Veel Nederlandse woorden (dans, zet, oordeel, assertie, ...) duiden zowel een handeling aan als het resultaat van die handeling. Het fenomeen doet zich in vrijwel alle talen voor en het lijkt erop dat het menselijke cognitieve apparaat er niet zoveel moeite mee heeft te wisselen tussen een statisch perspectief dat resultaten ziet en een dynamisch perspectief dat vooral gericht is op de processen die tot die resultaten geleid hebben. De filosofie heeft meer moeite met het wisselen tussen een statisch en (...) een dynamisch perspectief. Na een veelbelovende start waarbij Heraclites zei dat alles vloeit, maar Zeno en Parmenides bewezen dat alles integendeel stilstaat, lijkt de statische invalshoek toch de overhand te hebben gekregen. Oordelen betreffen statische proposities en redeneren vindt zijn neerslag in statische bewijzen. (shrink)
The relationships between logic and natural language are multiverse. On the one hand, logic is a theory of argumentation, proving and giving reasons, and such activities are primarily carried out in natural language. This means that logic is, in a certain loose sense, about natural language. On the other hand, logic has found it useful to develop its own linguistic means which sometimes in a sense compete with those of natural language. This has led to the situation where the systems (...) of logic can be taken as interesting "models" of various aspects of natural language. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The alliance of logic and linguistics has flowered especially from the beginning of the seventies, when scholars like Montague, Lewis, Cresswell, Partee and others showed how semantics of natural language can be explicated with the help certain suitable logical calculi and the corresponding model theory. (Montague went so far as to claim that in view of this, there is no principal difference between natural and formal languages - but this is, as far as I can see, rather misguiding.) Since that time, the interdisciplinary movement of formal semantics (associating not only linguists and logicians, but also philosophers, computer scientists, cognitive psychologists and others) has yielded a rich repertoire of formal theories of natural language, some of them (like Hintikka's game-theoretical semantics or the dynamic logic of Groenendijk and Stokhof) being based directly on logic, others (like the situation semantics of Barwise and Perry or DRT of Kamp) exploiting different formal strategies. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Moreover, although the enterprise of formal semantics (i.e. of modeling natural language semantics by means of certain formal structures) seems to be the principal point of contact between linguistics and logic, there are also other cooperative enterprises. One of the most fruitful ones seems to be the logical analysis of syntax, which has resulted from elaboration of what was originally called categorial grammar. (However, even this enterprise can be seen as importantly stimulated by Montague.) Â Â Â Â Â Â Â All in all, the region in which logic and theoretical linguistics overlap has grown both in size and fertility.. (shrink)
This paper investigates under what conditions a good corporate social responsibility (CSR) can compensate for a relatively poor corporate ability (CA) (quality), and vice versa. The authors conducted an experiment among business administration students, in which information about a financial services company’s CA and CSR was provided. Participants indicated their preferences for the company’s products, stocks, and jobs. The results show that for stock and job preferences, a poor CA can be compensated by a good CSR. For product preferences, a (...) poor CA could not be compensated by a good CSR, at least when people thought that CA is personally relevant to them. Furthermore, a poor CSR could be compensated by a good CA for product, stocks, and job preferences. (shrink)
In this paper, I argue against Peter van Inwagen’s claim (in “Free Will Remains a Mystery”), that agent-causal views of free will could do nothing to solve the problem of free will (specifically, the problem of chanciness). After explaining van Inwagen’s argument, I argue that he does not consider all possible manifestations of the agent-causal position. More importantly, I claim that, in any case, van Inwagen appears to have mischaracterized the problem in some crucial ways. Once we are clear on (...) the true nature of the problem of chanciness, agent-causal views do much to eradicate it. (shrink)
I. Introduction “We can and do see the truth about many things: ourselves, others, trees and animals, clouds and rivers—in the immediacy of experience.”1 Absent from Bas van Fraassen’s list of those things we see are paramecia and mitochondria. We do not see such things, van Fraassen has long maintained, because they are unobservable, that is, they are undetectable by means of the unaided senses.2 But notice that these two notions—what we can see in the “immediacy” of experience and what (...) is detectable by means of the unaided senses—are not the same. There is no incoherence in maintaining that the immediacy of experience is capable of disclosing to us truths concerning entities that are not detectable by the naked eye. And so, I claim, it does; science and technology provide us with the means to see things we have never seen before. Some of those things are van Fraassen’s unobservables. That suggestion is nothing new. Grover Maxwell long ago emphasized the continuity between seeing with and without instrumentation.3 Van Fraassen originally provided two responses to Maxwell’s arguments: some things that you can see with instruments you can also see without instruments (and those are the observables); and.. (shrink)
The anti-reductionist who wants to preserve the causal efficacy of mental phenomena faces several problems in regard to mental causation, i.e. mental events which cause other events, arising from her desire to accept the ontological primacy of the physical and at the same time save the special character of the mental. Psychology tries to persuade us of the former, appealing thereby to the results of experiments carried out in neurology; the latter is, however, deeply rooted in our everyday actions and (...) beliefs and despite the constant opposition of science still very much alive. Difficulties, however, arise from a combination of two claims that are widely accepted in philosophy of mind, namely, physical monism and mental realism, the acceptance of which leads us to the greatest problem of mental causation: the problem of causal exclusion. Since physical causes alone are always sufficient for physical effects mental properties are excluded from causal explanations of our behaviour, which makes them “epiphenomenal”. The article introduces Van Gulick’s solution to the exclusion problem which tries to prove that physical properties, in contrast to mental properties, do not have as much of a privileged status with respect to event causation as usually ascribed. Therefore, it makes no sense to say that physical properties are causally relevant whereas mental properties are not. This is followed by my objection to his argument for levelling mental and physical properties with respect to causation of events. I try to show that Van Gulick’s argument rests on a premise that no serious physicalist can accept. (shrink)
Van Heijenoort’s main contribution to history and philosophy of modern logic was his distinction between two basic views of logic, first, the absolutist, or universalist, view of the founding fathers, Frege, Peano, and Russell, which dominated the first, classical period of history of modern logic, and, second, the relativist, or model-theoretic, view, inherited from Boole, Schröder, and Löwenheim, which has dominated the second, contemporary period of that history. In my paper, I present the man Jean van Heijenoort (Sect. 1); then (...) I describe his way of arguing for the second view (Sect. 2); and finally I come down in favor of the first view (Sect. 3). There, I specify the version of universalism for which I am prepared to argue (Sect. 3, introduction). Choosing ZFC to play the part of universal, logical (in a nowadays forgotten sense) system, I show, through an example, how the usual model theory can be naturally given its proper place, from the universalist point of view, in the logical framework of ZFC; I outline another, not rival but complementary, semantics for admissible extensions of ZFC in the very same logical framework; I propose a way to get universalism out of the predicaments in which universalists themselves believed it to be (Sect. 3.1). Thus, if universalists of the classical period did not, in fact, construct these semantics, it was not that their universalism forbade them, in principle, to do so. The historical defeat of universalism was not technical in character. Neither was it philosophical. Indeed, it was hardly more than the victory of technicism over the very possibility of a philosophical dispute (Sect. 3.2). (shrink)
Van Heijenoort’s account of the historical development of modern logic was composed in 1974 and first published in 1992 with an introduction by his former student. What follows is a new edition with a revised and expanded introduction and additional notes.
The paper aims at drawing the main lines of a reflection about architectonic space, starting from the comparison between two hypothesis, as much as ever different: Theodor Lipps’ spatial aesthetics and Hans van der Laan’s elemental theory. The emphasis given by both authors to the intersection between directions and way, but also to the mutual subordination between thing and space, allows to rewrite the obituary of architecture as a spatial art, according to which the Modern Style has turned the spatiality (...) into its specular visibility, into the spaciousness, into the indefinite continuity of the Bigness. (shrink)
A colleague’s personal recollections of Jean van Heijenoort’s contributions to the editing of volumes I–III of Gödel’s Collected Works and of his interactions with the other editors.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2008v12n1p49 The aim of this article is to offer a rejoinder to an argument against scientific realism put forward by van Fraassen, based on theoretical considerations regarding microphysics. At a certain stage of his general attack to scientific realism, van Fraassen argues, in contrast to what realists typically hold, that empirical regularities should sometimes be regarded as “brute facts”, which do not ask for explanation in terms of deeper, unobservable mechanisms. The argument from microphysics formulated by van Fraassen is based (...) on the claim that in microphysics the demand for explanation leads to a demand for the so-called hidden-variable theories, which “runs contrary to at least one major school of thought in twentieth-century physics”. It is shown here that this argument does not represent an insurmountable obstacle to scientific realism, not even when a series of important theoretical and experimental results against hidden-variable theories — and not merely a conflict with a certain school of thought—is taken into account. (shrink)
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2008v12n2p121 O objetivo deste trabalho é discutir e desenvolver o diagnóstico que efetua van Fraassen (1987, p. 110) da lei de Hardy-Weinberg, de acordo coo qual esta: 1) não pode ser considerada uma lei a ser utilizada como un axioma da teoria genética de populações, pois é uma lei de equilíbrio que só vale sob certas condições especiais, 2) só determina uma subclasse de modelos, 3) sua generalização resulta vácua e 4) variantes complexas da lei podem ser deduzidas para pressupostos (...) mais realistas. A discussão e desenvolvimento deste diagnóstico será levada a cabo tomando como base noções propostas por outra das concepções semânticas afim daquela desenvolvida por van Fraassen, a saber: a concepção estruturalista das teorias, e uma reconstrução da genética clássica de populações no marco de uma tal metateoria, também apresentada neste trabalho. (shrink)
De acordo com a concepção dominante de causação, eventos espácio-temporalmente localizáveis que podem ser designados por termos singulares e descrições definidas são os únicos relata genuínos da relação causal. Isto dá apoio e é apoiado pela dicotomia aceita entre a explicação causal, concebida como uma relação intensional entre fatos ou verdades, e a relação natural e extensional da causação. O ensaio questiona este modo de ver e argumenta pela legitimidade da noção de causação por fatos: os relata de muitas relações (...) expressas pelo conector sentencial ‘(O fato) C causa (o fato) E’ podem ser causas e efeitos genuínos (I). Esta visão expandida da causação é então aplicada ao problema da causação mental. Assumindo a verdade do realizacionismo físico, o ensaio explora a conexão entre eficácia causal e relevância contrafactual de propriedades. Mostra-se que, pelo menos em muitos casos, as ligações contrafactuais corretas, requeridas pela causação, podem ser encontradas somente no nível dos fatos realizados, não no nível mais básico dos fatos realizadores (II). Finalmente, dadas as similaridades entre a defesa do fisicismo não-reducionista esboçada aqui e as tentativas menos modestas de justificação científica das pretensões do materialismo metafísico, justamente criticadas por van Fraassen como manifestações da ‘falsa consciência’, considera-se se e como a argumento principal do ensaio pode evitar o juízo crítico de van Fraassen (III). (shrink)
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Over the last twenty years, Bas van Fraassen has developed a “new epistemology”: an attempt to sail between Bayesianism and traditional epistemology. He calls his own alternative “voluntarism”. A constant pillar of his thought is the thought that rationality involves permission rather than obligation. The present paper aims to offer an appraisal of van Fraassen’s conception of rationality. In section 2, I review the Bayesian structural conception of rationality and argue that it has been found wanting. In sections 3 and (...) 4, I analyse van Fraassen’s voluntarism. I raise some objections about van Fraassen’s reliance on prior opinion and argue that the content of a belief matters to its rationality. In section 5, I criticise van Fraassen’s view that inference to the best explanation is incoherent. Finally, in section 6, I take on van Fraassen’s conception of rationality and show that it is too thin to fully capture rational judgement. (shrink)
It is argued that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Bas van Fraassen nowhere uses the argument from underdetermination in his argument for constructive empiricism. It is explained that van Fraassen’s use of the notion of empirical equivalence in The Scientific Image has been widely misunderstood. A reconstruction of the main arguments for constructive empiricism is offered, showing how the passages that have been taken to be part of an appeal to the argument from underdetermination should actually be interpreted.
Projet En développant son « empirisme constructif », Bas Van Fraassen est devenu une référence incontournable pour la philosophie des sciences contemporaine. Après la vague de critiques qui, vers les années 1960, avait fait perdre à l'empirisme logique sa prédominance dans le champ des idées, le réalisme scientifique semblait s'être imposé comme le seul compte rendu acceptable du travail et des orientations de la recherche. Quine avait beau énoncer ce que pourrait être un empirisme affranchi de ses deux « dogmes (...) » (l'intangibilité de la distinction vérités analytiques / vérités synthétiques, et la réduction des constructions aux « faits »), le programme d'une philosophie des sciences empiriste renouvelée restait à l'état d'esquisse. Mais par trois ouvrages successifs, Scientific Image (1980), Laws and symmetry (1989), et Quantum mechanics an empiricist view (1991), Van Fraassen a posé les bases d'un empirisme viable, parce que capable de prendre en charge la plupart des spécificités dont se prévaut le réalisme contre l'empirisme classique ou logique, et de rendre raison des développements les plus actuels de la physique. Contre l'empirisme classique ou logique, les réalistes font d'abord valoir que la réduction de toute réalité et de tout acte de référence aux phénomènes, ne rend justice ni à la pratique du langage courant ni à celle des sciences. Lorsque quelqu'un procède à une dénomination, il ne cherche pas à désigner par là une tranche d'apparaître, ou quelque ensemble fini et répertorié d'apparitions; il pointe vers "quelque chose" dont les modalités de manifestation sans fin assignable sont pour partie anticipées et pour partie ouvertes. De même, quand un chercheur scientifique parle de l'objet de ses investigations, il ne limite pas son discours à un ensemble fini de résultats d'expérience obtenus sous des conditions instrumentales actuellement disponibles; il renvoie à une entité dont la variété des manifestations futures est prévue aussi complètement que possible (et avec un succès croissant) par des cadres conceptuels et théoriques révisables. Face à cette objection, Van Fraassen fait jouer un rôle capital aux modèles dans sa version de l'empirisme.. (shrink)
Sitting in the office of a distinguished philosopher of language recently, I watched him lean back (somewhat precariously) in his chair, look at the ceiling, and sigh: “Johan, we both write all this stuff about information, context, and communication – but is not the only time you really feel that you are making progress, when you resolutely close your eyes, and shut out the world and the others?” I appreciated his point, and indeed, in most spheres of life on (...) this planet, “l’Enfer” is most definitely “Les Autres”. (shrink)
Considering Pragma-Dialectics honors the monumental contributions of one of the foremost international figures in current argumentation scholarship: Frans van Eemeren. The volume presents the research efforts of his colleagues and addresses how their work relates to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with which van Eemeren’s name is so intimately connected. This tribute serves to highlight the varied approaches to the study of argumentation and is destined to inspire researchers to advance scholarship in the field far into the (...) future. Replete with contributions from highly-esteemed academics in argumentation study, chapters in this volume address such topics as: *Pragma-dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments; *Pragma-dialectics and self-advocacy in physician-patient interactions; *The pragma-dialectical analysis of the ad hominem family; *Rhetoric, dialectic, and the functions of argument; and *The semantics of reasonableness. As an exceptional volume and a fitting tribute, this work will be of interest to all argumentation scholars considering the astute insights and scholarly legacy of Frans van Eemeren. (shrink)
Over the past decades, logicians interested in rational agency and intelligent interaction studied major components of these phenomena, such as knowledge, belief, and preference. In recent years, standard ‘static’ logics describing information states of agents have been generalized to dynamic logics describing actions and events that produce information, revise beliefs, or change preferences, as explicit parts of the logical system. Van Ditmarsch, van der Hoek & Kooi 2007, Baltag, van Ditmarsch & Moss 2008, van Benthem, to appear A, are up-to-date (...) accounts of this dynamic trend (the present paper follows Chapter 9 of the latter book). But in reality, concrete rational agency contains all these dynamic processes entangled. A concrete setting for this entanglement are games – and this paper is a survey of their interfaces with logic, both static and dynamic. Games are intriguing also since their analysis brings together two major streams, or tribal communities: ‘hard’ mathematical logics of computation, and ‘soft’ philosophical logics of propositional attitudes. Of course, this hard/soft distinction is spurious, and there is no natural border line between the two sources: it is their congenial mixture that makes current theories of agency so lively. (shrink)
In this honorific volume, his protigi F. LeRon Shults has gathered a chorus of excellent voices in van Huyssteen's main areas of philosophy, science, and ...
Analysis shows that statements of ability are disguised conditionals. More exactly, the correct analysis of 'X could have done A' is 'If X h decided (chosen, willed ...) to do A, X would have done A'. Therefore having acted freely--having been able to act otherwise than one fact did--is compatible with determinism (with the causal determination of one's acts).
Mijn wetenschappelijke bijdrage sluit aan bij het stuk van Jan Willem Klop in deze zelfde afscheidsbundel, dat ik van Jan Willem onder embargo te lezen heb gekregen. Je zult je herinneren dat Jan Willem in de CWI lezing ter gelegenheid van zijn eredoctoraat kort refereerde aan de Thue Morse reeks. Noem deze reeks M . Jan Willem gaf de versie die start met 1. Noem het resultaat van omwisselen van nullen en enen in de Thue Morse reeks M . De (...) reeks M is wat je krijgt als je het Thue Morse proces start met 0. (shrink)
REFERENCES Barwise, J. & R. Cooper (1981) — 'Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language', Linguistics and Philosophy 4:2159-219. Van Benthem, J. (1983a) — ' Five Easy Pieces', in Ter Meulen (ed.), 1-17. Van Benthem, J. (1983b) ...
In a recent paper Johan van Benthem reviews earlier work done by himself and colleagues on ‘natural logic’. His paper makes a number of challenging comments on the relationships between traditional logic, modern logic and natural logic. I respond to his challenge, by drawing what I think are the most significant lines dividing traditional logic from modern. The leading difference is in the way logic is expected to be used for checking arguments. For traditionals the checking is local, i.e. (...) separately for each inference step. Between inference steps, several kinds of paraphrasing are allowed. Today we formalise globally: we choose a symbolisation that works for the entire argument, and thus we eliminate intuitive steps and changes of viewpoint during the argument. Frege and Peano recast the logical rules so as to make this possible. I comment also on the traditional assumption that logical processing takes place at the top syntactic level, and I question Johan’s view that natural logic is ‘natural’. (shrink)
Issues about information spring up wherever one scratches the surface of logic. Here is a case that raises delicate issues of 'factual' versus 'procedural' information, or 'statics' versus 'dynamics'. What does intuitionistic logic, perhaps the earliest source of informational and procedural thinking in contemporary logic, really tell us about information? How does its view relate to its 'cousin' epistemic logic? We discuss connections between intuitionistic models and recent protocol models for dynamic-epistemic logic, as well as more general issues that emerge.
This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that (...) the participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models. (shrink)
When in 1980, on the Third Amsterdam Colloquium, Johan van Benthem read a paper with the title ‘Why is Semantics What?’ (cf. [1]), I was puzzled: Wasn’t it obvious what semantics is? Why did our concept of it stand in need of justification? Later, much later, I came to appreciate what Van Benthem was doing in this paper (and in some others). Questioning the ‘standard model’, the assumptions on which the working semanticists silently agree, Van Benthem opened up a (...) space of issues to be discussed, questions to be asked, routes to be explored, that had been hidden from view by the unreflective endorsement of just one possible, albeit fruitful way of doing semantics. History, by the way, has proven him right on many points: the monolithic approach that dominated formal semantics of natural language in the seventies, and which relied heavily on Montague’s seminal papers, has given way to a multitude of different ways of tackling semantic issues, using different formal techniques. Some limitations, in particular the almost exclusive focus on sentences as the primary units of analysis, have been overcome. In another respect, however, I feel that the message of Van Benthem’s paper has not caught on sufficiently. He urges semanticists to take more interest in the properties of their tools, arguing that such questions are important if we are to come to a real, deep understanding of what semantics is. Such ‘meta-level’ considerations, although certainly less scarce than they used to be, are still not an everyday concern of the working semanticist. (shrink)
Theoria , the international Swedish philosophy journal, was founded in 1935. Its contributors in the first 75 years include the major Swedish philosophers from this period and in addition a long list of international philosophers, including A. J. Ayer, C. D. Broad, Ernst Cassirer, Hector Neri Castañeda, Arthur C. Danto, Donald Davidson, Nelson Goodman, R. M. Hare, Carl G. Hempel, Jaakko Hintikka, Saul Kripke, Henry E. Kyburg, Keith Lehrer, Isaac Levi, David Lewis, Gerald MacCallum, Richard Montague, Otto Neurath, Arthur N. (...) Prior, W. V. Quine, Nicholas Rescher, Ernest Sosa, Robert C. Stalnaker, P. F. Strawson, Patrick Suppes, Johan van Benthem, Georg Henrik von Wright and many others. Hempel's confirmation paradoxes, Ross's deontic paradox, Montague's universal grammar and Lindström's theorem are among the contributions to philosophy that were first published in Theoria. (shrink)
Transparency is a crucial condition to implement a CSR policy based on the reputation mechanism. The central question of this contribution is how a transparency policy ought to be organised in order to enhance the CSR behaviour of companies. Governments endorsing CSR as a new means of governance have different strategies to foster CSR transparency. In this paper we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of two conventional policy strategies: the facilitation policy and the command and control strategy. Using three criteria (...) (efficiency, freedom and virtue) we conclude that both strategies are defective. Most attention is paid to the facilitation strategy since governments nowadays mainly use this. In evaluating this strategy we analyse the Dutch case. As an alternative we introduce a third government policy: the development of a self-regulating sub-system. By construing an analogy with the historical development of corporate financial disclosure, we point out that the vital step in the creation of a self-regulating subsys- tem is the creation of strong informational intermediate organisations. (shrink)
This paper presents a new modal logic for ceteris paribus preferences understood in the sense of "all other things being equal". This reading goes back to the seminal work of Von Wright in the early 1960's and has returned in computer science in the 1990' s and in more abstract "dependency logics" today. We show how it differs from ceteris paribus as "all other things being normal", which is used in contexts with preference defeaters. We provide a semantic analysis and (...) several completeness theorems. We show how our system links up with Von Wright's work, and how it applies to game-theoretic solution concepts, to agenda setting in investigation, and to preference change. We finally consider its relation with infinitary modal logics. (shrink)
In the present version of these lecture notes only a number of typos and a few glaring mistakes have been corrected. Thanks to Paul Dekker for his help in this respect. No attempt has been been made to update the original text or to incorporate new insights and approaches. For a more recent overview, see our ‘Questions’ in the Handbook of Logic and Language (edited by Johan van Benthem and Alice ter Meulen, Elsevier, 1997).
Current dynamic epistemic logics for analyzing effects of informational events often become cumbersome and opaque when common knowledge is added for groups of agents. Still, postconditions involving common knowledge are essential to successful multi-agent communication. We propose new systems that extend the epistemic base language with a new notion of ‘relativized common knowledge’, in such a way that the resulting full dynamic logic of information flow allows for a compositional analysis of all epistemic postconditions via perspicuous ‘reduction axioms’. We also (...) show how such systems can deal with factual alteration, rather than just information change, making them cover a much wider range of realistic events. After a warm-up stage of analyzing logics for public announcements, our main technical results are expressivity and completeness theorems for a much richer logic that we call LCC. This is a dynamic epistemic logic whose static base is propositional dynamic logic (PDL), interpreted epistemically. This system is capable of expressing all model-shifting operations with finite action models, while providing a compositional analysis for a wide range of informational events. This makes LCC a serious candidate for a standard in dynamic epistemic logic, as we illustrate by analyzing some complex communication scenarios, including sending successive emails with both ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ lines, and other private announcements to subgroups. Our proofs involve standard modal techniques, combined with a new application of Kleene’s theorem on finite automata, as well as new Ehrenfeucht games of model comparison. (shrink)
Since Lewis’s (1969) and Aumann’s (1976) pioneering contributions, the concepts of common knowledge and common belief have been discussed extensively in the literature, both syntactically and semantically1. At the individual level the difference between knowledge and belief is usually identified with the presence or absence of the Truth Axiom ( iA → A), which is interpreted as ”if individual i believes that A, then A is true”. In such a case the individual is often said to know that A (thus (...) it is possible for an individual to believe a false proposition but she cannot know a false proposition). Going to the interpersonal level, the literature then distinguishes between common knowledge and common belief on the basis of whether or not the Truth Axiom is postulated at the individual level. However, while at the individual level the Truth Axiom captures merely a relationship between the individuals’ beliefs and the external world, at the interpersonal level it has very strong implications. For example, the following is a consequence of the Truth Axiom: i jA → iA, that is, if individual i believes that individual j believes that A, then individual i herself believes that A. Thus, in contrast to other axioms, the Truth Axiom does not merely reflect individual agents’ “logic of belief”. (The reason why the Truth Axiom is much stronger in an interpersonal context than appears at first glance is that it amounts to assuming that agreement of any individual’s belief with the truth is common knowledge). Given its logical force, it is not surprising to find that it has strong implications for the logic of common knowledge. In particular, if each individual’s beliefs satisfy the strongest logic of knowledge (namely S5 or KT5), the associated common knowledge operator satisfies this logic too. Such is not the case for belief: bereft of the Truth Axiom, even the strongest logic for individual belief (KD45) is insufficient to ensure the satisfaction of the “Negative Introspection” axiom for common belief: ¬ ∗A → ∗¬ ∗A (where ∗ denotes the common belief operator).. (shrink)
Taking Backward Induction as its running example, this paper explores avenues for a logic of information-driven social action. We use recent results on limit phenomena in knowledge updating and belief revision, procedural rationality, and a ‘Theory of Play’ analyzing how games are played by different agents.
Semantic Automata Johan van Ben them. INTRODUCTION An attractive, but never very central idea in modern semantics has been to regard linguistic expressions ...
Many logical systems today describe intelligent interacting agents over time. Frameworks include Interpreted Systems (IS, Fagin et al. [8]), Epistemic-Temporal Logic (ETL, Parikh & Ramanujam [22]), STIT (Belnap et al. [5]), Process Algebra and Game Semantics (Abramsky [1]). This variety is an asset, as different modeling tools can be fine-tuned to specific applications. But it may also be an obstacle, when barriers between paradigms and schools go up. This paper takes a closer look at one particular interface, between two systems (...) that both address the dynamics of knowledge and information flow in multi-agent systems. One is IS/ETL (IS and ETL are, from a technical point of view, the same up to model transformations, cf. [20]), which uses linear or branching time models with added epistemic structure induced by agents’ different capabilities for observing events. These models provide a Grand Stage where histories of some process unfold constrained by a protocol, and a matching epistemic-temporal language describes what happens. The other framework is Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL, [10, 4, 34]) that describes interactive processes in terms of epistemic event models which may occur inside modalities of the language. Temporal evolution is then computed from some initial epistemic model through a process of successive ‘product updates’. It has long been unclear how to best compare IS/ETL and DEL. Various aspects have been investigated in [10, 30, 32], but in this paper, we study the interface in a more systematic way. Often, DEL and ETL are presented as alternative ways of adding dynamics to multi-agent epistemic models. In this paper, we rather focus on how merging the two different modeling choices leads to interesting new questions. Our leading interest here will be a view of informational processes as evolving over time. To see what we mean, consider the simplest version of DEL, viz. the logic of public announcements PAL ([23]) which adds a very specific type of communicative 1 action to epistemic models: a public announcement.. (shrink)
A variety of logical frameworks have been developed to study rational agents interacting over time. This paper takes a closer look at one particular interface, between two systems that both address the dynamics of knowledge and information flow. The first is Epistemic Temporal Logic (ETL) which uses linear or branching time models with added epistemic structure induced by agents' different capabilities for observing events. The second framework is Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) that describes interactive processes in terms of epistemic event (...) models which may occur inside modalities of the language. This paper systematically and rigorously relates the DEL framework with the ETL framework. The precise relationship between DEL and ETL is explored via a new representation theorem characterizing the largest class of ETL models corresponding to DEL protocols in terms of notions of Perfect Recall, No Miracles, and Bisimulation Invariance. We then focus on new issues of completeness. One contribution is an axiomatization for the dynamic logic of public announcements constrained by protocols, which has been an open problem for some years, as it does not fit the usual 'reduction axiom' format of DEL. Finally, we provide a number of examples that show how DEL suggests an interesting fine-structure inside ETL. (shrink)
No attempt has been been made to update the original text or to incorporate new insights and approaches. For a more recent overview, see our ‘Questions’ in the Handbook of Logic and Language (edited by Johan van Benthem and Alice ter Meulen, Elsevier, 1997).
Transition systems can be viewed either as process diagrams or as Kripke structures. The rst perspective is that of process theory, the second that of modal logic. This paper shows how various formalisms of modal logic can be brought to bear on processes. Notions of bisimulation can not only be motivated by operations on transition systems, but they can also be suggested by investigations of modal formalisms. To show that the equational view of processes from process algebra is closely related (...) to modal logic, we consider various ways of looking at the relation between the calculus of basic process algebra and propositional dynamic logic. More concretely, the paper contains preservation results for various bisimulation notions, a result on the expressive power of propositional dynamic logic, and a de nition of bisimulation which is the proper notion of invariance for concurrent propositional dynamic logic. (shrink)
This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that (...) the participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models. Keywords Epistemic logic - Cognitive science - Intelligent interaction - Cognitive modeling. (shrink)
Game logics describe general games through powers of players for forcing outcomes. In particular, they encode an algebra of sequential game operations such as choice, dual and composition. Logic games are special games for specific purposes such as proof or semantical evaluation for first-order or modal languages. We show that the general algebra of game operations coincides with that over just logical evaluation games, whence the latter are quite general after all. The main tool in proving this is a representation (...) of arbitrary games as modal or first-order evaluation games. We probe how far our analysis extends to product operations on games. We also discuss some more general consequences of this new perspective for standard logic. (shrink)
Taking Löb's Axiom in modal provability logic as a running thread, we discuss some general methods for extending modal frame correspondences, mainly by adding fixed-point operators to modal languages as well as their correspondence languages. Our suggestions are backed up by some new results -- while we also refer to relevant work by earlier authors. But our main aim is advertizing the perspectives, showing how modal languages with fixed-point operators are a natural medium to work with.
We make a proposal for formalizing simultaneous games at the abstraction level of player's powers, combining ideas from dynamic logic of sequential games and concurrent dynamic logic. We prove completeness for a new system of 'concurrent game logic' CDGL with respect to finite non-determined games. We also show how this system raises new mathematical issues, and throws light on branching quantifiers and independence-friendly evaluation games for first-order logic.
It has been known since the seventies that the formulas of modal logic are invariant for bisimulations between possible worlds models -- while conversely, all bisimulation-invariant first-order formulas are modally definable. In this paper, we extend this semantic style of analysis from modal formulas to dynamic program operations. We show that the usual regular operations are safe for bisimulation, in the sense that the transition relations of their values respect any given bisimulation for their arguments. Our main result is a (...) complete syntactic characterization of all first-order definable program operations that are safe for bisimulation. This is a semantic functional completeness result for programming, which may be contrasted with the more usual analysis in terms of computational power. The 'Safety Theorem' can be modulated in several ways. We conclude with a list of variants, extensions, and further developments. (shrink)
For a Euclidean space ${\Bbb R}^{n}$ , let $L_{n}$ denote the modal logic of chequered subsets of ${\Bbb R}^{n}$ . For every n ≥ 1, we characterize $L_{n}$ using the more familiar Kripke semantics thus implying that each $L_{n}$ is a tabular logic over the well-known modal system Grz of Grzegorczyk. We show that the logics $L_{n}$ form a decreasing chain converging to the logic $L_{\infty}$ of chequered subsets of ${\Bbb R}^{\infty}$ . As a result, we obtain that $L_{\infty}$ is (...) also a logic over Grz, and that $L_{\infty}$ has the finite model property. We conclude the paper by extending our results to the modal language enriched with the universal modality. (shrink)
Exact philosophy consists of various disciplines scattered and separated. Formal semantics and philosophy of science are good examples of two such disciplines. The aim of this paper is to show that there is possible to find some integrating bridge topics between the two fields, and to show how insights from the one are illuminating and suggestive in the other.
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)
Minimal predicates P satisfying a given first-order description ϕ(P) occur widely in mathematical logic and computer science. We give an explicit first-order syntax for special first-order 'PIA conditions' ϕ(P) which quarantees unique existence of such minimal predicates. Our main technical result is a preservation theorem showing PIA-conditions to be expressively complete for all those first-order formulas that are preserved under a natural model-theoretic operation of 'predicate intersection'. Next, we show how iterated predicate minimization on PIA-conditions yields a language MIN(FO) equal (...) in expressive power to LFP(FO), first-order logic closed under smallest fixed-points for monotone operations. As a concrete illustration of these notions, we show how our sort of predicate minimization extends the usual frame correspondence theory of modal logic, leading to a proper hierarchy of modal axioms: first-order-definable, first-order fixed-point definable, and beyond. (shrink)
We present a number of, somewhat unusual, ways of describing what Craig's interpolation theorem achieves, and use them to identify some open problems and further directions.
Of the various notions of reduction in the logical literature, relative interpretability in the sense of Tarski et al. [6] appears to be the central one. In the present note, this syntactic notion is characterized semantically, through the existence of a suitable reduction functor on models. The latter mathematical condition itself suggests a natural generalization, whose syntactic equivalent turns out to be a notion of interpretability quite close to that of Ershov [1], Szczerba [5] and Gaifman [2].
Parameters of a Bertalanffy type of temperature dependent growth model are fitted using data from a population of stone loach ( Barbatula barbatula ). Over two periods respectively in 1990 and 2010 length data of this population has been collected at a lowland stream in the central part of the Netherlands. The estimation of the maximum length of a fully grown individual is given special attention because it is in fact found as the result of an extrapolation over a large (...) interval of the entire lifetime. It is concluded that this parameter should not at forehand be set at one fixed value for the population at that location due to varying conditions over the years. (shrink)
In this paper, the author defends Peter van Inwagen’s modal skepticism. Van Inwagen accepts that we have much basic, everyday modal knowledge, but denies that we have the capacity to justify philosophically interesting modal claims that are far removed from this basic knowledge. The author also defends the argument by means of which van Inwagen supports his modal skepticism, offering a rebuttal to an objection along the lines of that proposed by Geirrson. Van Inwagen argues that Stephen Yablo’s recent and (...) influential account of the relationship between conceivability and possibility supports his skeptical claims. The author’s defence involves a creative interpretation and development of Yablo’s account, which results in a recursive account of modal epistemology, what the author calls the “safe explanation” theory of modal epistemology. (shrink)
Constructive empiricism is supposed to offer a positive alternative to scientific realism that dispenses with the need for metaphysics. I first review the terms of the debate before arguing that the standard objections to constructive empiricism are not decisive. I then explain van Fraassen's views on modality and counterfactuals, and argue that, because constructive empiricism recommends on epistemological grounds belief in the empirical adequacy rather than the truth of theories, it requires that there be an objective modal distinction between the (...) observable and the unobservable. This conclusion is incompatible with van Fraassen's empiricism. Finally I explain some further problems for constructive empiricism that arise when we consider modal matters. (shrink)
Hilary Putnam and Bas C. van Fraassen have been two pivotal figures in the scientific realism debate in the second half of the twentieth century. Their initial perspectives were antithetical—defining an archetypical scientific realist position (Putnam) and a major empiricism-inspired alternative to scientific realism (van Fraassen). But as the years (and the philosophical debates) went on, there have been important lines of convergence in the stances of these two thinkers, mostly motivated by an increasing flirting with pragmatism and by a (...) growing disdain towards metaphysics. Putnam’s views went through two major turns, in a philosophical journey he aptly described as taking him “from realism back to realism” (1994, 494). Being an arch scientific realist in the 1960s and the early 1970s, he moved to a trenchant critique of metaphysical realism and the adoption of a verificationist-‘internalist’ approach (what he called pragmatic or internal realism), which he upheld roughly until the end of the twentieth century. Then he adopted a direct realist outlook, what he called “common sense” or “natural realism”, which was based on the denial of at least some of the tenets of his internalist period (e.g., the abandonment of a verificationist conception of truth), while at the same time tried to avoid “the phantasies of metaphysical realism”. It is (almost) impossible to cover all aspects of Putnam’s realist endeavours. I will therefore focus on his changing views about scientific realism. Van Fraassen occupied a space in the scientific realism debate that was left vacant by Putnam’s critique of fictionalism and verificationism, viz., an agnostic stance towards the ontological commitments of literally understood scientific theories. His positive alternative to realism, Constructive Empiricism (CE), was meant to be a position suitable for post-positivist empiricists, that is philosophers who a) take for granted the empiricist dictum that all (substantive) knowledge stems from experience; b) take science seriously (but not uncritically) as the paradigm of rational inquiry; and c) take to heart all criticism of the positivist approach to science, bound as it was to issues concerning the language of theories and the privileging of an alleged theory-neutral observational vocabulary.. (shrink)
Bas van Fraassen claims that constructive empiricism strikes a balance between the empiricist's commitments to epistemic modesty -- that one's opinion should extend no further beyond the deliverances of experience than is necessary -- and to the rationality of science. In "Should the Empiricist be a Constructive Empiricist?" I argued that if the constructive empiricist follows through on her commitment to epistemic modesty she will find herself adopting a much more extreme position than van Fraassen suggests. Van Fraassen and Bradley (...) Monton have recently responded. My purpose here is to contest their response. The goal is not merely the rebuttal of a rebuttal; there is a lesson to learn concerning the realist/anti-realist dialectic generated by van Fraassen's view. (shrink)
In this three-part paper, my concern is to expound and defend a conception of science, close to Einstein's, which I call aim-oriented empiricism. I argue that aim-oriented empiricsim has the following virtues. (i) It solve the problem of induction; (ii) it provides decisive reasons for rejecting van Fraassen's brilliantly defended but intuitively implausible constructive empiricism; (iii) it solves the problem of verisimilitude, the problem of explicating what it can mean to speak of scientific progress given that science advances from one (...) false theory to another; (iv) it enables us to hold that appropriate scientific theories, even though false, can nevertheless legitimately be interpreted realistically, as providing us with genuine , even if only approximate, knowledge of unobservable physical entities; (v) it provies science with a rational, even though fallible and non-mechanical, method for the discovery of fundamental new theories in physics. In the third part of the paper I show that Einstein made essential use of aim-oriented empiricism in scientific practice in developing special and general relativity. I conclude by considering to what extent Einstein came explicitly to advocate aim-oriented empiricism in his later years. (shrink)
This paper criticizes the dominant approaches to presupposition projection and proposes an alternative. Both the update semantics of Heim and the discourse representation theory of van der Sandt have problems in explicating the presuppositions of disjunctions. Moreover, Heim's approach is committed to a conception of accommodation that founders on the problem of informative presuppositions, and van der Sandt's approach is committed to a conception of accommodation that generates over-interpretations of utterances. The present approach borrows Karttunen's idea that instead of associating (...) presuppositions with sentences, we should define the conditions that contexts must meet in order to satisfy-the-presuppositions-of a sentence. However, in place of Karttunen's conception of contexts in terms of common ground, the present theory substitutes a conception of contexts as objective entities that are independent of the attitudes of the interlocutors. Contexts, so conceived, may be defined as containing sets of relevant possibilities. This allows us to define the conditions under which a context satisfies-the-presuppositions-of a disjunction. (shrink)
Peter van Inwagen's brand of materialism leads him to speculate that God actually removes the deceased at the moment of death and replaces the corpse with a simulacrum that decays or is cremated. Dean Zimmerman offers an account of resurrection that is loyal to Peter van Inwagen's commitment to a materialist metaphysics, with its stress on the earlier life processes of an organism immanently causing its later ones, while maintaining that resurrection is possible without involving God in any ‘body snatching’. (...) My contention is that Zimmerman's account is metaphysically impossible. His alleged ‘solution’ is at odds with the principles governing the ways in which an organism can assimilate new parts. Instead of providing a scenario where we can be resurrected, Zimmerman has merely sketched a scenario where we are duplicated. An alternative materialist account of resurrection is offered, one in which immanent causation is not necessary. (shrink)
First, I'd like to thank Professors Van Till, Pun, and McMullin for their careful and thoughtful replies. There is a deep level of agreement among all four of us; as is customary with replies and replies to replies, however, I shall concentrate on our areas of disagreement. In the cases of Van Till and McMullin, this may give an impression of deeper disagreement than actually exists. In the case of Pun it leaves me with little to say except Yea and (...) Amen; I find no serious disagreement between us. (shrink)
We often speak of an object being composed of various other objects. We say that the deck is composed of the cards, that a road is the sum total of its sections, that a house is composed of its walls, ceilings, floors, doors, etc. Suppose we have some material objects. Here is a philosophical question: what conditions must obtain for those objects to compose something? In his recent book Material Beings, Peter van Inwagen addresses this question, which he calls the (...) ‘special composition question’; his answer is:1 (1) For any material objects X , the X s compose something iff the activity of the X s constitutes a life, or there is only one of the Xs. Additionally, he accepts a simpler thesis that follows from (1):2 (2) Every material object is either a mereological atom or a living thing, where a mereological atom is an object lacking proper parts. (2) may seem radical. If it is true then there are no tables, chairs, planets, protons, galaxies, gas stations, etc. But van Inwagen does not hold it lightly— there are serious difficulties with alternate views. Moreover, he claims that.. (shrink)
In a recent article, van Fraassen has taken issue with the use to which Perrin’s experiments on Brownian motion have been put by philosophers, especially those defending scientific realism. He defends an alternative position by analysing the details of Perrin’s case in its historical context. In this reply, I argue that van Fraassen has not done the job well enough and I extend and in some respects attempt to correct his claims by close attention to the historical details.
This essay revisits Meyer Schapiro’s critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of Van Gogh’s painting of a pair of shoes in order to raise the question of the dispute between art history and philosophy as a contest increasingly ceded to the claim of the expert and the hegemony of the museum as culture and as cult or coded signifier. Following a discussion of museum culture, I offer a hermeneutic and phenomenological reading of Heidegger’s ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ and conclude by (...) taking Heidegger’s discussion of the strife between earth and world to the site of the ancient temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae as an example of the insistent foreclosure of the ancient work of art and the conflicts of the pervasive efforts of modern conservation. (shrink)
, I argued that Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism was undermined in various ways by his antirealism about modality. Here I offer some comments and responses to the reply to my arguments by Bradley Monton and van Fraassen [2003]. In particular, after making some minor points, I argue that Monton and van Fraassen have not done enough to show that the context dependence of counterfactuals renders their truth conditions non-objective, and I also argue that adopting modal realism does after all (...) undermine the motivation for constructive empiricism. Introduction Underdetermination and epistemic modesty Counterfactual observations Modal realism and constructive empiricism. (shrink)
In Belief and the Will, van Fraassen employed a diachronic Dutch Book argument to support a counterintuitive principle called Reflection. There and subsequently van Fraassen has put forth Reflection as a linchpin for his views in epistemology and the philosophy of science, and for the voluntarism (first-person reports of subjective probability are undertakings of commitments) that he espouses as an alternative to descriptivism (first-person reports of subjective probability are merely self-descriptions). Christensen and others have attacked Reflection, taking it to have (...) unpalatable consequences. We prescind from the question of the cogency of diachronic Dutch Book arguments, and focus on Reflection's proper interpretation. We argue that Reflection is not as counterintuitive as it appears — that once interpreted properly the status of the counterexamples given by Christensen and others is left open. We show also that descriptivism can make sense of Reflection, while voluntarism is not especially well suited to do so. (shrink)
We give a condensed survey of recent research on generalized quantifiers in logic, linguistics and computer science, under the following headings: Logical definability and expressive power, Polyadic quantifiers and linguistic definability, Weak semantics and axiomatizability, Computational semantics, Quantifiers in dynamic settings, Quantifiers and modal logic, Proof theory of generalized quantifiers.
