Haack, S. Is truth flat or bumpy?--Chihara, C. S. Ramsey 's theory of types.--Loar, B. Ramsey 's theory of belief and truth.--Skorupski, J. Ramsey on Belief.--Hookway, C. Inference, partial belief, and psychological laws.--Skyrms, B. Higher order degrees of belief.--Mellor, D. H. Consciousness and degrees of belief.--Blackburn, S. Opinions and chances.--Grandy, R. E. Ramsey, reliability, and knowledge.--Cohen, L. J. The problem of natural laws.--Giedymin, J. Hamilton's method in geometrical optics and Ramsey 's view of theories.

Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. (...) The latter gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects. (shrink)

This is an indispensable volume for the study of Wittgenstein's philosophy and is also, in a certain manner, an introduction to many of the problems which have beset Anglo-American philosophy as a whole since the first appearance of the Tractatus. The thirty articles, reviews, and notes are arranged chronologically—with the exception of Ryle's quasi-expository article which begins the volume—and run from Ramsey's 1923 review to David Keyt's 1964 article, "Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Language." All the articles are complete with (...) the exception of a review of Stenius' book by Shwayder. A comprehensive bibliography of items relating to the Tractatus is included as is an index of references to the propositions of the Tractatus. Credits for the Zemach and second Keyt articles were omitted from the proper place, evidently by mistake; they are given in the bibliography. Wittgenstein's own "Some Remarks on Logical Form" is included—with a proxy disclaimer as to its relevance by Wittgenstein through Anscombe. Also included is a satirical "Epistle" written by Julian Bell in 1932. The book as a whole is a model example of what a critical anthology should be.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Fourteen essays by former pupils of Calhoun, including G. A. Lindbeck, W. A. Christian, N. C. Nielsen, Jr., R. P. Ramsey, and A. C. Outler. The depth of scholarship that these former students have achieved as well as the generally high calibre of all the essays are ample evidence of Calhoun's pedagogical prowess. Most of the contributions are of theological import, and most are historically oriented as the title of the book suggests. Lindbeck's essay, however, "The A Priori in (...) St. Thomas' Theory of Knowledge," has direct philosophical relevance for those concerned over the "Transcendental" interpretation of Thomas' epistemology and metaphysics. Nothing is advanced over the arguments of Maréchal, Lonergan, and Rahner in favor of this interpretation, but this additional support in a new context lends strength to the thesis.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This note is, in effect, a postscript to Ramsey's 'Theories'. It argues that to assert the existence of a causal quality (e.g. mass) is merely to affirm the consequences of a theory that invokes it.

By bootstrapping the output of the PC algorithm (Spirtes et al., 2000; Meek 1995), using larger conditioning sets informed by the current graph state, it is possible to define a novel algorithm, JPC, that improves accuracy of search for i.i.d. data drawn from linear, Gaussian, sparse to moderately dense models. The motivation for constructing sepsets using information in the current graph state is to highlight the differences between d-­‐separation information in the graph and conditional independence information extracted from the sample. (...) The same idea can be pursued for any algorithm for which conditioning sets informed by the current graph state can be constructed and for which an orientation procedure capable of orienting undirected graphs can be extracted. Another plausible candidate for such retrofitting is the CPC algorithm (Ramsey et al, 2006), yielding an algorithm, JCPC, which, when the true graph is sparse is somewhat more accurate than JPC. The method is not feasible for discovery for models of categorical variables, i.e., traditional Bayes nets; with alternative tests for conditional independence it may extend to non-­‐linear or non-­‐Gaussian models, or both. (shrink)

In these three Riddell Memorial Lectures for 1965 Ramsey views religious discourse as an instrument for expressing or stimulating "cosmic disclosure." RD must invariably work through the medium of "models," systems of concepts drawn from human experience and applied only by way of metaphor to the presumably transcendent object of RD. No single model is wholly adequate to exhaust a cosmic disclosure, and the danger lies in interpreting them in too literal a fashion and creating the false, and eventually (...) inconsistent, idea that all or most of the elements of the model are isomorphic with the reality of the object of the disclosure. This danger was succumbed to in the past, according to Ramsey, by most explanations of the doctrine of Atonement. Love, Ramsey concludes, is the best model upon which to express Atonement, and the model of the person is most appropriately used to express the disclosure of God. Having detailed this theory of RD, Ramsey attempts to show how it can be used successfully in resolving some of the difficulties raised in the "Honest to God" debate.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In “Connectionism and the fats of folk psychology”, Forster and Saidel argue that the central claim of Ramsey, Stich and Garon (1991)—that distributed connectionist models are incompatible with the causal discreteness of folk psychology—is mistaken. To establish their claim, they offer an intriguing model which allegedly shows how distributed representations can function in a causally discrete manner. They also challenge our position regarding projectibility of folk psychology. In this essay, I offer a response to their account and show how (...) their model fails to demonstrate that our original argument was mistaken. While I will discuss several difficulties with their model, my primary criticism will be that the features of their model that are causally discrete are not truly distributed, while the features that are distributed are not really discrete. Concerning the issue of projectibility, I am more inclined to agree with Forster and Saidel and I offer a revised account of what we should have said originally. (shrink)