It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on the offered (...) odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction. (shrink)

This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction by (...) one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

Agenda Relevance is the first volume in the authors' omnibus investigation of the logic of practical reasoning, under the collective title, A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems. In this highly original approach, practical reasoning is identified as reasoning performed with comparatively few cognitive assets, including resources such as information, time and computational capacity. Unlike what is proposed in optimization models of human cognition, a practical reasoner lacks perfect information, boundless time and unconstrained access to (...) computational complexity. The practical reasoner is therefore obliged to be a cognitive economizer and to achieve his cognitive ends with considerable efficiency. Accordingly, the practical reasoner avails himself of various scarce-resource compensation strategies. He also possesses neurocognitive traits that abet him in his reasoning tasks. Prominent among these is the practical agent's striking (though not perfect) adeptness at evading irrelevant information and staying on task. On the approach taken here, irrelevancies are impediments to the attainment of cognitive ends. Thus, in its most basic sense, relevant information is cognitively helpful information. Information can then be said to be relevant for a practical reasoner to the extent that it advances or closes some cognitive agenda of his. The book explores this idea with a conceptual detail and nuance not seen the standard semantic, probabilistic and pragmatic approaches to relevance; but wherever possible, the authors seek to integrate alternative conceptions rather than reject them outright. A further attraction of the agenda-relevance approach is the extent to which its principal conceptual findings lend themselves to technically sophisticated re-expression in formal models that marshal the resources of time and action logics and label led deductive systems. Agenda Relevance is necessary reading for researchers in logic, belief dynamics, computer science, AI, psychology and neuroscience, linguistics, argumentation theory, and legal reasoning and forensic science, and will repay study by graduate students and senior undergraduates in these same fields. Key features: relevance action and agendas practical reasoning belief dynamics non-classical logics labelled deductive systems. (shrink)

Abstract.One of the theses of the present work is that, at the strictly logical and methodological level, practical logic has neither made, nor can it make any contribution to the philosophy of law, since none of the three branches of practical logic that have been taken into account, namely, the logic of norms, deontic logic and legal logic, seems to be theoretically possible. The contribution of practical logic to the analysis of (...) legal language is assessed in terms of both the instruments of analysis elaborated by practical logic, the artificial languages, and the results obtained in two capital subjects, the negations of norms and the permissions. (shrink)

I share my experiences teaching Practical Logic with a focus on good reasoning as eliminating alternative conclusions. This unites the various topics traditionally taught in such courses in a way that I have found to be extremely effective.

Philosophers of logic are particularly interested in understanding the aims, epistemology, and methodology of logic. This raises the question of how the philosophy of logic should go about these enquires. According to the practice-based approach, the most reliable method we have to investigate the methodology and epistemology of a research field is by considering in detail the activities of its practitioners. This holds just as true for logic as it does for the recognised empirical and abstract (...) sciences. If we wish to systematically understand the aims and epistemology of logic, we are best placed achieving this by looking at what logicians do, rather than reflecting upon the nature of logic itself. In this entry, we outline the motivations for a practice-based approach towards the philosophy of logic and highlight its advantages over more “top-down” approaches, which attempt to infer conclusions about the nature of logic and its methodology on the basis of traditional assumptions about knowledge, metaphysics, or logic itself. We end by addressing several prominent concerns raised against the practice-based approach. (shrink)

Overgeneralization -- Vague definition -- Post hoc, propter hoc -- False analogy -- Partial selection of the evidence -- Groupthink -- Scams, deceptions, ruses, swindles, hoaxes and gaslights -- Begging the question -- The logic of Alice.

The workshop will discuss new insights in the interaction between logic and law, and more precisely the study of different answers to the question: What role does logic play in legal reasoning? It will present both current challenges and historical perspectives in the relation between logic and law. The perspectives to be discussed involve the interface of the following studies.

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that he (...) grants—and in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

In this paper my primary aim is to present a logical system of practical reasoning that can be used to assess the validity of practical arguments, that is, arguments with a practical judgment as conclusion. I begin with a critical evaluation of other approaches to this issue and argue that they are inadequate. On the basis of these considerations, I explain in Sect. 2 the informal conception of practical validity and introduce in Sect. 3 the logical (...) system P , which is an extension of propositional logic and can be used to assess the validity of a wide range of practical arguments. In the last section, I apply this system to some examples of practical reasoning in order to demonstrate how it can be used in practice. (shrink)

This book presents the current state of the art regarding the application of logical tools to the problems of theory and practice of lawmaking. It shows how contemporary logic may be useful in the analysis of legislation, legislative drafting and legal reasoning concerning different contexts of lawmaking. Elaborations of the process of lawmaking have variously emphasised its political, social or economic aspects. Yet despite strong interest in logical analyses of law, questions remains about the role of logical tools in (...) lawmaking. This volume attempts to bridge that gap, or at least to narrow it, drawing together some important research problems-and some possible solutions-as seen through the work of leading contemporary academics. The volume encompasses 20 chapters written by authors from 16 countries and it presents diversified views on the understanding of logic (from strict mathematical approaches to the informal, argumentative ones) and differentiated choices concerning the aspects of lawmaking taken into account. The book presents a broad set of perspectives, insights and results into the emerging field of research devoted to the logical analysis of the area of creation of law. How does logic inform lawmaking? Are legal systems consistent and complete? How can legal rules be represented by means of formal calculi and visualization techniques? Does the structure of statutes or of legal systems resemble the structure of deductive systems? What are the logical relations between the basic concepts of jurisprudence that constitute the system of law? How are theories of legal interpretation relevant to the process of legislation? How might the statutory text be analysed by means of contemporary computer programs? These and other questions, ranging from the theoretical to the immediately practical, are addressed in this definitive collection. (shrink)

This book reports on cutting edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and also presents key case studies. Further, it describes concepts related to habits, routines and rituals and examines important features of human action such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations.

Process logic described by A. V. Smirnov is based on materials from the arab-muslim cul­ture as a whole. Process logic is contrasted with the substance logic which forms the foundation of European culture as a whole. It has been proven theoretically that any situation could be interpreted using any logic of sense. The article provides an empirical illustration of the use of the process logic in a consultation of a preschool educational in­stitution psychologist on problems (...) connected with a mental disorder of one of the pupils of the institution. On the basis of this single example it is demonstrated how process logic allows the shift of the focus of attention retaining the rational basis of the actions. Situa­tions relating to the health are difficult to describe using substantial logic as the course of the disease depends on the actions of the patient and on the actions of people in his/her immediate surroundings. This limits the usability of the law of identity which is funda­mental to substantial logic. The disease is “not that very same” disease – it is changing as the result of the actions. This creates a persistent uncertainty which is of remarkable im­portance in pediatric healthcare, where the actions of the parents are complicating the sit­uation much more significantly compared to the adult healthcare. In contrast to this, process logic allows us to observe the course of the ailment as such, as being a process, which eliminates the uncertainty. The process determines the actions regarding the ail­ment as well as their evaluation. If an action is changing the course of the ailment to the better we consider it successful. In the case described, the logic of understanding the situation used by the consultant has changed the client’s logic of understanding the situation. The person stopped seeing the problem as something rigid and insurmount­able. The change of the logic didn’t require any special training of the client. It follows that the shift of understanding from the substance logic to the process logic can help to solve practical pediatric problems. (shrink)

Moral conflicts are real, and while a deontic logic containing a modified "agglomeration rule" may be able to accommodate this fact, even the most sophisticated logic will still overlook much of what everyday normative reasoning involves.