Download or read book Rediscovering the Forgotten Vienna Circle written by Th.E Uebel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Philosophical Problems of Space and Time written by Adolf Grünbaum and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 903 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is ten years since Adolf Griinbaum published the first edition of this book. It was promptly recognized to be one of the few major works in the philosophy of the natural sciences of this generation. In part, this is so because Griinbaum has chosen a problem basic both to philosophy and to the natural sciences - the nature of space and time; and in part, this is so because he so admirably exemplifies that Aristotelian devotion to the intimate and mutual dependence of actual science and philosophical understanding. More than this, however, the quality of his work derives from his achievement in combining detail with scope. The problems of space and time have been among the most difficult in contemporary and classical thought, and Griinbaum has been responsible to the full depth and complexity of these difficulties. This revised and enlarged second edition is a work in progress, in the tradition of reflective analysis of modern science of such figures as Ehrenfest and Reichenbach. In publishing this work among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we hope to contribute to and encourage that broad tradition of natural philosophy which is marked by the close collaboration of philoso phers and scientists. To this end, we have published the proceedings of our Colloquia, of meetings and conferences here and abroad, as well as the works of single authors.

Download or read book Tense Logic written by R.L. McArthur and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is designed to provide an introduction to the principal areas of tense logic. Many of the developments in this ever-growing field have been intentionally excluded to fulfill this aim. Length also dictated a choice between the alternative notations of A. N. Prior and Nicholas Rescher - two pioneers of the subject. I choose Prior's because of the syntactical parallels with the language it symbolizes and its close ties with other branches of logi cal theory, especially modal logic. The first chapter presents a wider view of the material than later chapters. Several lines of development are consequently not followed through the remainder of the book, most notably metric systems. Although it is import ant to recognize that the unadorned Prior-symbolism can be enriched in vari ous ways it is an advanced subject as to how to actually carry off these enrichments. Readers desiring more information are referred to the appropri ate literature. Specialists will notice that only the first of several quantifi cational versions of tense logic is proven complete in the final chapter. Again constraints of space are partly to blame. The proof for the 'star' systems is wildly complex and at the time of this writing is not yet ready for publi cation.

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 Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov Warsaw School written by Jan Wolenski and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lvov-Warsaw School was active in all spheres of philosophy. Its members worked in the border area between philosophy and disci plines such as psychology, linguistics, and literary theory. But its most important achievements were without doubt in logic and philosophical analysis based on logic. The present book is concerned with fields to which the Lvov-Warsaw School made its most important and famous contributions. Data on the School as a whole are included only in the first and last part of the book. This work is based on my monograph (1985), which appeared in Polish. But it is not merely a translation, because some fragments of the Polish version have been omitted (e. g., the chapter on ethics), and some have been revised. Many persons helped me in my work on the book in Polish as well as on the present edition. I must first mention the late Izydora D~mbska, to whom this book is dedicated. On various detailed issues I have availed myself of advice and information given to me by Stefan Amsterdamski, Zdzislaw Augustynek, Kazimierz Czarnota, Henryk Hii, Boleslaw Iwanus, Jacek Jadacki, Jacek KabziIiski, Stanislaw Kiczuk, Tomasz Komendzinski, Janina Kotarbinska, Czeslaw Lejewski, Jerzy Perzanowski, Marian Przet~cki, the late Jerzy Slupecki, Klemens Szaniawski, Stefan Zamecki, Zbigniew Zwinogrodzki i Jan Zygmunt. I am indebted to Jaakko Hintikka for suggesting that my book be trans lated into English and published by Reidel. Olgierd Wojtasiewicz helped me to prepare the English text.

Download or read book Between Experience and Metaphysics written by S. Amsterdamski and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Structuralism written by J.M. Broekman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of the word 'structuralism', not only as a title for the present book but also as a valuable indication for outstanding philosophical and cultural developments of our century, may embarrass the English reader. The same might be the case regarding some of the philosophical thoughts developed in connexion with this structuralism. Emphasis is namely not on a set of technical operations using ideas and conceptions closely linked up with 'structural' or 'systematical' analyses, system and in formation theories, biology, psychology and even literary criticism. On the contrary, the concept of structuralism here defmitely refers to a holistic approach, not unlike existentialism or phenomenology. Many philosophical implications of this structuralism are however quite different from those contained in existential philosophies. The first difference applies to philosophy itself: no existential thinker will doubt or deny that the thoughts developed are genuine philoso phical thoughts. Structuralism however does not take that decision before hand, and thus no longer restricts itself to the traditionallaws and habits of philosophical reasoning. It presents itself on the one hand as a holistic attempt to interpret reality among lines of philosophical argumentation, bu t tries to do so without the decision that this argumentation leads to philoso phy. Structuralism therefore presents itself as a specific activity, a modus operandi in reality itself.

Download or read book Philosophy of Language written by F. Von Kutschera and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has arisen out of lectures I gave in recent years at the Uni versities of Munich and Regensburg, and it is intended to serve as a textbook for courses in the Philosophy of Language. In my lectures I was able to presuppose that the students had taken an introductory course in logic. Some knowledge of logic will also be helpful in studying this book - as it is almost everywhere else in philosophy -, especially in Section 3. 2, but it is no prerequisite. I would like to give my sincere thanks to Prof. Terrell for his excellent translation of the book, which is based on the second, revised and en larged German edition. Regensburg, May 1975 FRANZ VON KUTSCHERA INTRODUCTION Language has become one of philosophy's most important and pressing themes during this century. This preoccupation with language has its ori gins in the most diverse areas of philosophical inquiry.

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 2012-12-06 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.

Download or read book Can Theories be Refuted written by Sandra Harding and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to a view assumed by many scientists and philosophers of science and standardly found in science textbooks, it is controlled ex perience which provides the basis for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable theories in science: acceptable theories are those which can pass empirical tests. It has often been thought that a certain sort of test is particularly significant: 'crucial experiments' provide supporting empiri cal evidence for one theory while providing conclusive evidence against another. However, in 1906 Pierre Duhem argued that the falsification of a theory is necessarily ambiguous and therefore that there are no crucial experiments; one can never be sure that it is a given theory rather than auxiliary or background hypotheses which experiment has falsified. w. V. Quine has concurred in this judgment, arguing that "our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not indi vidually but only as a corporate body". Some philosophers have thought that the Duhem-Quine thesis gra tuitously raises perplexities. Others see it as doubly significant; these philosophers think that it provides a base for criticism of the foundational view of knowledge which has dominated much of western thought since Descartes, and they think that it opens the door to a new and fruitful way to conceive of scientific progress in particular and of the nature and growth of knowledge in general.

Download or read book Investigations in Modal and Tense Logics with Applications to Problems in Philosophy and Linguistics written by Dov M. Gabbay and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended to serve as an advanced text and reference work on modal logic, a subject of growing importance which has applications to philosophy and linguistics. Although it is based mainly on research which I carried out during the years 1969-1973, it also includes some related results obtained by other workers in the field (see the refer ences in Part 7). Parts 0, 1 and 2, can be used as the basis of a one year graduate course in modal logic. The material which they contain has been taught in such courses at Stanford since 1970. The remaining parts of the book contain more than enough material for a second course in modal logic. The exercises supplement the text and are usually difficult. I wish to thank Stanford University and Bar-Han University for making it possible for me to continue and finish this work, and A. Ungar for correcting the typescript. Bar-Ilan University, Israel Dov M. GABBA Y PART 0 AN INTRODUCTION TO GENERAL INTENSIONAL LOGICS CHAPTER 0 CONSEQUENCE RELATIONS Motivation We introduce the notions of a consequence relation (which is a generalization of the notion of a logical system) and of a semantics. We show that every consequence relation is complete for a canonical semantics. We define the notion of one semantics being Dian in another and study the basic properties of this notion. The concepts of this chapter are generalizations of the various notions of logical system and possible world semantics found in the literature.

Download or read book Essays on Explanation and Understanding written by Juha Manninen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 The Understanding of Nature written by Marjorie Grene and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1974-09-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No student or colleague of Marjorie Grene will miss her incisive presence in these papers on the study and nature of living nature, and we believe the new reader will quickly join the stimulating discussion and critique which Professor Grene steadily provokes. For years she has worked with equally sure knowledge in the classical domain of philosophy and in modern epistemological inquiry, equally philosopher of science and metaphysician. Moreover, she has the deeply sensible notion that she should be a critically intelligent learner as much as an imaginatively original thinker, and as a result she has brought insightful expository readings of other philosophers and scientists to her own work. We were most fortunate that Marjorie Grene was willing to spend a full semester of a recent leave here in Boston, and we have on other occasions sought her participation in our colloquia and elsewhere. Now we have the pleasure of including among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science this generous selection from Grene's philosophical inquiries into the understanding of the natural world, and of the men and women in it. Boston University Center for the R. S. COHEN Philosophy and History of Science M. W. W ARTOFSKY April 1974 PREFACE This collection spans - spottily - years from 1946 ('On Some Distinctions between Men and Brutes') to 1974 ('On the Nature of Natural Necessity').

Download or read book Probability and Causality written by J.H. Fetzer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions to this special collection concern issues and problems discussed in or related to the work of Wesley C. Salmon. Salmon has long been noted for his important work in the philosophy of science, which has included research on the interpretation of probability, the nature of explanation, the character of reasoning, the justification of induction, the structure of space/time and the paradoxes of Zeno, to mention only some of the most prominent. During a time of increasing preoccupation with historical and sociological approaches to under standing science (which characterize scientific developments as though they could be adequately analysed from the perspective of political movements, even mistaking the phenomena of conversion for the rational appraisal of scientific theories), Salmon has remained stead fastly devoted to isolating and justifying those normative standards distinguishing science from non-science - especially through the vindi cation of general principles of scientific procedure and the validation of specific examples of scientific theories - without which science itself cannot be (even remotely) adequately understood. In this respect, Salmon exemplifies and strengthens a splendid tradi tion whose most remarkable representatives include Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap and Carl G. Hempel, all of whom exerted a profound influence upon his own development.

Download or read book Body Mind and Method written by Donald F. Gustafson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple seeing. Plain talking. Language in use and persons in action. These are among the themes of Virgil Aldrich's writings, from the 1930's onward. Throughout these years, he has been an explorer of conceptual geography: not as a foreign visitor studying an alien land, but close up 'in the language in which we live, move, and have our being'. This is his work. It is clear to those who know him best that he also has fun at it. Yet, in the terms of his oft-cited distinction, it is equally clear that he is to be counted not among the funsters of philosophy, but among its most committed workers. Funsters are those who attempt to do epistemology, metaphysics, or analysis by appealing to examples which are purely imaginary, totally fictional, as unrealistic as you like, 'completely unheard of'. Such imaginative wilfullness takes philosophers away from, not nearer to, 'the rough ground' (Wittgenstein) where our concepts have their origin and working place. In the funsters' imagined, 'barely possible' (but actually impossible) world, simple seeing becomes transformed into the sensing of sense-data; plain talk is rejected as imprecise, vague, and misleading; and per sons in action show up as ensouled physical objects in motion. Then the fly is in the bottle, buzzing out its tedious tunes: the problem of perception of the external world; the problem of meaning and what it is; the mind-body problem. Image-mongering has got the best of image-management.

Download or read book Unity of Science written by Robert L. Causey and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first section of this chapter describes the major goals of this investiga tion and the general strategy of my presentation. The remaining three sections review some requisite background material and introduce some terminology and notation used in the book. Section B contains a brief review of some of the ideas and notation of elementary logic and set theory. Section C contains an introductory discussion of kinds and at tributes. Section D presents some basic ideas about laws and law sentences. A. GENERAL PLAN OF THE BOOK Basic scientific research is directed towards the goals of increasing our knowledge of the wor1d and our understanding of the wor1d. Knowledge increases through the discovery and confirmation of facts and laws. Understanding results from the explanation of known facts and laws, and through the formulation of general, systematic theories. Other things being equal, we tend to feeI that our understanding of a c1ass of phenomena increases as we develop increasingly general and intuitively unified theories of that c1ass of phenomena. It is therefore natural to consider the possibility of one very general, unified theory which, at least in principle, governs all known phenomena. The dream of obtaining such a theory, and the understanding that it would provide, has motivated an enormous amount of research by both scientists and philosophers.