An Essay in the Logic of World-views

This book develops a logic of world-views: belief-systems that shape how we know, interpret, and act in the world. It explores how these frameworks function as sign-systems, models of reality, and normative guides for thought and behavior. This book starts with epistemological issues, like the faith/reason-debates, relativism, and the Gettier problem. It shows, how they reflect deeper questions about the role of belief-systems in knowledge. This book then offers a conceptual structure of semiotics, practices of seeking and finding, frameworks and pragmatic circles of inquiry for understanding how world-views operate through trust, vision, faithfulness, and assent. It argues that world-views are not just abstract theories but lived frameworks, guiding practices and shaping responses to reality. It proposes ways to compare and assess incommensurable world-views through dialogue. Bridging philosophical logic, semiotics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion, this book provides a new foundation for understanding belief-systems and tools for world-view studies.

Lauri Snellman (ThD, University of Helsinki, 2020) is a philosopher. His research interests include the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, metaphysics and pragmatism. He has researched the problem of evil at Helsinki, and the logic of world-views at Helsinki and Uppsala Universitet. Author of Evil and Intelligibility (Leiden: Brill, 2023).