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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Logic
F. H. Bradley was the greatest of the British Idealists, but for
much of this century his views have been neglected, primarily as a
result of the severe criticism to which they were subjected by
Russell and Moore. In recent years, however, there has been a
resurgence of interest in and a widespread reappraisal of his work.
W. J. Mander offers a general introduction to Bradley's metaphysics
and its logical foundations, and shows that much of his philosophy
has been seriously misunderstood. Dr Mander argues that any
adequate treatment of Bradley's thought must take full account of
his unique dual inheritance from the traditions of British
empiricism and Hegelian rationalism. The scholarship of recent
years is assessed, and new interpretations are offered of Bradley's
views about truth, predication, and relations, and of his arguments
for idealism. This book is a clear and helpful guide for those new
to this difficult but fascinating thinker, and at the same time an
original and stimulating contribution to the re-evaluation of his
work.
Alfred Tarski was one of the two giants of the twentieth-century
development of logic, along with Kurt Goedel. The four volumes of
this collection contain all of Tarski's papers and abstracts
published during his lifetime, as well as a comprehensive
bibliography. Here will be found many of the works, spanning the
period 1921 through 1979, which are the bedrock of contemporary
areas of logic, whether in mathematics or philosophy. These areas
include the theory of truth in formalized languages, decision
methods and undecidable theories, foundations of geometry, set
theory, and model theory, algebraic logic, and universal algebra.
Isaac Levi's new book develops further his pioneering work in
formal epistemology, focusing on the problem of belief contraction,
or how rationally to relinquish old beliefs. Levi offers the most
penetrating analysis to date of this key question in epistemology,
offering a completely new solution and explaining its relation to
his earlier proposals. He mounts an argument in favour of the
thesis that contracting a state of belief by giving up specific
beliefs is to be evaluated in terms of the value of the information
lost by doing so. The rationale aims to be thoroughly decision
theoretic. Levi spells out his goals and shows that certain types
of recommendations are obtained if one seeks to promote these
goals. He compares his approach to his earlier account of inductive
expansion. The recommendations are for 'mild contractions'. These
are formally the same as the 'severe withdrawals' considered by
Pagnucco and Rott. The rationale, however, is different. A critical
part of the book concerns the elaboration of these differences. The
results are relevant to accounts of the conditions under which it
is legitimate to cease believing and to accounts of conditionals.
Mild Contraction will be of great interest to all specialists in
belief revision theory and to many students of formal epistemology,
philosophy of science, and pragmatism.
Critical thinking is becoming increasingly prominent as an academic
discipline taught and examined in schools and universities, as well
as a crucial skill for everyday life. To be a successful critical
thinker it is vital to understand how the different concepts and
terms are defined and used. The terminology often presents a
stumbling block for the beginner, since much of it is used
imprecisely in everyday language. This definitive A to Z guide
provides precise definitions for over 130 terms and concepts used
in critical thinking. Each entry presents a short definition
followed by a more detailed explanation and authoritative
clarification. Armed with the tools and knowledge provided in these
pages, the reader will be able to distinguish an assertion from an
argument, a flaw from a fallacy, a correlation from a cause and a
fact from an opinion. The book is an invaluable resource for
teachers and students of critical thinking, providing all the tools
necessary to effectively analyse, evaluate, question and reason for
yourself.
This book presents reflections on the relationship between
narratives and argumentative discourse. It focuses on their
functional and structural similarities or dissimilarities, and
offers diverse perspectives and conceptual tools for analyzing the
narratives' potential power for justification, explanation and
persuasion. Divided into two sections, the first Part, under the
title "Narratives as Sources of Knowledge and Argument", includes
five chapters addressing rather general, theoretical and
characteristically philosophical issues related to the
argumentative analysis and understanding of narratives. We may
perceive here how scholars in Argumentation Theory have recently
approached certain topics that have a close connection with
mainstream discussions in epistemology and the cognitive sciences
about the justificatory potential of narratives. The second Part,
entitled "Argumentative Narratives in Context", brings us six more
chapters that concentrate on either particular functions played by
argumentatively-oriented narratives or particular practices that
may benefit from the use of special kinds of narratives. Here the
focus is either on the detailed analysis of contextualized examples
of narratives with argumentative qualities or on the careful
understanding of the particular demands of certain well-defined
situated activities, as diverse as scientific theorizing or war
policing, that may be satisfied by certain uses of narrative
discourse.
In three comprehensive volumes, Logic of the Future presents a full
panorama of Charles S. Peirce's important late writings. Among the
most influential American thinkers, Peirce took his existential
graphs to be his greatest contribution to human thought. The
manuscripts from 1895-1913, most of which are published here for
the first time, testify the richness and open-endedness of his
theory of logic and its applications. They also invite us to
reconsider our ordinary conceptions of reasoning as well as the
conventional stories told about the evolution of modern logic. This
second volume collects Peirce's writings on existential graphs
related to his Lowell Lectures of 1903, the annus mirabilis of his
that became decisive in the development of the mature theory of the
graphical method of logic.
'David Pole, in his The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein, makes an
admirable attempt to clarify the central points of Wittgenstein's
philosophy in a straightforward manner. He approaches it from the
outside with sympathy and good sense. And since he combines a clear
head with a fluent style of writing - a combination that is rare
among the initiated - his book will prove an excellent introduction
for those who need a succinct account of Wittgenstein's later
philosophy without any mystical overtones.' - The Economist 'There
is now a real need for a commentary on what must in frankness be
admitted to be an exceedingly difficult corpus of philosophy. Mr
Pole's little book is a response to that need; if small in bulk, it
is rich in ideas... and all students of Wittgenstein will turn to
it with gratitude.' - Sunday Times
This volume comprises nine lively and insightful essays by leading
scholars on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing mainly
on his early work. The essays are written from a range of
perspectives and do not belong to any one exegetical school; they
approach Wittgenstein's work directly, seeking to understand it in
its own terms and by reference to the context in which it was
produced. The contributors cover a wide range of aspects of
Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but three central themes emerge:
the relationship between Wittgenstein's account of representation
and Russell's theories of judgment; the role of objects in the
tractarian system; and Wittgenstein's philosophical method.
Collectively, the essays demonstrate how progress in the
understanding of Wittgenstein's work is not to be made by focusing
on overarching, ideological issues, but by paying close attention
to his engagement with specific philosophical problems.
Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be
understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a
respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for
making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that
might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has
five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that
simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the
present commentary, here translated into English for the first
time, Alexander develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He
preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work
is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable
picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time,
including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for
dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the
syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest
not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and
debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the
Middle Ages and later.
Alain Badiou's Being and Event continues to impact philosophical
investigations into the question of Being. By exploring the central
role set theory plays in this influential work, Burhanuddin Baki
presents the first extended study of Badiou's use of mathematics in
Being and Event. Adopting a clear, straightforward approach, Baki
gathers together and explains the technical details of the relevant
high-level mathematics in Being and Event. He examines Badiou's
philosophical framework in close detail, showing exactly how it is
'conditioned' by the technical mathematics. Clarifying the relevant
details of Badiou's mathematics, Baki looks at the four core topics
Badiou employs from set theory: the formal axiomatic system of ZFC;
cardinal and ordinal numbers; Kurt Goedel's concept of
constructability; and Cohen's technique of forcing. Baki then
rebuilds Badiou's philosophical meditations in relation to their
conditioning by the mathematics, paying particular attention to
Cohen's forcing, which informs Badiou's analysis of the event.
Providing valuable insights into Badiou's philosophy of
mathematics, Badiou's Being and Event and the Mathematics of Set
Theory offers an excellent commentary and a new reading of Badiou's
most complex and important work.
This volume is a result of the international symposium "The
Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School in European Culture," which
took place in Warsaw, Poland, September 2015. It collects almost
all the papers presented at the symposium as well as some
additional ones. The contributors include scholars from Austria,
the Netherlands, Ireland, and Poland. The papers are devoted to the
history and reception of the Lvov-Warsaw School, a Polish branch of
analytic philosophy. They present the School's achievements as well
as its connections to other analytic groups. The contributors also
show how the tradition of the School is developed contemporarily.
The title will appeal to historians of analytic philosophy as well
as historians of philosophy in Central Europe.
Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity was one of the most influential
philosophical works of the twentieth century. In this collection of
essays leading specialists explore issues arising from this and
other works of Kripke's.
This book explores what it means to be 'critical' in different
disciplines in higher education and how students can be taught to
be effective critical thinkers. This book clarifies the idea of
critical thinking by investigating the 'critical' practices of
academics across a range of disciplines. Drawing on key theorists -
Wittgenstein, Geertz, Williams, Halliday - and using a
'textographic' approach, the book explores how the concept of
critical thinking is understood by academics and also how it is
constructed discursively in the texts and practices they employ in
their teaching. Critical thinking is one of the most widely
discussed concepts in debates on university learning. For many, the
idea of teaching students to be critical thinkers characterizes
more than anything else the overriding purpose of 'higher
education'. But whilst there is general agreement about its
importance as an educational ideal, there is surprisingly little
agreement about what the concept means exactly. Also at issue is
how and what students need to be taught in order to be properly
critical in their field. This searching monograph seeks answers to
these important questions.
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.
Since the middle of the 20th century Ludwig Wittgenstein has been
an exceptionally influential and controversial figure wherever
philosophy is studied. This is the most comprehensive volume ever
published on Wittgenstein: thirty-five leading scholars explore the
whole range of his thought, offering critical engagement and
original interpretation, and tracing his philosophical development.
Topics discussed include logic and mathematics, language and mind,
epistemology, philosophical methodology, religion, ethics, and
aesthetics. Wittgenstein's relation to other founders of analytic
philosophy such as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore
is explored. This Handbook is the place to look for a full
understanding of Wittgenstein's special importance to modern
philosophy.
Writing on the justification of certain inductive inferences, the
author proposes that sometimes induction is justified and that
arguments to prove otherwise are not cogent. In the first part he
examines the problem of justifying induction, looks at some
attempts to prove that it is justified, and responds to criticisms
of these proofs. In the second part he deals with such topics as
formal logic, deductive logic, the theory of logical probability,
and probability and truth.
This book presents adaptive logics as an intuitive and powerful
framework for modeling defeasible reasoning. It examines various
contexts in which defeasible reasoning is useful and offers a
compact introduction into adaptive logics. The author first
familiarizes readers with defeasible reasoning, the adaptive logics
framework, combinations of adaptive logics, and a range of useful
meta-theoretic properties. He then offers a systematic study of
adaptive logics based on various applications. The book presents
formal models for defeasible reasoning stemming from different
contexts, such as default reasoning, argumentation, and normative
reasoning. It highlights various meta-theoretic advantages of
adaptive logics over other logics or logical frameworks that model
defeasible reasoning. In this way the book substantiates the status
of adaptive logics as a generic formal framework for defeasible
reasoning.
This volume provides a comprehensive collection of classic and
contemporary readings in the philosophy of logic. The selections
include some of the most important, technically exact, yet lucid
and readable expositions of central concepts and controversies in
philosophical logic. Areas of coverage include classical logic,
truth, propositions and meaning, quantifiers and quantificational
theory, validity, inference and entailment, and modality,
intensionality and propositional attitude.
Since the articles are written from a variety of perspectives,
the reader is able to critically assess the background and current
trends in philosophical applications of symbolic logic. The volume
also examines the limitations of classical and nonstandard
logics.
The book complements "Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology"
and "A Companion to Philosophical Logic, "also edited by Dale
Jacquette.
Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge addresses a philosophical
subject-the nature of truth and knowledge-but treats it in a way
that draws on insights beyond the usual confines of modern
philosophy. This ambitious collection includes contributions from
established scholars in philosophy, theology, mathematics,
chemistry, biology, psychology, literary criticism, history, and
architecture. It represents an attempt to integrate the insights of
these disciplines and to help them probe their own basic
presuppositions and methods. The essays in Forms of Truth and the
Unity of Knowledge are collected into five parts, the first dealing
with division of knowledge into multiple disciplines in Western
intellectual history; the second with the foundational disciplines
of epistemology, logic, and mathematics; the third with explanation
in the natural sciences; the fourth with truth and understanding in
disciplines of the humanities; and the fifth with art and theology.
Contributors: Vittorio Hoesle, Keith Lehrer, Robert Hanna, Laurent
Lafforgue, Thomas Nowak, Francisco J. Ayala, Zygmunt Pizlo, Osborne
Wiggins, Allan Gibbard, Carsten Dutt, Aviezer Tucker, Nicola Di
Cosmo, Michael Lykoudis, and Celia Deane-Drummond.
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