New Essays on the Knowability Paradox

New Essays on the Knowability Paradox
Author: Joe Salerno
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2009-06-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191608688

In 1945 Alonzo Church issued a pair of referee reports in which he anonymously conveyed to Frederic Fitch a surprising proof showing that wherever there is (empirical) ignorance there is also logically unknowable truth. Fitch published this and a generalization of the result in 1963. Ever since, philosophers have been attempting to understand the significance and address the counter-intuitiveness of this, the so-called paradox of knowability. This collection assembles Church's referee reports, Fitch's 1963 paper, and nineteen new papers on the knowability paradox. The contributors include logicians and philosophers from three continents, many of whom have already made important contributions to the discussion of the problem. The volume contains a general introduction to the paradox and the background literature, and is divided into seven sections that roughly mark the central points of debate. The sections include the history of the paradox, Michael Dummett's constructivism, issues of paraconsistency, developments of modal and temporal logics, Cartesian restricted theories of truth, modal and mathematical fictionalism, and reconsiderations about how, and whether, we ought to construe an anti-realist theory of truth.

The Law of Non-Contradiction

The Law of Non-Contradiction
Author: Graham Priest
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2006-11-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191548065

The Law of Non-Contradiction-that no contradiction can be true-has been a seemingly unassailable dogma since the work of Aristotle, in Book Gamma of the Metaphysics. It is an assumption challenged from a variety of angles in this collection of original papers. Twenty-three of the world's leading experts investigate the 'law', considering arguments for and against it and discussing methodological issues that arise whenever we question the legitimacy of logical principles. The result is a balanced inquiry into a venerable principle of logic, one that raises questions at the very centre of logic itself. The aim of this volume is to present a comprehensive debate about the Law of Non-Contradiction, from discussions as to how the law is to be understood, to reasons for accepting or re-thinking the law, and to issues that raise challenges to the law, such as the Liar Paradox, and a 'dialetheic' resolution of that paradox. One of the editors contributes an introduction which surveys the issues and serves to frame the debate. This collection will be of interest to anyone working on philosophical logic, and to anyone who has ever wondered about the status of logical laws and about how one might proceed to mount arguments for or against them.

Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science

Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science
Author: Shahid Rahman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 618
Release: 2009-03-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402028083

The first volume in this new series explores, through extensive co-operation, new ways of achieving the integration of science in all its diversity. The book offers essays from important and influential philosophers in contemporary philosophy, discussing a range of topics from philosophy of science to epistemology, philosophy of logic and game theoretical approaches. It will be of interest to philosophers, computer scientists and all others interested in the scientific rationality.

Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments

Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments
Author: Kevin McCain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2021-07-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000417026

In this new kind of entrée to contemporary epistemology, Kevin McCain presents fifty of the field’s most important puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Assuming no familiarity with epistemology from the reader, McCain titles each case with a memorable name, describes the details of the case, explains the issue(s) to which the case is relevant, and assesses its significance. McCain also briefly reviews the key responses to the case that have been put forward, and provides a helpful list of suggested readings on the topic. Each entry is accessible, succinct, and self-contained. Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a fantastic learning tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in epistemological issues. Key Features: Though concise overall, offers broad coverage of the key areas of epistemology. Describes each imaginative case directly and in a memorable way, making the cases accessible and easy to remember. Provides a list of Suggested Readings for each case, divided into General Overviews, Seminal Presentations, and Other Important Discussions.

A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy

A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy
Author: Graham Oppy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2019-03-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1119119227

PROSE 2020 Single Volume Reference Finalist! Philosophers throughout history have debated the existence of gods, but it is only in recent years that the absence of such a belief has become a significant topic of philosophical analysis, in particular for philosophers of religion. Although it is difficult to trace the historical contours of atheism as the lack of belief in a higher power, the reasoned, reflective, and thoughtful rejection of theism has become commonplace in many modern intellectual circles, including academic philosophy where disciplinary data indicates that a large majority of philosophers self-identify as atheists. As the first book of its kind to bring together a collection of writing on the philosophical aspects of atheism both historical and contemporary, the Companion to Atheism and Philosophy stages an explicit, constructive, and comprehensive conversation between philosophy and atheism to examine the ways in which atheist thought intersects with ideas and positions from a variety of philosophical and theological sub-disciplines. The Companion begins by addressing the foundational questions and lingering controversies which underpin philosophical thought about atheism, exploring the implications of major developments in the history of philosophy for the modern atheistic worldview. Divided into eight distinct sections, essays consider a range of thinkers who were widely believed to have been atheists—including David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—and survey different kinds of objections to theism and atheism, including logical, evidential, normative, and prudential. Later chapters trace the relationship between atheism and metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy oriented around topics such as pragmatism, postmodernism, freedom, education, violence, and happiness. Deftly curated and thoughtfully composed, A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy is the most ambitious and authoritative account of philosophical thinking on atheism available, and is a first-rate resource for academics, professionals, and students of philosophy, religious studies, and theology.

Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability

Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability
Author: Lee Walters
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198712731

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.

The Realism-Antirealism Debate in the Age of Alternative Logics

The Realism-Antirealism Debate in the Age of Alternative Logics
Author: Shahid Rahman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2011-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 940071923X

The relation between logic and knowledge has been at the heart of a lively debate since the 1960s. On the one hand, the epistemic approaches based their formal arguments in the mathematics of Brouwer and intuitionistic logic. Following Michael Dummett, they started to call themselves `antirealists'. Others persisted with the formal background of the Frege-Tarski tradition, where Cantorian set theory is linked via model theory to classical logic. Jaakko Hintikka tried to unify both traditions by means of what is now known as `explicit epistemic logic'. Under this view, epistemic contents are introduced into the object language as operators yielding propositions from propositions, rather than as metalogical constraints on the notion of inference. The Realism-Antirealism debate has thus had three players: classical logicians, intuitionists and explicit epistemic logicians. The editors of the present volume believe that in the age of Alternative Logics, where manifold developments in logic happen at a breathtaking pace, this debate should be revisited. Contributors to this volume happily took on this challenge and responded with new approaches to the debate from both the explicit and the implicit epistemic point of view.

On certainty and other philosophical essays on cognition

On certainty and other philosophical essays on cognition
Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110319772

On Certainty continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing occasional studies that form part of a wider program of investigation of the scope and limits of rational inquiry in the pursuit of understanding. And pragmatism forms a subtextual Leitmotiv of these essays, seeing that the linking idea at work throughout is that knowledge is a tool for the management of our theoretical and practical affairs, and that what we ask of it is serviceability for the uses we have in view.

Applications of Formal Philosophy

Applications of Formal Philosophy
Author: Rafał Urbaniak
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 331958507X

This book features mathematical and formal philosophers’ efforts to understand philosophical questions using mathematical techniques. It offers a collection of works from leading researchers in the area, who discuss some of the most fascinating ways formal methods are now being applied. It covers topics such as: the uses of probable and statistical reasoning, rational choice theory, reasoning in the environmental sciences, reasoning about laws and changes of rules, and reasoning about collective decision procedures as well as about action. Utilizing mathematical techniques has been very fruitful in the traditional domains of formal philosophy – logic, philosophy of mathematics and metaphysics – while formal philosophy is simultaneously branching out into other areas in philosophy and the social sciences. These areas particularly include ethics, political science, and the methodology of the natural and social sciences. Reasoning about legal rules, collective decision-making procedures, and rational choices are of interest to all those engaged in legal theory, political science and economics. Statistical reasoning is also of interest to political scientists and economists.

The Metaphysics of Paradox

The Metaphysics of Paradox
Author: Wm. Andrew Schwartz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498563937

This book is an exploration into the paradoxical structure of pluralistic thinking as illuminated by both Western and Eastern insights—especially Jainism. By calling into question the most fundamental assumptions of religious pluralists, the author hopes to contribute to a paradigm shift in discourse on religious pluralism and conflicting truth claims.