The Priority of Logic over Anti-Logical Dialectic: Domain Shifts, Negation, and Assertoric Commitment

This is a preprint of the manuscript: "The Priority of Logic over Anti-Logical Dialectic: Domain Shifts, Negation, and Assertoric Commitment" Abstract:This paper argues that many alleged dialectical contradictions are better analyzed as shifts in the domain relative to which negation is interpreted than as violations of logical law. Within a fixed domain, negation is complement; after a domain has been expanded, the content of that complement is re-specified. The paper gives this diagnosis an index-relative formal characterization and states Criteria of Legitimate Domain Expansion. On this basis it defends the Priority Thesis: dialectic does not merely fail to violate logic; it presupposes a minimal logical core already operative in meaningful assertion. The thesis receives an elenctic vindication at the level of assertoric commitment, where the operative core is minimal anti-trivialism—the impossibility of being committed to everything. The manuscript has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and is currently under review.