Winch and Collingwood on logic

This chapter makes extensive use of unpublished and posthumous material by R. G. Collingwood and Peter Winch. Both thinkers addressed questions about the nature and status of logic. Their commonalities are striking. For both, the central question about logic was its status as a representation of real thinking. A proposition taken out of context has no definite meaning. This gives every formalisation of a proposition a tentative, context-sensitive character. At the same time, the formal requirement of consistency is a genuine requirement on meaningful thought, and Winch asked how such “authority of reason” should be understood. Collingwood and Winch contrasted an “Aristotelian” conception of logic with a “Socratic” conception. For the “Aristotelian”, we can identify and analyse the logical form of a proposition independently of its use. Logical structure is already ‘there’, and the task of formal logic is to study it. In contrast, the “Socratic” conception of logic implied studying judgements as they occur in full-blown contexts of inquiry and dialogue. Collingwood developed his logic of question and answer mainly as part of an epistemology of scientific inquiry. For Winch, the Socratic use of arguments had an ethical aspect.