Talk given at the Artificial Intelligence and Contemporary Society: The Role of Information conference (XXI Jornadas de Filosofía y Metodología actual de la Ciencia — Jornadas Sobre Inteligencia Artificial Y Sociedad Contemporánea: El Cometido De La Información) at the University of A Coruña.

Abstract The upshot of this paper is to develop and refine the suggestion that logical systems are conceptual artefacts, and hence the result of a design-process. I develop this idea within the confines of the philosophy of information, and against the combined background of a Carnapian philosophy (as perceived through its current revival) and Herbert Simon’s ideas on the sciences of the artificial.

The proposed constructionist account is developed as follows. I start by highlighting the basic ideas behind a constructionist epistemology and a constructionist philosophical methodology, and then use these insights to identify how a constructionist attitude is already at play in how logicians develop novel formal systems. This modest constructionism is then turned into a more radical form through the proposal, backed by the use of the method of abstraction, that the common counterexample-dynamics in philosophical theorising should be replaced by a refinement-dynamics and a clear statement of requirements, and the application of this idea to the development of logical systems. I conclude with some general remarks on logic as a semantic artefact and as an interface.