Download or read book The Propositional Logic of Avicenna written by Avicenna and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main purpose of this work is to provide an English translation of and commentary on a recently published Arabic text dealing with con ditional propositions and syllogisms. The text is that of A vicenna (Abu represents his views on the subject as they were held throughout his life.

Download or read book Avicenna written by Jon McGinnis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ibn Sina -- Avicenna in Latin -- (980-1037) played a considerable role in the development of both eastern and western philosophy and science. This book provides a general introduction to Avicenna's intellectual system and offer a careful philosophical analysis of most of the major aspects of his thought, presented in such a way as to be accessible to students as well as serving as a resource for specialists in Islamic studies, philosophers, and historians of science.

Download or read book Collected Papers on Epistemology Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy written by W. Stegmüller and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two volumes contain all of my articles published between 1956 and 1975 which might be of interest to readers in the English-speaking world. The first three essays in Vol. 1 deal with historical themes. In each case I have attempted a rational reconstruction which, as far as possible, meets con temporary standards of exactness. In The Problem of Universals Then and Now some ideas of W.V. Quine and N. Goodman are used to create a modem sketch of the history of the debate on universals beginning with Plato and ending with Hao Wang's System :E. The second article concerns Kant's Philosophy of Science. By analyzing his position vis-a-vis I. Newton, Christian Wolff, and D. Hume, it is shown that for Kant the very notion of empirical knowledge was beset with a funda mental logical difficulty. In his metaphysics of experience Kant offered a solution differing from all prior as well as subsequent attempts aimed at the problem of establishing a scientific theory. The last of the three historical papers utilizes some concepts of modem logic to give a precise account of Wittgenstein's so-called Picture Theory of Meaning. E. Stenius' interpretation of this theory is taken as an intuitive starting point while an intensional variant of Tarski's concept of a relational system furnishes a technical instrument. The concepts of model world and of logical space, together with those of homomorphism and isomorphism be tween model worlds and between logical spaces, form the conceptual basis of the reconstruction.

Download or read book Praxis written by Mihailo Markovic and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of the Boston Studies is a distillation of one of the most creative and important movements in contemporary social theory. The articles repre sent the work of the so-called 'Praxis' group in Yugoslavia, a heterogeneous movement of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, historians, and cul tural critics, united by a common approach: that of social theory as a critical and scientific enterprise, closely linked to questions of contemporary practical life. As the introductory essay explains, in its history and analysis of the development of this group, the name Praxis focuses on the heart of Marx's social theory - the conception of human beings as creative, productive makers and shapers of their own history. The journal Praxis, which appeared regularly in Yugoslavia at Zagreb, and also in an International Edition for many years, is the source of many of these articles. The journal had to suspend publication in 1975 because of political pressures in Yugoslavia. Eight members of the group were dismissed from their University posts in Belgrade, after a long struggle in which their colleagues stood by them staunchly. Yet the creativity and productivity of the group continues, by those in Belgrade and elsewhere. Its contributions to the social sciences, and to the very conception of social science as critical and applied theory, remain vivid, timely and innovative. The importance of the theoretical work of the Praxis group is perhaps at its height now.

Download or read book Dispositions written by R. Tuomela and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology consists of a collection of papers on the nature of dis positions and the role of disposition concepts in scientific theories. I have tried to make the collection as representative as possible, except that problems specifically connected with dispositions in various special sciences are relatively little discussed. Most of these articles have been previously published. The papers by Mackie, Essler and Trapp, Fetzer (in Section 11), Levi, and Tuomela appear here for the first time, and are simultaneously published in Synthese 34, No. 4, which is a special issue on dispositions. Of the previously published material it should be emphasized that the papers by Hempel and Fisk have been extensively revised specially for this anthology. The papers are grouped in four sections, partlyon the basis of their content. However, due to the complexity of the issues involved, there is considerable overlap in content between the different sections, especially between Sections land 11. I wish to thank Professors James Fetzer and Carl G. Hempel for helpful advicc in compiling this anthology.

Download or read book Transcendental Arguments and Science written by P. Bieri and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of the present volume is to discuss the notion of a 'conceptual framework' or 'conceptual scheme', which has been dominating much work in the analysis and justification of knowledge in recent years. More specifi cally, this volume is designed to clarify the contrast between two competing approaches in the area of problems indicated by this notion: On the one hand, we have the conviction, underlying much present-day work in the philosophy of science, that the best we can hope for in the justifi cation of empirical knowledge is to reconstruct the conceptual means actually employed by science, and to develop suitable models for analyzing conceptual change involved in the progress of science. This view involves the assumption that we should stop taking foundational questions of epistemology seriously and discard once and for all the quest for uncontrovertible truth. The result ing program of justifying epistemic claims by subsequently describing patterns of inferentially connected concepts as they are at work in actual science is closely connected with the idea of naturalizing epistemology, with concep tual relativism, and with a pragmatic interpretation of knowledge. On the other hand, recent epistemology tends to claim that no subsequent reconstruction of actually employed conceptual frameworks is sufficient for providing epistemic justification for our beliefs about the world. This second claim tries to resist the naturalistic and pragmatic approach to epistemology and insists on taking the epistemological sceptic seriously.

Download or read book Action Theory and Social Science written by I. Pörn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended as a contribution to the foundations of the sciences of man, especially the social sciences. It has been argued with increasing frequency in recent years that the vocabulary of social science is to a large extent an action vocabulary and that any attempt to systematize concepts and establish bases for understanding in the field cannot, therefore, succeed unless it is firmly built on action theory. I think that these claims are sub stantially correct, but at the same time it seems to me that action theory, as it is relevant to social science, still awaits vital contributions from logic and philosophy. For example, it has often been said, rightly I believe, that situa tions in which two or more agents interact constitute the subject-matter of social science. But have we got an action theory which is rich enough or com prehensive enough to allow us to characterize the interaction situation? I think not. Once we have such a theory, however, we should be able to give an accurate account of central social phenomena and to articulate our concep tions about the nature of social reality. The conceptual scheme advanced in this book consists, in the first instance, of solutions to a number of characterization problems, i. e. problems which may be expressed by questions of the form "What is the nature of . . .

Download or read book Local Induction written by R. Bogdan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The local justification of beliefs and hypotheses has recently become a major concern for epistemologists and philosophers of induction. As such, the problem of local justification is not entirely new. Most pragmatists had addressed themselves to it, and so did, to some extent, many classical inductivists in the Bacon-Whewell-Mill tradition. In the last few decades, however, the use of logic and semantics, probability calculus, statistical methods, and decision-theoretic concepts in the reconstruction of in ductive inference has revealed some important technical respects in which inductive justification can be local: the choice of a language, with its syntactic and semantic features, the relativity of probabilistic evalua tions to an initial body of evidence or background knowledge and to an agent's utilities and preferences, etc. Some paradoxes and difficulties encountered by purely formal accounts of inductive justification, the erosion of the once dominant empiricist position, which most approaches to induction took for granted, and the increasing challenge of noninduc tivist epistemolgies have underscored the need of accounting for the methodological problems of applying inductive logic to real life contexts, particularly in science. As a result, in the late fifties and sixties, several related developments pointed to a new, local approach to inductive justification.

Download or read book Persons and Minds written by Joseph Margolis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Persons and Minds is an inquiry into the possibilities of materialism. Professor Margolis starts his investigation, however, with a critique of the range of contemporary materialist theories, and does not find them viable. None of them, he argues, "can accommodate in a convincing way the most distinctive features of the mental life of men and oflower creatures and the imaginative possibilities of discovery and technology" (p. 8). In an extraordinarily rich analysis, Margolis carefully considers and criticizes mind-body identity theories, physicalism, eliminative materialism, behaviorism, as inadequate precisely in that they are reductive. He argues, then, for ramified concepts of emergence, and embodiment which will sustain a philosophically coherent account both of the distinctive non-natural character of persons and of their being naturally embodied. But Margolis provokes us to ask, what is an em bodied mind? The crucial context for him is not the plain physical body as such, but culture. "Persons", he writes, "are in a sense not natural entities: they exist only in cultural contexts and are identifiable as such only by refer ence to their mastery of language and of whatever further abilities presuppose such mastery" (p. 245). The hallmark of persons, in Margolis's account, is their capacity for freedom, as well as their physical endowment. Thus he writes, " . . . their characteristic powers - in effect, their freedom - must inform the order of purely physical causes in a distinctive way" (p. 246).

Download or read book The Nicomachean Ethics written by and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The principles used in the translation of the Ethics are the same as those in the translations of the Physics and the Metaphysics, and their main function is to help the reader get Aristotle's meaning as accurately as possible. Briefly, they are principles of terminology and of thought, some of which will be repeated here. English terms common to all three translations have the same mean ings, with a few exceptions, and many terms proper to ethics are added. Many of the terms in the Glossary are defined or are made known dia lectically or in some other way. For the term 1tpOUiPEcrt~ the term 'inten tion' or the expression 'deliberate choice' will be used instead of the term 'choice', but the definition will be the same as that given in the Physics and the Metaphysics. Difficulties arise from some allied terms or terms close in meaning, e. g. , the terms UUAOC;, KUKOC;, ~OXeT\PO~, and 1tovT\p0C;, for the exact differences of their meanings are not ascertainable from the extant works. Each of these terms, however, seems to be used consistently, and we shall assume such consistency. The choice of the corresponding English terms can only be suggested by the usage of the Greek terms and by induction.

Download or read book Course of Mathematical Logic written by R. Fraïssé and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is addressed primarily to researchers specializing in mathemat ical logic. It may also be of interest to students completing a Masters Degree in mathematics and desiring to embark on research in logic, as well as to teachers at universities and high schools, mathematicians in general, or philosophers wishing to gain a more rigorous conception of deductive reasoning. The material stems from lectures read from 1962 to 1968 at the Faculte des Sciences de Paris and since 1969 at the Universities of Provence and Paris-VI. The only prerequisites demanded of the reader are elementary combinatorial theory and set theory. We lay emphasis on the semantic aspect of logic rather than on syntax; in other words, we are concerned with the connection between formulas and the multirelations, or models, which satisfy them. In this context considerable importance attaches to the theory of relations, which yields a novel approach and algebraization of many concepts of logic. The present two-volume edition considerably widens the scope of the original [French] one-volume edition (1967: Relation, Formule logique, Compacite, Completude). The new Volume 1 (1971: Relation et Formule logique) reproduces the old Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8, redivided as follows: Word, formula (Chapter 1), Connection (Chapter 2), Relation, operator (Chapter 3), Free formula (Chapter 4), Logicalformula,denumer able-model theorem (L6wenheim-Skolem) (Chapter 5), Completeness theorem (G6del-Herbrand) and Interpolation theorem (Craig-Lyndon) (Chapter 6), Interpretability of relations (Chapter 7).

Download or read book Language and Logic in the Post Medieval Period written by E.J. Ashworth and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keckermann remarked of the sixteenth century, "never from the begin ning of the world was there a period so keen on logic, or in which more books on logic were produced and studies oflogic flourished more abun dantly than the period-in which we live. " 1 But despite the great profusion of books to which he refers, and despite the dominant position occupied by logic in the educational system of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, very little work has been done on the logic of the post medieval period. The only complete study is that of Risse, whose account, while historically exhaustive, pays little attention to the actual logical 2 doctrines discussed. Otherwise, one can tum to Vasoli for a study of humanism, to Munoz Delgado for scholastic logic in Spain, and to Gilbert and Randall for scientific method, but this still leaves vast areas untouched. In this book I cannot hope to remedy all the deficiencies of previous studies, for to survey the literature alone would take a life-time. As a result I have limited myself in various ways. In the first place, I con centrate only on those matters which are of particular interest to me, namely theories of meaning and reference, and formal logic.

Download or read book The Logic of the Articles in Traditional Philosophy written by E.M. Barth and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the original Dutch version of this book was presented in 1971 to the University of Leiden as a thesis for the Doctorate in philosophy, I was prevented by the academic mores of that university from expressing my sincere thanks to three members of the Philosophical Faculty for their support of and interest in my pursuits. I take the liberty of doing so now, two and a half years later. First and foremost I want to thank Professor G. Nuchelmans warmly for his expert guidance of my research. A number of my most im portant sources were brought to my attention by him. During the whole process of composing this book his criticism and encouragement were carried out in a truly academic spirit. He thereby provided working conditions that are a sine qua non for every author who is attempting to approach controversial matters in a scientific manner, conditions which, however, were not easily available at that time. In a later phase I also came into contact with Professors L. M. de Rijk and J. B. Ubbink, with both of whom I had highly stimulating discussions and exchanges of ideas. The present edition contains some entirely new sections, viz. 1-9, IV-29, V-9, V-20, VII-14 (iii), (iv), VII-17 (i), VIII-22, IX-17, IX-19, X-9 and XI-8. Section X-9 was inspired by a remark made by Professor A.

Download or read book Ancient Logic and Its Modern Interpretations written by J. Corcoran and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last half century there has been revolutionary progress in logic and in logic-related areas such as linguistics. HistoricaI knowledge of the origins of these subjects has also increased significantly. Thus, it would seem that the problem of determining the extent to which ancient logical and linguistic theories admit of accurate interpretation in modern terms is now ripe for investigation. The purpose of the symposium was to gather logicians, philosophers, linguists, mathematicians and philologists to present research results bearing on the above problem with emphasis on logic. Presentations and discussions at the symposium focused themselves into five areas: ancient semantics, modern research in ancient logic, Aristotle's logic, Stoic logic, and directions for future research in ancient logic and logic-related areas. Seven of the papers which appear below were originally presented at the symposium. In every case, discussion at the symposium led to revisions, in some cases to extensive revisions. The editor suggested still further revisions, but in every case the author was the finaljudge of the work that appears under his name.

Download or read book Rudolf Carnap Logical Empiricist written by Jaakko Hintikka and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-14 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Logical Theory and Semantic Analysis written by Sören Stenlund and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1974-06-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sense and Contradiction A Study in Aristotle written by R.M. Dancy and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1975-06-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study began as a paper. It got out of hand. It had help doing that. Oswaldo Chateaubriand, Ronald Haver, Paul Horwich, Bernie Katz, Norman Kretzmann, Stanley Martens, Stephen Pink, Michael Stokes, Eleanor Stump, Bill Ulrich, Celia Wolf, and a lot of other people questioned or criticized or helped reformulate one or another of the arguments and interpretations along the way. In spite of (maybe partly because of) their efforts, the book is full of mistakes. At least, induction over previous drafts indicates that irresistibly. But I do not, right now, know of any particular mistakes. All but a couple of the translations are mine (the exceptions are noted). That is not because existing translations are bad, but because some uniformity was essential. The translations often make unpleasant reading. So, often, does Aristotle; I have tried to be literal. A text and translation of the passage on which the book centers is in Appendix III. Footnotes cite literature by author and (sometimes abbreviated) title. Details are in the bibliography. I do not profess to have covered all the literature. An enormous amount of editorial work was done by Margaret Mundy. She was not able to undo the errors that remain. In particular, the footnotes are often numbered oddly: '4', '4a', '4b', etc.