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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Logic
In Medieval Supposition Theory Revisited papers are presented which, on the basis of L.M. de Rijk's monumental Logica modernorum (1962-1967, 3 vols.), sketch the development of medieval theories on meaning and reference from the beginnings well into the 17th century. The book also presents studies of these theories from a modern point of view.
Material objects persist through time and survive change. How do
they manage to do so? What are the underlying facts of persistence?
Do objects persist by being "wholly present" at all moments of time
at which they exist? Or do they persist by having distinct
"temporal segments" confined to the corresponding times? Are
objects three-dimensional entities extended in space, but not in
time? Or are they four-dimensional spacetime "worms"? These are
matters of intense debate, which is now driven by concerns about
two major issues in fundamental ontology: parthood and location. It
is in this context that broadly empirical considerations are
increasingly brought to bear on the debate about persistence.
Grazer Philosophische Studien is a peer reviewed journal that publishes articles on philosophical problems in every area, especially articles related to the analytic tradition. Each year at least two volumes are published, including special issues with invited papers. Reviews are accepted by invitation only.
When instruments are harmoniously joined together, beautiful music ensues. Just as in a classic symphony, life often occurs in phases, or movements. In his creative comparison Symphony #1 in a Minor Key, literary exegete Alan Block shares his philosophies on four movements reflected in his own life, each loosely modeled on a different musical form linked to the emotions of a life both fully lived and joyously celebrated. In the first movement, "Sonata Allegro," Block juxtaposes biblical stories with personal experiences as he explores the contradictory nature of what it means to leave home in search of another home. In the second movement, representing a slow march to and from the grave, he focuses his examination on the funerals of three very different people from a Jewish perspective. In strong contrast, Block presents a glimpse into his absurd daily world in the third movement, punctuated by jokes and commentary. Finally, he shares a celebration of life and hope inspired by the final movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, encouraging others to be open to the sublime and realize that none of our worlds is perfect. Symphony #1 in a Minor Key shares one man's reflections as he offers a fascinating meditation on life, death, and everything in between.
To clarify and facilitate our inquiries we need to define a disquotational truth predicate that we are directly licensed to apply not only to our own sentences as we use them now, but also to other speakers' sentences and our own sentences as we used them in the past. The conventional wisdom is that there can be no such truth predicate. For it appears that the only instances of the disquotational pattern that we are directly licensed to accept are those that define "is true" for our own sentences as we use them now. Gary Ebbs shows that this appearance is illusory. He constructs an account of words that licenses us to rely not only on formal (spelling-based) identifications of our own words, but also on our non-deliberative practical identifications of other speakers' words and of our own words as we used them in the past. To overturn the conventional wisdom about disquotational truth, Ebbs argues, we need only combine this account of words with our disquotational definitions of truth for sentences as we use them now. The result radically transforms our understanding of truth and related topics, including anti-individualism, self-knowledge, and the intersubjectivity of logic.
This volume of newly written chapters on the history and interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus represents a significant step beyond the polemical debate between broad interpretive approaches that has recently characterized the field. Some of the contributors might count their approach as 'new' or 'resolute', while others are more 'traditional', but all are here concerned primarily with understanding in detail the structure of argument that Wittgenstein presents within the Tractatus, rather than with its final self-renunciation, or with the character of the understanding that renunciation might leave behind. The volume makes a strong case that close investigation, both biographical and textual, into the composition of the Tractatus, and into the various influences on it, still has much to yield in revealing the complexity and fertility of Wittgenstein's early thought. Amongst these influences Kant and Kierkegaard are considered alongside Wittgenstein's immediate predecessors in the analytic tradition. The themes explored range across the breadth of Wittgenstein's book, and include his accounts of ethics and aesthetics, as well as issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and aspects of the logical framework of his account of representation. The contrast of saying and showing, and Wittgenstein's attitude to the inexpressible, is of central importance to many of the contributions. By approaching this concern through the various first-level issues that give rise to it, rather than from entrenched schematic positions, the contributors demonstrate the possibility of a more inclusive, constructive and fruitful mode of engagement with Wittgenstein's text and with each other.
The book is a collection of the author's selected works in the philosophy and history of logic and mathematics. Papers in Part I include both general surveys of contemporary philosophy of mathematics as well as studies devoted to specialized topics, like Cantor's philosophy of set theory, the Church thesis and its epistemological status, the history of the philosophical background of the concept of number, the structuralist epistemology of mathematics and the phenomenological philosophy of mathematics. Part II contains essays in the history of logic and mathematics. They address such issues as the philosophical background of the development of symbolism in mathematical logic, Giuseppe Peano and his role in the creation of contemporary logical symbolism, Emil L. Post's works in mathematical logic and recursion theory, the formalist school in the foundations of mathematics and the algebra of logic in England in the 19th century. The history of mathematics and logic in Poland is also considered. This volume is of interest to historians and philosophers of science and mathematics as well as to logicians and mathematicians interested in the philosophy and history of their fields.
There is, first of all, the distinction between that part of our belief which is rational and that part which is not. If a man believes something for a reason which is preposterous or for no reason at all, and what he believes turns out to be true for some reason not known to him, he cannot be said to believe it rationally, although he believes it and it is in fact true. On the other hand, a man may rationally believe a proposition to be probable, when it is in fact false. -from Chapter II: Probability in Relation to the Theory of Knowledge" His fame as an economist aside, John Maynard Keynes may be best remembered for saying, "In the long run, we are all dead." That phrase may well be the most succinct expression of the theory of probability every uttered. For a longer explanation of the premise that underlies much of modern mathematics and science, Keynes's A Treatise on Probability is essential reading. First published in 1920, this is the foundational work of probability theory, which helped establish the author's enormous influence on modern economic and even political theories. Exploring aspects of randomness and chance, inductive reasoning and logical statistics, this is a work that belongs in the library of any interested in numbers and their application in the real world. AUTHOR BIO: British economist JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946) also wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), The End of Laissez-Faire (1926), The Means to Prosperity (1933), and General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).
Taking students beyond classical mathematical logic, Philosophical Logic is a wide-ranging introduction to more advanced topics in the study of philosophical logic. Starting by contrasting familiar classical logic with constructivist or intuitionist logic, the book goes on to offer concise but easy-to-read introductions to such subjects as quantificational and syllogistic logic, modal logic and set theory. Chapters include: - Sentential Logic- Quantificational Logic- Sentential Modal Logic- Quantification and Modality- Set Theory- Incompleteness- An Introduction to Term Logic- Modal Term Logic In addition, the book includes a list of symbols and a glossary of terms for ease of reference and exercises throughout help students master the topics covered in the book. Philosophical Logic is an essential, student-friendly guide for anyone studying these difficult topics as part of their Logic course.
'You shouldn't drink too much. The Earth is round. Milk is good for your bones.' Are any of these claims true? How can you tell? Can you ever be certain you are right? For anyone tackling philosophical logic and critical thinking for the first time, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Reasoning Well provides a practical guide to the skills required to think critically. From the basics of good reasoning to the difference between claims, evidence and arguments, Robert Arp and Jamie Carlin Watson cover the topics found in an introductory course. Now revised and fully updated, this Second Edition features a glossary, chapter summaries, more student-friendly exercises, study questions, diagrams, and suggestions for further reading. Topics include: the structure, formation, analysis and recognition of arguments deductive validity and soundness inductive strength and cogency inference to the best explanation truth tables tools for argument assessment informal and formal fallacies With real life examples, advice on graduate school entrance exams and an expanded companion website packed with additional exercises, an answer key and help with real life examples, this easy-to-follow introduction is a complete beginner's tool set to good reasoning, analyzing and arguing. Ideal for students in basic reasoning courses and students preparing for graduate school.
This edited book focuses on concepts and their applications using the theory of conceptual spaces, one of today's most central tracks of cognitive science discourse. It features 15 papers based on topics presented at the Conceptual Spaces @ Work 2016 conference. The contributors interweave both theory and applications in their papers. Among the first mentioned are studies on metatheories, logical and systemic implications of the theory, as well as relations between concepts and language. Examples of the latter include explanatory models of paradigm shifts and evolution in science as well as dilemmas and issues of health, ethics, and education. The theory of conceptual spaces overcomes many translational issues between academic theoretization and practical applications. The paradigm is mainly associated with structural explanations, such as categorization and meronomy. However, the community has also been relating it to relations, functions, and systems. The book presents work that provides a geometric model for the representation of human conceptual knowledge that bridges the symbolic and the sub-conceptual levels of representation. The model has already proven to have a broad range of applicability beyond cognitive science and even across a number of disciplines related to concepts and representation.
The Logic Manual is a clear and concise introduction to logic for
beginning philosophy students. It offers a complete introductory
course, guiding the reader carefully through the topics in logic
that are most important for the study of philosophy. It covers
propositional and predicate logic with and without identity. It
includes an account of the semantics of these languages including
definitions of truth and satisfaction. Natural deduction is used as
a proof system. Volker Halbach introduces the essential concepts
through examples and informal explanations as well as through
abstract definitions.
Our experience of objects (and consequently our theorizing about them) is very rich. We perceive objects as possessing individuation conditions. They appear to have boundaries in space and time, for example, and they appear to move independently of a background of other objects or a landscape. In Ontology Without Boundaries Jody Azzouni undertakes an analysis of our concept of object, and shows what about that notion is truly due to the world and what about it is a projection onto the world of our senses and thinking. Location and individuation conditions are our product: there is no echo of them in the world. Features, the ways that objects seem to be, aren't projections. Azzouni shows how the resulting austere metaphysics tames a host of ancient philosophical problems about constitution ("Ship of Theseus," "Sorities"), as well as contemporary puzzles about reductionism. In addition, it's shown that the same sorts of individuation conditions for properties, which philosophers use to distinguish between various kinds of odd abstracta-universals, tropes, and so on, are also projections. Accompanying our notion of an object is a background logic that makes cogent ontological debate about anything from Platonic objects to Bigfoot. Contemporary views about this background logic ("quantifier variance") make ontological debate incoherent. Azzouni shows how a neutral interpretation of quantifiers and quantifier domains makes sense of both philosophical and pre-philosophical ontological debates. Azzouni also shows how the same apparatus makes sense of our speaking about a host of items-Mickey Mouse, unicorns, Martians-that nearly all of us deny exist. It's allowed by what Azzouni shows about the background logic of our ontological debates, as well as the semantics of the language of those debates that we can disagree over the existence of things, like unicorns, without that background logic and semantics forcing ontological commitments onto speakers that they don't have.
Ascriptions of mental states to oneself and others give rise to many interesting logical and semantic problems. Attitude Problems presents an original account of mental state ascriptions that are made using intensional transitive verbs such as "want," "seek," "imagine," and "worship." Forbes offers a theory of how such verbs work that draws on ideas from natural language semantics, philosophy of language, and aesthetics.
Despite the resurgence of interest in the philosophy of John Dewey, his work on logical theory has received relatively little attention. Ironically, Dewey's logic was his "first and last love." The essays in this collection pay tribute to that love by addressing Dewey's philosophy of logic, from his work at the beginning of the twentieth century to the culmination of his logical thought in the 1938 volume, "Logic: The Theory of Inquiry." All the essays are original to this volume and are written by leading Dewey scholars. Ranging from discussions of propositional theory to logic's social and ethical implications, these essays clarify often misunderstood or misrepresented aspects of Dewey's work, while emphasizing the seminal role of logic to Dewey's philosophical endeavors. This collection breaks new ground in its relevance to contemporary philosophy of logic and epistemology and pays special attention to applications in ethics and moral philosophy.
Subtle Implications is a defining clarification of the human experience as presented in the story of the author's life, and expressed in his 'Theories of Everything. Through his unrelenting quest to understand and come to terms with life's wide variety of apparently random events, he developed a methodology we can use to analyze and understand the madness. At the very least, the author offers the opportunity to gain the insight and strength needed to cope with even the worst of life's emotionally crippling crises. What are the true natures of our physical and spiritual realities? How did our Universe begin? Why are we here? Why do bad things happen in our lives? What happens when we die? Do we live again? Life is not that complicated. Pertinent information and the proper perspective can help you see life as your own creation. You alone are responsible for the present state of every facet of your life. Together we are responsible for every aspect of the world that greets us every morning. Together we can create a world where a comfortable life is the rule and not the exception. It is all up to us
Between Saying and Doing aims to reconcile pragmatism (in both its classical American and its Wittgensteinian forms) with analytic philosophy. It investigates the relations between the meaning of linguistic expressions and their use. Giving due weight both to what one has to do in order to count as saying various things and to what one needs to say in order to specify those doings, makes it possible to shed new light on the relations between semantics (the theory of the meanings of utterances and the contents of thoughts) and pragmatics (the theory of the functional relations among meaningful or contentful items). Among the vocabularies whose interrelated use and meaning are considered are: logical, indexical, modal, normative, and intentional vocabulary. As the argument proceeds, new ways of thinking about the classic analytic core programs of empiricism, naturalism, and functionalism are offered, as well as novel insights about the ideas of artificial intelligence, the nature of logic, and intentional relations between subjects and objects.
The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions--are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is possible and what is necessary, the nature of modal knowledge, modal logic and its relations to necessary existence and to counterfactual reasoning. The general introduction locates the individual contributions in the wider context of the contemporary discussion of the metaphysics and epistemology of modality.
Wittgenstein's philosophical career began in 1911 when he went to
Cambridge to work with Russell. He compiled the Notes on Logic two
years later as a kind of summary of the work he had done so far.
Russell thought that they were "as good as anything that has ever
been done in logic," but he had Wittgenstein himself to explain
them to him. Without the benefit of Wittgenstein's explanations,
most later scholars have preferred to treat the Notes solely as an
interpretative aid in understanding the Tractatus (which draws on
them for material), rather than as a philosophical work in their
own right. |
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