This latest volume in the eminent Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series examines the main features of the intellectual milieu from which logical empiricism sprang, providing the first critical exploration of this context by ...

Recent work on Austrian philosophy has revealed, hitherto, unsuspected links between Vienna circle positivism on the one hand, and the thought of Franz Brentano and his circle on the other. the paper explores these links, casting light also on the Polish analytic movement, on the development of gestalt psychology, and on the work of Schlick and Neurath.

This volume presents the proceedings from the Eleventh Brazilian Logic Conference on Mathematical Logic held by the Brazilian Logic Society in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The conference and the volume are dedicated to the memory of professor Mario Tourasse Teixeira, an educator and researcher who contributed to the formation of several generations of Brazilian logicians. Contributions were made from leading Brazilian logicians and their Latin-American and European colleagues. All papers were selected by a careful refereeing processs and were (...) revised and updated by their authors for publication in this volume. There are three sections: Advances in Logic, Advances in Theoretical Computer Science, and Advances in Philosophical Logic. Well-known specialists present original research on several aspects of model theory, proof theory, algebraic logic, category theory, connections between logic and computer science, and topics of philosophical logic of current interest. Topics interweave proof-theoretical, semantical, foundational, and philosophical aspects with algorithmic and algebraic views, offering lively high-level research results. (shrink)

The paper begins with a more carefully stated version of ontologically neutral (ON) logic, originally introduced in (Hailperin, 1997). A non-infinitistic semantics which includes a definition of potential infinite validity follows. It is shown, without appeal to the actual infinite, that this notion provides a necessary and sufficient condition for provability in ON logic.

more on the history of the Vienna Circle and its allies, see Coffa 1991; Friedman 1983; Hailer 1982, 1985; Kraft 1950; and Proust 1986, 1989). Without question, however, the crucial, formative, early intellectual experience of at least Schlick, Reichenbach, and Carnap, the experience that did most to give form and content to their emergent philosophies of science, was their engagement with relativity theory. Thus, after a few early writings on more general philosophical themes, Schlick first caught the attention of a (...) broader philosophical public with his 1915 essay, "Die philosophische Bedeutung des.. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that the idea of logical determinism can be traced back from the Old Babylonian period at least. According to this idea, there are some signs which can explain the appearance of all events. These omens demonstrate the will of gods and their power realized through natural forces. As a result, each event either necessarily appears or necessarily disappears. This idea can be examined as the first version of eternalism – the philosophical belief that each temporal (...) event is actual. In divination lists in Akkadian presented as codes we can reconstruct Boolean matrices showing that the Babylonians used some logical-algebraic structures in their reasoning. The idea of logical contingency was introduced within a new mood of thinking presented by the Greek prose – historical as well as philosophical narrations. In the Jewish genre ’aggādōt, the logical determinism is supposed to be in opposition to the Greek prose. (shrink)

Alan Richardson, one of the editors of the present volume, dryly remarks in a footnote to the introduction: “Logical empiricism remains alive in philosophical memory chiefly by the significance of its death.” I think that this pertinent paradox can be enlarged to generally characterise the relation of present-day philosophy of science to logical empiricism : the more philosophy of science has struggled in the past to distance itself from central tenets of the movement of LE, the more it had to (...) realise how close and how indebted it remains to LE and how much “post-positivism” itself willy-nilly keeps its spirit alive. Thus, there is the growing feeling that the identity of today’s philosophy of science is much more closely tied to LE, many manifestations to the contrary notwithstanding. The renewed interest in LE that has resulted from this insight must necessarily have lead to repercussions also on the appraisal of LE as a philosophical position. The once almost unanimous and rash condemnation of LE in the sixties and seventies is today followed by a prudent and broad-minded second look that tries to do fuller justice to the historical background and development. One can understand that for some of those who take the foregoing considerations seriously the news of LE’s death seems to be a little premature. (shrink)

We consider the history of logic in pre-Petrine. Petrine. and immediate post-Pctrine Russia (from the 15th to the mid-18th centuries) and especially of the Petrine era from the late 17th to early 18th century. Throughout much of this time, the clergy evinced strong hostility towards logic. Nevertheless, a small number of academics and clerics such as Stefan Iavorskii and Fcofan Prokopovich kept Aristotelian logic alive during this period and provided the foundation for its development in the modern (...) era. (shrink)

The article presents a brief analysis of how the existence of various logics became possi­ble. This is shown on the example of such well-known logical theories as syllogistics, temporal, multivalued, intuitionistic, paraconsistent and quantum logics. Each of them arose not on someone’s whim, but to solve specific problems. They are based on the most general ontological assumptions about the subject area under study. In formal logic onto­logical assumptions are refined in the concept of a model structure. Since it is (...) impossible to talk about logic in isolation from the language used, the most general epistemic as­sumptions about the nature of the relationship of linguistic expressions to those objects of extralinguistic reality that they represent are also accepted. One of the most important of these relationships is the concept of the truth of sentences, which was first formulated by Plato and Aristotle. Taking certain ontological and epistemic assumptions depending on the problem being solved, we obtain different logics. Process logic is primarily char­acterized by special ontological assumptions that are fundamentally different from the as­sumptions of other currently existing logics. The ontology of processes is an ontology of developing processes, not things. Historically, it was most vividly described in the writings of Heraclitus. In the overwhelming majority of modern approaches to the de­scription of processes, we see attempts to reduce them to sequences of states, which de­values the very concept of a process, just as a cinematic picture of the flow of time deval­ues the concept of time. Since logics are built on the basis of various ontological and epistemic assumptions, they are inherently theories of these accepted assumptions, and not universal reasoning tools that don’t depend on the characteristics of the study area and the categories of linguistic expressions. Universal logic is possible if one rises from the level of specific languages to a higher level of sign theory. (shrink)

Hierarchical cognitive mechanisms underlie sophisticated behaviors, including language, music, mathematics, tool-use, and theory of mind. The origins of hierarchical logical reasoning have long been, and continue to be, an important puzzle for cognitive science. Prior approaches to hierarchical logical reasoning have often failed to distinguish between observable hierarchical behavior and unobservable hierarchical cognitive mechanisms. Furthermore, past research has been largely methodologically restricted to passive recognition tasks as compared to active generation tasks that are stronger tests of hierarchical rules. We (...) argue that it is necessary to implement learning studies in humans, non-human species, and machines that are analyzed with formal models comparing the contribution of different cognitive mechanisms implicated in the generation of hierarchical behavior. These studies are critical to advance theories in the domains of recursion, rule-learning, symbolic reasoning, and the potentially uniquely human cognitive origins of hierarchical logical reasoning. (shrink)

Burt C. Hopkins presents the first in-depth study of the work of Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein on the philosophical foundations of the logic of modern symbolic mathematics. Accounts of the philosophical origins of formalized concepts—especially mathematical concepts and the process of mathematical abstraction that generates them—have been paramount to the development of phenomenology. Both Husserl and Klein independently concluded that it is impossible to separate the historical origin of the thought that generates the basic concepts of mathematics (...) from their philosophical meanings. Hopkins explores how Husserl and Klein arrived at their conclusion and its philosophical implications for the modern project of formalizing all knowledge. (shrink)

This abridged and revised edition of the original book (Springer-Verlag Vienna, 2001) offers the only comprehensive history and documentation of the Vienna Circle based on new sources with an innovative historiographical approach to the study of science. With reference to previously unpublished archival material and more recent literature, it refutes a number of widespread clichés about "neo-positivism" or "logical positivism". Following some insights on the relation between the history of science and the philosophy of science, the book offers an accessible (...) introduction to the complex subject of "the rise of scientific philosophy" in its socio-cultural background and European philosophical networks till the forced migration in the Anglo-Saxon world. The first part of the book focuses on the origins of Logical Empiricism before World War I and the development of the Vienna Circle in "Red Vienna" (with the "Verein Ernst Mach"), its fate during Austro-Fascism (Schlick's murder 1936) and its final expulsion by National-Socialism beginning with the "Anschluss" in 1938. It analyses the dynamics of the Schlick-Circle in the intellectual context of "late enlightenment" including the minutes of the meetings from 1930 on for the first time published and presents an extensive description of the meetings and international Unity of Science conferences between 1929 and 1941. The chapters introduce the leading philosophers of the Schlick Circle (e.g., Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Felix Kaufmann, Edgar Zilsel) and describe the conflicting interaction between Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the long term communication between Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Waismann and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as between the Vienna Circle with Heinrich Gomperz and Karl Popper. In addition, Karl Menger's "Mathematical Colloquium" with Kurt Gödel is presented as a parallel movement. The final chapter of this section describes the demise of the Vienna Circle and the forced exodus of scientists and intellectuals from Austria.The second part of the book includes a bio-bibliographical documentation of the Vienna Circle members and for the first time of the assassination of Moritz Schlick in 1936, followed by an appendix comprising an extensive list of sources and literature. (shrink)

The identity theory’s rise to prominence in analytic philosophy of mind during the late 1950s and early 1960s is widely seen as a watershed in the development of physicalism, in the sense that whereas logical behaviourism proposed analytic and a priori ascertainable identities between the meanings of mental and physical-behavioural concepts, the identity theory proposed synthetic and a posteriori knowable identities between mental and physical properties. While this watershed does exist, the standard account of it is misleading, as it is (...) founded in erroneous intensional misreadings of the logical positivists’—especially Carnap’s—extensional notions of translation and meaning, as well as misinterpretations of the positivists’ shift from the strong thesis of translation-physicalism to the weaker and more liberal notion of reduction-physicalism that occurred in the Unity of Science programme. After setting the historical record straight, the essay traces the first truly modern identity theory to Schlick’s pre-positivist views circa 1920 and goes on to explore its further development in Feigl, arguing that the fundamental difference between the Schlick-Feigl identity theory and the more familiar and influential Place-Smart-Armstrong identity theory has resurfaced in the deep and seemingly unbridgeable gulf in contemporary philosophy of consciousness between inflationary mentalism and deflationary physicalism. (shrink)

The physiologist and neo-Kantian philosopher Johannes von Kries (1853-1928) wrote one of the most philosophically important works on the foundation of probability after P.S. Laplace and before the First World War, his Principien der Wohrscheinlich-keitsrechnung (1886, repr. 1927). In this book, von Kries developed a highly original interpretation of probability, which maintains it to be both logical and objectively physical. After presenting his approach I shall pursue the influence it had on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann. It seems that von (...) Kries's approach had more potential than recognized in his time and that putting Waismann's and Wittgenstein's early work in a von Kries perspective is able to shed light on the notion of an elementary proposition. (shrink)

In the 19th century, "Psychophysical Parallelism" was the most popular solution of the mind-body problem among physiologists, psychologists and philosophers. (This is not to be mixed up with Leibnizian and other cases of "Cartesian" parallelism.) The fate of this non-Cartesian view, as founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner, is reviewed. It is shown that Feigl's "identity theory" eventually goes back to Alois Riehl who promoted a hybrid version of psychophysical parallelism and Kantian mind-body theory which was taken up by Feigl's teacher (...) Moritz Schlick. (shrink)

Burt C. Hopkins, The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics. Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2011. 592 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-253-35671-...

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division over (...) the years know well, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century logician Lambert of Auxerre was well known for his Summa Lamberti, or simply Logica, written in the mid-1250s, which became an authoritative textbook on logic in the Western tradition. Our knowledge of medieval logic comes in great part from Lambert's Logica and three other texts: William of Sherwood's Introductiones in logicam, Peter of Spain's Tractatus, and Roger Bacon's Summulae dialectics. Of the four, Lambert's work is the best example of question-summas that proceed principally by asking and (...) answering questions on the subject matter. Thomas S. Maloney's translation of Logica, the only complete translation of this work in any language, is a milestone in the study of medieval logic. More than simply a translation, Maloney's project is a critical, comprehensive study of Lambert's logic situated in the context of his contemporaries and predecessors. As such, it offers a wealth of annotation and commentary. The lengthy introduction and extensive notes to the text explain the origin, theoretical context, and intricacies of the text and its doctrines. Maloney also addresses the disputed issues of authorship, date, and place of publication of the Summa Lamberti and makes available to the English-only audience the French, German, and Italian secondary sources--all translated--that are needed to enter the discussion. "Thomas S. Maloney fully commands the primary and secondary sources necessary to elucidate Lambert's Logica. An expert on Roger Bacon's philosophy, he demonstrates a rare proficiency in medieval Latin and scholastic logic. His references to sources from the ancient (Aristotle and Boethius) and medieval worlds are apposite, perspicuous, and useful. The volume's presentation with an appropriate introduction and commentary in the endnotes will no doubt establish it as an indispensable resource for scholars in the twenty-first century." --Alan Perreiah, University of Kentucky. (shrink)

The opposition of "person" [jen] to "people" [min] in the Analects [Lun-yü] was a fundamental contradiction of the slave system of the late Spring and Autumn period. The "people not following their rulers" combined with the insur-rections of the "vassals" and "tradespeople" to become a great motive force for the transition to feudalism; in turn, the splits within the slave-owning class, the so-called "violent acts" of the "rebellious ministers and bad sons," made use of the strength of the people for (...) seizures of political power. (shrink)

This volume contains selections of Ockham's philosophical writings which give a balanced introductory view of his work in logic, metaphysics, and ethics. This edition includes textual markings referring readers to appendices containing changes in the Latin text and alterations found in the English translation that have been made necessary by the critical edition of Ockham’s work published after Boehner prepared the original text. The updated bibliography includes the most important scholarship produced since publication of the original edition.

René Girard’s anthropological theory is founded on the assumption that mimesis in primates may have been a threat to the emergence of new species, particularly for what humans would become. Mimesis necessarily led to rivalry around nonshareable objects, which may have led the members of the earliest anthropoid communities to autodestruction. As known to all who are familiar with the ideas of Girard, mankind has been selected by the repetition of a mechanism according to which a bunch of individuals killed (...) one member of their community. It is the hypothesis of the scapegoat victim that helps to explain the emergence of all cultural forms; in fact, it is the scapegoat victim that makes human thought possible... (shrink)

Aristotle's syllogistic theory, as developed in his Prior Analytics, is often regarded as the birth of logic in Western philosophy. Over the past century, scholars have tried to identify important precursors to this theory. I argue that Platonic division, a method which aims to give accounts of essences of natural kinds by progressively narrowing down from a genus, influenced Aristotle's logical theory in a number of crucial respects. To see exactly how, I analyze the method of division as it (...) was originally conceived by Plato and received by Aristotle. I argue that, while Plato allowed that some divisions fail to rigorously investigate the essence, he began a program continued by Aristotle (and others in antiquity and the middle ages) of seeking norms for division that would apply in any domain whatsoever. This idea of a rigorous, general method was taken up and developed by Aristotle in his syllogistic. Aristotle also used Plato's conception of predication as parthood in his semantics for syllogistic propositions. As part of my argument, I prove that a semantics based on Platonic divisional structures is sound and complete for the deduction system used in the literature to model Aristotle's syllogistic. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the complex conditions for the emergence of 19th-century symbolic logic. The main scope will be on the mathematical motives leading to the interest in logic; the philosophical context will be dealt with only in passing. The main object of study will be the algebra of logic in its British and German versions. Special emphasis will be laid on the systems of George Boole and above all of his German follower Ernst Schröder.

In this paper, I show that in the Pāli Canon there was a tradition of Buddhist logic, but this tradition was weak, and the proto-logic we can reconstruct on the basis of the early Pāli texts can be evaluated as a predecessor of the Hindu logic. According to the textual analysis of the Pāli texts, we can claim that at the time of the closing of the Pāli Canon there did not exist the Nyāya philosophy known by (...) the Nyāya Sūtra. Meanwhile, we can assume that the Milindapañha, the best logical source of early Pāli literature, was written under influences of the Gandhāran Buddhists and this text preceded the Nyāya philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the first universities and mendicant schools, where thousands of students began to converge during the thirteenth century. Logic played an unpreceded role in basic and higher education. A “Parisian logical model” of education was shaped at the University of Paris, adopted by mendicant Orders in their schools of logic, diffused in all disciplines, and progressively spread in Southern Europe. Medieval education became heavily based upon logical, and even “logician” practices, with the “syllogization” of (...) exegetical, disputational, and evaluation practices.The notion of logical skill conveniently captures this unique situation for the discipline of logic, as well as the way medieval thinkers conceived of logic as a universal, transdisciplinary method, a natural operation of the mind, a modality of knowledge, the very form of teaching and graduating, a “habitus,” a technique and a science.The divisions of Aristotelian logic, the “artificial logic,” were for the first time naturalized and projected on the very structure of human mind, which was thereby “logicalized” and ascribed a “natural logic.” A strong anthropological dimension was bestowed on logic. The discipline of logic was deemed a necessary instrument in the philosophical “perfection” and the Christian “reparation” of man as an intellectual creature by a group of logically skilled, professional philosophers and theologians, whereas men deprived of logical education were described as “logically disabled,” and stuck into inferior forms of humanity.The world of medieval intellectual elites displayed a variety of social uses of logic, beyond academic circles, especially in the performance of pastoral duties. The possible historical records of the social usefulness of logic are explored: for students, the majority in medieval universities, who left university without a degree, but with a solid logical education, for ordinary mendicant friars, dedicated to preaching and confession, who frequented logical schools, and for members of the parish clergy sent to the faculties of arts. (shrink)

In his lectures on general logic Kant maintains that the generality of a representation (the form of a concept) arises from the logical acts of comparison, reflection and abstraction. These acts are commonly understood to be identical with the acts that generate reflected schemata. I argue that this is mistaken, and that the generality of concepts, as products of the understanding, should be distinguished from the classificatory generality of schemata, which are products of the imagination. A Kantian concept does (...) not provide mere criteria for noting sameness and difference in things, but instead reflects the inner nature of things. Its form consists in the self-consciousness of a capacity to judge (i.e. the Concept is the ‘I think’). (shrink)

In order to describe the logic of morality, "contractualist" philosophers have studied how individuals behave when they choose to follow their moral intuitions. These individuals, contractualists note, often act as if they have bargained and thus reached an agreement with others about how to distribute the benefits and burdens of mutual cooperation. Using this observation, such philosophers argue that the purpose of morality is to maximize the benefits of human interaction. The resulting "contract" analogy is both insightful and puzzling. (...) On one hand, it captures the pattern of moral intuitions, thus answering questions about human cooperation: why do humans cooperate? Why should the distribution of benefits be proportionate to each person's contribution? Why should the punishment be proportionate to the crime? Why should the rights be proportionate to the duties? On the other hand, the analogy provides a mere as-if explanation for human cooperation, saying that cooperation is "as if" people have passed a contract-but since they didn't, why should it be so? To evolutionary thinkers, the puzzle of the missing contract is immediately reminiscent of the puzzle of the missing "designer" of life-forms, a puzzle that Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially resolved. Evolutionary and contractualist theory originally intersected at the work of philosophers John Rawls and David Gauthier, who argued that moral judgments are based on a sense of fairness that has been naturally selected. In this book, Nicolas Baumard further explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. In this environment, Baumard suggests, the best strategy was to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation in a fair way, so that those who offered less than others were left out of cooperation while those who offered more were exploited by their partners. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard ultimately accounts for the specific structure of human morality. (shrink)

The origin of paraconsistent logic is closely related with the argument, ‘from the assertion of two mutually contradictory statements any other statement can be deduced’; this can be referred to as ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet (ECSQ). Despite its medieval origin, only by the 1930s did it become the main reason for the unfeasibility of having contradictions in a deductive system. The purpose of this article is to study what happened earlier: from Principia Mathematica to that time, when it became (...) well established. The two main historical claims that I am going to advance are the following: (1) the first explicit use of ECSQ as the main argument for supporting the necessity of excluding any contradiction from deductive systems is to be found in the first edition of the book Grundzüge der Theoretischen Logik (Hilbert, D. and Ackermann, W. 1928. Grundzüge der Theoretischen Logik. Berlin: Julius Springer Verlag); (2) Łukasiewicz's position regarding the logical constraints against contradictions varies considerably from his studies on the principle of (non-) contradiction in Aristotle, published in 1910 and what is stated in his `authorized lectured notes' on mathematical logic that appeared in 1929. The two texts are: 1) a paper in German (Łukasiewicz, J. 1910. `Über den Satz des Widerspruchs bei Aristotles'. Bulletin International de l'Académie des sciences de Cracovie, Classe d'Histoire et de Philosophie, pp. 15–38) [English translation: Łukasiewicz, J. 1971. ‘On the principle of contradiction in Aristotle’, Review of Metaphysics, XXIV, 485–509]; and 2) a book in Polish. Łukasiewicz, J. 1910. O zasadzie sprzecznosci u Aristotelesa Studium krytyczne, Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe [German translation: Łukasiewicz, J. 1993. Über den Satz des Widerspruchs bei Aristotles. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag]. The lecture notes were then published as a book (Łukasiewicz, J. 1958. Elementy Logiki Matematycznej. Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe [PWN] and then translated into English (Łukasiewicz, J. 1963. Elements of Mathematical Logic. Oxford, New York: Pergamon Press/the Macmillan Company). The second half of this article will concentrate on Łukasiewicz's position on ECSQ. This will lead me to propose that to regard him as a forerunner of paraconsistent logic by virtue of those early writings is accurate only if his book published in Polish is considered but not if the analysis is restricted to the paper originally published in German (as has been the case for the principal reconstructions of the history of paraconsistent logic). Furthermore, I will stress that in the 1929 book he presented one formalization of ECSQ as an axiom for sentential calculus and, also, he used ECSQ to defend the necessity of consistency, apparently independently of Hilbert and Ackermann's book. At the end, I will suggest that the aim of twentieth century usage of ECSQ was to change from the centuries-long philosophical discussion about contradictions to a more ‘technical’ one. But with paraconsistent logic viewed as a technical solution to this restriction, then, the philosophical problem revives but having now at one's disposal an improved understanding of it. Finally, Łukasiewicz's two different positions about ECSQ open an interesting question about the history of paraconsistent logic: do we have to attempt a consistent reconstruction of it, or are we prepared to admit inconsistencies within it? (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is well-known that Artificial Intelligence requires Logic. But its Classical version shows too many insufficiencies. So, it is very necessary to introduce more sophisticated tools, as may be Fuzzy Logic, Modal Logic, Non-Monotonic Logic, and so on. When you are searching the possible precedent of such new ideas, we may found that they are not totally new, because some ancient thinkers have suggested many centuries ago similar concepts, certainly without adequate mathematical formulation, but in (...) the same line: against the dogmatism and the dualistic vision of the world: absolutely true vs. absolutely false, black vs. white, good or bad by nature, 0 vs.1, etc. We attempt to analyze here some of these greatly unexplored, and very interesting early origins. (shrink)

Introduction: schema, substance, and symbol -- Linguistic form: the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture -- Mythical thought: beginning the ladder of consciousness -- Phenomenology of knowledge: taking phenomenology in the Hegelian, not the modern sense -- Metaphysics of symbolic forms: spirit, life, and Werk -- Logic of the cultural sciences: nature and culture -- Animal symbolicum -- Human freedom and politics.

A candid and spirited discussion of “To him who looks at the world rationally the world looks rationally back".

Between inventing the concept of a universal computer in 1936 and breaking the German Enigma code during World War II, Alan Turing, the British founder of computer science and artificial intelligence, came to Princeton University to study mathematical logic. Some of the greatest logicians in the world--including Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, and Stephen Kleene--were at Princeton in the 1930s, and they were working on ideas that would lay the groundwork for what would become known as computer (...) science. Though less well known than his other work, Turing's 1938 Princeton PhD thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals," which includes his notion of an oracle machine, has had a lasting influence on computer science and mathematics. This book presents a facsimile of the original typescript of the thesis along with essays by Andrew Appel and Solomon Feferman that explain its still-unfolding significance. A work of philosophy as well as mathematics, Turing's thesis envisions a practical goal--a logical system to formalize mathematical proofs so they can be checked mechanically. If every step of a theorem could be verified mechanically, the burden on intuition would be limited to the axioms. Turing's point, as Appel writes, is that "mathematical reasoning can be done, and should be done, in mechanizable formal logic." Turing's vision of "constructive systems of logic for practical use" has become reality: in the twenty-first century, automated "formal methods" are now routine. Presented here in its original form, this fascinating thesis is one of the key documents in the history of mathematics and computer science. (shrink)

Excerpt from Outlines of Logic, Psychology and Ethics The following pages do not lay claim to originality of thought, or even of language. But they cover the whole ground of the Mental and Moral Philosophy Course for the London University Pass B.A., and, in manuscript form, have been found useful by students preparing for that examination. In later years the questions on each branch of the course appear to have been set from a constantly enlarging circle of text-books; and (...) the student who confines himself to one or two authorities, however excellent these may be, is sure to meet with many questions for which he is totally unprepared; while, if he extends the range of his reading, he is very likely to concentrate his attention on what is superfluous and, for his immediate purpose, without value. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The Origin of Human Nature offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins - random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can't otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities - our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic (...) capability, our creativity and our intelligence - have come into being and evolved. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, The Origin of Human Nature resolves the dilemma of how to have both truth and ethics at the same time. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and uncertain past and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and immediate present and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is, how can these have evolved? Dr. Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. In writing this book, he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science. He takes issue with Richard Dawkins' published texts, and provides a point-by-point rebuttal of the neo-Darwinist argument. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to develop a framework for the origin of foresight. Following a review of arguments for foresight as genetically inherited versus environmentally acquired, the understanding of foresight is expanded through a behaviorist perspective and through an evolutionary perspective. The framework established makes it possible to deploy evolutionary logic to explain foresight as well as to enhance our understanding of foresight, both on individual (e.g., managerial) and aggregated (e.g., organizational) levels.

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

Recent accounts of mindreading—i.e., the human capacity to attribute mental states to interpret, explain, and predict behavior—have suggested that it has evolved through cultural rather than biological evolution. Although these accounts describe the role of culture in the ontogenetic development of mindreading, they neglect the question of the cultural origins of mindreading in human prehistory. We discuss four possible models of this, distinguished by the role they posit for culture: (1) the standard evolutionary psychology model (Carruthers), (2) the individualist (...) empiricist model (Wellman, Gopnik), (3) the cultural empiricist model (Heyes), and (4) the radical socio-cultural constructivist model, which we favor. We motivate model (4) by arguing that many forms of mental state ascription do not serve the function of simply describing inner states causally responsible for the behavior of a cognitive agent; rather, they relate the agent to her environment by characterizing her practical commitments. Making these practical commitments explicit has an important regulatory function in that it supports action coordination and alignment on joint goals. We propose a model of how the ascription of mental states may have evolved as a linguistic device to perform exactly this function of making agents’ practical commitments explicit. (shrink)