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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Logic
"Exploring Hegels philosophical psychology to uncover viable
remedies to the chief dilemmas plaguing contemporary philosophy of
mind, Hegel and Mind exposes why mind cannot be an epistemological
foundation nor reduced to discursive consciousness not modelled
after computing machines"--Provided by publisher.
Jan Wolenski and Sandra Lapointe Polish philosophy goes back to the
13th century, when Witelo, famous for his works in optics and the
metaphysics of light, lived and worked in Silesia. Yet, Poland's
academic life only really began after the University of Cracow was
founded in 1364 - its development was interrupted by the sudden
death of King Kazimierz III, but it was re-established in 1400. The
main currents of classical scholastic thought like Thomism,
Scottism or Ockhamism had been late - about a century - to come to
Poland and they had a considerable impact on the budding Polish
philosophical scene. The controversy between the via antiqua and
the via moderna was hotly 1 debated. Intellectuals deliberated on
the issues of concilliarism (whether the C- mon Council has
priority over the Pope) and curialism (whether the Bishop of Rome
has priority over the Common Council). On the whole, the situation
had at least two remarkable features. Firstly, Polish philosophy
was pluralistic, and remained so, since its very beginning. But it
was also eclectic, which might explain why it aimed to a large
extent at achieving a compromise between rival views. Secondly,
given the shortcomings of the political system of the time as well
as external pr- sure by an increasingly hegemonic Germany, thinkers
were very much interested in political matters. Poland was a
stronghold of political thought (mostly inclined towards
concilliarism) and Polish political thought distinguished itself in
Europe J."
This volume honours the life and work of Solomon Feferman, one of
the most prominent mathematical logicians of the latter half of the
20th century. In the collection of essays presented here,
researchers examine Feferman's work on mathematical as well as
specific methodological and philosophical issues that tie into
mathematics. Feferman's work was largely based in mathematical
logic (namely model theory, set theory, proof theory and
computability theory), but also branched out into methodological
and philosophical issues, making it well known beyond the borders
of the mathematics community. With regard to methodological issues,
Feferman supported concrete projects. On the one hand, these
projects calibrate the proof theoretic strength of subsystems of
analysis and set theory and provide ways of overcoming the
limitations imposed by Goedel's incompleteness theorems through
appropriate conceptual expansions. On the other, they seek to
identify novel axiomatic foundations for mathematical practice,
truth theories, and category theory. In his philosophical research,
Feferman explored questions such as "What is logic?" and proposed
particular positions regarding the foundations of mathematics
including, for example, his "conceptual structuralism." The
contributing authors of the volume examine all of the above issues.
Their papers are accompanied by an autobiography presented by
Feferman that reflects on the evolution and intellectual contexts
of his work. The contributing authors critically examine Feferman's
work and, in part, actively expand on his concrete mathematical
projects. The volume illuminates Feferman's distinctive work and,
in the process, provides an enlightening perspective on the
foundations of mathematics and logic.
This text presents a clear and philosophically sound method for
identifying, interpreting, and evaluating arguments as they appear
in non-technical sources. It focuses on a more functional,
real-world goal of argument analysis as a tool for figuring out
what is reasonable to believe rather than as an instrument of
persuasion. Methods are illustrated by applying them to arguments
about different topics as they appear in a variety of contexts -
e.g., newspaper editorials and columns, short essays, informal
reports of scientific results, etc.
This book sets out for the first time in English and in the terms
of modern logic the semantics of the Port Royal Logic (La Logique
ou l'Art de penser, 1662-1685) of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre
Nicole, perhaps the most influential logic book in the 17th and
18th centuries. Its goal is to explain how the Logic reworks the
foundation of pre-Cartesian logic so as to make it compatible with
Descartes' metaphysics. The Logic's authors forged a new theory of
reference based on the medieval notion of objective being, which is
essentially the modern notion of intentional content. Indeed, the
book's central aim is to detail how the Logic reoriented semantics
so that it centered on the notion of intentional content. This
content, which the Logic calls comprehension, consists of an idea's
defining modes. Mechanisms are defined in terms of comprehension
that rework earlier explanations of central notions like conceptual
inclusion, signification, abstraction, idea restriction, sensation,
and most importantly within the Logic's metatheory, the concept of
idea-extension, which is a new technical concept coined by the
Logic. Although Descartes is famous for rejecting
"Aristotelianism," he says virtually nothing about technical
concepts in logic. His followers fill the gap. By putting to use
the doctrine of objective being, which had been a relatively minor
part of medieval logic, they preserve more central semantic
doctrines, especially a correspondence theory of truth. A recurring
theme of the book is the degree to which the Logic hews to medieval
theory. This interpretation is at odds with what has become a
standard reading among French scholars according to which this
16th-century work should be understood as rejecting earlier logic
along with Aristotelian metaphysics, and as putting in its place
structures more like those of 19th-century class theory.
Originally published in 1931. This inquiry investigates and
develops John Cook Wilson's view of the province of logic. It bases
the study on the posthumous collected papers Statement and
Inference. The author seeks to answer questions on the nature of
logic using Cook Wilson's thought. The chapters introduce and
consider topics from metaphysics to grammar and from psychology to
knowledge. An early conception of logic in the sciences and
presenting the work of an important twentieth century philosopher,
this is an engaging work.
During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, leading scholar of global
literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound
commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Upon learning that
these notebooks, which richly contextualise the early stages of his
magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before
been published in English, the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly
set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of
1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person
recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from
his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple
with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a
forbidden sexuality and the formation of an explosive analytical
philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes
with death. Much like Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, Private
Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it
augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself.
Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in
the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement
of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of
logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines
were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge
and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced
further developments in British philosophy at the end of the
century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British
empiricism, which is represented by philosophers such as John
Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and
explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian
philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship
in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false
notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to
Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the
original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and
terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the
rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its
doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British
empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that
philosophy is not defined only by the great names, but also by
minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the
canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of
logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the
seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving
manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing
scholarship in the field. "
This volume tells the story of the legacy and impact of the great
German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz made
significant contributions to many areas, including philosophy,
mathematics, political and social theory, theology, and various
sciences. The essays in this volume explores the effects of
Leibniz's profound insights on subsequent generations of thinkers
by tracing the ways in which his ideas have been defended and
developed in the three centuries since his death. Each of the 11
essays is concerned with Leibniz's legacy and impact in a
particular area, and between them they show not just the depth of
Leibniz's talents but also the extent to which he shaped the
various domains to which he contributed, and in some cases
continues to shape them today. With essays written by experts such
as Nicholas Jolley, Pauline Phemister, and Philip Beeley, this
volume is essential reading not just for students of Leibniz but
also for those who wish to understand the game-changing impact made
by one of history's true universal geniuses.
Originally published in 1994, The Incommensurability Thesis is a
critical study of the Incommensurability Thesis of Thomas Kuhn and
Paul Feyerabend. The book examines the theory that different
scientific theories may be incommensurable because of conceptual
variance. The book presents a critique of the thesis and examines
and discusses the arguments for the theory, acknowledging and
debating the opposing views of other theorists. The book provides a
comprehensive and detailed discussion of the incommensurability
thesis.
Originally published in 1972, Medieval Logic and Metaphysics shows
how formal logic can be used in the clarification of philosophical
problems. An elementary exposition of Lesniewski's Onotology, an
important system of contemporary logic, is followed by studies of
central philosophical themes such as Negation and Non-being,
Essence and Existence, Meaning and Reference, Part and Whole.
Philosophers and theologians discussed include St Anselm, St Thomas
Aquinas, Abelard, Ockham, Scotus, Hume and Russell.
Originally published in 1987, this volume reflects the diversity in
Hegelianism and every branch of philosophy which he contributed to.
It includes essays on his contribution to contemporary social
philosophy, logic and the philosophy of religion. His work is
examined in relation to Marx, Wittgenstein and his social
philosophy discussed from a feminist standpoint.
Ideas gain legitimacy as they are put to some practical use. A
study of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) supports this
pragmatism as a way of thinking about truth and meaning.
Architecture has a strong pragmatic strand, not least as we think
of building users, architecture as a practice, the practical
demands of building, and utility. After all, Vitruvius placed
firmness and delight in the company of utilitas amongst his demands
on architecture. Peirce (pronounced 'purse') was a logician, and so
many of his ideas are couched in terms of formal propositions and
their limitations. His work appeals therefore to many architects
grappling with the digital age, and references to his work cropped
up in the Design Methods Movement that developed and grew from the
1950s. That movement sought to systematise the design process,
contributing to the idea of the RIBA Plan of Work, computer-aided
design, and various controversies about rendering the design
process transparent and open to scrutiny. Peirce's commitment to
logic led him to investigate the basic elements of logical
statements, notably the element of the sign. His best-known
contribution to design revolves around his intricate theory of
semiotics, the science of signs. The study of semiotics divided
around the 1980s between advocates of Peirce's semiotics, and the
broader, more politically charged field of structuralism. The
latter has held sway in architectural discourse since the 1980s.
Why this happened and what we gain by reviving a Peircean semiotics
is the task of this book.
Winner of the 2020 Symposium Book Award by the Canadian Society for
Continental Philosophy Stella Gaon provides the first fully
philosophical account of the critical nature of deconstruction, and
she does so by turning in an original way to psychoanalysis.
Drawing on close readings of Freud and Laplanche, Gaon argues that
Derridean deconstruction is driven by a normative investment in
reason's psychological force. Indeed, deconstruction is more
faithful to the principle of reason than the various forms of
critical theory prevalent today. For if one pursues the classical
demand for rational grounds vigilantly, one finds that claims to
ethical or political legitimacy cannot be rationally justified,
because they are undone by logical undecidability. Gaon's argument
is borne out in the cases of Kantian deontology, Deweyan
pragmatism, progressive pedagogy, Habermasian moral theory,
Levinasian ethics and others. What emerges is the groundbreaking
demonstration that deconstruction is impelled by a quasi-ethical
critical drive, and that to read deconstructively is to radicalize
the emancipatory practice of reason as self-critique. This
important volume will be of great value to critical theorists as
well as to Derrida scholars and researchers in social and political
thought.
Timothy Williamson is one of the most influential living
philosophers working in the areas of logic and metaphysics. His
work in these areas has been particularly influential in shaping
debates about metaphysical modality, which is the topic of his
recent provocative and closely-argued book Modal Logic as
Metaphysics (2013). This book comprises ten essays by
metaphysicians and logicians responding to Williamson's work on
metaphysical modality, as well as replies by Williamson to each
essay. In addition, it contains an original essay by Williamson,
'Modal science,' concerning the role of modal claims in natural
science. This book was originally published as a special issue of
the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
William Tait is one of the most distinguished philosophers of
mathematics of the last fifty years. This volume collects his most
important published philosophical papers from the 1980's to the
present. The articles cover a wide range of issues in the
foundations and philosophy of mathematics, including some on
historical figures ranging from Plato to Godel.
Tait's main contributions were initially in proof theory and
constructive mathematics, later moving on to more philosophical
subjects including finitism and skepticism about mathematics. This
collection, presented as a whole, reveals the underlying unity of
Tait's work. The volume includes an introduction in which Tait
reflects more generally on the evolution of his point of view, as
well as an appendix and added endnotes in which he gives some
interesting background to the original essays. This is an important
collection of the work of one of the most eminent philosophers of
mathematics in this generation.
If there is one utterly inescapable problem for the metaphysician,
it is this: is metaphysics itself a theoretically legitimate
discipline? Is it, in other words, capable of a systematic and
well-confirmed set of theoretical results? And if not, why not?
From its inception, metaphysics has found itself exercised by the
nagging worry that its own inquiries might reveal it to be a
subject without an object, or a mode of inquiry without a method.
Such concerns were voiced as early as Plato's discussion of the
battle between the Gods and Giants. Since then, no era of its
history has spared metaphysics some rehearsal of this question. In
Empiricism and the Problem of Metaphysics, Paul Studtmann defends
an empiricist critique of metaphysical theorizing. At the heart of
the critique is an empiricist view of a priori knowledge, according
to which all a priori knowledge is empirical knowledge of the
results of effective procedures. Such a view of a priori knowledge
places severe limits on the scope a priori speculation and indeed
places beyond our ken the types of claims that metaphysicians as
well as traditional epistemologists and ethicists have typically
wanted to make.
Ideas gain legitimacy as they are put to some practical use. A
study of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) supports this
pragmatism as a way of thinking about truth and meaning.
Architecture has a strong pragmatic strand, not least as we think
of building users, architecture as a practice, the practical
demands of building, and utility. After all, Vitruvius placed
firmness and delight in the company of utilitas amongst his demands
on architecture. Peirce (pronounced 'purse') was a logician, and so
many of his ideas are couched in terms of formal propositions and
their limitations. His work appeals therefore to many architects
grappling with the digital age, and references to his work cropped
up in the Design Methods Movement that developed and grew from the
1950s. That movement sought to systematise the design process,
contributing to the idea of the RIBA Plan of Work, computer-aided
design, and various controversies about rendering the design
process transparent and open to scrutiny. Peirce's commitment to
logic led him to investigate the basic elements of logical
statements, notably the element of the sign. His best-known
contribution to design revolves around his intricate theory of
semiotics, the science of signs. The study of semiotics divided
around the 1980s between advocates of Peirce's semiotics, and the
broader, more politically charged field of structuralism. The
latter has held sway in architectural discourse since the 1980s.
Why this happened and what we gain by reviving a Peircean semiotics
is the task of this book.
The International Congresses of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy
of Science, which are held every fourth year, give a cross-section
of ongoing research in logic and philosophy of science. Both the
invited lectures and the many contributed papers are conductive to
this end. At the 9th Congress held in Uppsala in 1991 there were 54
invited lectures and around 650 contributed papers divided into 15
different sections. Some of the speakers who presented contributed
papers that attracted special interest were invited to submit their
papers for publication, and the result is the present volume. A few
papers appear here more or less as they were presented at the
Congress whereas others are expansions or elaborations of the talks
given at the Congress. A selection of this kind, containing 38
papers drawn from the 650 contributed papers presented at the
Uppsala Congress, cannot do justice to all facets of the field as
it appeared at the Congress. But it should allow the reader to get
a representative survey of contemporary research in large areas of
philosophical logic and philosophy of science. About half of the
papers of the volume appear in sections listed at the Congress
under the heading Philosophical and Foundational Problems about the
Sciences. The section Foundations of Logic, Mathematics and
Computer Science is represented by three papers, Foundations of
Physical Sciences by six papers, Foundations of Biological Sciences
by three papers, Foundations of Cognitive Science and AI by one
paper, and Foundations of Linguistics by three papers.
In the first half of the 20th century, many Polish philosophers
focused on defining scientific concepts that could lead to the
development of a philosophical synthesis of reality. Benedykt
Bornstein elaborated an algebraic logic and developed novum organum
philosophiae in the form of geometrical logic, a mathematical
system of universal science. It can also be stated that Bornstein
was unquestionably the forerunner of philosophers who started
research into spatial logic in the second half of the 20th century.
The aim of this study on Bornstein's Geometrical Logic is to draw
readers' attention not only to the algebraic and geometrical tools
used in philosophical research, but also to demonstrate its
importance for contemporary philosophical discussions which use
mathematical tools in topology and category theory.
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