Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias

Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (21 December 1918 – 11 June 2019) was a Peruvian philosopher, journalist and politician.

In his works he discusses the belief in "human nature" on the basis that any collective assumption about such a nature will be frustrating, and will have negative public results. He was interested in so-called "unorthodox logics". The term "paraconsistent logic" was coined in 1976 by him.

He was the first person of the Americas to hold the position of president of the International Federation of Philosophy Societies, elected in Moscow in 1990.

Biography He was the son of journalist Óscar Miró Quesada de la Guerra and María Josefina Cantuarias Dañino. His father, a renowned social researcher, was director of the newspaper El Comercio belonging to his family.

He completed his school studies, first, at the Pensionnat du Sacré-Coeur de Passy, in Paris, and then at the schools of the Sacred Hearts of Belén and Recoleta, and at the Antonio Raimondi Italian school in Lima. He completed his studies at the Faculty of Arts of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, where he graduated from Bachelor of Philosophy with the thesis Crítica de la prueba ontológica a través de San Anselmo, Descartes, Spinoza y Leibniz (Critique of the ontological argument through Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz) in 1938, and he continued at the National University of San Marcos, where he studied Philosophy and Mathematics, opting for the degree of doctor with the thesis Algunos estudios sobre las categorías. Ensayo de una crítica de la vida sicológica en general (Some studies on the categories. Essay of a critique of psychological life in general) in 1939. Subsequently, he obtained the bachelors in Mathematics and Law (1953) in the latter university and the title of lawyer.

He made his debut in 1941 with Sentido del movimiento fenomenológico (Meaning of the phenomenological movement). The term paraconsistent logic was coined by Miró Quesada at the Third Latin America Conference on Mathematical Logic in 1976.

Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias received on 9 December 2008 the Medal of Honor of the Congress of the Republic, in the degree of Grand Officer for his outstanding philosophical work, journalism, political thought and scientific dissemination.