ACT, OBJECT AND TRACE: the epistemological role of logic

primacy and now plays mainly an ontological role. If, however, one
wants to consider epistemology in relation to logic, the notions of
judgement and inference, rather than propositions ad their
consequences, are of fundamental importance.The judgement made is then
seen as the object of the act of judging. It is, however, not the only
objective correlate to such an act: there is also what we might call
the TRACE of the act, that is, an objective "blue-print" for acts of
judgement that produce the same judgement. The notion of an act-trace
will be applied to mathematical proofs and the resulting framework for
judgements and inferences will be constrasted with modern and
tradtional views. In particular, a criterion for inferential validity
will be given which differs from the current Bolzano-Tarski reduction
to the holding of a logical consequence.