Probability: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explains the principal concepts and applications of probability. It is intended for philosophers and others who want to understand probability as we all apply it in our working and everyday lives. The book is not a course in mathematical probability, of which it uses only the simplest results, and avoids all needless technicality. The role of probability in modern theories of knowledge, inference, induction, causation, laws of nature, action and decision-making makes an understanding of it especially important to philosophers and students of philosophy, to whom this book will be invaluable both as a textbook and a work of reference. In this book D. H. Mellor discusses the three basic kinds of probability - physical, epistemic, and subjective - and introduces and assesses the main theories and interpretations of them. The topics and concepts covered include: * chance * frequency * possibility * propensity * credence * confirmation * Bayesianism. Probability: A Philosophical Introduction is essential reading for all philosophy students and others who encounter or need to apply ideas of probability.

Series Information:
International Library of Philosophy

Real Time II extends and evolves DH Mellor's classic exploration of the philosophy of time, Real Time. This new book answers such basic metaphysical questions about time as: how do past, present and future differ, how are time and space related, what is change, is time travel possible? His Real Time dominated the philosophy of time for fifteen years. Real TIme II will do the same for the next twenty. GET /english/edu/Studying_at_SU/History_of_Literature.html HTTP/1.0

Real Time II extends and evolves DH Mellor's classic exploration of the philosophy of time,Real Time. This new book answers such basic metaphysical questions about time as: how do past, present and future differ, how are time and space related, what is change, is time travel possible? His Real Time dominated the philosophy of time for fifteen years. Real TIme II will do the same for the next twenty. GET /english/edu/Studying_at_SU/History_of_Literature.html HTTP/1.0

Series Information:
International Library of Philosophy

This selection of Professor Mellor's work gathers together 16 major papers on related topics written over the last 15 years. Together they form a complete modern metaphysics. The book starts with the mind - the subjectivity of the self, consciousness, how like computers we are, and how psychology relates to physics. It then tackles dispositions, natural kinds, physical necessity, objective chances, laws of nature and the relation of properties to predicates. From this it moves on to causation - what it relates, how it works, how it accommodates chance and defines the direction of time. Finally, the author shows how chance should affect our expectations and decisions, and how it solves the notorious problem of induction. Two of the papers were written for this volume, another has been revised for it, and many have hitherto been relatively inaccessible. An introduction demonstrates the connections between the papers, and discusses subsequent developments in the subject and in the author's own views.

This selection of D. H. Mellor's work demonstrates the wide ranging originality of his work. It gathers together sixteen major papers on related topics. Together they form a complete modern metaphysics. The first five papers are on aspects of the mind: on our 'selves', their supposed subjectivity and how we refer to them, on the nature of conscious belief and on computational and physicalist theories of the mind. The next five papers deal with dispositions, natural kinds, laws of nature and how they involve natural necessity, universals and objective chances, and the relation between properties and predicates. Then follow three papers about the relations between time, change and causation, the nature of individual causes and effects and of the causal relation between them, and how causation depends on chance. The last three papers discuss the relation between chance and degrees of belief, give a solution to the problem of induction, and argue for an objective interpretation of decision theory.

The Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) died tragically young, but had already established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Besides groundbreaking work in philosophy, particularly in logic, language, and metaphysics, he created modern decision theory and made substantial contributions to mathematics and economics. In these original essays, written to commemorate the centenary of Ramsey's birth, a distinguished international team of contributors offer fresh perspectives on his work and show how relevant it is to present-day concerns. Each of the ten essays addresses fundamental and contentious issues, including success semantics, propositions, infinity, conditionals, conceptual analysis, decision theory, and intergenerational justice. They also shed light on the intellectual context in which Ramsey developed his thought, including his relationship with such leading thinkers as John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The volume will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the recent history of philosophy and economics, as well as for practitioners and students of logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, decision theory, and welfare economics.

Ways of Communicating is a stimulating exploration of the single most powerful force that gives humankind its control over the natural world--the communication among us. So integral a part of everyday life as to be taken for granted, yet so multi-faceted as to be notoriously slippery to describe and analyze, the world of communication is treated here from the standpoint of the arts quite as much as the sciences. Speech and body language, fiction and music, communication by neural networks within the brain and by satellite around the globe, all are considered together to give a fascinating view of this elusive aspect of our common humanity. Contributors include P.N. Johnson-Laird on The Nature of Communication; Horace Barlow on The Brain; Patrick Bateson on Animals; Noam Chomsky on Language; D.H. Mellor on Truth; David Lodge on The Novel; Jonathan Miller on Communication without Words; Alexander Goehr on Music; and John Alvey on Telecommunications.

Statistical techniques and theories have become widely applied in the physical, biological and social sciences. The enormous increase in their scope and complexity has led to much philosophical discussion of their significance, and of the meaning in non-mathematical terms of the methods and concepts they employ. This book deals not so much with statistical methods as with the central concept of chance, or statistical probability, which statistical theories apply to nature. Examples range from the chance of a tossed coin falling heads to that of a man dying or a radioactive atom decaying in a fixed period of time. Chances seem, however, to be peculiar properties, and to belong to peculiar entitles, to events rather than to things.

Probability: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explains the principal concepts and applications of probability. It is intended for philosophers and others who want to understand probability as we all apply it in our working and everyday lives. The book is not a course in mathematical probability, of which it uses only the simplest results, and avoids all needless technicality. The role of probability in modern theories of knowledge, inference, induction, causation, laws of nature, action and decision-making makes an understanding of it especially important to philosophers and students of philosophy, to whom this book will be invaluable both as a textbook and a work of reference. In this book D. H. Mellor discusses the three basic kinds of probability - physical, epistemic, and subjective - and introduces and assesses the main theories and interpretations of them. The topics and concepts covered include: * chance * frequency * possibility * propensity * credence * confirmation * Bayesianism. Probability: A Philosophical Introduction is essential reading for all philosophy students and others who encounter or need to apply ideas of probability.

Ways of Communicating is a stimulating exploration of the single most powerful force that gives humankind its control over the natural world--the communication among us. So integral a part of everyday life as to be taken for granted, yet so multi-faceted as to be notoriously slippery to describe and analyze, the world of communication is treated here from the standpoint of the arts quite as much as the sciences. Speech and body language, fiction and music, communication by neural networks within the brain and by satellite around the globe, all are considered together to give a fascinating view of this elusive aspect of our common humanity. Contributors include P.N. Johnson-Laird on The Nature of Communication; Horace Barlow on The Brain; Patrick Bateson on Animals; Noam Chomsky on Language; D.H. Mellor on Truth; David Lodge on The Novel; Jonathan Miller on Communication without Words; Alexander Goehr on Music; and John Alvey on Telecommunications.

Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. The latter gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects.

Mind, Meaning, and Reality contains fifteen philosophical papers by D. H. Mellor, including a new defense of "success semantics," and an introduction arguing that metaphysics can and need only be justified by doing it and not by a "meta-metaphysics," which it needs no more than physics needs metaphysics. The papers are grouped into three parts. Part I is about how the ways we are disposed to act fixes both what we believe and what we use language to mean. Part II is about what there is: the reality of dispositions; what makes beliefs and sentences true; why there is only one universe; and how social groups, and other things composed of parts, are related to the people and other things that constitute them. Part III is about time, and includes discussions of twentieth century developments in the philosophy of time; why Kant was right about tense, even though he was wrong about time; why forward time travel is trivial and backward time travel impossible; and what gives time its direction.

About the Series: The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader. The editors of each volume contribute an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading. About this volume: When we say a certain rose is red, we seem to be attributing a property, redness, to it. But are there really such properties? If so, what are they like, how do we know about them, and how are they related to the objects which have them and the linguistic devices which we use to talk about them? This collection presents these ancient problems in a modern light. In particular, it makes accessible for the first time the most important contributions to the contemporary controversy about the nature of properties. Those new to the subject will find the clearly-written introduction, by two experts in the field, an invaluable guide to the intricacies of this debate. The volume illustrates very well the aims and methods of modern metaphysics and shows how a thorough understanding of the metaphysics of properties is crucial to most of analytic philosophy.