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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Logic
In these essays Geoffrey Hellman presents a strong case for a
healthy pluralism in mathematics and its logics, supporting
peaceful coexistence despite what appear to be contradictions
between different systems, and positing different frameworks
serving different legitimate purposes. The essays refine and extend
Hellman's modal-structuralist account of mathematics, developing a
height-potentialist view of higher set theory which recognizes
indefinite extendability of models and stages at which sets occur.
In the first of three new essays written for this volume, Hellman
shows how extendability can be deployed to derive the axiom of
Infinity and that of Replacement, improving on earlier accounts; he
also shows how extendability leads to attractive, novel resolutions
of the set-theoretic paradoxes. Other essays explore advantages and
limitations of restrictive systems - nominalist, predicativist, and
constructivist. Also included are two essays, with Solomon
Feferman, on predicative foundations of arithmetic.
This book provides an epistemological study of the great Islamic
scholar of Banjarese origin, Syeikh Muhammad Arsyad al-Banjari
(1710-1812) who contributed to the development of Islam in
Indonesia and, in general, Southeast Asia. The work focuses on
Arsyad al-Banjari's dialectical use and understanding of qiyas or
correlational inference as a model of parallel reasoning or analogy
in Islamic jurisprudence. This constituted the most prominent
instrument he applied in his effort of integrating Islamic law into
the Banjarese society.This work studies how Arsyad al-Banjari
integrates jadal theory or dialectic in Islamic jurisprudence,
within his application of qiyas. The author develops a framework
for qiyas which acts as the interface between jadal, dialogical
logic, and Per Martin-Loef's Constructive Type Theory (CTT). One of
the epistemological results emerging from the present study is that
the different forms of qiyas applied by Arsyad al-Banjari represent
an innovative and sophisticated form of reasoning. The volume is
divided into three parts that discuss the types of qiyas as well
their dialectical and argumentative aspects, historical background
and context of Banjar, and demonstrates how the theory of qiyas
comes quite close to the contemporary model of parallel reasoning
for sciences and mathematics developed by Paul Bartha (2010). This
volume will be of interest to historians and philosophers in
general, and logicians and historians of philosophy in particular.
Mathematics plays a central role in much of contemporary science,
but philosophers have struggled to understand what this role is or
how significant it might be for mathematics and science. In this
book Christopher Pincock tackles this perennial question in a new
way by asking how mathematics contributes to the success of our
best scientific representations. In the first part of the book this
question is posed and sharpened using a proposal for how we can
determine the content of a scientific representation. Several
different sorts of contributions from mathematics are then
articulated. Pincock argues that each contribution can be
understood as broadly epistemic, so that what mathematics
ultimately contributes to science is best connected with our
scientific knowledge.
In the second part of the book, Pincock critically evaluates
alternative approaches to the role of mathematics in science. These
include the potential benefits for scientific discovery and
scientific explanation. A major focus of this part of the book is
the indispensability argument for mathematical platonism. Using the
results of part one, Pincock argues that this argument can at best
support a weak form of realism about the truth-value of the
statements of mathematics. The book concludes with a chapter on
pure mathematics and the remaining options for making sense of its
interpretation and epistemology.
Thoroughly grounded in case studies drawn from scientific
practice, this book aims to bring together current debates in both
the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of science and to
demonstrate the philosophical importance of applications of
mathematics.
It is with great pleasure that we are presenting to the community
the second edition of this extraordinary handbook. It has been over
15 years since the publication of the first edition and there have
been great changes in the landscape of philosophical logic since
then. The first edition has proved invaluable to generations of
students and researchers in formal philosophy and language, as well
as to consumers of logic in many applied areas. The main logic
article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1999 has described the
first edition as 'the best starting point for exploring any of the
topics in logic'. We are confident that the second edition will
prove to be just as good. ! The first edition was the second
handbook published for the logic commu nity. It followed the North
Holland one volume Handbook of Mathematical Logic, published in
1977, edited by the late Jon Barwise, The four volume Handbook of
Philosophical Logic, published 1983-1989 came at a fortunate
temporal junction at the evolution of logic. This was the time when
logic was gaining ground in computer science and artificial
intelligence circles. These areas were under increasing commercial
pressure to provide devices which help and/or replace the human in
his daily activity. This pressure required the use of logic in the
modelling of human activity and organisa tion on the one hand and
to provide the theoretical basis for the computer program
constructs on the other.
The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our
thinking. The quality of our thinking, in turn, is determined by
the quality of our questions, for questions are the engine, the
driving force behind thinking. Without questions, we have nothing
to think about. Without essential questions, we often fail to focus
our thinking on the significant and substantive. When we ask
essential questions, we deal with what is necessary, relevant, and
indispensable to a matter at hand. We recognize what is at the
heart of the matter. Our thinking is grounded and disciplined. We
are ready to learn. We are intellectually able to find our way
about. To be successful in life, one needs to ask essential
questions: essential questions when reading, writing, and speaking;
when shopping, working, and parenting; when forming friendships,
choosing life-partners, and interacting with the mass media and the
Internet. Yet few people are masters of the art of asking essential
questions. Most have never thought about why some questions are
crucial and others peripheral. Essential questions are rarely
studied in school. They are rarely modeled at home. Most people
question according to their psychological associations. Their
questions are haphazard and scattered. The ideas we provide are
useful only to the extent that they are employed daily to ask
essential questions. Practice in asking essential questions
eventually leads to the habit of asking essential questions. But we
can never practice asking essential questions if we have no
conception of them. This mini-guide is a starting place for
understanding concepts that, when applied, lead to essential
questions. We introduce essential questions as indispensable
intellectual tools. We focus on principles essential to
formulating, analyzing, assessing, and settling primary questions.
You will notice that our categories of question types are not
exclusive. There is a great deal of overlap
This book examines the birth of the scientific understanding of
motion. It investigates which logical tools and methodological
principles had to be in place to give a consistent account of
motion, and which mathematical notions were introduced to gain
control over conceptual problems of motion. It shows how the idea
of motion raised two fundamental problems in the 5th and 4th
century BCE: bringing together being and non-being, and bringing
together time and space. The first problem leads to the exclusion
of motion from the realm of rational investigation in Parmenides,
the second to Zeno's paradoxes of motion. Methodological and
logical developments reacting to these puzzles are shown to be
present implicitly in the atomists, and explicitly in Plato who
also employs mathematical structures to make motion intelligible.
With Aristotle we finally see the first outline of the fundamental
framework with which we conceptualise motion today.
Of the four chapters in this book, the first two discuss (albeit in
consider ably modified form) matters previously discussed in my
papers 'On the Logic of Conditionals' [1] and 'Probability and the
Logic of Conditionals' [2], while the last two present essentially
new material. Chapter I is relatively informal and roughly
parallels the first of the above papers in discussing the basic
ideas of a probabilistic approach to the logic of the indicative
conditional, according to which these constructions do not have
truth values, but they do have probabilities (equal to conditional
probabilities), and the appropriate criterion of soundness for
inferences involving them is that it should not be possible for all
premises of the inference to be probable while the conclusion is
improbable. Applying this criterion is shown to have radically
different consequences from the orthodox 'material conditional'
theory, not only in application to the standard 'fallacies' of the
material conditional, but to many forms (e. g. , Contraposition)
which have hitherto been regarded as above suspi cion. Many more
applications are considered in Chapter I, as well as certain
related theoretical matters. The chief of these, which is the most
important new topic treated in Chapter I (i. e.
Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a natural point of entry to
what for most readers will be a new subject. Plural logic deals
with plural terms ('Whitehead and Russell', 'Henry VIII's wives',
'the real numbers', 'the square root of -1', 'they'), plural
predicates ('surrounded the fort', 'are prime', 'are consistent',
'imply'), and plural quantification ('some things', 'any things').
Current logic is singularist: its terms stand for at most one
thing. By contrast, the foundational thesis of this book is that a
particular term may legitimately stand for several things at once;
in other words, there is such a thing as genuinely plural
denotation. The authors argue that plural phenomena need to be
taken seriously and that the only viable response is to adopt a
plural logic, a logic based on plural denotation. They expound a
framework of ideas that includes the distinction between
distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural
descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists. A formal system of
plural logic is presented in three stages, before being applied to
Cantorian set theory as an illustration. Technicalities have been
kept to a minimum, and anyone who is familiar with the classical
predicate calculus should be able to follow it. The authors'
approach is an attractive blend of no-nonsense argumentative
directness and open-minded liberalism, and they convey the exciting
and unexpected richness of their subject. Mathematicians and
linguists, as well as logicians and philosophers, will find
surprises in this book. This second edition includes a greatly
expanded treatment of the paradigm empty term zilch, a much
strengthened treatment of Cantorian set theory, and a new chapter
on higher-level plural logic.
Paris of the year 1900 left two landmarks: the Tour Eiffel, and
David Hilbert's celebrated list of twenty-four mathematical
problems presented at a conference opening the new century. Kurt
Goedel, a logical icon of that time, showed Hilbert's ideal of
complete axiomatization of mathematics to be unattainable. The
result, of 1931, is called Goedel's incompleteness theorem. Goedel
then went on to attack Hilbert's first and second Paris problems,
namely Cantor's continuum problem about the type of infinity of the
real numbers, and the freedom from contradiction of the theory of
real numbers. By 1963, it became clear that Hilbert's first
question could not be answered by any known means, half of the
credit of this seeming faux pas going to Goedel. The second is a
problem still wide open. Goedel worked on it for years, with no
definitive results; The best he could offer was a start with the
arithmetic of the entire numbers. This book, Goedel's lectures at
the famous Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in 1941, shows
how far he had come with Hilbert's second problem, namely to a
theory of computable functionals of finite type and a proof of the
consistency of ordinary arithmetic. It offers indispensable reading
for logicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists interested
in foundational questions. It will form a basis for further
investigations into Goedel's vast Nachlass of unpublished notes on
how to extend the results of his lectures to the theory of real
numbers. The book also gives insights into the conceptual and
formal work that is needed for the solution of profound scientific
questions, by one of the central figures of 20th century science
and philosophy.
This volume offers English translations of three early works by
Ernst Schroeder (1841-1902), a mathematician and logician whose
philosophical ruminations and pathbreaking contributions to
algebraic logic attracted the admiration and ire of figures such as
Dedekind, Frege, Husserl, and C. S. Peirce. Today he still engages
the sympathetic interest of logicians and philosophers. The works
translated record Schroeder's journey out of algebra into algebraic
logic and document his transformation of George Boole's opaque and
unwieldy logical calculus into what we now recognize as Boolean
algebra. Readers interested in algebraic logic and abstract algebra
can look forward to a tour of the early history of those fields
with a guide who was exceptionally thorough, unfailingly honest,
and deeply reflective.
This is the first complete English translation of Gottlob Frege's
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (originally published in two volumes,
1893 and 1903), with introduction and annotation. The importance of
Frege's ideas within contemporary philosophy would be hard to
exaggerate. He was, to all intents and purposes, the inventor of
mathematical logic, and the influence exerted on modern philosophy
of language and logic, and indeed on general epistemology, by the
philosophical framework within which his technical contributions
were conceived and developed has been so deep that he has a strong
case to be regarded as the inventor of much of the agenda of modern
analytical philosophy itself. Two of Frege's three principal books
- the Begriffsschrift (1879) and Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) -
have been available in English translation for many years, as have
all the most important of his other, article-length writings.
Grundgesetze was to have been the summit of Frege's life's work - a
rigorous demonstration of how the fundamental laws of the classical
pure mathematics of the natural and real numbers could be derived
from principles which, in his view, were purely logical. A letter
received from Bertrand Russell shortly before the publication of
the second volume made Frege realise that Axiom V of his system,
governing identity for value-ranges, led to contradiction. But much
of the main thrust of Frege's project can be salvaged. The
continuing importance of the Grundgesetze lies not only in its
bearing on issues in the foundations of mathematics but in its
model of philosophical inquiry. Frege's ability to locate the
essential questions, his integration of logical and philosophical
analysis, and his rigorous approach to criticism and argument in
general are vividly in evidence in this, his most ambitious work.
This volume examines the role of logic in cognitive psychology in
light of recent developments. Gonzalo Reyes's new semantic theory
has brought the fields of cognitive psychology and logic closer
together, and has shed light on how children master proper names
and count nouns, and thus acquire knowledge. The chapters highlight
the inadequacies of classical logic in its handling of ordinary
language and reveal the prospects of applying these new theories to
cognitive psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, the
philosophy of language and logic.
This volume deals with formal, mechanizable reasoning in modal
logics, that is, logics of necessity, possibility, belief, time
computations etc. It is therefore of immense interest for various
interrelated disciplines such as philosophy, AI, computer science,
logic, cognitive science and linguistics. The book consists of 15
original research papers, divided into three parts. The first part
contains papers which give a profound description of powerful
proof-theoretic methods as applied to the normal modal logic S4.
Part II is concerned with a number of generalizations of the
standard proof-theoretic formats, while the third part presents new
and important results on semantics-based proof systems for modal
logic.
Offering a bold new vision on the history of modern logic, Lukas M.
Verburgt and Matteo Cosci focus on the lasting impact of
Aristotle's syllogism between the 1820s and 1930s. For over two
millennia, deductive logic was the syllogism and syllogism was the
yardstick of sound human reasoning. During the 19th century, this
hegemony fell apart and logicians, including Boole, Frege and
Peirce, took deductive logic far beyond its Aristotelian borders.
However, contrary to common wisdom, reflections on syllogism were
also instrumental to the creation of new logical developments, such
as first-order logic and early set theory. This volume presents the
period under discussion as one of both tradition and innovation,
both continuity and discontinuity. Modern logic broke away from the
syllogistic tradition, but without Aristotle's syllogism, modern
logic would not have been born. A vital follow up to The Aftermath
of Syllogism, this book traces the longue duree history of
syllogism from Richard Whately's revival of formal logic in the
1820s through the work of David Hilbert and the Goettingen school
up to the 1930s. Bringing together a group of major international
experts, it sheds crucial new light on the emergence of modern
logic and the roots of analytic philosophy in the 19th and early
20th centuries.
This book applies the formal discipline of logic to everyday
discourse. It offers a new analysis of the notion of individual,
suggesting that this notion is linguistic, not ontological, and
that anything denoted by a proper name in a well-functioning
language game is an individual. It further posits that everyday
discourse is non-compositional, i.e., its complex expressions are
not just the result of putting simpler ones together but react on
the latter, modifying their meaning through feedback. The book
theorizes that in everyday discourse, there is no algebra of truth
values, but the latter can be both input and output of something
which has no truth value at all. It suggests that an elementary
proposition of everyday discourse (defined as having exactly one
predicate) can, in principle, be indefinitely expanded by adding
new components, belonging neither to subject nor to predicate, but
remain elementary. This book is of interest to logicians and
philosophers of language.
By drawing on the insights of diverse scholars from around the
globe, this volume systematically investigates the meaning and
reality of the concept of negation in Post-Kantian
Philosophy-German Idealism, Early German Romanticism, and
Neo-Kantianism. The reader benefits from the historical, critical,
and systematic investigations contained which trace not only the
significance of negation in these traditions, but also the role it
has played in shaping the philosophical landscape of Post-Kantian
philosophy. By drawing attention to historically neglected thinkers
and traditions, and positioning the dialogue within a global and
comparative context, this volume demonstrates the enduring
relevance of Post-Kantian philosophy for philosophers thinking in
today's global context. This text should appeal to graduate
students and professors of German Idealism, Post-Kantian
philosophy, comparative philosophy, German studies, and
intellectual history.
This book features mathematical and formal philosophers' efforts to
understand philosophical questions using mathematical techniques.
It offers a collection of works from leading researchers in the
area, who discuss some of the most fascinating ways formal methods
are now being applied. It covers topics such as: the uses of
probable and statistical reasoning, rational choice theory,
reasoning in the environmental sciences, reasoning about laws and
changes of rules, and reasoning about collective decision
procedures as well as about action. Utilizing mathematical
techniques has been very fruitful in the traditional domains of
formal philosophy - logic, philosophy of mathematics and
metaphysics - while formal philosophy is simultaneously branching
out into other areas in philosophy and the social sciences. These
areas particularly include ethics, political science, and the
methodology of the natural and social sciences. Reasoning about
legal rules, collective decision-making procedures, and rational
choices are of interest to all those engaged in legal theory,
political science and economics. Statistical reasoning is also of
interest to political scientists and economists.
Papers from more than three decades reflect the development of
thinkingover the dialogical framework that shapes verbal expression
of comprehending experience and that has to be exhibited in
responsible argumentations. With dialogical reconstructions of
experience owing to the methodical constructivism of the a
oeErlangen Schoola it is possible to uncover the origin of many
conceptual oppositions in traditional philosophical talk, like
natural vs. artificial/cultural, subjective vs. objective, etc.,
and to solve philosophical riddles connected with them.
This book intends to unite studies in different fields related to
the development of the relations between logic, law and legal
reasoning. Combining historical and philosophical studies on legal
reasoning in Civil and Common Law, and on the often neglected
Arabic and Talmudic traditions of jurisprudence, this project
unites these areas with recent technical developments in computer
science. This combination has resulted in renewed interest in
deontic logic and logic of norms that stems from the interaction
between artificial intelligence and law and their applications to
these areas of logic. The book also aims to motivate and launch a
more intense interaction between the historical and philosophical
work of Arabic, Talmudic and European jurisprudence. The
publication discusses new insights in the interaction between logic
and law, and more precisely the study of different answers to the
question: what role does logic play in legal reasoning? Varying
perspectives include that of foundational studies (such as logical
principles and frameworks) to applications, and historical
perspectives.
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