Redefining logical constants as inference markers

There is currently no universally accepted general definition of logical constanthood. With a view to addressing this issue, we follow a pragmatist rationale, according to which, some notion can be identified as a logical constant by considering the way in which it is used in our everyday reasoning practices, and argue that a logical constant has to be seen as encoding some kind of dynamic meaning, which marks the presence of an inferential transition among propositional contents. We then put forth a characterisation of logical constants that takes into account their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic roles. What follows from our proposal is that logical constanthood can be best understood as a functional property that is satisfied only by certain uses of the relevant notions.