In Zwicker (1987) the hypergame paradox is introduced and studied. In this paper we continue this investigation, comparing the hypergame argument with the diagonal one, in order to find a proof schema. In particular, in Theorems 9 and 10 we discuss the complexity of the set of founded elements in a recursively enumerable relation on the set N of natural numbers, in the framework of reduction between relations. We also find an application in the theory of diagonalizable algebras and construct (...) an undecidable formula. (shrink)
In this paper, we generalize the set-theoretic translation method for poly-modal logic introduced in [11] to extended modal logics. Instead of devising an ad-hoc translation for each logic, we develop a general framework within which a number of extended modal logics can be dealt with. We first extend the basic set-theoretic translation method to weak monadic second-order logic through a suitable change in the underlying set theory that connects up in interesting ways with constructibility; then, we show how to tailor (...) such a translation to work with specific cases of extended modal logics. (shrink)
We discuss the interpolation property on some important families of non classical logics, such as intuitionistic, modal, fuzzy, and linear logics. A special paragraph is devoted to a generalization of the interpolation property, uniform interpolation.
We discuss the interpolation property on some important families of non classical logics, such as intuitionistic, modal, fuzzy, and linear logics. A special paragraph is devoted to a generalization of the interpolation property, uniform interpolation.
In this paper, we generalize the set-theoretic translation method for polymodal logic introduced in [11] to extended modal logics. Instead of devising an ad-hoc translation for each logic, we develop a general framework within which a number of extended modal logics can be dealt with. We first extend the basic set-theoretic translation method to weak monadic second-order logic through a suitable change in the underlying set theory that connects up in interesting ways with constructibility; then, we show how to tailor (...) such a translation to work with specific cases of extended modal logics. (shrink)
Free Public Reason examines the idea of public justification, stressing its importance but also questioning the coherence of the concept itself. Although public justification is employed in the work of theorists such as John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Thomas Nagel, and others, it has received little attention on its own as a philosophical concept. In this book Fred D'Agostino shows that the concept is composed of various values, interests, and notions of the good, and that no ranking of these is possible. (...) The notion of public justification itself is thus shown to be contestable. In demonstrating this, D'Agostino undermines many current political theories that rely on this concept. Having broken down the foundations of public justification, D'Agostino then offers an alternative model of how a workable consensus on its meaning might be reached through the interactions of a community of interpreters or delegates at a constitutional convention. (shrink)
INTRODUCTION The editors of this volume - Jarvie and D'Agostino - encountered John Watkins at such different times in his career that they have never ...
Books reviewed in this essay:Fred d'Agostino, Naturalizing Epistemology: Thomas Kuhn and the Essential Tension (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)Edwin H.-C. Hung, Beyond Kuhn: Scientific Explanation, Theory Structure, Incommensurability and Physical Necessity (Hants: Ashgate, 2006)Hanne Andersen, Peter Barker, and Xiang Chen, The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Forty-eight years after the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, fourteen since the death of its author, Thomas S. Kuhn, and ten since the publication of the posthumous Road Since Structure (...) (2000), the Kuhn cottage industry continues to produce. In preparing this essay review I .. (shrink)
Discussion of the cognitive division of labor has usually made very little contact with relevant materials from other disciplines, including theoretical biology, management science, and design theory. This article draws on these materials to consider some unavoidable conundrums faced by any attempt to present a particular way of dividing tasks among a labor team as the uniquely rational way of doing this, given the interdependence of the underlying evaluative standards by which the products of a system of division of labor (...) will be judged. Divisions of labor will typically cut across these interdependencies in ways which leave the outcomes of a process of labor hostage to path dependencies and suboptimalities. Some attempts to avoid these results are shown to be unsuccessful. All these difficulties are compounded by the fact that, in many cases, the division of labor has to be constructed over a ground of values that is itself being constructed simultaneously with the products which they are invoked to assess. Key Words: risk spreading • interdependency • NK fitness landscapes • complexity • epistasis • Kuhn • modularity • path dependency. (shrink)
Deductive inference is usually regarded as being “tautological” or “analytical”: the information conveyed by the conclusion is contained in the information conveyed by the premises. This idea, however, clashes with the undecidability of first-order logic and with the (likely) intractability of Boolean logic. In this article, we address the problem both from the semantic and the proof-theoretical point of view. We propose a hierarchy of propositional logics that are all tractable (i.e. decidable in polynomial time), although by means of growing (...) computational resources, and converge towards classical propositional logic. The underlying claim is that this hierarchy can be used to represent increasing levels of “depth” or “informativeness” of Boolean reasoning. Special attention is paid to the most basic logic in this hierarchy, the pure “intelim logic”, which satisfies all the requirements of a natural deduction system (allowing both introduction and elimination rules for each logical operator) while admitting of a feasible (quadratic) decision procedure. We argue that this logic is “analytic” in a particularly strict sense, in that it rules out any use of “virtual information”, which is chiefly responsible for the combinatorial explosion of standard classical systems. As a result, analyticity and tractability are reconciled and growing degrees of computational complexity are associated with the depth at which the use of virtual information is allowed. (shrink)
Philosophy of Social Science, that social scientific investigations do not and cannot meet the liberal requirement of "neutrality" most familiar to social scientists in the form of Max Weber's requirement of value-freedom. He argues, moreover, that this is for "institutional," not idiosyncratic, reasons: methodological demands (e.g., of validity) impel social scientists to pass along into their "objective" investigations the values of the people, groups, and cultures they are studying. In this paper, I consider the implications of Root's claims for the (...) use of social scientific results in the formation of policy in a democratic society. In particular, I argue that Root's results amplify familiar "post-modernist" conclusions: there is no "neutral" and "objective" basis for policy-making. (shrink)
The construction of memory in colonial Eritrea: Eritreans, Mestizos and Italians. Focusing on some passages of life histories collected in Asmara and based on the ‘memory of Italy’, I study the representation of the past in order to reveal the shaping of the subjective experience by the colonial discourse in Eritrea. If the main aim of my essay is the understanding of the play of interactions between individuals and collectivity, one more important element I take into account is ‘memory’ seen (...) as a “social selection of remembering” (Halbwachs). I try to connect the social position and narrative role of single members (of the Eritrean society) to the meaning it takes the ‘going back to the past’ for them as individuals belonging to a group (an Eritrean, a Mestizo, an Italian) in relation to the past and the present. The consequence is that the logic dominant/dominated is inadequate to explain the internal articulations of the colonial context and that the focus must be shifted on individual and collective systems of expectations and on the negotiations of meaning resulting from a “past always to be recovered” and a “present always to be rebuilt”. (shrink)
This paper considers criticisms of the author's Science and Scepticism advanced (in a Festchrift volume) by Fred D' Agostino, Graham Oddie, Elie Zahar, Alan Musgrave, and John Worrall. The criticisms concern the following topics: the aim of science, unified theoryhood, the empirical basis, corroboration by already known evidence, the idea that scientific theories need be no more than possibly (as opposed to probably or certainly) true, and the pragmatic problem of induction. Various clarifications and improvements result, and on the (...) last topic the author significantly modifies his position. (shrink)
We show that Smullyan's analytic tableaux cannot p-simulate the truth-tables. We identify the cause of this computational breakdown and relate it to an underlying semantic difficulty which is common to the whole tradition originating in Gentzen's sequent calculus, namely the dissonance between cut-free proofs and the Principle of Bivalence. Finally we discuss some ways in which this principle can be built into a tableau-like method without affecting its analytic nature.
We investigate the semantics of the logical systems obtained by introducing the modalities and into the family of substructural implication logics (including relevant, linear and intuitionistic implication). Then, in the spirit of the LDS (Labelled Deductive Systems) methodology, we "import" this semantics into the classical proof system KE. This leads to the formulation of a uniform labelled refutation system for the new logics which is a natural extension of a system for substructural implication developed by the first two authors in (...) a previous paper. (shrink)
Deductive inference is usually regarded as being "tautological" or "analytical": the information conveyed by the conclusion is contained in the information conveyed by the premises. This idea, however, clashes with the undecidability of first-order logic and with the (likely) intractability of Boolean logic. In this article, we address the problem both from the semantic and the proof-theoretical point of view. We propose a hierarchy of propositional logics that are all tractable (i.e. decidable in polynomial time), although by means of growing (...) computational resources, and converge towards classical propositional logic. The underlying claim is that this hierarchy can be used to represent increasing levels of "depth" or "informativeness" of Boolean reasoning. Special attention is paid to the most basic logic in this hierarchy, the pure "intelim logic", which satisfies all the requirements of a natural deduction system (allowing both introduction and elimination rules for each logical operator) while admitting of a feasible (quadratic) decision procedure. We argue that this logic is "analytic" in a particularly strict sense, in that it rules out any use of "virtual information", which is chiefly responsible for the combinatorial explosion of standard classical systems. As a result, analyticity and tractability are reconciled and growing degrees of computational complexity are associated with the depth at which the use of virtual information is allowed. (shrink)
Eric Mack’s “Inside Public Reason” is thorough and fair-minded review of The Order of Public Reason. My deep thanks to him for his insights, as well as his judiciousness. In these remarks I cannot take up all the important matters he raises; in particular I put aside two important issues—the analysis of the political and discussion of how contingent social processes play a fundamental role in public justification (Fred D’Agostino focuses on this second feature of The Order of Public Reason (...) in his “The Orders of Public Reason,” Analytical Philosophy, forthcoming.). I plan to take up the latter on another occasion. (shrink)
I want to consider how the general characteristics of a discipline might facilitate ?social mechanisms for distributing knowledge? that do not depend on uniformity of use, but, in fact, on different uses by different people. Indeed, I want to show that the ways in which a discipline is organized afford the growth of knowledge and do so, in particular, by facilitating an approach to what Thomas Kuhn described as ?the essential tension? between, on the one hand, the traditional or customary (...) elements of disciplined enquiry, which are prerequisites for there being a community of enquiry, and, on the other hand, the innovative elements of disciplined enquiry, which are needed on account of the always already inadequate character of our engagement with the objects of enquiry. (shrink)
Kuhn's "essential tension" between conservative and innovative imperatives in enquiry has an empirical analogue—between the potential benefits of collectivization of enquiry and the social dynamic impediments to effective sharing of information and insights in collective settings. A range of empirical materials from social psychology and organization theory are considered which bear on the issue of balancing these opposing forces and an institution is described in which they are balanced in a way which is appropriate for collective knowledge production.
Kuhn’s “essential tension” between conservative and innovative imperatives in enquiry has an empirical analogue—between the potential benefits of collectivization of enquiry and the social dynamic impediments to effective sharing of information and insights in collective settings. A range of empirical materials from social psychology and organization theory are considered which bear on the issue of balancing these opposing forces and an institution is described in which they are balanced in a way which is appropriate for collective knowledge production.
Abstract It is usually attempted teleologically to demonstrate the rationality of the so?called scientific method. Goals or aims are posited (and their specification defended) and it is then argued that conformity with some body of methodological rules is conducive to the realization of these goals or aims. A ? deontological? alternative to this approach is offered, adapting insights of contemporary political philosophers, especially John Rawls and Bruce Ackerman. The ?circumstances of method? are defined as those circumstances in which it alone (...) makes sense to seek some method for the resolution of disputed issues. It is then shown that individuals who find themselves in these circumstances have reason to conduct themselves in conformity with certain simple rules of argumentation?have reason, indeed, in the very fact that they do so find themselves and altogether without reference to any goals or aims which it might be hoped to achieve. These rules require non?interference, responsiveness, relevance, and publicity, and are, arguably, the rules which define the concept (and which therefore provide a framework for various conceptions,) of scientific method. (shrink)
The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy is a comprehensive, definitive reference work, providing an up-to-date survey of the field, charting its history and key figures and movements, and addressing enduring questions as ...
To understand the continuing importance of John Rawls’s work, we need to understand the background, the object and the method of his fifty-year quest as a political thinker. The background to Rawls’s investigation was a (carefully circumscribed) acknowledgement of a certain kind of evaluative pluralism. The object of Rawls’s work was to develop a method of commensuration that would enable us, the free and equal citizens of a democratic society, to identify a common basis for our dealings, in search of (...) mutual benefit, with one another. Finally, the method used by Rawls in his work was broadly, though tacitly rather than explicitly, pragmatist in character, especially in the sense that Rawls was aiming, now explicitly, to develop principles of political association that generate their own support in the attitudes and actions of those whose behavior they are intended to guide. (shrink)
