Download or read book Knowledge and Conditionals written by Robert Stalnaker and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert C. Stalnaker presents a set of essays on the structure of inquiry. In the first part he focuses on the concepts of knowledge, belief, and partial belief, and on the rules and procedures we use - or ought to use - to determine what to believe, and what to claim that we know. In the second part he examines conditional statements and conditional beliefs, their role in epistemology, and their relations to causal and explanatory concepts, such as dispositions, objective chance, relations of dependence, and independence. A central concern of the book is the interaction of different cognitive perspectives - the ways in which the attitudes of rational agents are or should be influenced by critical reflection on their present cognitive situation, on their own cognitive situations at other times, and on the cognitive situations of others with whom they interact. The general picture that is developed is naturalistic, following Hume in rejecting a substantive role for pure reason in the defense of inductive rules, and in giving causal concepts a central role in the description and explanation of our cognitive practices. However, Stalnaker rejects the side of Hume that aims to reduce concepts involving natural necessity to more basic descriptive concepts. Instead, he argues that the development of inductive rules and practices takes place in interaction with the development of concepts for giving a theoretical description of the world.
Download or read book Probabilistic Knowledge written by Sarah Moss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sarah Moss argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. She introduces the notion of probabilistic content and shows how it plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language. Just you can believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents.
Download or read book Conditionals in Nonmonotonic Reasoning and Belief Revision written by Gabriele Kern-Isberner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001-07-25 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers lymphoproliferative disorders in patients with congenital or acquired immunodeficiencies. Acquired immunodeficiencies are caused by infections with the human immunodeficiency virus or arise following immunosuppressive therapy administered after organ transplantation or to treat connective tissue diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. It was recently discovered that various diseases or therapeutic modalities that induce a state of immunosuppression may cause virally driven lymphoproliferations. This book summarizes for the first time this group of immunodeficiency-associated lymphoproliferations.
Download or read book Conditionals and Prediction written by Barbara Dancygier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new and in-depth analysis of English conditional sentences. In a wide-ranging discussion, Dancygier classifies conditional constructions according to time-reference and modality. She shows how the basic meaning parameters of conditionality correlate to formal parameters of the linguistic constructions which are used to express them. Dancygier suggests that the function of prediction is central to the definition of conditionality, and that conditional sentences display certain formal features which correlate to aspects of interpretation. Although the analysis is based primarily on English, it provides a theoretical framework that can be extended cross-linguistically to a broad range of grammatical phenomena. It will be essential reading for scholars and students concerned with the role of conditionals in English and many other languages.
Download or read book Suppose and Tell written by Timothy Williamson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does 'if' mean? Timothy Williamson presents a controversial new approach to understanding conditional thinking, which is central to human cognitive life. He argues that in using 'if' we rely on psychological heuristics, fast and frugal methods which can lead us to trust faulty data and prematurely reject simple theories.
Download or read book Inquiry written by Robert C. Stalnaker and published by Bradford Books. This book was released on 1987 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The abstract structure of inquiry - the process of acquiring and changing beliefs about the world - is the focus of this book which takes the position that the "pragmatic" rather than the "linguistic" approach better solves the philosophical problems about the nature of mental representation, and better accounts for the phenomena of thought and speech. It discusses propositions and propositional attitudes (the cluster of activities that constitute inquiry) in general and takes up the way beliefs change in response to potential new information, suggesting that conditional propositions should be understood as projections of epistemic policies onto the world.Robert C. Stalnaker is a professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. A Bradford Book.
Download or read book Tracking Truth written by Sherrilyn Roush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracking Truth presents a unified treatment of knowledge, evidence, and epistemological realism and anti-realism about scientific theories. A wide range of knowledge-related phenomena, especially but not only in science, strongly favour the idea of tracking as the key to what makes something knowledge. A subject who tracks the truth - an idea first formulated by Robert Nozick - has the ability to follow the truth through time and changing circumstances. Epistemologistsrightly concluded that Nozick's theory was not viable, but a simple revision of that view is not only viable but superior to other current views. In this new tracking account of knowledge, in contrast to the old view, knowledge has the property of closure under known implication, and troublesome counterfactualsare replaced with well-defined conditional probability statements. Of particular interest are the new view's treatment of skepticism, reflective knowledge, lottery propositions, knowledge of logical truth, and the question why knowledge is power in the Baconian sense.Ideally, evidence indicates a hypothesis and discriminates it from other possible hypotheses. This is the idea behind a tracking view of evidence, and Sherrilyn Roush provides a defence of a confirmation theory based on the Likelihood Ratio. The accounts of knowledge and evidence she offers provide a deep and seamless explanation of why having better evidence makes one more likely to have knowledge. Roush approaches the question of epistemological realism about scientific theories through thequestion what is required for evidence, and rejects both traditional realist and traditional anti-realist positions in favour of a new position which evaluates realist claims in a piecemeal fashion according to a general standard of evidence. The results show that while anti-realists were immodest indeclaring a priori what science could not do, realists were excessively sanguine about how far our actual evidence has so far taken us.
Download or read book Transparency and Self Knowledge written by Alex Byrne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alex Byrne sets out and defends a theory of self-knowledge-knowledge of one's mental states. Inspired by Gareth Evans' discussion of self-knowledge in his The Varieties of Reference, the basic idea is that one comes to know that one is in a mental state M by an inference from a worldly or environmental premise to the conclusion that one is in M. (Typically the worldly premise will not be about anything mental.) The mind, on this account, is 'transparent': self-knowledge is achieved by an 'outward glance' at the corresponding tract of the world, not by an 'inward glance' at one's own mind. Belief is the clearest case, with the inference being from 'p' to 'I believe that p'. One serious problem with this idea is that the inference seems terrible, because 'p' is at best very weak evidence that one believes that p. Another is that the idea seems not to generalize. For example, what is the worldly premise corresponding to 'I intend to do this', or 'I feel a pain'? Byrne argues that both problems can be solved, and explains how the account covers perception, sensation, desire, intention, emotion, memory, imagination, and thought. The result is a unified theory of self-knowledge that explains the epistemic security of beliefs about one's mental states (privileged access), as well as the fact that one has a special first-person way of knowing about one's mental states (peculiar access).
Download or read book Knowledge Through Imagination written by Amy Kind and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagination is celebrated as our vehicle for escape from the mundane here and now. It transports us to distant lands of magic and make-believe. It provides us with diversions during boring meetings or long bus rides. It enables creation of new things that the world has never seen. Yet the focus on imagination as a means of escape from the real world minimizes the fact that imagination seems also to furnish us with knowledge about it. Imagination seems an essential component in our endeavor to learn about the world in which we live--whether we're planning for the future, aiming to understand other people, or figuring out whether two puzzle pieces fit together. But how can the same mental power that allows us to escape the world as it currently is also inform us about the world as it currently is? The ten original essays in Knowledge Through Imagination, along with a substantial introduction by the editors, grapple with this neglected question; in doing so, they present a diverse array of positions ranging from cautious optimism to deep-seated pessimism. Many of the essays proceed by considering specific domains of inquiry where imagination is often employed--from the navigation of our immediate environment, to the prediction of our own and other peoples' behavior, to the investigation of ethical truth. Other essays assess the prospects for knowledge through imagination from a more general perspective, looking at issues of cognitive architecture and basic rationality. Blending perspectives from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics, Knowledge Through Imagination sheds new light on the epistemic role of imagination.
Download or read book Conditionals Paradox and Probability written by Lee Walters and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability comprises fifteen original essays on themes from the work of Dorothy Edgington, the first woman to hold a chair in philosophy at Oxford. Eminent contributors from philosophy and linguistics discuss a range of topics including conditionals, vagueness, knowledge, reasoning, and probability.
Download or read book Basic Knowledge and Conditions on Knowledge written by Mark McBride and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we know what we know? In this stimulating and rigorous book, Mark McBride explores two sets of issues in contemporary epistemology: the problems that warrant transmission poses for the category of basic knowledge; and the status of conclusive reasons, sensitivity, and safety as conditions that are necessary for knowledge. To have basic knowledge is to know (have justification for) some proposition immediately, i.e., knowledge (justification) that doesn’t depend on justification for any other proposition. This book considers several puzzles that arise when you take seriously the possibility that we can have basic knowledge. McBride’s analysis draws together two vital strands in contemporary epistemology that are usually treated in isolation from each other. Additionally, its innovative arguments include a new application of the safety condition to the law. This book will be of interest to epistemologists―both professionals and students.
Download or read book Mind Method and Conditionals written by Frank Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Constructing the World written by David J. Chalmers and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Chalmers develops a picture of reality on which all truths can be derived from a limited class of basic truths. The picture is inspired by Rudolf Carnap's construction of the world in Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt. Carnap's Aufbau is often seen as a noble failure, but Chalmers argues that a version of the project can succeed. With the right basic elements and the right derivation relation, we can indeed construct the world. The focal point of Chalmers' project is scrutability: the thesis that ideal reasoning from a limited class of basic truths yields all truths about the world. Chalmers first argues for the scrutability thesis and then considers how small the base can be. The result is a framework in "metaphysical epistemology": epistemology in service of a global picture of the world. The scrutability framework has ramifications throughout philosophy. Using it, Chalmers defends a broadly Fregean approach to meaning, argues for an internalist approach to the contents of thought, and rebuts W.V. Quine's arguments against the analytic and the a priori. He also uses scrutability to analyze the unity of science, to defend a sort of conceptual metaphysics, and to mount a structuralist response to skepticism. Based on Chalmers's 2010 John Locke lectures, Constructing the World opens up debate on central philosophical issues concerning knowledge, language, mind, and reality.
Download or read book IFS written by W.L. Harper and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With publication of the present volume, The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science enters its second phase. The first fourteen volumes in the Series were produced under the managing editorship of Professor James J. Leach, with the cooperation of a local editorial board. Many of these volumes resulted from colloguia and workshops held in con nection with the University of Western Ontario Graduate Programme in Philosophy of Science. Throughout its seven year history, the Series has been devoted to publication of high quality work in philosophy of science con sidered in its widest extent, including work in philosophy of the special sciences and history of the conceptual development of science. In future, this general editorial emphasis will be maintained, and hopefully, broadened to include important works by scholars working outside the local context. Appointment of a new managing editor, together with an expanded editorial board, brings with it the hope of an enlarged international presence for the Series. Serving the publication needs of those working in the various subfields within philosophy of science is a many-faceted operation. Thus in future the Series will continue to produce edited proceedings of worthwhile scholarly meetings and edited collections of seminal background papers. How ever, the publication priorities will shift emphasis to favour production of monographs in the various fields covered by the scope of the Series. THE MANAGING EDITOR vii W. L. Harper, R. Stalnaker, and G. Pearce (eds.), lIs, vii.
Download or read book Conditionals written by Nicholas Rescher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007-05-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unified treatment of conditionals based on epistemological principles rather than the semantical principles in vogue over recent decades. This book by distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher seeks to clarify the idea of what a conditional says by elucidating the information that is normally transmitted by its utterance. The result is a unified treatment of conditionals based on epistemological principles rather than the semantical principles in vogue over recent decades. This approach, argues Rescher, makes it easier to understand how conditionals actually function in our thought and discourse. In its concern with what language theorists call pragmatics—the study of the norms and principles governing our use of language in conveying information—Conditionals steps beyond the limits of logic as traditionally understood and moves into the realm claimed by theorists of artificial intelligence as they try to simulate our actual information-processing practices. The book's treatment of counterfactuals essentially revives an epistemological approach proposed by F. P. Ramsey in the 1920s and developed by Rescher himself in the 1960s but since overshadowed by the now-dominant possible-worlds approach. Rescher argues that the increasingly evident liabilities of the possible-worlds strategy make a reappraisal of the older style of analysis both timely and desirable. As the book makes clear, an epistemological approach demonstrates that counterfactual reasoning, unlike inductive inference, is not a matter of abstract reasoning alone but one of good judgment and common sense.
Download or read book Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge written by Torin Alter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-14 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consciousness has long been regarded as the biggest stumbling block for the view that the mind is physical. This volume collects thirteen new papers on this problem by leading philosophers including Torin Alter, Ned Block, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, John Hawthorne, Frank Jackson, Janet Levin, Joseph Levine, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Laurence Nemirow, Knut Nordby, David Papineau, and Stephen White.
Download or read book Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems written by Thomas Eiter and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-07-31 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the papers presented at the “Second International S- posium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems” (FoIKS 2002), which was held in Schloß Salzau, Germany from February 20th to 23rd, 2002. FoIKS is a biennial event focusing on theoretical foundations of information and knowledge systems. It aims to bring together researchers working on the theoretical foundations of information and knowledge systems and to attract researchers working in mathematical ?elds such as discrete mathematics, c- binatorics, logics, and ?nite model theory who are interested in applying their theories to research on database and knowledge base theory. FoIKS took up the tradition of the conference series “Mathematical Fundamentals of Database S- tems” (MFDBS) which enabled East-West collaboration in the ?eld of database theory. The ?rst FoIKS symposium was held in Burg, Spreewald (Germany) in 2000. Former MFDBS conferences were held in Dresden (Germany) in 1987, Visegr ́ ad (Hungary) in 1989, and in Rostock (Germany) in 1991. Proceedings of these previous events were published by Springer-Verlag as volumes 305, 364, 495, and 1762 of the LNCS series. In addition the FoIKS symposium is intended to be a forum for intensive d- cussions. For this reason the time slot of long and short contributions is 60 and 30 minutes respectively, followed by 30 and 15 minutes for discussions, respectively. Furthermore, participants are asked in advance to prepare as correspondents to a contribution of another author. There are also special sessions for the pres- tation and discussion of open research problems.
