It is not a novelty that ex contradictione quodlibet (ECQ) — from a contradiction everything follows — is a source of trouble for classical logic. In this paper we present and discuss two arguments against classical logic via ECQ. The first one was presented by Koji Tanaka (2013), and holds that a system of logic validating ECQ fails to provide a criterion of rationality, something we should expect from logic. The second argument comes from Andreas Kapsner (2019), and holds that the notion of imaginative resistance may be used to motivate failure of ECQ: in short, in ordinary circumstances, one simply refuses to follow a reasoner inferring according to ECQ, just as a reader of fiction resists to agree with a narrator approving immoral acts of some characters. Our claim is that both arguments are not decisive against classical logic and ECQ. Furthermore, both arguments, we argue, assume that logical validity is something to be discovered. We suggest that a different view of logic, where logical theories have a constitutive role in determining what is valid, may avoid that kind of dispute from arising in the first place.
