"A sequel to Pollock's How to Build a Person, this volume builds upon that theoretical groundwork for the implementation of rationality through artificial ...

In this essay, I reply to the comments of Joanna Leidenhag and Nick Trakakis on my book Religion After Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity.

The principle of set theory known as the Axiom of Choice has been hailed as “probably the most interesting and, in spite of its late appearance, the most discussed axiom of mathematics, second only to Euclid's axiom of parallels which was introduced more than two thousand years ago” (Fraenkel, Bar-Hillel & Levy 1973, §II.4). The fulsomeness of this description might lead those unfamiliar with the axiom to expect it to be as startling as, say, the Principle of the Constancy of (...) the Velocity of Light or the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. But in fact the Axiom of Choice as it is usually stated appears humdrum, even self-evident. For it amounts to nothing more than the claim that, given any collection of mutually disjoint nonempty sets, it is possible to assemble a new set — a transversal or choice set — containing exactly one element from each member of the given collection. Nevertheless, this seemingly innocuous principle has far-reaching mathematical consequences — many indispensable, some startling — and has come to figure prominently in discussions on the foundations of mathematics. It (or its equivalents) have been employed in countless mathematical papers, and a number of monographs have been exclusively devoted to it. (shrink)

This exceptionally successful survey text introduces the teachings and practice of Islam from its earliest origins up to its contemporary practice. John L. Esposito, an internationally renowned expert on Islam, traces the development of Islam and its impact on world history and politics.Lucidly written and expansive in scope, Islam: The Straight Path, Updated Fifth Edition, provides keen insight into one of the world's least understood religions. It is ideally suited for use in courses on Islam, world religions, comparative religions, (...) and Middle East history and culture.A FREE 6-month subscription to Oxford Islamic Studies Online, edited by John L. Esposito, is included with the purchase of every new copy of this text. (shrink)

Human beings think of themselves in terms of a privileged non-descriptive designator — a mental “I”. Such thoughts are called “_de se_” thoughts. The mind/body problem is the problem of deciding what kind of thing I am, and it can be regarded as arising from the fact that we think of ourselves non-descriptively. Why do we think of ourselves in this way? We investigate the functional role of “I” (and also “here” and “now”) in cognition, arguing that the use of (...) such non-descriptive “reflexive” designators is essential for making sophisticated cognition work in a general-purpose cognitive agent. If we were to build a robot capable of similar cognitive tasks as humans, it would have to be equipped with such designators. (shrink)

The usual meaning of the word continuous is “unbroken” or “uninterrupted”: thus a continuous entity —a continuum—has no “gaps.” We commonly suppose that space and time are continuous, and certain philosophers have maintained that all natural processes occur continuously: witness, for example, Leibniz's famous apothegm natura non facit saltus—“nature makes no jump.” In mathematics the word is used in the same general sense, but has had to be furnished with increasingly precise definitions. So, for instance, in the later 18th century (...) continuity of a function was taken to mean that infinitesimal changes in the value of the argument induced infinitesimal changes in the value of the function. With the abandonment of infinitesimals in the 19th century this definition came to be replaced by one employing the more precise concept of limit. (shrink)

If we imagine a chess-board with alternate blue and red squares, then this is something in which the individual red and blue areas allow themselves to be distinguished from each other in juxtaposition, and something similar holds also if we imagine each of the squares divided into four smaller squares also alternating between these two colours. If, however, we were to continue with such divisions until we had exceeded the boundary of noticeability for the individual small squares which result, then (...) it would no longer be possible to apprehend the individual red and blue areas in their respective positions. But would we then see nothing at all? Not in the least; rather we would see the whole chessboard as violet, i.e. apprehend it as something that participates simultaneously in red and blue. (shrink)

This third edition, now available in paperback, is a follow up to the author's classic Boolean-Valued Models and Independence Proofs in Set Theory. It provides an exposition of some of the most important results in set theory obtained in the 20th century: the independence of the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice.

"The Third Edition of Philosophical Foundations of Adult Education presents seven theoretical approaches to adult education: liberal, progressive, behaviorist, humanist, radical/critical, analytic, and postmodem. The book gives the historical grounding as well as the basic principles for each approach. In this edition each chapter has been revised and brought up to date. The chapter on radical adult education incorporates recent developments in radical education, phenomenology, feminist educational theory, and critical social theory. The book contains an entirely new chapter on postmodem (...) adult education.". (shrink)

This new edition of the classic Contemporary Theories of Knowledge has been significantly updated to include analyses of the recent literature in epistemology.

5.5. Every topos is linguistic: the equivalence theorem.

Pollock argues that theories of ideal rationality are largely irrelevant to the decision making of real agents. Thinking about Acting aims to provide a theory of "real rationality.".

Perkins, John L The atrocity of September 11 led me to become an atheist. A boundary had been crossed, I thought, and religions could no longer be regarded as benign. As the buildings crashed to the ground in New York, this conclusion seemed obvious. Yet a decade and a half later, it seems remarkable how few people have been able to reach the same conclusion.

As his editor John L. Stanley points out, Georges Sorel was "that fascinating polymath." This volume, the third in his selected works in the English language published by Transaction, emphasizes Sorel's extraordinary writings in the philosophy of science, religion, culture, and art. For those who know Sorel only as author of Reflections on Violence, the present volume will come as a forceful reminder of the range and depth of Sorelian efforts to construct a world view. Sorel is throughout concerned (...) with the moral development of human beings. In this sense, his writings on politics are of a piece with his writings on religion, "facticity" of human history and society. Sorel's earliest writings were on religion, and key portions of that period are reflected in selections here. And he went on from there to study the sociology of science, the ways in which science fits into the cultural history of civilization and present day social relationships of industrial society. Stanley provides a profound framework based on two decades of close study and translation of Sorel's texts. He helps to explain how the partial theories of Sorel lead to holistic intellectual consequences, how the psychological method does not foreclose political activism, and how historical limits can be transformed against a background of aesthetics or considerations of taste. He shows that Sorel comes as a close as Manheim and Simmel and Durkheim to the creation of a modern social science--albeit he lacks the overall philosophical theorems of people like Marx and Weber. In Sorel we have a first-class mind at work. And in Stanley, we have a first-class analyst at work. Together, the volume adds up to something special for the political scientist, sociologist, art historian, theologian--in short for those to whom the ideal of a human science endures. John L. Stanley is professor of political science at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of The Sociology of Virtue: The Political and Social Theories of Georges Sorel. He has written many articles and reviews on the history of European political theory. With his wife, Charlotte Stanley, he has been long engaged in the translation of the works of Georges Sorel. (shrink)

Distinguishing between the old atheism, the new atheism, and modest atheism, and also between belief and acceptance, and belief and acceptance tokens and types, I defend the disjunctive view that either modest atheistic belief or modest atheistic acceptance, construed as type, is today epistemically justified in the context of philosophical inquiry. Central to my defence is a deductive version of the hiddenness argument and an emphasis on the early stage of philosophical inquiry that we presently occupy.

This Element is an exposition of second- and higher-order logic and type theory. It begins with a presentation of the syntax and semantics of classical second-order logic, pointing up the contrasts with first-order logic. This leads to a discussion of higher-order logic based on the concept of a type. The second Section contains an account of the origins and nature of type theory, and its relationship to set theory. Section 3 introduces Local Set Theory, an important form of type theory (...) based on intuitionistic logic. In Section 4 number of contemporary forms of type theory are described, all of which are based on the so-called 'doctrine of propositions as types'. We conclude with an Appendix in which the semantics for Local Set Theory - based on category theory - is outlined. (shrink)

Princeton University Press, 1974. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (5 MB).

Two seemingly complementary trends stand out currently in school science education in the United States: one is the increased emphasis on inquiry activities in classrooms, and the other is the high level of attention given to student understanding of the nature of science. This essay looks at the range of activities that fall within the first trend, noting, in particular, the growing popularity of inquiry activities that engage students in engineering-type tasks. The potential for public disengagement from science and technology (...) issues is described as a result of the continued juxtaposition of these sorts of inquiry activities with our current, idealized portrayals of the nature of science—the emphasis of the second trend. Drawing on Dewey's instrumental theory of knowledge, an alternative way of thinking about science is offered that would not only provide for a more authentic understanding of science, but also invite much needed public participation in the broad governance of science in modern-day democratic societies. (shrink)

There was a long tradition in philosophy according to which good reasoning had to be deductively valid. However, that tradition began to be questioned in the 1960’s, and is now thoroughly discredited. What caused its downfall was the recognition that many familiar kinds of reasoning are not deductively valid, but clearly confer justification on their conclusions. Here are some simple examples.

IN THEIR WELL-KNOWN PAPER, Kochen and Specker (1967) introduce the concept of partial Boolean algebra (pBa) and show that certain (finitely generated) partial Boolean algebras arising in quantum theory fail to possess morphisms to any Boolean algebra (we call such pBa's intractable in the sequel). In this note we begin by discussing partial..

This exceptionally successful survey text introduces the teachings and practice of Islam from its earliest origins up to its contemporary practice. John L. Esposito, an internationally renowned expert on Islam, traces the development of Islam and its impact on world history and politics.Lucidly written and expansive in scope, Islam: The Straight Path, Fifth Edition, provides keen insight into one of the world's least understood religions. It is ideally suited for use in courses on Islam, world religions, comparative religions, and (...) Middle East history and culture.A FREE 6-month subscription to Oxford Islamic Studies Online, edited by John L. Esposito, is included with the purchase of every new copy of this text. (shrink)

Uses modernist and postmodernist theoretical perspectives to examine the formation and reformation of states throughout history and around the globe.

From unemployment to Brexit to climate change, capitalism is in trouble and ill-prepared to cope with the challenges of the coming decades. How did we get here? While contemporary economists and policymakers tend to ignore the political and social dimensions of capitalism, some of the great economists of the past - Adam Smith, Friedrich List, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Polanyi and Albert Hirschman - did not make the same mistake. Leveraging their insights, sociologists John L. Campbell (...) and John A. Hall trace the historical development of capitalism as a social, political, and economic system throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They draw comparisons across eras and around the globe to show that there is no inevitable logic of capitalism. Rather, capitalism's performance depends on the strength of nation-states, the social cohesion of capitalist societies, and the stability of the international system - three things that are in short supply today. (shrink)

In this book Pollock deals with the subject of probabilistic reasoning, making general philosophical sense of objective probabilities and exploring their ...

Pollock describes an exciting theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons.

Despite the general acceptance of Hegel's importance for Marx, virtually no one has paid sufficient attention to Marx's youthful critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature. Even Alfred Schmidt, whose work refers to the Naturphilosophie most frequently, underestimates its importance in the formulation of Marx's own materialist philosophy of nature and comes close to replicating the very Hegelian views that Marx is attacking. Yet the critique of the Naturphilosophie in Marx's Dissertation and the 1844 Manuscripts foreshadows Marx's later stated intention in (...) Capital to turn Hegel right-side up. It affirms not only a theory of the ontological reality of the material world, but a dialectics of nature whose importance for Marx extends from the Paris Manuscripts to Capital. Marx' s Naturphilosophie criticizes Hegel's replacement of natural history with a Philosophy of Nature derived from logical categories. It affirms Engels' later view that natural history should be restored by discovering dialectics in nature rather than imposing dialectics on it. (shrink)

"There is no attempt here to lay down as inviolable or to legislate certain ways of looking at things or ways of proceeding for philosophers of religion, only proposals for how to deal with a range of basic issues-proposals that I hope will ignite much fruitful discussion and which, in any case, I shall take as a basis for my own ongoing work in the field."-from the Preface Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, (...) J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of religious and irreligious belief, the varieties of religious skepticism, and the nature of religion itself. From the author's searching analysis of faith emerges a novel understanding of propositional faith as requiring the absence of belief. Schellenberg asks what the aims of the field should be, setting out a series of principles for carrying out some of the most important of these aims. His account of justification considers not only belief but also other responses to religious claims and distinguishes the justification of responses, propositions, and persons. Throughout Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, Schellenberg is laying the groundwork for an elaboration of his own vision while at the same time suggesting how philosophers might rethink assumptions guiding most of today's work in analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Introduces classical and contemporary philosophical ideas of education in various areas, including intellectual, moral, aesthetic, religious, political, vocational, physical, and special education, from a historical perspective. Chapters treat the history of ideas in each area and the history of ideas in practice. Annotation copyright Book News, In.

Princeton University Press, 984. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (3.9 MB).