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Higher-Order Metaphysics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 556

Higher-Order Metaphysics

This volume explores the use of higher-order logics in metaphysics. Higher-order logics are natural extensions of the common systems of predicate logic, with a history going back to the very beginnings of formal logic. Such logics are well suited to formalize metaphysical views and arguments. Over the last decade, there has been a resurgence of interest in higher-order metaphysics. Seventeen original essays are grouped under five headings. Three introductory chapters present higher-order languages and motivate their use in metaphysics. Three chapters on pure higher-order metaphysics discuss different options of higher-order languages and logics which may be used in metaphysics. Three chapters on applied higher-order metaphysics consider the application of higher-order logic to various central topics of metaphysics. Three historical chapters trace the development of higher-order logic as it relates to metaphysics over the last 150 years. The volume concludes with a discussion, containing two chapters criticizing the use of higher-order logic in metaphysics, as well as responses to these criticisms by two authors.

The Many and the One
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 329

The Many and the One

Plural expressions found in natural languages allow us to talk about many objects simultaneously. Plural logic -- a logical system that takes plurals at face value -- has seen a surge of interest in recent years. This book explores its broader significance for philosophy, logic, and linguistics. What can plural logic do for us? Are the bold claims made on its behalf correct? After introducing plural logic and its main applications, the book provides a systematic analysis of the relation between this logic and other theoretical frameworks such as set theory, mereology, higher-order logic, and modal logic. The applications of plural logic rely on two assumptions, namely that this logic is onto...

Critical Views of Logic
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 235

Critical Views of Logic

This book examines positions that challenge the Fregean logic-first view. It raises critical questions about logic by examining various ways in which logic may be entangled with mathematics and metaphysics. Is logic topic-neutral and general? Can we take the application of logic for granted? This book suggests that we should not be dogmatic about logic but ask similar critical questions about logic as those Kant raised about metaphysics and mathematics. It challenges the Fregean logic-first view according to which logic is fundamental and hence independent of any extra-logical considerations. Whereas Quine assimilated logic and mathematics to the theoretical parts of empirical science, the p...

Origins and Varieties of Logicism
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 419

Origins and Varieties of Logicism

This book offers a plurality of perspectives on the historical origins of logicism and on contemporary developments of logicist insights in philosophy of mathematics. It uniquely provides up-to-date research and novel interpretations on a variety of intertwined themes and historical figures related to different versions of logicism. The essays, written by prominent scholars, are divided into three thematic sections. Part I focuses on major authors like Frege, Dedekind, and Russell, providing a historical and theoretical exploration of such figures in the philosophical and mathematical milieu in which logicist views were first expounded. Part II sheds new light on the interconnections between...

Subatomic quantification
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 334

Subatomic quantification

The goal of this book is to explore the relationship between the cognitive notion of parthood and various grammatical devices expressing this concept in natural language. The monograph aims to investigate syntactic constructions and lexical categories, e.g., partitives, whole-adjectives, and multipliers, encoding different kinds of part-whole structures both in Slavic and non-Slavic languages. It is envisioned to inspire radical rethinking of the ontology of models accounting for nominal semantics. Specifically, it provides novel evidence for a mereotopological approach to meaning, i.e., a theory of wholes that captures not only parthood but also topological relations holding between parts. This evidence comes from the phenomenon of subatomic quantification, i.e., quantification over parts of referents of concrete count nouns.

Engaging Putnam
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 370

Engaging Putnam

Hilary Whitehall Putnam was one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. As student of Rudolph Carnap's and Hans Reichenbach's, he went on to become not only a major figure in North American analytic philosophy, who made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics, and physics but also to the disciplines of logic, number theory, and computer science. He passed away on March 13, 2016. The present volume is a memorial to his extraordinary intellectual contributions, honoring his contributions as a philosopher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. It features essays by an international team of leading philosophers, covering all aspects ...

The Nature of Contingency
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 232

The Nature of Contingency

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2020
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  • Publisher: Unknown

This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality.

Modal Logic as Metaphysics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 481

Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.

One True Logic
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 265

One True Logic

One True Logic is the first monograph to explicitly articulate a version of logical monism and defend it against the challenge from logical pluralism, according to which there is more than one correct logic.

Reasoning with Attitude
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 351

Reasoning with Attitude

Certain combinations of sounds or signs on paper are meaningful. What makes it the case that, unlike most combinations of sounds or signs, they have meaning? What is this meaning that they have? And what is it to understand this meaning? The traditional answers to these questions are based on the idea that words stand for something, but it is difficult to say what words such as good, if, or probable stand for. This book advances novel answers based on the idea that words get their meaning from the way they are used to express states of mind and what follows from them. It articulates a precise version of this idea, at a time when the shortcomings of the traditional answers are hotly discussed.