I have been reading Florian Steinberger's dissertation (Harmony and logical inferentialism) and I come across the following on p60:

...two fundamental assumptions (the other one being the principle of autonomy) that underpin not only the inferentialist approach to logicality but also the logical inferentialist's view more generally.

The principle of innocence: logic alone should not be a source of new information. That is, it should not be possible, solely by engaging in deductive reasoning, to discover hitherto unknown (atomic) truths about the world that we would have been incapable of discovering (at least in principle) independently of logic.

And Steinberger remarks at the footnote:

The principle of innocence has a well-known flipside: if logic really does not deliver any new knowledge, then how are we to explain its usefulness?

This strucks me as a very interesting point: indeed, if one believes in the principle of innocence, it seems that we shouldn't be able to derive new knowledge, e.g. mathematical truths, by deductive reasoning.

So my question is as follows: Is there a particular name given to this debate? And could anyone suggest any further reading (would be best if they are an overview article on the debate in general) please?

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