Modal logic is the study of modalities - expressions that qualify assertions about the truth of statements - like the ordinary language phrases necessarily, possibly, it is known/believed/ought to be, etc., and computationally or mathematically motivated expressions like provably, at the next state, or after the computation terminates. The study of modalities dates from antiquity, but has been most actively pursued in the last three decades, since the introduction of the methods of Kripke semantics, and now impacts on a wide (...) range of disciplines, including the philosophy of language and linguistics ('possible words' semantics for natural language), constructive mathematics (intuitionistic logic), theoretical computer science (dynamic logic, temporal and other logics for concurrency), and category theory (sheaf semantics). This volume collects together a number of the author's papers on modal logic, beginning with his work on the duality between algebraic and set-theoretic modals, and including two new articles, one on infinitary rules of inference, and the other about recent results on the relationship between modal logic and first-order logic. Another paper on the 'Henkin method' in completeness proofs has been substantially extended to give new applications. Additional articles are concerned with quantum logic, provability logic, the temporal logic of relativistic spacetime, modalities in topos theory, and the logic of programs. (shrink)

Structures for Semantics offers an advanced course in logical and mathematical techniques and structures that are used in semantics, in relation to their semantic applications. The book helps students with a background in semantics to develop their skills of formalization and it makes research in semantics accessible. Workers in other disciplines will use it to discover more about the role of formal modelling in current semantic research, and about semantics itself. Following a chapter on logic and set theory there are (...) three parts of chapters: two pairs of chapters on partial order and equivalence relations in relation to semantic analyses of tense, partial information and vagueness; two chapters on methods for creating ordered structures in relation to intervals, events, and the semantics of change; two chapters on lattices and Boolean algebras in relation to types for noun phrases and verbs, and the semantics of plurals and mass nouns. For upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students in semantics: theoretical linguists, logicians, philosophers of language, computer scientists interested in natural language semantics. (shrink)

This influential 1888 publication explained the real numbers, and their construction and properties, from first principles.

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

In the past twenty years, interest in the epistemic status of religious belief has greatly increased. Leading this revival are the philosophers Basil Mitchell and Richard Swinburne, who believe that {eligious belief can be justified using inductive "best explanation" arguments. However, while Swinburne's approach is formal, using the calculus of Bayes Theorem, Mitchell's is informal, based on his recognition of judgment as central to such an assessment. This book is the first full length comparison of these two men and their (...) styles of justifying religious belief. The first half addresses the issues of rationality, endorsing Mitchell's methodology; the second half explores the concept of theistic explanation and demonstrates that the ontological argument has a place in the comprehensive explanatory power of theism. (shrink)

Foundations of Set Theory discusses the reconstruction undergone by set theory in the hands of Brouwer, Russell, and Zermelo. Only in the axiomatic foundations, however, have there been such extensive, almost revolutionary, developments. This book tries to avoid a detailed discussion of those topics which would have required heavy technical machinery, while describing the major results obtained in their treatment if these results could be stated in relatively non-technical terms. This book comprises five chapters and begins with a discussion of (...) the antinomies that led to the reconstruction of set theory as it was known before. It then moves to the axiomatic foundations of set theory, including a discussion of the basic notions of equality and extensionality and axioms of comprehension and infinity. The next chapters discuss type-theoretical approaches, including the ideal calculus, the theory of types, and Quine's mathematical logic and new foundations; intuitionistic conceptions of mathematics and its constructive character; and metamathematical and semantical approaches, such as the Hilbert program. This book will be of interest to mathematicians, logicians, and statisticians. (shrink)

J'ai fait dernierement (etant a un endroit ou quelques jours durant je n'avais rien a faire) un petit discours de Metaphysique, dont je serais bien aise d'avoir le sentiment de M. Arnauld. Leibniz annoncait en ces termes, en fevrier 1686, a l'un de ses nombreux correspondants, l'achevement tout recent de ces fameux trente sept articles. Ce discours offre, avec une remarquable densite, le premier grand expose d'ensemble des principes generaux d'une metaphysique qui jusque la se cherchait encore a travers de (...) nombreux travaux partiels; c'est cette synthese, qui sera bientot reprise par d'innombrables opuscules, qui inspirera encore les grandes oeuvres de maturite (Theodicee, Monadologie, Principes de la nature et de la grace). (shrink)

Faith and Reason displays in historical perspective some of the rich dialogue between religion and philosophy over two millennia, beginning with Greek reflections about God and the gods and ending with twentieth-century debate about faith in a world which tends to reserve its reverence for science. Paul Helm uses as a case study the question of whether the world is eternal or whether it was created out of nothing, following this theme from Plato through medieval thought to modern scientific speculation (...) about the beginnings of the universe. This Oxford Reader also includes discussion of many other fundamental issues raised by the juxtaposition of faith and reason, including arguments for and against the existence of God, the relationship between religion and ethics, the contrast between reason and revelation as sources of knowledge, and the implications of religious belief for freedom of the will. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy - arguably the most important philosophical movement in the 20th century - has gained a new historical self-consciousness, particularly about it's own origins. The period between 1880 and 1930 saw the most important work of its founding figures (Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) take root and flourish. The fifteen previously-unpublished essays in this collection explore different facets of this period, with an emphasis on the vital intellectual relationship between Frege and the early Wittgenstein.

Paul Horwich gives the definitive exposition of a prominent philosophical theory about truth, `minimalism'. His theory has attracted much attention since the first edition of Truth in 1990; he has now developed, refined, and updated his treatment of the subject, while preserving the distinctive format of the book. This revised edition appears simultaneously with a new companion volume, Meaning; the two books demystify central philosophical issues, and will be essential reading for all who work on the philosophy of language.

Covert behavior may also be strong behavior which cannot be overtly emitted because the proper circumstances are lacking. When we are strongly inclined to go skiing, although there is no snow, we say I would like to go skiing. It is not very  ...

After 1905, Einstein's miraculous year, physics would never be the same again. In those twelve months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five extraordinary papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. This book brings those papers together in an accessible format. The best-known papers are the two that founded special relativity: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? In the former, Einstein showed that absolute time (...) had to be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light. In the second, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which would lead to the famous formula E = mc 2 . The book also includes On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light , in which Einstein challenged the wave theory of light, suggesting that light could also be regarded as a collection of particles. This helped to open the door to a whole new world--that of quantum physics. For ideas in this paper, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921. The fourth paper also led to a Nobel Prize, although for another scientist, Jean Perrin. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat concerns the Brownian motion of such particles. With profound insight, Einstein blended ideas from kinetic theory and classical hydrodynamics to derive an equation for the mean free path of such particles as a function of the time, which Perrin confirmed experimentally. The fifth paper, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions , was Einstein's doctoral dissertation, and remains among his most cited articles. It shows how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of molecules. These papers, presented in a modern English translation, are essential reading for any physicist, mathematician, or astrophysicist. Far more than just a collection of scientific articles, this book presents work that is among the high points of human achievement and marks a watershed in the history of science. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the miraculous year, this new paperback edition includes an introduction by John Stachel, which focuses on the personal aspects of Einstein's youth that facilitated and led up to the miraculous year. (shrink)

The 'Evolution of Cooperation' addresses a simple yet age-old question; If living things evolve through competition, how can cooperation ever emerge? Despite the abundant evidence of cooperation all around us, there existed no purely naturalistic answer to this question until 1979, when Robert Axelrod famously ran a computer tournament featuring a standard game-theory exercise called The Prisoner's Dilemma. To everyone's surprise, the program that won the tournament, named Tit for Tat, was not only the simplest but the most "cooperative" entrant. (...) This unexpected victory proved that cooperation - one might even say altruism - is mathematically possible and therefore needs no hidden hand or divine agent to create and sustain it. A great roadblock to the understanding of all sorts of behavior was at last removed. The updated edition includes an extensive new chapter on cooperation in cancer cells and among terrorist organizations. (shrink)

This is the second of David Pears's acclaimed two‐volume work on the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy, covering the Philosophical Investigations and other writings from 1929 onwards. Though more selective in its coverage than the first volume (it deals mainly with Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology and the ego, the possibility of a private language and rule‐following), the book reveals with great clarity the style, method, and content of Wittgenstein's later thought. While this volume is independently comprehensible, Pears remains largely within the (...) structural framework of the first volume and uncovers thereby the general overall configuration and internal organization of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Die Grundlagen gehören zu den klassischen Texten der Sprachphilosophie, Logik und Mathematik. Frege stützt sein Programm einer Begründung von Arithmetik und Analysis auf reine Logik, indem er die natürlichen Zahlen als bestimmte Begriffsumfänge definiert. Die philosophische Fundierung des Fregeschen Ansatzes bilden erkenntnistheoretische und sprachphilosophische Analysen und Begriffserklärungen. Studienausgabe aufgrund der textkritisch herausgegebenen Jubiläumsausgabe (Centenarausgabe). Mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen, Literaturverzeichnis und Namenregister.

Classic analysis of the subject and the development of personal probability; one of the greatest controversies in modern statistcal thought.

The book will serve as an excellent graduate-level textbook in cognitive psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.

Churchland proposes a radically new way of representing theories and their acquisition in the terms of connectionist neuro- science. ...

"The first two lectures place the alternative I defend -- a kind of pragmatic realism -- in a historical and metaphysical context. Part of that context is provided by Husserl's remark that the history of modern philosophy begins with Galileo -- that is, modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that scientific facts are all the facts there are. Another part is provided by the analysis of a very simple example of what I call 'contextual relativity'. The position I (...) defend holds that truth depends on conceptual scheme and it is nonetheless 'real truth'. "In my third lecture I turn to the Kantian antecedents of this view, explaining what I think should be retained of the Kantian idea of autonomy as the central theme of morality, and extracting from Kant's work a 'moral image of the world' that connects the ideals of equality and intellectual liberty. In this lecture I defend the idea that moral images are an indispensible part of our moral and cultural heritage. "In the final lecture I defend the idea of moral objectivity. I compare our epistemological positions in ethics, history, analysis of human character, and science, and I argue that in no area can we hope for a 'foundation' which is more ultimate than the beliefs that actually, at a given time, function as foundational in the area, the beliefs concerning which one has to say 'this is where my spade is turned'. In ethics such beliefs are represented in moral images of the world.". (shrink)

This extended investigation of the semantics of event (and state) sentences in their various forms is a major contribution to the semantics of natural language, simultaneously encompassing important issues in linguistics, philosophy, and logic. It develops the view that the logical forms of simple English sentences typically contain quantification over events or states and shows how this view can account for a wide variety of semantic phenomena. Focusing on the structure of meaning in English sentences at a &"subatomic&" level&-that is, (...) a level below the one most theories accept as basic or &"atomic&"&-Parsons asserts that the semantics of simple English sentences require logical forms somewhat more complex than is normally assumed in natural language semantics. His articulation of underlying event theory explains a wide variety of apparently diverse semantic characteristics of natural language, and his development of the theory shows the importance of seeing the distinction between events and states. Parsons demonstrates that verbs, also, indicate kinds of actions rather than specific, individual actions. Verb phrases, too, he argues, depend on modifiers to make their function and meaning in a sentence specific. An appendix gives many of the details needed to formalize the theory discussed in the body of the text and provides a series of templates that permit the generation of atomic formulas of English. (shrink)

This is an introductory guide to the basic principles of constructing good arguments and criticizing bad ones. It is nontechnical in its approach, and is based on 150 key examples, each discussed and evaluated in clear, illustrative detail. The author explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound argument strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical questions for responding. Among the many subjects covered are: techniques of posing, (...) replying to, and criticizing questions, forms of valid argument, relevance, appeals to emotion, personal attack, uses and abuses of expert opinion, problems in deploying statistics, loaded terms, equivocation, and arguments from analogy. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

This book attempts to synthesize two apparently contradictory views of psychology: as the science of internal mental mechanisms and as the science of complex external behavior. Most books in the psychology and philosophy of mind reject one approach while championing the other, but Rachlin argues that the two approaches are complementary rather than contradictory. Rejection of either involves disregarding vast sources of information vital to solving pressing human problems--in the areas of addiction, mental illness, education, crime, and decision-making, to name (...) but a few. Where previous books have focused either on psychology as an abstract science of the mind or as a strictly empirical approach to behavioral problems, this is the only book that attempts to show how the best modern theoretical work on mental mechanisms relates to the best modern empirical work on complex behavioral problems. It will be of considerable interest to psychologists and philosophers across many disciplines and perspectives. (shrink)

The newest addition to the successful Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, this collection contains the most important contributions to the recent debate on the philosophy of science. The contributors crystallize the often heated arguments of the last two decades, assessing the skeptical attitudes within philosophy of science and the counter-challenges of the scientific realists. Contributors include Nancy Cartwright, Brian Ellis, Arthur Fine, Clark Glymour, Larry Laudan, Peter Lipton, Alan Musgrave, Wesely C. Salmon, Lawrence Sklar, Bas C. van Fraassen, and John (...) Worrall. (shrink)

Preface by Daniel C. Dennett Beginning with a general theory of function applied to body organs, behaviors, customs, and both inner and outer representations, ...

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.