Online research in philosophy

Applications of game theory to moral philosophy are impededby foundational issues and troublesome examples. In the first part of this paper,questions are raised about the appropriate game-theoretical frameworks for applications to moralphilosophy and about the proper interpretations of the theoretical devices employed inthese frameworks. In the second part, five examples that should be of particular interest to thoseinterested in the connections between ethics and game theory are delineated and discussed. Thefirst example comprises games in which there is an outcome unanimously (...) preferred to the``solution'' of the game, appropriately defined. The second comprises games whose solution callsfor different players to employ different strategies. The third comprises games whosesolution calls for players to adopt mixed strategies. The fourth comprises games whose solutionrequires players to cycle among a variety of strategies. The fifth comprises games whose solutionrequires players to discriminate in morally inappropriate ways. (shrink)

A sentence containing a number of definite descriptions, each lying within the scope of its predecessor, is naturally read as asserting the uniqueness of a sequence of objects satisfying the descriptions. The project of providing a general uniform procedure for eliminating embedded definite descriptions that gets this and other logical forms right is impeded by several puzzles.

Montague, Prior, von Wright and others drew attention to resemblances between modal operators and quantifiers. In this paper we show that classical quantifiers can, in fact, be regarded as S5-like operators in a purely propositional modal logic. This logic is axiomatized and some interesting fragments of it are investigated.