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The Logic of Mysticism (Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action #16)
by Ermanno BencivengaThis book reconciles the worlds of mysticism and logic, building on the author’s previous groundbreaking work in oceanic logic. Historically, the seemingly distinct domains of mysticism and logic have been viewed through a narrow lens through which logic and mysticism have been considered fundamentally separate from each other. The author expands on this concept and argues that logic can be understood in a broader sense. The book reveals that mystics engage in rigorous reasoning, and their writings provide fertile ground for the advancement of logical discourse. The text references insights from the fifth century B.C. through the Middle Ages to the present day, offering a compelling argument for the harmonious integration of logic and mysticism. It challenges conventional wisdom and opens new avenues for understanding the depths of human thought, making it of great interest to those interested in philosophical logic as well as history of science.
The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to M. Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday, 11th March, 1961 (Routledge Library Editions: Epistemology)
by POLANYI FESTSCHRIFT COMMITTEEOriginally published in 1961. Michael Polanyi was a polymath who influenced economics and the sciences as well as philosophy. His wide-ranging research in physical science is as well-known as his work on freedom and knowledge and his arguments against positivism and reductionism. This collection of essays written for him touches on all aspects of his influence but rotates around his published lectures Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. The contributors address four areas – The Scientist as Knower, Historical Perspectives, The Knowledge of Society and the Knowledge of Living Things.
The Logic of Political Survival (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Alastair Smith James D. Morrow Bruce Bueno De Mesquita Randolph M. SiversonThe authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.
The Logic of Precedent: Constraint, Freedom, and Common Law Reasoning
by John HortyUnlike statutory law, which relies on the explicit formulation of rules, common law is thought to emerge from a complex doctrine of precedential constraint, according to which decisions in earlier cases constrain later courts while still allowing these courts the freedom to address new situations in creative ways. Although this doctrine is applied by legal practitioners on a daily basis, it has proved to be considerably more difficult to develop an adequate theoretical account of the doctrine itself. Drawing on recent work in legal theory, as well as AI and law, this book develops a new account of precedential constraint and the balance achieved in the common law between constraint and freedom. This account, which involves construction of a group priority ordering among reasons, is then applied to other topics including the semantics of open-textured predicates and the practice of making exceptions to general rules.
The Logic of Real Arguments
by Alec FisherThis book aims to help college students to think critically about the kind of sustained, theoretical arguments which they commonly encounter in the course of their studies: arguments about the natural world, about society, about policy, about philosophy, and so on. The book expounds a novel method for handling such arguments and applies to reasoning expressed in natural language - has two distinctive features. It employs what is called the 'Assertibility Question', a key question in extracting and evaluating arguments, and it deals fully with the technique of 'suppositional reasoning', an important method of reasoning which is commonly ignored by writers in this field. The author applies the method to examples from a wide variety of sources. These range from newspaper articles to extracts from classic texts. There is a special chapter on scientific method and an appendix which explains some classical formal logic (a 'little light logic'). The book contains numerous exercises and concludes with carefully selected passages on which students can practise their critical thinking skills.
The Logic of Religion
by Jude P. DoughertyThe philosopher and author of Western Creed, Western Identity offers a probing history of important writings on the logic of religion. The Logic of Religion offers a sweeping history of philosophical perspectives on religion from ancient Greek and Roman writings to medieval Christian thought to modern Western philosophy and beyond. Even among those who find no evidence for the existence of God, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, we encounter discussions of the nature of religion and its function in society. This study begins in antiquity with Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Seneca. It then moves through Augustine to the Middle Ages as represented by Averroes and Aquinas. By so proceeding, philosopher Jude P. Dougherty gives the reader insight into the logic of religion as conceived before and after the advent of Christianity. Subsequent investigation leads to the works of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and G. W. F. Hegel, each of whom spoke to the implications of religion in the practical order, and of Sigmund Freud&’s negative assessment of religion in The Future of an Illusion. Although the focus of this study is primarily Western religion, attention is also paid to certain Eastern modes of thought such as Buddhism and Confucianism. Throughout, readers will find many interesting philosophical observations of the nature of belief, worship, ritual, sacrifice, doctrine, theology, and community.
The Logic of Responsibility Voids (Synthese Library #456)
by Hein DuijfThis book focuses on the problem of responsibility voids: these are cases where responsibility for a morally undesirable outcome cannot be attributed to any of the involved agents. Responsibility voids are thought to occur in collective decision-making and in the context of artificial intelligent systems. In these cases, philosophers worry that there is a shortfall of moral responsibility. In particular, such voids are often assumed to justify a notion of collective responsibility that cannot be reduced to individual responsibility. One of the aims of the book is to study how collective responsibility and joint action relate to individual responsibility and individual actions. The book offers a unifying framework for modelling moral responsibility by drawing from modal logic and game theory.The book investigates the possibility and scope of the problem of responsibility voids. One of its characteristics is its pluralistic perspective on moral responsibility: in contrast to giving a unique and all-encompassing definition of it, the book makes progress by spelling out and modelling several conceptions of moral responsibility. One of the appealing features of the book is that a relatively small range of models is used to investigate a variety of conceptions of moral responsibility. The unifying framework can thus be used to characterize the conditions under which responsibility voids are ruled out.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery: 14th Printing (Routledge Classics)
by Karl PopperDescribed by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such as the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks alongside The Open Society and Its Enemies as one of Popper's most enduring books and contains insights and arguments that demand to be read to this day.
The Logic of Social Practices (Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics #52)
by Raffaela Giovagnoli Robert LoweThis book reports on cutting-edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, including philosophy, biology, and cognitive science, 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. Based on a workshop held in June 2018 at the 6th World Congress of Universal Logic, UNILOG2018, in Vichy, and including additional invited chapters, the book offers fresh insights into the fields of social practice and the cognitive, computational, and philosophical tools to understand them.
The Logic of Social Practices II (Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics #68)
by Raffaela Giovagnoli Robert LoweThis book reports on cutting-edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, including philosophy, biology, psychology and cognitive science, and economy, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and presenting key case studies as well. 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. Based on a workshop held on April 2022 at the World Congress on Universal Logic (UNILOG 22), in Crete, and including additional invited chapters, the book offers fresh insights into the fields of social practice and the cognitive, computational, and philosophical tools to understand them.
The Logic of Sortals: A Conceptualist Approach (Synthese Library #408)
by Max A. FreundSortal concepts are at the center of certain logical discussions and have played a significant role in solutions to particular problems in philosophy. Apart from logic and philosophy, the study of sortal concepts has found its place in specific fields of psychology, such as the theory of infant cognitive development and the theory of human perception. In this monograph, different formal logics for sortal concepts and sortal-related logical notions (such as sortal identity and first-order sortal quantification) are characterized. Most of these logics are intensional in nature and possess, in addition, a bidimensional character. That is, they simultaneously represent two different logical dimensions. In most cases, the dimensions are those of time and natural necessity, and, in other cases, those of time and epistemic necessity. Another feature of the logics in question concerns second-order quantification over sortal concepts, a logical notion that is also represented in the logics. Some of the logics adopt a constant domain interpretation, others a varying domain interpretation of such quantification. Two of the above bidimensional logics are philosophically grounded on predication sortalism, that is, on the philosophical view that predication necessarily requires sortal concepts. Another bidimensional logic constitutes a logic for complex sortal predicates. These three sorts of logics are among the important novelties of this work since logics with similar features have not been developed up to now, and they might be instrumental for the solution of philosophically significant problems regarding sortal predicates. The book assumes a modern variant of conceptualism as a philosophical background. For this reason, the approach to sortal predicates is in terms of sortal concepts. Concepts, in general, are here understood as intersubjective realizable cognitive capacities. The proper features of sortal concepts are determined by an analysis of the main features of sortal predicates. Posterior to this analysis, the sortal-related logical notions represented in the above logics are discussed. There is also a discussion on the extent to which the set-theoretic formal semantic systems of the book capture different aspects of the conceptualist approach to sortals. These different semantic frameworks are also related to realist and nominalist approaches to sortal predicates, and possible modifications to them are considered that might represent those alternative approaches.
The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity
by Alan D. SchriftThe theme of the gift can be located at the center of current discussions of deconstruction, gender and feminist theory, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, and economics: it is, simply, one of the primary focal points at which contemporary interdisciplinary discourses intersect. Into this context comes a new, indispensable volume. The Logic of the Gift offers several important essays on gifts and gift-giving that are often referred to but seldom read, and adds to them new essays written especially for this collection.
The Logic of the Moral Sciences (Dover Thrift Editions)
by John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill (1806–73) was the most influential English philosopher of the nineteenth century. His vast intellectual output covered a range of subjects — traditional philosophy and logic, economics, political science — and included this work, a founding document in the area now known as social science. In The Logic of the Moral Sciences, Mill applied his considerable talents to examining how the study of human behavior, society, and history could be established on a rational, philosophical basis. The philosopher maintains that casual empiricism and direct experiment are not applicable to the study of complex social phenomena. Instead, "empirical laws," drawn from historical generalizations, must be derivable from a deductive science of human nature. Mills' insights and approaches have remained relevant in the century and a half since this treatise's publication. This volume will prove of vital interest to historians of philosophy and the social sciences as well as to undergraduate social science majors.
The Logic, Philosophy, and History of the Lambda-Calculus: Theory and Applications (History of Analytic Philosophy)
by Levis ZerpaThis is the first book focused on the logico-philosophical aspects of the lambda-calculus since the inception of the field in 1932 in the pioneering work of Alonzo Church. The book starts a new field called “lambda-philosophy”: a branch of logic-based analytic philosophy in the tradition of Frege and Russell, directly constructed from the lambda-calculus. Another innovation of the book is a new graphical and intuitive logico-mathematical notation for the lambda-calculus called “the container notation”. The book covers in detail some episodes of the history of the subject, including three comparative studies of the lambda-calculus with Viète's algebra, Descartes' analytic geometry, and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. A didactic approach to the logico-mathematical aspects of the lambda-calculus, partially based on cognitive science, provides the technical basis for the analysis. In this way, the book provides a systematic and coherent treatment of diverse logico-philosophical aspects and applications of the lambda-calculus as part of the platform offered by lambda-philosophy. The book includes the following: a detailed treatment of the ambiguities of the concept of function (under the traditional or Euler’s notation); an elucidation of the notion of transformative philosophical analysis; an account of Church’s methodology which shows that the lambda-calculus is an adequate solution to the problem of a philosophical analysis of functions as rules of computation; a didactic treatment of the formal aspects of the lambda-calculus through the container notation; and diverse arithmetical and logical examples of the container notation. The book questions a dogma of algorithmic thinking by arguing that the lambda-calculus is more intuitive and natural than Turing machines. The Logic, Philosophy, and History of the Lambda-Calculus is essential reading for all scholars and researchers of the history of analytic philosophy and especially those focussing on logic-based analytic philosophy.
The Logical Alien: Conant And His Critics
by Sofia MiguensIs our logical form of thought merely one among many, or must it be the form of thought as such? From Kant to Wittgenstein, philosophers have wrestled with variants of this question. This volume brings together nine distinguished thinkers on the subject, including James Conant, author of the seminal paper “The Search for Logically Alien Thought.”
The Logical Deduction of Chinese Traditional Political Philosophy
by Shiwei ZhangThis book presents a panoramic and extensive exploration of Chinese political philosophy, examining key political problems of the past, and the thinkers who addressed them. As the reader will discover, China’s traditional political philosophy is one with distinctive national characteristics and ideals. Therefore, the book helps to clarify the evolution of Chinese political thought, while also investigating fundamental political issues throughout the country’s history. The book offers a unique resource for researchers and graduate students in the fields of political science, philosophy, and history, as well as ordinary readers who are interested in China’s traditional and political culture.
The Logical Foundations of Scientific Theories: Languages, Structures, and Models (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics and Physics)
by Decio Krause Jonas R.B. ArenhartThis book addresses the logical aspects of the foundations of scientific theories. Even though the relevance of formal methods in the study of scientific theories is now widely recognized and regaining prominence, the issues covered here are still not generally discussed in philosophy of science. The authors focus mainly on the role played by the underlying formal apparatuses employed in the construction of the models of scientific theories, relating the discussion with the so-called semantic approach to scientific theories. The book describes the role played by this metamathematical framework in three main aspects: considerations of formal languages employed to axiomatize scientific theories, the role of the axiomatic method itself, and the way set-theoretical structures, which play the role of the models of theories, are developed. The authors also discuss the differences and philosophical relevance of the two basic ways of aximoatizing a scientific theory, namely Patrick Suppes’ set theoretical predicates and the "da Costa and Chuaqui" approach. This book engages with important discussions of the nature of scientific theories and will be a useful resource for researchers and upper-level students working in philosophy of science.
The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics
by David HarrimanA groundbreaking solution to the problem of induction, based on Ayn Rand's theory of concepts. Inspired by and expanding on a series of lectures presented by Leonard Peikoff, David Harriman presents a fascinating answer to the problem of induction-the epistemological question of how we can know the truth of inductive generalizations. Ayn Rand presented her revolutionary theory of concepts in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. As Dr. Peikoff subsequently explored the concept of induction, he sought out David Harriman, a physicist who had taught philosophy, for his expert knowledge of the scientific discovery process. Here, Harriman presents the result of a collaboration between scientist and philosopher. Beginning with a detailed discussion of the role of mathematics and experimentation in validating generalizations in physics-looking closely at the reasoning of scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier, and Maxwell-Harriman skillfully argues that the inductive method used in philosophy is in principle indistinguishable from the method used in physics. .
The Logical Legacy of Nikolai Vasiliev and Modern Logic
by Vladimir Markin Dmitry ZaitsevThis volume offers a wide range of both reconstructions of Nikolai Vasiliev's original logical ideas and their implementations in the modern logic and philosophy. A collection of works put together through the international workshop "Nikolai Vasiliev's Logical Legacy and the Modern Logic," this book also covers foundations of logic in the light of Vasiliev's contradictory ontology. Chapters range from a look at the Heuristic and Conceptual Background of Vasiliev's Imaginary Logic to Generalized Vasiliev-style Propositions. It includes works which cover Imaginary and Non-Aristotelian Logics, Inconsistent Set Theory and the Expansion of Mathematical Thinking, Plurivalent Logic, and the Impact of Vasiliev's Imaginary Logic on Epistemic Logic. The Russian logician, Vasiliev, was widely recognized as one of the forerunners of modern non-classical logic. His "imaginary logic" developed in some of his work at the beginning of 20th century is often considered to be one of the first systems of paraconsistent and multi-valued logic. The novelty of his logical project has opened up prospects for modern logic as well as for non-classical science in general. This volume contains a selection of papers written by modern specialists in the field and deals with various aspects of Vasiliev's logical ideas. The logical legacy of Nikolai Vasiliev can serve as a promising source for developing an impressive range of philosophical interpretations, as it marries promising technical innovations with challenging philosophical insights.
The Logical Structure of Science (Routledge Library Editions: Logic)
by A. Cornelius BenjaminThis book addresses the argument in the history of the philosophy of science between the positivists and the anti-positivists. The author starts from a point of firm conviction that all science and philosophy must start with the given… But that the range of the given is not definite. He begins with an examination of science from the outside and then the inside, explaining his position on metaphysics and attempts to formulate the character of operational acts before a general theory of symbolism is explored. The last five chapters constitute a treatise to show that the development from one stage of symbolismto the next is inevitable, consequently that explanatory science represents the culmination of knowledge.
The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age
by Paul J. NahinHow two pioneers of math and technology ushered in the computer revolutionBoolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use—from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? In The Logician and the Engineer, Paul Nahin combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras—mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon—advanced Boolean logic and became founding fathers of the electronic communications age. Nahin takes readers from fundamental concepts to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of modern digital machines, in order to explore computing and its possible limitations in the twenty-first century and beyond.
The Logos of the Living World: Merleau-Ponty, Animals, and Language (Groundworks: Ecological Issues in Philosophy and Theology)
by Louise WestlingToday we urgently need to reevaluate the human place in the world in relation to other animals. This book puts Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy into dialogue with literature, evolutionary biology, and animal studies. In a radical departure from most critical animal studies, it argues for evolutionary continuity between human cultural and linguistic behaviors and the semiotic activities of other animals.In his late work, Derrida complained of philosophers who denied that animals possessed such faculties, but he never investigated the wealth of scientific studies of actual animal behavior. Most animal studies theorists still fail to do this. Yet more than fifty years ago, Merleau-Ponty carefully examined the philosophical consequences of scientific animal studies, with profound implications for human language and culture. For him, “animality is the logos of the sensible world: an incorporated meaning.” Human being is inseparable from animality.This book differs from other studies of Merleau-Ponty by emphasizing his lifelong attention to science. It shows how his attention to evolutionary biology and ethology anticipated recent studies of animal cognition, culture, and communication.
The Logos of the Sensible World: Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Philosophy (The Collected Writings of John Sallis #III, 10)
by John SallisA presentation of the two-semester lecture course on Merleau-Ponty given at Duquesne University from 1970 to 1971 by the esteemed American philosopher.Devoted primarily to a close reading of the French philosopher’s magnum opus, Phenomenology of Perception, this course begins with a detailed analysis of The Structure of Behavior. The central topics considered in the lectures include the functions of the phenomenological body; beyond realism and idealism; the structures of the lived world; spatiality, temporality, language, sexuality; and perception and knowledge. Sallis illuminates Merleau-Ponty’s first two works and offers a thread to follow through developments in his later essays. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the primacy of perception and his claim that “the end of a philosophy is the account of its beginning” are woven throughout the lectures. For Sallis’s part, these lectures are foundational for his extended engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible, which was published in Sallis’s Phenomenology and the Return to Beginnings.“Sallis has managed to write a review that is accessible and makes only modest demands on the reader. This is an ideal resource for nonspecialists and for those who want a straightforward, relatively brief treatment of Merleau-Ponty’s important book . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet Buddha: Masks, Meditation, and Improvised Play to Induce Liberated States
by Peter Coyote• Shares a series of mindfulness techniques and improv exercises with masks to suppress the ego, calm the mind, and allow spontaneous playfulness and spaciousness to arise from your deepest nature • Draws on Buddhist philosophy to describe how and why the exercises work • Woven throughout with a lighthearted parable of an overweight and out-of-work Lone Ranger and Tonto who meet Buddha and experience spiritual awakeningSharing a series of mindfulness techniques and acting exercises that show how malleable the self can be, award-winning actor, narrator, and Zen Buddhist priest Peter Coyote reveals how to use masks, meditation, and improvisation to free yourself from fixed ideas of who you think you are and help you release your ego from constant defensive strategizing, calm the mind&’s overactivity, and allow spontaneous playfulness to arise out of your deepest nature. Developed through 40 years of research and personal study, Coyote&’s synthesis of mask-based improv games and Zen practices is specifically designed to create an ego-suppressed state akin to the mystical experiences of meditation or the spiritual awakenings of psychedelics. After preparatory exercises, seeing yourself in a mask will temporarily displace your familiar self and the spirit of the mask will take over. Likening the liberated state induced by mask work to &“Enlightenment-lite,&” Coyote draws on Buddhist philosophy to describe how and why the exercises work as well as how to make your newly awakened and confident self part of daily life. In true Zen form, woven throughout the narrative is a lighthearted parable of an out-of-work Lone Ranger and Tonto, who meet Buddha and experience spiritual awakening. Illuminating the lessons of mask work, the transformation of the Lone Ranger mirrors that of the individual pursuing this practice, revealing how you will come to realize that the world is more magical and vaster than you thought possible.
The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi
by William Scott WilsonMiyamoto Musashi (1584?1645) was the legendary samurai known throughout the world as a master swordsman, spiritual seeker, and author of the classic book on strategy, the Book of Five Rings. Over 350 years after his death, Musashi and his legacy still fascinate us and continue to inspire artists, authors, and filmmakers. Here, respected translator and expert on samurai culture William Scott Wilson has created both a vivid account of a fascinating period in feudal Japan and a portrait of the courageous, iconoclastic samurai who wrestled with philosophical and spiritual ideas that are as relevant today as they were in his time. For Musashi, the way of the martial arts was about mastery of the mind rather than simply technical prowess--and it is this path to mastery that is the core teaching in his Book of Five Rings. This volume includes supplemental material on Musashi's legacy as a martial arts icon, his impact on literature and film, and the influence of his Book of Five Rings.