An introduction to philosophy of language since Frege, focusing on the 20th century.

This chapter presents a new semantics for inductive empirical knowledge. The epistemic agent is represented concretely as a learner who processes new inputs through time and who forms new beliefs from those inputs by means of a concrete, computable learning program. The agent’s belief state is represented hyper-intensionally as a set of time-indexed sentences. Knowledge is interpreted as avoidance of error in the limit and as having converged to true belief from the present time onward. Familiar topics are re-examined within (...) the semantics, such as inductive skepticism, the logic of discovery, Duhem’s problem, the articulation of theories by auxiliary hypotheses, the role of serendipity in scientific knowledge, Fitch’s paradox, deductive closure of knowability, whether one can know inductively that one knows inductively, whether one can know inductively that one does not know inductively, and whether expert instruction can spread common inductive knowledge—as opposed to mere, true belief—through a community of gullible pupils. (shrink)

This book illustrates the program of Logical-Informational Dynamics. Rational agents exploit the information available in the world in delicate ways, adopt a wide range of epistemic attitudes, and in that process, constantly change the world itself. Logical-Informational Dynamics is about logical systems putting such activities at center stage, focusing on the events by which we acquire information and change attitudes. Its contributions show many current logics of information and change at work, often in multi-agent settings where social behavior is essential, (...) and often stressing Johan van Benthem's pioneering work in establishing this program. However, this is not a Festschrift, but a rich tapestry for a field with a wealth of strands of its own. The reader will see the state of the art in such topics as information update, belief change, preference, learning over time, and strategic interaction in games. Moreover, no tight boundary has been enforced, and some chapters add more general mathematical or philosophical foundations or links to current trends in computer science. The theme of this book lies at the interface of many disciplines. Logic is the main methodology, but the various chapters cross easily between mathematics, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive and social sciences, while also ranging from pure theory to empirical work. Accordingly, the authors of this book represent a wide variety of original thinkers from different research communities. And their interconnected themes challenge at the same time how we think of logic, philosophy and computation. Thus, very much in line with van Benthem's work over many decades, the volume shows how all these disciplines form a natural unity in the perspective of dynamic logicians (broadly conceived) exploring their new themes today. And at the same time, in doing so, it offers a broader conception of logic with a certain grandeur, moving its horizons beyond the traditional study of consequence relations. (shrink)

IntroductionA quick glance at the opening paragraphs in many of the classic logic textbooks reveals a common view: Logical methods highlight the reasoning patterns of a single agent engaged in some form of mathematical thinking.A sampling from my bookshelf: Shoenfield’s Mathematical Logic: “Logic is the study of reasoning; and mathematical logic is the study of the type of reasoning done by mathematicians”; Enderton’s A Mathematical Introduction of Logic: “Symbolic logic is a mathematical model of deductive thought”; and Chiswell and Hodges (...) Mathematical Logic: “In this course we shall study some ways of proving statements.” However, this traditional view of the “subject matter” of logic is expanding. There is a growing literature using phrases such as “rational interaction” or “information flow” to describe its subject matter while still employing traditional logical methods. The clearest example of this can be found in the work of Johan van Benthem and others on l .. (shrink)

Gupta has proposed a definition of strategic rationality cast in the framework of his revision theory of truth. His analysis, relative to a class of normal form games in which all players have a strict best reply to all other players’ strategy profiles, shows that game-theoretic concepts have revision-theoretic counterparts. We extend Gupta’s approach to deal with normal form games in which players’ may have weak best replies. We do so by adapting intuitions relative to Nash equilibrium refinements to the (...) revision-theoretic framework. We prove that there is a precise equivalence between trembling-hand perfect equilibria in two-player normal games and a revision-theoretic property. We then introduce lexicographic choice of action as a way to represent players’ expectations, which allows our analysis to reach full generality. Finally, we provide an example of the versatility of revision theory as applied to strategic interaction by formalizing a risk-and-compensation procedure of strategic choice in the revision-theoretic framework. (shrink)