Free logic is an important field of philosophical logic that first appeared in the 1950s. J. Karel Lambert was one of its founders and coined the term itself. The essays in this collection explore the philosophical foundations of free logic and its application to areas as diverse as the philosophy of religion and computer science. Amongst the applications on offer are those to the analysis of existence statements, to definite descriptions and to partial functions. The volume contains a (...) proof that free logics of any kind are non-extensional and then uses that proof to show that Quine's theory of predication and referential transparency must fail. The purpose of this collection is to bring an important body of work to the attention of a new generation of professional philosophers, computer scientists and mathematicians. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are based on addresses presented during a colloquium on free logic, modal logic and related areas held at the University of California at Irvine, in May of 1968. With the single exception of Dagfinn F011esdal, whose revised address is included in a recent issue of Synthese honoring W. V. Quine, all of the speakers at the Irvine colloquium are contributors to this volume. Thanks are due to Professor A. I. Melden, Chairman of the Department of (...) Philosophy at Irvine, for his enthusiastic support of the colloquium, and to Drs. Gordon Brittan and Daniel Dennett for their help in the administration of the colloquium. Finally. I should also like to thank Professor Ralph W. Gerard, Dean of the Graduate Division of the University of California at Irvine, for the financial support which made the colloquium possible. KAREL LAMBERT Laguna Beach, California, 1969 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE V KAREL LAMBERT and BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN/ Meaning Relations, Possible Objects, and Possible Worlds 1 JAAKKO HINTIKKA / Existential Presuppositions and Uniqueness Presuppositions 20 RICHMOND H. THOMASON / Some Completeness Results for Modal Predicate Calculi 56 H. LEBLANC and R. K. MEYER / Truth-Value Semantics for the Theory of Types 77 J. M. VICKERS / Probability and Non Standard Logics 102 PETER W. WOODRUFF / Logic and Truth Value Gaps 121 DANA SCOTT / Advice on Modal Logic 143 INDEX OF NAMES 175 KAREL LAMBER T AND BAS C. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are based on addresses presented during a colloquium on free logic, modal logic and related areas held at the University of California at Irvine, in May of 1968. With the single exception of Dagfinn F011esdal, whose revised address is included in a recent issue of Synthese honoring W. V. Quine, all of the speakers at the Irvine colloquium are contributors to this volume. Thanks are due to Professor A. I. Melden, Chairman of the Department of (...) Philosophy at Irvine, for his enthusiastic support of the colloquium, and to Drs. Gordon Brittan and Daniel Dennett for their help in the administration of the colloquium. Finally. I should also like to thank Professor Ralph W. Gerard, Dean of the Graduate Division of the University of California at Irvine, for the financial support which made the colloquium possible. KAREL LAMBERT Laguna Beach, California, 1969 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE V KAREL LAMBERT and BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN/ Meaning Relations, Possible Objects, and Possible Worlds 1 JAAKKO HINTIKKA / Existential Presuppositions and Uniqueness Presuppositions 20 RICHMOND H. THOMASON / Some Completeness Results for Modal Predicate Calculi 56 H. LEBLANC and R. K. MEYER / Truth-Value Semantics for the Theory of Types 77 J. M. VICKERS / Probability and Non Standard Logics 102 PETER W. WOODRUFF / Logic and Truth Value Gaps 121 DANA SCOTT / Advice on Modal Logic 143 INDEX OF NAMES 175 KAREL LAMBER T AND BAS C. (shrink)

In Liberalism’s religion, Laborde defends a liberal egalitarian position and tackles, from a new perspective, some issues dealt with in his republican writings. This article examines some of these issues, paying attention to the place that the recognition of identities occupies both in her republican and in her liberal theories, as well as the type of justification advanced in both cases. The article shows that the recognition of identities has gone from having a peripheral and instrumental role in her republican (...) writings to having a central role in her liberal theory. (shrink)

Supporters of neutrality as benign neglect argue that a neutral state should not grant any type of recognition to cultural or religious groups. Liberal multiculturalists argue instead that due to the non-neutral nature of public institutions, democratic states must adopt policies that recognize and accommodate the distinctive needs of ethnocultural groups. This article examines a different way of conceiving the principle of neutrality. In this conception, developed by Alan Patten in the framework of liberal multiculturalism, a state can only be (...) neutral when it extends equivalent levels of assistance/hindrance to rival conceptions of the good. Neutrality is thus reinterpreted to become a principle justifying the religious exemptions. The article highlights some aspects of this theory that should be reconsidered.// -/- Les défenseurs de la neutralité bienveillante soutiennent qu’un État neutre ne doit accorder aucun type de reconnaissance aux groupes culturels ou religieux. Les multiculturalistes libéraux avancent pour leur part que, en raison de la nature non neutre des institutions publiques, les États démocratiques doivent adopter des politiques vi-sant la reconnaissance et l’accommodement des besoins distinctifs des groupes ethnoculturels. Cet article examine une manière diffé-rente de concevoir le principe de neutralité. Dans cette conception, développée par Alan Patten dans le cadre du multiculturalisme libé-ral, un État ne peut être neutre que s’il assiste ou entrave de manière équivalente les différentes conceptions du bien. La neutralité est ainsi réinterprétée pour devenir un principe permettant de justifier les exemptions religieuses. L’article souligne certains aspects de cette théorie qui méritent d’être repensés. (shrink)

Le rapport issu de la commission Bouchard-Taylor qualifie la laïcité qui s’est implantée au Québec comme étant « plus libérale que républicaine », car elle permet à tous les citoyens « d’exprimer leurs convictions religieuses dans la mesure où cette expression n’entrave pas les droits et libertés d’autrui ». Les régimes républicains y sont présentés comme ceux qui refoulent les différences ethnoculturelles, « en les laissant en marge », tandis que le multiculturalisme accorderait une place prioritaire à la diversité. Dans (...) cet essai, je présente la relation entre le républicanisme et le multiculturalisme sous un éclairage différent. (shrink)

Les théories normatives qui justifient les politiques multiculturelles sont souvent dénoncées comme étant relativistes, conservatrices et anti-libérales. De telles politiques menaceraient en effet la cohésion sociale et promouvraient la fragmentation sociale et l’inégalité juridique en plaçant les cultures au-dessus de la politique et les groupes au-dessus des individus. Elles se fonderaient sur un respect inconditionnel du droit à la différence, en mettant l’accent sur les droits des minorités ethniques au détriment de la majorité et en s’attaquant à l’égalité de tous (...) les citoyens devant la loi. Dans ce cadre, le multiculturalisme est souvent présenté comme incompatible aussi bien avec le libéralisme qu’avec le républicanisme. Se voulant une introduction à six théories politiques de la diversité, cet ouvrage présente la relation entre le libéralisme, le républicanisme et le multiculturalisme sous un éclairage différent. Au moyen d’une reconstruction et d’une clarification des théories politiques retenues il montre, d’une part, que le libéralisme et le républicanisme sont tous deux compatibles avec la prise en compte gouvernementale de la diversité culturelle et religieuse, notamment en raison de l’adaptation de leurs principes fondamentaux à la réalité pluriculturelle contemporaine. D’autre part, il montre que les théories politiques examinées sont difficilement concevables à la lumière de certaines critiques formulées par les détracteurs des politiques multiculturelles. (shrink)

Review of Karel Lambert, Meinong and the Principle of Independence: Its Place in Meinong's Theory of Objects and Its Significance in Contemporary Philosophical Logic.

En su más reciente ensayo, Francis Fukuyama aborda uno de los temas centrales de la teoría política contemporánea: los desafíos que representan las exigencias de los grupos identitarios para la democracia liberal.

Durante los últimos treinta años, los nacionalistas liberales han defendido la idea según la cual del mismo modo que el liberalismo necesita delnacionalismo para lograrmejor sus objetivos centrales, las diferentes expresiones delnacionalismo deben ser limitadas por los principios liberales.Yael Tamir ha sidouna de las figuras clave de esta singular articulación. En su obra Liberal Nationalism(1993), como en sus trabajos posteriores,no sólo defendió que era posible conciliar los valores liberales con ciertos aspectos fundamentales de la tradición nacionalista, sino también que era (...) necesario fundar una alianza entre el liberalismo y el multiculturalismocon el propósito de hacerjusticia a los miembros de las minorías culturales y religiosas. En Why Nationalism, su más reciente libro,Tamirse proponeenumerar las ventajas que el nacionalismo aporta al discurso político y examinar una variedad de reivindicaciones nacionales juzgándolas por sus propios méritos. (shrink)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally (...) negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

Philosophie et sciences: voila un theme difficile, central, de notre temps, ou il est necessairement question de son sens. C'est ce sens qu'interrogent, d'une facon a la fois historique et problematique, les essais du present volume. J. Merleau-Ponty questionne les rapports entre sciences et vulgarisation scientifique. J. Ladriere pose le probleme de La normativite de la pensee scientifique. J. Lambert met en evidence le probleme du Livre de la Nature chez Galilee et Kepler. P. Kerszberg confronte les structures internes (...) de la philosophie critique kantienne et de la theorie de la relativite sur la question cosmologique. M. Richir analyse L'illusion transcendantale dans la theorie cantorienne des ensembles. B. d'Espagnat et G. Hottois evoquent le problemes des rapports difficiles, aujourd'hui, entre science et philosophie. (shrink)

The project review as outlined in this article explores the questions: What is transformative research and what is transformation as far as the community stakeholders are concerned? To what extent has the transformative research achieved its intended outcomes? The Bokamoso project (founded by Lesego Serolong as facilitator and investor) is an integrated development project designed to create employment and to enable the community to learn while they make a living through a diverse range of farming activities. The participatory research as (...) discussed here is part of the University of South Africa’s research and community engagement programme, and is set in a remote, arid zone. This research coupled with community engagement aims to transform lives and create opportunities by enhancing their participation in education, training and employment creation. The project (which has been running since 2015) supports indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing and has succeeded in enabling the farmers trained through Bokamoso to be less dependent on social benefits (government grants). (shrink)

This essay lays out the leading principles of the theories of definite descriptions advocated by Frege, Russell, and Hilbert and Bernays, and discusses various difficulties, philosophical and otherwise, with each treatment, fixing especially on the treatment of singular existence claims. Then the leading principles of free (definite) description theory are presented and it is shown how it resolves difficulties confronting the more traditional approaches. Finally, a pair of technical problems in free (definite) description theory are addressed. They help to show (...) the fecundity of this treatment of definite descriptions. (shrink)

Those who want to interpret the quantifier ? (3 x) (. . .x. . .)'as having no existence commitment often fail to distinguish between this objective and that of merely changing the values of the variables. The confusion vitiates solutions of the singular existence anomalies which purport to be based on a non?existential interpretation of the quantifier. An example of one who makes the distinction but still interprets the particular quantifier non?existentially is offered by Czeslaw Lejewski. Objection to the classical (...) interpretation of the quantifiers often runs hand in hand with aversion to extensional logic. However, it is at least arguable that such an aversion is the result of underestimating the resources of extensional logic. These points arc discussed in the wake of Professor Marcus's recent paper in this journal ?Interpreting Quantification? (shrink)

The basic theory of scientific understanding presented in Sections 1–2 exploits three main ideas.First, that to understand a phenomenonP (for a given agent) is to be able to fitP into the cognitive background corpusC (of the agent).Second, that to fitP intoC is to connectP with parts ofC (via arguments in a very broad sense) such that the unification ofC increases.Third, that the cognitive changes involved in unification can be treated as sequences of shifts of phenomena inC. How the theory fits (...) typical examples of understanding and how it excludes spurious unifications is explained in detail. Section 3 gives a formal description of the structure of cognitive corpuses which contain descriptive as well as inferential components. The theory of unification is then refined in the light of so called puzzling phenomena, to enable important distinctions, such as that between consonant and dissonant understanding. In Section 4, the refined theory is applied to several examples, among them a case study of the development of the atomic model. The final part contains a classification of kinds of understanding and a discussion of the relation between understanding and explanation. (shrink)

The expression ‘free logic,’ coined by the author in 1960, is an abbreviation for ‘logic free of existence assumptions with respect to its terms, singular and general, but whose quantifiers are treated exactly as in standard quantifier logic.’ In more traditional language, such logics do not presume that either singular or general terms — the two distinct categories of terms emphasized in modern logical grammar — have existential import. A singular term ‘t’ has existential import just in case t exists (...) (or, equivalently, there exists an object the same as t) and a general term (or predicate) ‘G’ has existential import just in case G exist (or, equivalently, there exists an object that is G).1 Examples from colloquial English customarily taken to be singular terms are expressions such as ‘Socrates’, ‘the planet causing perturbations in the orbit of Mercury’, ‘5’, ‘5/0’, ‘the square of 3’ and ‘having a heart’. Some of these do not have existential import — in particular, ‘5/0’ and ‘the planet causing perturbations in the orbit of Mercury’. Examples from colloquial English customarily taken to be general terms are expressions such as ‘is a philosopher’, ‘is a planet causing perturbations in the orbit of Mercury’, ‘number’, ‘is divisible by 0’, and ‘has a heart’. Some of these general terms do not have existential import — in particular, ‘is a planet causing perturbations in the orbit of Mercury’ and ‘is divisible by 0’. To say that the quantifers are treated exactly as in standard quantifier logic is to say, roughly, that the operator symbol ‘∃’ (the existential quantifier) reads: ‘There exists an object’, and the operator symbol ‘∀’ (the universal quantifier) reads: ‘Every existent object’. (shrink)

As well as aiming to revive interest in Meinong's thought, this book challenges many of the most widespread assumptions of philosophical logic.

Free logic, an alternative to traditional logic, has been seen as a useful avenue of approach to a number of philosophical issues of contemporary interest. In this collection, Karel Lambert, one of the pioneers in, and the most prominent exponent of, free logic, brings together a variety of published essays bearing on the application of free logic to philosophical topics ranging from set theory and logic to metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. The work of such distinguished philosophers (...) as Bas van Fraassen, Dana Scott, Tyler Burge, and Jaakko Hintikka is represented. Lambert provides an introductory essay placing free logic in the logical tradition beginning with Aristotle, developing it as the natural culmination of a trend begun in the Port Royal logic of the 1600s, and continuing through current predicate logic--the trend to rid logic of existence assumptions. His Introduction also provides a useful systematic overview of free logic, including both a standard syntax and some semantical options. (shrink)

The authors contend that most contemporary logic textbooks fail the average student because they emphasize the evaluation of arguments over their clarification, assuming that the student already understands what motivations underlie logic.

Dostoevsky wrote that love in action is a harsh and terrible thing compared to love in dreams. That reality is particularly evident in medicine, where there is an almost universal, involuntary participation of physicians and other healthcare workers in the suffering of their patients. This paper explores this phenomenon through the paradigm of ‘mystery’ as explained by the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel. A mystery is different from a problem in the sense that the former requires the active immersion of (...) the person involved in order to be truly experienced. It is a ‘meta-problem’ that cannot be analyzed objectively and separately from the person that it affects, without changing the nature of the thing experienced. The authors contend that the human suffering encountered in medicine is one such phenomenon, and the paper draws on illustrations of this concept in art and literature. Awareness of the subtle but important difference between mystery and problem may help physicians better understand their personal entanglement with the suffering of patients. (shrink)

Intentionally or not, our clinical practice is informed by our philosophical premises. A subtle misunderstanding can have frequent, though insidious, implications in day-to-day clinical encounters....