Download or read book Nuel Belnap on Indeterminism and Free Action written by Thomas Müller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to further the use of formal methods in clarifying one of the central problems of philosophy: that of our free human agency and its place in our indeterministic world. It celebrates the important contributions made in this area by Nuel Belnap, American logician and philosopher. Philosophically, indeterminism and free action can seem far apart, but in Belnap’s work, they are intimately linked. This book explores their philosophical interconnectedness through a selection of original research papers that build forth on Belnap’s logical and philosophical work. Some contributions take the form of critical discussions of Belnap's published work, some develop points made in his publications in new directions, and others provide additional insights on the topics of indeterminism and free action. In Nuel Belnap’s work on indeterminism and free action, three formal frameworks figure prominently: the simple branching histories framework known as "branching time;" its relativistic spatio-temporal extension, branching space-times; and the “seeing to it that” (stit ) logic of agency. As those frameworks provide the formal background for the contributed papers, the volume introduction gives an overview of the current state of their development. It also introduces case-intensional first order logic (CIFOL), a general intensional logic offering resources for a first-order extension of the mentioned frameworks and a recent research focus of Belnap’s. The volume also contains an extended biographical interview with Nuel Belnap.

Download or read book Nuel Belnap on Indeterminism and Free Action written by Thomas Muller and published by . This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Logic of Responsibility Voids written by Hein Duijf and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the problem of responsibility voids: these are cases where responsibility for a morally undesirable outcome cannot be attributed to any of the involved agents. Responsibility voids are thought to occur in collective decision-making and in the context of artificial intelligent systems. In these cases, philosophers worry that there is a shortfall of moral responsibility. In particular, such voids are often assumed to justify a notion of collective responsibility that cannot be reduced to individual responsibility. One of the aims of the book is to study how collective responsibility and joint action relate to individual responsibility and individual actions. The book offers a unifying framework for modelling moral responsibility by drawing from modal logic and game theory. The book investigates the possibility and scope of the problem of responsibility voids. One of its characteristics is its pluralistic perspective on moral responsibility: in contrast to giving a unique and all-encompassing definition of it, the book makes progress by spelling out and modelling several conceptions of moral responsibility. One of the appealing features of the book is that a relatively small range of models is used to investigate a variety of conceptions of moral responsibility. The unifying framework can thus be used to characterize the conditions under which responsibility voids are ruled out.

Download or read book Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time written by Alessio Santelli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one historian of Medieval philosophy who investigates the way in which William of Ockham “in flesh and bone” construed time and, more generally, future contingency. The essays explore the different meanings of this theory. They cover three main topics, in particular. The first examines the thesis that sentences and propositions about the future have a definite truth value, without any ensuing commitment to determinism or fatalism. The second topic looks at the problem whether the branching-time model needs to countenance a privileged branch (the so-called Thin Red Line). Finally, the third topic considers the idea that there are so-called soft facts. These would be the subject matter of sentences and propositions verbally about the present or the past, but metaphysically about a later time, and which might change in the future. Overall, the book provides an updated and rigorous idea of the debate about Ockhamism. It gives readers a deeper understanding into this philosophical approach influenced by William of Ockham, characterized by the rejection of the Aristotelian idea that, in order to preserve the contingency of the future, future contingents must be deemed neither true nor false.

Download or read book Time in Our Times written by Astrid Marie Holand and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-10-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Branching Space Times written by Nuel Belnap and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book develops a rigorous theory of indeterminism as a local and modal concept. Its crucial insight is that our world contains events or processes with alternative, really possible outcomes. The theory aims at clarifying what this assumption involves, and it does it in two ways. First, it provides a mathematically rigorous framework for local and modal indeterminism. Second, we support that theory by spelling out the philosophically relevant consequences of this formulation and by showing its fruitful applications in metaphysics. To this end, we offer a formal analysis of modal correlations and of causation, which is applicable in indeterministic and non-local contexts as well. We also propose a rigorous theory of objective single-case probabilities, intended to represent degrees of possibility. In a third step, we link our theory to current physics, investigating how local and modal indeterminism relates to issues in the foundations of physics, in particular, quantum non-locality and spatio-temporal relativity. The book also ventures into the philosophy of time, showing how the theory's resources can be used to explicate the dynamic concept of the past, present, and future based on local indeterminism"--

Download or read book The Asymmetric Nature of Time written by Vincent Grandjean and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-09-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access monograph offers a detailed study and a systematic defense of a key intuition we typically have, as human beings, with respect to the nature of time: the intuition that the future is open, whereas the past is fixed. For example, whereas it seems unsettled whether there will be a fourth world war, it is settled that there was a first world war. The book contributes, in particular, three major and original insights. First, it provides a coherent, non-metaphorical, and metaphysically illuminating elucidation of the intuition. Second, it determines which model of the temporal structure of the world is most appropriate to accommodate the intuition, and settles on a specific version of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT). Third, it puts forward a naturalistic foundation for GBT, by exploiting recent results of our best physics (viz. General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Gravity). Three main challenges are addressed: the dismissal of temporal asymmetries as non-fundamental phenomena only (e.g., thermodynamic or causal phenomena), the epistemic objection against GBT, and the apparent tension between GBT and relativistic physics. It is argued that the asymmetry between the open future and the fixed past must be grounded in the temporal structure of the world, and that this is neither precluded by our epistemic device, nor by the latest approaches to Quantum Gravity (​e.g., the Causal Set Theory). Aiming at reconciling time as we find it in ordinary experience and time as physics describes it, this ​innovative book ​will raise the interest of both academic researchers and ​graduate students working on the philosophy of time. More generally, it ​presents contents of interest for all metaphysicians and non-dogmatic philosophers of physics. This is an open access book.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Modality written by Otávio Bueno and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modality - the question of what is possible and what is necessary - is a fundamental area of philosophy and philosophical research. The Routledge Handbook of Modality is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into seven clear parts: worlds and modality essentialism, ontological dependence, and modality modal anti-realism epistemology of modality modality in science modality in logic and mathematics modality in the history of philosophy. Within these sections the central issues, debates and problems are examined, including possible worlds, essentialism, counterfactuals, ontological dependence, modal fictionalism, deflationism, the integration challenge, conceivability, a priori knowledge, laws of nature, natural kinds, and logical necessity. The Routledge Handbook of Modality is essential reading for students and researchers in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. It will also be very useful for those in related fields in philosophy such as philosophy of mathematics, logic and philosophy of science.

Download or read book God Time Infinity written by Mirosław Szatkowski and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-05-07 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues of the nature and existence of God, time and infinity, respectively, and how they relate to each other, are some of the most complicated problems of metaphysics.This volume presents contributions of thirteen internationally renowned scholars who deal with various aspects of these complex issues. The contributions were presented and discussed during the international conference: God, Time, Infinity held in Warsaw, September 22—24, 2015.

Download or read book Where Responsibility Takes You written by Ilaria Canavotto and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-04 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the Ph.D. dissertation of Ilaria Canavotto. The thesis won the E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize in 2021 for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information. It combines modal logics of agency, counterfactuals, and norms in order to study the reasoning underlying ascriptions of causal responsibility, the responsibility an agent is subject to because of the states of affairs they have brought about. Ascriptions of causal responsibility involve both causal reasoning and normative reasoning. In order to provide a logical analysis of these components, the dissertation brings together two mainstream logics of actions, STIT (seeing to it that) logic and Propositional Dynamic Logic, and extends them with an analysis of causality, a Lewis-Stalnaker style analysis of counterfactuals, subject matter semantics, and deontic logic. The author uses the resulting logics to investigate a number of philosophical issues underlying ascriptions of causal responsibility and technical issues emerging from the unification of the above-mentioned formal frameworks.

Download or read book Temporal Logics written by Valentin Goranko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Temporal Logics are a rich variety of logical systems designed for formalising reasoning about time, and about events and changes in the world over time. This Element aims at providing both a panoramic view and closer looks at temporal logics.

Download or read book Logic in High Definition written by Alessandro Giordani and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume clusters together issues centered upon the variety of types of intensional semantics. Consisting of 10 contributions, the volume is based on papers presented at the Trends in Logic 2019 conference. The various chapters introduce readers to the topic, or apply new types of logical semantics to elucidate subtleties of logical systems and natural language semantics. The book introduces hyperintentional systems that aim at solving some open philosophical problems. Specifically, the first three studies focus on relating semantics, while the following ones discuss fundamental issues related to hyper-intensional semantics or develop hyper-intensional frameworks to address issues in modal, epistemic, deontic and action logic. Authors in this volume present original results on logical systems but also extend beyond this by offering philosophical considerations on the topic as well. This volume will appeal to students and researchers in the field of logic.

Download or read book Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures written by Kirk R. MacGregor and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents a significant advance of the philosophical and theological conversation surrounding Molinism. It opens by arguing that Molinism constitutes the best explanation of the scriptural data on divine sovereignty, human freedom, predestination, grace, and God’s salvific will. The alleged biblical prooftexts for open theism are better explained, according to Kirk MacGregor, by Molinism. Responding to philosophical critics of Molinism, MacGregor offers a novel solution to the well-known grounding objection and a robust critique of arguments from explanatory priority. He also presents a Molinist interpretation of branching time models as heuristic illustrations of the relationship between possibility and feasibility. Seeking to push Molinism into new territories, MacGregor furnishes a Molinist account of sacred music, according to which music plays a powerful apologetic function. Finally, regarding the nature of hell, MacGregor contends that Molinism is compatible with both eternalism and eventual universalism.

Download or read book Making it Formally Explicit written by Gábor Hofer-Szabó and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collects research papers on the philosophical foundations of probability, causality, spacetime and quantum theory. The papers are related to talks presented in six subsequent workshops organized by The Budapest-Kraków Research Group on Probability, Causality and Determinism. Coverage consists of three parts. Part I focuses on the notion of probability from a general philosophical and formal epistemological perspective. Part II applies probabilistic considerations to address causal questions in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Part III investigates the question of indeterminism in spacetime theories. It also explores some related questions, such as decidability and observation. The contributing authors are all philosophers of science with a strong background in mathematics or physics. They believe that paying attention to the finer formal details often helps avoiding pitfalls that exacerbate the philosophical problems that are in the center of focus of contemporary research. The papers presented here help make explicit the mathematical-structural assumptions that underlie key philosophical argumentations. This formally rigorous and conceptually precise approach will appeal to researchers and philosophers as well as mathematicians and statisticians.

Download or read book Agency Norms Inquiry and Artifacts Essays in Honor of Risto Hilpinen written by Paul McNamara and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book contains a collection of chapters written by experts from the fields of philosophy, law, logic, computer science and artificial intelligence who pay tribute to Professor Risto Hilpinen's impressive work on the logic of induction, on deontic logic and epistemology, and on philosophy of science. In addition to an introduction by the editors, a section on Professor Hilpinen’s positions, professional services and honors, as well as a complete bibliography of his writings, the editors, McNamara, Jones and Brown, have compiled a multidisciplinary global cross-section of academic contemporaries that provides insights and perspectives on Hilpinen's influence and legacy. The essays reflect central aspects of Risto Hilpinen's research interests, and offer further contributions to some of the philosophical fields for which he is best known: applied modal logic, including deontic logic (from the ancient Greek δέον déon, pertaining to the concepts of duty and obligation), the semantics of normative language, the logic of action, and the theory of practical reasoning; the analysis of the concept of artifact; and the theory of semiotics in the tradition of Charles Peirce. The presence in the collection of several papers relating to deontic logic underlines Hilpinen's importance in that area, in which his publications have long been recognized as standard works. The book is an essential collection of ideas for all those who feel at home in a variety of formal disciplines, from propositional logic to the logic of artificial intelligence.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics written by Eleanor Knox and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 1223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the state of the art in the philosophy of physics. It comprisess 54 self-contained chapters written by leading philosophers of physics at both senior and junior levels, making it the most thorough and detailed volume of its type on the market – nearly every major perspective in the field is represented. The Companion’s 54 chapters are organized into 12 parts. The first seven parts cover all of the major physical theories investigated by philosophers of physics today, and the last five explore key themes that unite the study of these theories. I. Newtonian Mechanics II. Special Relativity III. General Relativity IV. Non-Relativistic Quantum Theory V. Quantum Field Theory VI. Quantum Gravity VII. Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics VIII. Explanation IX. Intertheoretic Relations X. Symmetries XI. Metaphysics XII. Cosmology The difficulty level of the chapters has been carefully pitched so as to offer both accessible summaries for those new to philosophy of physics and standard reference points for active researchers on the front lines. An introductory chapter by the editors maps out the field, and each part also begins with a short summary that places the individual chapters in context. The volume will be indispensable to any serious student or scholar of philosophy of physics.

Download or read book Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation written by Giorgio Bongiovanni and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook addresses legal reasoning and argumentation from a logical, philosophical and legal perspective. The main forms of legal reasoning and argumentation are covered in an exhaustive and critical fashion, and are analysed in connection with more general types (and problems) of reasoning. Accordingly, the subject matter of the handbook divides in three parts. The first one introduces and discusses the basic concepts of practical reasoning. The second one discusses the general structures and procedures of reasoning and argumentation that are relevant to legal discourse. The third one looks at their instantiations and developments of these aspects of argumentation as they are put to work in the law, in different areas and applications of legal reasoning.