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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > 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.
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.
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.
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).
This book investigates a number of central problems in the
philosophy of Charles Peirce grouped around the realism of his
semiotics: the issue of how sign systems are developed and used in
the investigation of reality. Thus, it deals with the precise
character of Peirce's realism; with Peirce's special notion of
propositions as signs which, at the same time, denote and describe
the same object. It deals with diagrams as signs which depict more
or less abstract states-of-affairs, facilitating reasoning about
them; with assertions as public claims about the truth of
propositions. It deals with iconicity in logic, the issue of
self-control in reasoning, dependences between phenomena in their
realist descriptions. A number of chapters deal with applied
semiotics: with biosemiotic sign use among pre-human organisms: the
multimedia combination of pictorial and linguistic information in
human semiotic genres like cartoons, posters, poetry, monuments.
All in all, the book makes a strong case for the actual relevance
of Peirce's realist semiotics.
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.
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
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.
The Logic Manual provides the best entry to the general abstract
way of thinking about language, logic, and semantics which is
characteristic of contemporary philosophy. Exercises, examples, and
sample examination papers are provided on an accompanying website.
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.
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.
Syllogism is a form of logical argument allowing one to deduce a
consistent conclusion based on a pair of premises having a common
term. Although Aristotle was the first to conceive and develop this
way of reasoning, he left open a lot of conceptual space for
further modifications, improvements and systematizations with
regards to his original syllogistic theory. From its creation until
modern times, syllogism has remained a powerful and compelling
device of deduction and argument, used by a variety of figures and
assuming a variety of forms throughout history. The Aftermath of
Syllogism investigates the key developments in the history of this
peculiar pattern of inference, from Avicenna to Hegel. Taking as
its focus the longue duree of development between the Middle Ages
and the nineteenth century, this book looks at the huge reworking
scientific syllogism underwent over the centuries, as some of the
finest philosophical minds brought it to an unprecedented height of
logical sharpness and sophistication. Bringing together a group of
major international experts in the Aristotelian tradition, The
Aftermath of Syllogism provides a detailed, up to date and critical
evaluation of the history of syllogistic deduction.
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.
Michael Potter unequivocally demonstrates the philosophical and
historical importance of the Notes for the first time. By teasing
out the meaning of key passages, he shows how many of the most
important insights in the Tractatus they contain. He discusses in
detail how Wittgenstein arrived at these insights by thinking
through ideas he obtained from Russell and Frege. And he uses a
challenging blend of biography and philosophy to illuminate the
methods Wittgenstein used in his work.
The book features the complete text of the Notesi in a critical
edition, with a detailed discussion of the circumstances in which
they were compiled, leading to a new understanding of how they
should be read.
This monograph proposes a new (dialogical) way of studying the
different forms of correlational inference, known in the Islamic
jurisprudence as qiyas. According to the authors' view, qiyas
represents an innovative and sophisticated form of dialectical
reasoning that not only provides new epistemological insights into
legal argumentation in general (including legal reasoning in Common
and Civil Law) but also furnishes a fine-grained pattern for
parallel reasoning which can be deployed in a wide range of
problem-solving contexts and does not seem to reduce to the
standard forms of analogical reasoning studied in contemporary
philosophy of science and argumentation theory. After an overview
of the emergence of qiyas and of the work of al-Shirazi penned by
Soufi Youcef, the authors discuss al-Shirazi's classification of
correlational inferences of the occasioning factor (qiyas
al-'illa). The second part of the volume deliberates on the system
of correlational inferences by indication and resemblance (qiyas
al-dalala, qiyas al-shabah). The third part develops the main
theoretical background of the authors' work, namely, the dialogical
approach to Martin-Loef's Constructive Type Theory. The authors
present this in a general form and independently of adaptations
deployed in parts I and II. Part III also includes an appendix on
the relevant notions of Constructive Type Theory, which has been
extracted from an overview written by Ansten Klev. The book
concludes with some brief remarks on contemporary approaches to
analogy in Common and Civil Law and also to parallel reasoning in
general.
Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, or Basic Laws of
Arithmetic, was intended to be his magnum opus, the book in which
he would finally establish his logicist philosophy of arithmetic.
But because of the disaster of Russell's Paradox, which undermined
Frege's proofs, the more mathematical parts of the book have rarely
been read. Richard G. Heck, Jr., aims to change that, and establish
it as a neglected masterpiece that must be placed at the center of
Frege's philosophy. Part I of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze develops
an interpretation of the philosophy of logic that informs
Grundgesetze, paying especially close attention to the difficult
sections of Frege's book in which he discusses his notorious 'Basic
Law V' and attempts to secure its status as a law of logic. Part II
examines the mathematical basis of Frege's logicism, explaining and
exploring Frege's formal arguments. Heck argues that Frege himself
knew that his proofs could be reconstructed so as to avoid
Russell's Paradox, and presents Frege's arguments in a way that
makes them available to a wide audience. He shows, by example, that
careful attention to the structure of Frege's arguments, to what he
proved, to how he proved it, and even to what he tried to prove but
could not, has much to teach us about Frege's philosophy.
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