Simple finite axiomatizations are given for versions of the modal logics K and K4 with non-contingency (or contingency) as the sole modal primitive. This answers two questions of I. L. Humberstone.

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.

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)

The prisoner 's dilemma game has acquired large literatures in several disciplines. It is surprising, therefore, that a good definition of the game is hard to find. Typically an author relates a story about captured criminals or military rivals, provides a particular payoff matrix and asserts that the PD is characterized, or illustrated, by that matrix. In the few cases in which characterizing conditions are given, the conditions, and the motivations for them, do not always agree with each other or (...) with the paradigm examples elsewhere. In this paper we describe several varieties of PD's. In particular, we suggest there are two distinctions among PD's with philosophical significance, the pure/impure and the utilitarian/nonutilitarian distinctions. In the first section, we explain and characterize the two distinctions. In the second, we discuss an issue of moral philosophy that illustrates the significance of the former. (shrink)

The semantics of tense has received a great deal of attention in the contemporary linguistics, philosophy and logic literatures. This is probably due partly to a renewed appreciation for the fact that issues involving tense touch on certain issues of philosophical importance (viz., determinism, causality, and the nature of events, of time and of change). It may also be due partly to neglect. Tense was noticeably omitted from the theories of meaning advanced in previous generations. In the writings of both (...) Russell and Frege there is the suggestion that tense would be absent altogether from an ideal or scientifically adequate language. (Tense was not the only blemish of natural language to be removed, of course, but tense is a more serious omission than, say, pronouns because it is present in every sentence of the language.) Finally, in recent years there has been a greater recognition of the important role that all of the so-called “indexical” expressions must play in an explanation of mental states and human behavior. Tense is no exception. Knowing that our friend died is cause for mourning, knowing that he dies is just another confirmation of a familiar syllogism. (shrink)

A notable early result of David Makinson establishes that every monotone modal logic can be extended to LI, LV, or LF, and every antitone logic can be extended to LN, LV, or LF, where LI, LN, LV, and LF are logics axiomatized, respectively, by the schemas □α↔α, □α↔¬α, □α↔⊤, and □α↔⊥. We investigate logics that are both monotone and antitone (hereafter amphitone). There are exactly three: LV, LF, and the minimum amphitone logic AM axiomatized by the schema □α→□β. These logics, (...) along with LI, LN, and a wider class of “extensional” logics, bear close affinities to classical propositional logic. Characterizing those affinities reveals differences among several accounts of equivalence between logics. Some results about amphitone logics do not carry over when logics are construed as consequence or generalized (“multiple-conclusion”) consequence relations on languages that may lack some or all of the nonmodal connectives. We close by discussing these divergences and conditions under which our results do carry over. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Reasoning biases have been suggested as risk factors for delusional ideation in both patients and non-clinical individuals. Still, it is unclear how these biases are longitudinally related to delusions in the general population. We hence aimed to investigate longitudinal associations between reasoning biases and delusional ideation in the general population. METHODS: We conducted an online cohort study with 1184 adults from the German and Swiss general population. Participants completed measures on reasoning biases (jumping-to-conclusion bias JTC, liberal acceptance bias LA, (...) bias against disconfirmatory evidence BADE, possibility of being mistaken PM) and delusional ideation at baseline, and delusional ideation 7 to 8 months later. RESULTS: A greater JTC bias was associated with a greater increase in delusional ideation over the following months. This association was better described by a positive quadratic relationship. Neither BADE, LA nor PM were associated with subsequent changes in delusional ideation. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that jumping-to-conclusions predicts delusional ideation in the general population but that this association may follow a quadratic trajectory. While no other associations turned significant, future studies with shorter temporal distances may shed further light on the role of reasoning biases as risk factors for delusional ideation in non-clinical samples. (shrink)

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions _is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty (...) years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, _Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context. Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science. (shrink)

The system obtained by adding full propositional quantification to S5 is known to be decidable, while that obtained by doing so for T is known to be recursively intertranslatable with full second-order logic. Recently it was shown that the system with two S5 operators and full propositional quantification is also recursively intertranslatable with second-order logic. This note establishes that the map assigning [1][2]p to \squarep provides a validity and satisfaction preserving translation between the T system and the double S5 system, (...) thus providing an easier proof of the recent result. (shrink)

The recent interpretation of Michel Henry’s thought as a ‘phenomenological vitalism’ raises fundamental questions regarding the reception of his phenomenology. The issue raised, however, is not primarily about radical phenomenology being inspired (or not) by more or less vitalistic philosophies like those of Maine de Biran, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and even Freud, rather it concerns the ‘how’ of purely immanent appearing in affect and force understood as immediate corporeality. Does the latter, being original affectivity, require temporality in order to free the (...) affect from its passivity (Passibilit%t) and, thus, in order to enable action? This, however, would lead to an impossible intentional gap or difference within the original phenomenality of life itself. As an alternative, flesh can be seen as a potentiality, inwhich the concrete transcendental possibility and the phenomenological power of appearing as ‘I can’ are already united prior to any formal exercise of freedom. Such inquiry into the reception of the phenomenology of life provides at the same time a framework for the contemporary phenomenological debate. (shrink)

Ricoeur developed a very elaborated philosophy of religion. At the same time, he always moved along interdisciplinary borders of philosophy, theology, exegesis, historical and language sciences. His religious concerns are in this sense related to pre-philosophical experiences that within certain fields lend themselves to hermeneutical articulation. His analysis of the Scriptures in terms of narrativity deals with biblical texts. However, he doesn’t speak as a theologian,but as a philosopher, since the question of a philosophical and theological hermeneutics is from his (...) own point of view closely related to the fundamentaltension between autonomy and heteronomy. This paper regards his work as a new form of French philosophy of religion, and as a result of this includes a criticalconsideration of the pre-textual sphere understood as an absolute “priority”. This absolute “priority” should be presupposed by any hermeneutics of the written revelation, even when it is not able to provide a final response to its radical-phenomenological implications. (shrink)