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The fourteenth volume of the Second Edition covers central topics in philosophical logic that have been studied for thousands of years, since Aristotle: Inconsistency, Causality, Conditionals, and Quantifiers. These topics are central in many applications of logic in central disciplines and this book is indispensable to any advanced student or researcher using logic in these areas. The chapters are comprehensive and written by major figures in the field.
"A defense of an ontology of propositions and of some logical resources for representing them. It begins with an austere formulation of a theory of propositions in a first-order extensional logic, but then uses the commitments of this theory to justify an enrichment to modal logic - the logic of necessity and possibility - as an appropriate framework for regimented languages that are constructed to represent any of our scientific and philosophical commitments. Both the proof-theory and the model theory of a first-order quantified modal logic are developed in detail, and it is argued that these formal resources help to sharpen questions about ontology and predication. The clarification of pre...
This book provides an accessible, comprehensive and critical overview of theories of linguistic reference and meaning in the 20th century.
Robert Stalnaker explores the contexts in which speech takes place, the ways we represent them, and the roles they play in explaining the interpretation and dynamics of speech. His central thesis is the autonomy of pragmatics: the independence of theory about structure and function of discourse from theory about mechanisms serving those functions.
So it is hardly a decade ago that presupposition theory has been cast into a promising theoretical form. And as this provided an inspiring starting point for further research, we thought that, at the turn of the century, the time had come to discuss what the new theory had taught us and which promising further perspectives had been opened up. This was the motivation behind the conference on "Presupposition" which we convened in Stuttgart in October 2000, and which gave rise to the papers collected in this volume. The conference was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which we gratefully acknowledge. Undoubtedly, presupposition theory is a major chapter in the success story of dynamic semantics. A conference on the topic thus also seemed to us the ideal birthday present for one of the founding fathers of dynamic semantics, our teacher and friend Hans Kamp, on his 60th birthday. To him we dedicate the volume as an expression of our gratitude for his untiring effort to make us understand.
Essays on the state of research investigating the relationship between conditionals and conditional probabilities.
In Context and Content Robert Stalnaker develops a philosophical picture of the nature of speech and thought and the relations between them. Two themes in particular run through these collected essays: the role that the context in which speech takes place plays in accounting for the way language is used to express thought, and the role of the external environment in determining the contents of our thoughts. Stalnaker argues against the widespread assumption of the priority of linguistic over mental representation, which he suggests has had a distorting influence on our understanding. The first part of the book develops a framework for representing contexts and the way they interact with the ...
This Undergraduate Textbook introduces key methods and examines the major areas of philosophy in which formal methods play pivotal roles. Coverage begins with a thorough introduction to formalization and to the advantages and pitfalls of formal methods in philosophy. The ensuing chapters show how to use formal methods in a wide range of areas. Throughout, the contributors clarify the relationships and interdependencies between formal and informal notions and constructions. Their main focus is to show how formal treatments of philosophical problems may help us understand them better. Formal methods can be used to solve problems but also to express new philosophical problems that would never have seen the light of day without the expressive power of the formal apparatus. ​Formal philosophy merges work in different areas of philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, computer science, linguistics, physics, psychology, biology, economics, political theory, and sociology. This title offers an accessible introduction to this new interdisciplinary research area to a wide academic audience.
Making a Difference presents fifteen original essays on causation and counterfactuals by an international team of experts. Collectively, they represent the state of the art on these topics. The essays in this volume are inspired by the life and work of Peter Menzies, who made a difference in the lives of students, colleagues, and friends. Topics covered include: the semantics of counterfactuals, agency theories of causation, the context-sensitivity of causal claims, structural equation models, mechanisms, mental causation, causal exclusion argument, free will, and the consequence argument.
Belief change is an emerging field of artificial intelligence and information science dedicated to the dynamics of information and the present book provides a state-of-the-art picture of its formal foundations. It deals with the addition, deletion and combination of pieces of information and, more generally, with the revision, updating and fusion of knowledge bases. The book offers an extensive coverage of, and seeks to reconcile, two traditions in the kinematics of belief that often ignore each other - the symbolic and the numerical (often probabilistic) approaches. Moreover, the work encompasses both revision and fusion problems, even though these two are also commonly investigated by diff...