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1Ordinal Conditional Functions. A Dynamic Theory of Epistemic StatesIn W. L. Harper & B. Skyrms (eds.), Causation in Decision, Belief Change, and Statistics, vol. II, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1988.It is natural and important to have a formal representation of plain belief, according to which propositions are held true, or held false, or neither. (In the paper this is called a deterministic representation of epistemic states). And it is of great philosophical importance to have a dynamic account of plain belief. AGM belief revision theory seems to provide such an account, but it founders at the problem of iterated belief revision, since it can generally account only for one step of revisio…Read more
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42On the Objectivity of Facts, Beliefs, and ValuesIn Peter K. Machamer & Gereon Wolters (eds.), Science, Values, and Objectivity, University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 172. 2004.
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115How to understand the foundations of empirical belief in a coherentist wayProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 98 (1). 1998.The central claim of the paper is, roughly, that the fact that it looks to somebody as if p is a defeasibly a priori reason for assuming that p (and vice versa), for any person, even for the perceiver himself. As a preparation, it outlines a doxastic conception suitable to explicate this claim and explains how to analyse dispositions within this conception. Since an observable p has the disposition to look as if p, this analysis generalizes to the central claim which is then argued to be at the …Read more
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Probabilistic Causality: from Hume via Suppes to GrangerIn M. Galvotti & G. Gambetta (eds.), Causalitã¡ E Modelli Probabilistici, Clueb. pp. 69-87. 1983.
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51Obituary for Patrick SuppesErkenntnis 80 (2): 239-242. 2014.Patrick Colonel Suppes Published with the kind permission of the Patrick Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science at Stanford UniversityWe deeply mourn the death of our senior editor Patrick Suppes . After the death of Carl Gustav Hempel in 1997, who had been the senior editor since the reestablishment of ERKENNTNIS in 1975, Wilhelm Essler and I asked Pat to succeed Hempel as editor of ERKENNTNIS.Our journal was founded by Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap in 1931. It was the spe…Read more
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12PrefaceErkenntnis 35 (1-3): 1-1. 1991.What may we believe? What ought we to do? These two questions, which are intended as a subtle contemporary version of the questions that concerned Kant, set the parameters of the diverse activities of the Eighth Triannual International Congress, GAP.8, of the German Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie (Society for Analytic Philosophy, GAP), held at the University of Konstanz at September 17–20, 2012. These questions remain central systematic questions of theoretical and practical philosophy…Read more
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38This paper deals with Hans Reichenbach's common cause principle. It was propounded by him in, and has been developed and widely applied by Wesley Salmon, e.g. in and. Thus, it has become one of the focal points of the continuing discussion of causation. The paper addresses five questions. Section 1 asks: What does the principle say? And section 2 asks: What is its philosophical significance? The most important question, of course, is this: Is the principle true? To answer that question, however,…Read more
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Jahre Gettier : Reichen VielleichtIn Gerhard Ernst & Lisa Marani (eds.), Das Gettierproblem. Eine Bilanz nach 50 Jahren, Mentis. 2013.
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87How the Modalities Come into the WorldErkenntnis 83 (1): 89-112. 2018.The modalities come into the world by being projections or objectivizations of our epistemic constitution. Thus this paper is a statement of Humean projectivism. In fact, it goes beyond Simon Blackburn’s version. It is also designed as a comprehensive counter-program to David Lewis’ program of Humean supervenience. In detail, the paper explains: Already the basic fact that the world is a world of states of affairs is due to the nature of our epistemic states. Objects, which figure in states of a…Read more
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250Laws Are Persistent Inductives SchemesIn Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Induction and Deduction in the Sciences, Springer. pp. 11--135. 2004.The characteristic difference between laws and accidental generalizations lies in our epistemic or inductive attitude towards them. This idea has taken various forms and dominated the discussion about lawlikeness in the last decades. Hence, ranking theory with its resources of formalizing defeasible reasoning or inductive schemes seems ideally suited to explicate the idea in a formal way. This is what the paper attempts to do. Thus it will turn out that a law is simply the deterministic analogue…Read more
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2How to Understand the Foundations of Empirical Belief in a Coherentist Way: IIProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 98 (1): 22-40. 1998.
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6Laws Are Persistent Inductive SchemesVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 11 135-150. 2004.Laws are true lawlike sentences. But what is lawlikeness? Much effort went into investigating the issue, but the richer the concert of opinions became, the more apparent their deficiencies became too, and with it the profound importance of the issue for epistemology and philosophy of science.
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62Isaac Levi’s potentially surprising epistemologicalpictureIn Erik J. Olsson (ed.), Knowledge and Inquiry: Essays on the Pragmatism of Isaac Levi, Cambridge University Press. 2006.This paper compares the epistemological conception of Isaac Levi with mine. We are joined in both giving a constructive answer to the relation of belief and probability, without reducing one to the other. However, our constructions differ in at least nine more or less important ways, all discussed in the paper. In particular, the paper explains the similarities and differences of Shackle's functions of potential surprise, as used by Levi, and my ranking functions in formal as well as in philosop…Read more
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272Laws, ceteris paribus conditions, and the dynamics of beliefErkenntnis 57 (3): 373-394. 2002.The characteristic difference between laws and accidental generalizations lies in our epistemic or inductive attitude towards them. This idea has taken various forms and dominated the discussion about lawlikeness in the last decades. Likewise, the issue about ceteris paribus conditions is essentially about how we epistemically deal with exceptions. Hence, ranking theory with its resources of defeasible reasoning seems ideally suited to explicate these points in a formal way. This is what the p…Read more
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21Defeasible normative reasoningSynthese 197 (4): 1391-1428. 2020.The paper is motivated by the need of accounting for the practical syllogism as a piece of defeasible reasoning. To meet the need, the paper first refers to ranking theory as an account of defeasible descriptive reasoning. It then argues that two kinds of ought need to be distinguished, purely normative and fact-regarding obligations (in analogy to intrinsic and extrinsic utilities). It continues arguing that both kinds of ought can be iteratively revised and should hence be represented by ranki…Read more
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7Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach (edited book)Springer. 1991.Rudolf Carnap was born on May 18, 1891, and Hans Reichenbach on September 26 in the same year. They are two of the greatest philosophers of this century, and they are eminent representatives of what is perhaps the most powerful contemporary philosophical movement. Moreover, they founded the journal Erkenntnis. This is ample reason for presenting, on behalf of Erkenntnis, a collection of essays in honor of them and their philosophical work. I am less sure, however, whether it is a good time for r…Read more
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54Epistemic justification: its subjective and its objective waysSynthese 195 (9): 3837-3856. 2018.Objective standards for justification or for being a reason would be desirable, but inductive skepticism tells us that they cannot be presupposed. Rather, we have to start from subjective-relative notions of justification and of being a reason. The paper lays out the strategic options we have given this dilemma. The paper explains the requirements for this subject-relative notion and how they may be satisfied. Then it discusses four quite heterogeneous ways of providing more objective standards,…Read more