulated by any of its main proponents. The reason was not merely that deep ecology is less than a fully coherent body of doctrine, with, furthermore, many problematic subthemes, but worse, that much of it departed from the ideals it should be expressing, and that some of it was rubbish. Yet I felt that deep ecology was a worthwhile enterprise (carried on by
dedicated and good people), and that something along the lines of a replacement for deep ecology … was very much on the right track. … I agreed with the general drift of much deeper
ecology, and with virtually all the careful applications of deep ecology."
Beginning in the 1970s, he published several notable articles and books on the topic, and he co-authored the 1994 book "The Greening of Ethics," with David Bennett. From his work in environmental ethics, Sylvan took an interest in anarchism
, contributing an often-cited entry on the subject to A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy.
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
.
Biography
Sylvan was born Francis Richard Routley in Levin, New ZealandLevin, New Zealand
Levin is a town in the Manawatu-Wanganui region of New Zealand, and is the largest town in the Horowhenua district. It is 90 kilometres north of Wellington, 50 kilometres south of Palmerston North, and two kilometres to the east of Lake Horowhenua....
, and his early work is cited with this surname. He studied at Victoria University College of the University of New Zealand (now Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a former constituent college of the University of New Zealand. It is particularly well known for its programmes in law, the humanities, and some scientific disciplines, but offers a broad range of other courses...
), and then Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, before taking positions successively at several Australian institutions, including the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
. From 1971 until his death in Bali, Indonesia, he was a fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
.
Sylvan was married to the philosopher/environmentalist Val Routley
Val Plumwood
Val Plumwood , formerly Val Routley, was an Australian ecofeminist intellectual and activist, who was prominent in the development of radical ecosophy from the early 1970s through the remainder of the 20th century....
(later, Val Plumwood), with whom he worked closely for twenty years before their separation in 1982. An overview of their extensive collaborative work and life, emphasising their work in environmental philosophy, can be found in Hyde's 2009 "Two in the Bush: The environmental philosophy of Val Routley/Plumwood and Richard Routley/Sylvan". After his divorce from Plumwood, he married Louise Sylvan (née Merlin) in 1983 and adopted the last name Sylvan (an English word meaning "of the forest") to reflect his love of the forest and commitment to environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
.
Work in Logic and Metaphysics
Sylvan was instrumental in the development and study of relevant logicRelevance logic
Relevance logic, also called relevant logic, is a kind of non-classical logic requiring the antecedent and consequent of implications be relevantly related. They may be viewed as a family of substructural or modal logics...
. In 1972, Sylvan (in a paper co-authored with Plumwood) proposed a semantics for certain relevant logics that had been developed by American philosophers Nuel Belnap
Nuel Belnap
Nuel D. Belnap, Jr. is an American logician and philosopher who has made many important contributions to the philosophy of logic, temporal logic, and structural proof theory. He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961; before that he was at Yale University. His best known work is...
and Alan Ross Anderson
Alan Ross Anderson
Alan Ross Anderson was an American logician and professor of philosophy at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh....
. Together with Robert K. Meyer, Routley turned this into a semantics for a huge range of logical systems.
Their work in logic work helped make ANU a center for the study of non-classical logic in general. Routley's work had particular influence for Graham Priest
Graham Priest
Graham Priest is Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as a regular visitor at St. Andrews University. Priest is a fellow in residence at Ormond College. He was educated at the University...
, a well-known proponent of non-classical logic; Sylvan and Priest edited a well-regarded volume on the topic. And Priest in turn influenced Sylvan. They met in 1976 at the Australasian Association of Logic conference in Canberra at a time when Sylvan (then Routley) was teetering on the edge of acceptance of the view now known as dialetheism – the view that some contradictions are true. Some contradictions of logic and set theory were to be accepted for what they were, true contradictions. Not long after meeting Priest, then investigating a logic capable of handling such true contradictions, Sylvan also unequivocally endorsed the view.
Sylvan's studies ranged over a variety of topics in logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
and the philosophy of logic
Philosophy of logic
Following the developments in Formal logic with symbolic logic in the late nineteenth century and mathematical logic in the twentieth, topics traditionally treated by logic not being part of formal logic have tended to be termed either philosophy of logic or philosophical logic if no longer simply...
. He wrote important papers on free logic
Free logic
A free logic is a logic with fewer existential presuppositions than classical logic. Free logics may allow for terms that do not denote any object. Free logics may also allow models that have an empty domain...
, general modal logic
Modal logic
Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...
, and natural deduction
Natural deduction
In logic and proof theory, natural deduction is a kind of proof calculus in which logical reasoning is expressed by inference rules closely related to the "natural" way of reasoning...
systems. However, much of his most important work in logic was dedicated to relevant logic, for which he authored numerous papers (both technical and expository).
From early in his career (and for many years after), Sylvan defended a sophisticated Meinong
Alexius Meinong
Alexius Meinong was an Austrian philosopher, a realist known for his unique ontology...
-inspired ontology (which he called "noneism"), first presented in his 1966 paper, "Some Things Do Not Exist." After several more papers in the 1970s, the theory was given a book-length treatment in 1980, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. The view — also defended in recent years by Priest — utilizes a modal theory
Modal logic
Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...
including "impossible worlds" to deal with supposed objects, like the "round square." Sylvan's formulation is logically consistent, and avoids certain paradoxes associated with Meinong's original ontology; although, like many Meinongian views, it faces criticism due to its presumed ontological implausibility.
More detail on his work in logic and metaphysics can be found in Hyde's 2001 "Richard (Routley) Sylvan: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics".
Environmental Ethics and Politics
Outside of logic and metaphysics, Sylvan was a proponent of so-called deep environmental ethics in the study of environmental ethicsEnvironmental ethics
Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world...
(following Arne Naess's shallow/deep distinction). Author of the famous Last Man Argument in his groundbreaking 1973 paper "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental Ethic?" he went on to articulate and defend a typically unorthodox and carefully-argued account of the intrinsic value of the non-human, natural world. For this he was sometimes considered a defender of deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
, but he was in fact very critical of what he saw as much woolly thinking inherent in the movement and was very wary of what he saw as an unfortunate influence from North America with elements of nature mysticism. (Deep ecologists sometimes nonetheless persisted in counting him one of their own, acknowledging his criticism by describing him as "the bad boy of deep ecology".) In a covering note to his 1985 "Critique of Deep Ecology", read to an audience that included deep ecologists Arne Naess and Bill Devall, he declared:
"I could not find my way to accept deep ecology as formulated by any of its main proponents. The reason was not merely that deep ecology is less than a fully coherent body of doctrine, with, furthermore, many problematic subthemes, but worse, that much of it departed from the ideals it should be expressing, and that some of it was rubbish. Yet I felt that deep ecology was a worthwhile enterprise (carried on by
dedicated and good people), and that something along the lines of a replacement for deep ecology … was very much on the right track. … I agreed with the general drift of much deeper
ecology, and with virtually all the careful applications of deep ecology."
Beginning in the 1970s, he published several notable articles and books on the topic, and he co-authored the 1994 book "The Greening of Ethics," with David Bennett. From his work in environmental ethics, Sylvan took an interest in anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, contributing an often-cited entry on the subject to A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy.