Nicholas Rescher

It is shown that the logical theory of belief statements must be prepared to take into account relationships among statements which are subtler and more delicate than is requisite in other contexts. It is necessary here to draw distinctions (of a modal and semantical character) which the standard assertory logic can ignore with impunity. This is due to the fact that it is entirely possible to be in ignorance of various logical relationships (eg., entailment, equivalence, etc.) that in fact obtain among believed statements, and so, for example to believe the premisses of a valid deductive argument, and yet disbelieve the conclusion which follows from them. The implications of such difficulties for the logic of belief statements are examined

Luck is at issue when it is a matter of pure chance that a result of significant positive of negative value ensues for someone. Luck differs from fate, which pivots on an individual's condition, and from fortune, which pivots on an individual's talent and effort. It is by luck that you are rich when you win the lottery, by fortune if your wealth comes from talent and hard work, and by fate if you inherit those millions. On this basis luck lies beyond anyone's rational control. With risk as the probability of failure in a chancy situation and the stake as the difference between a favorable and an unfavorable outcome, luck can be measured as the product of these quantities: L = R × S. The condition of humankind in an uncertain world being as it is, luck cannot be eliminated as a key factor of our existence, be it in cognitive, practical, or ethical regards

The paper argues that the idea that immediate (i.e., self-contained, supposedly cognitively unmediated) experience of itself suffices to provide for “evident” knowledge is an illusion. The step from experiential subjectivity to objective fact always presupposes some suppositionally “taken” (rather than experientially given) linkage of an objectively trans-experiential nature. The deployment of idealistically mind-postulated resources is always needed to underwrite the step from personal experience to putatively objective knowledge.

The four main essays in this volume investigate new sectors of the theory of decision, preference, act-characteristics, and action analysis. Herbert A. Simon applies tools developed in the theory of decision-making to the logic of action, and thereby develops a novel concept of heuristic power. Adapting ideas from utility and decision theory, Nicholas Rescher proposes a logic of preference by which conflicting theories proposed by G. H. von Wright, R. M. Chisholm, and others can be systematized. Donald Davidson discusses difficulties in specifying the structure of action sentences to elucidate how their meaning depends on that structure. G. H. von Wright devises a method for describing each “state of the world” that results from an action, in a revision of his own earlier work. Additionally, a study of the logic of norms by Alan Ross Anderson is presented as an appendix, along with an appendix by Rescher outlining the aspects of action.

Originally published in 1966. Professor Rescher's aim is to develop a "logic of commands" in exactly the same general way which standard logic has already developed a "logic of truth-functional statement compounds" or a "logic of quantifiers". The object is to present a tolerably accurate and precise account of the logically relevant facets of a command, to study the nature of "inference" in reasonings involving commands, and above all to establish a viable concept of validity in command inference, so that the logical relationships among commands can be studied with something of the rigour to which one is accustomed in other branches of logic.

The aim of the book is to introduce the reader to some new areas oflogic which have yet to find their way into the bulk of modern logic books written from the more orthodox direction of the mainstream of develop ments. Such a work seems to me much needed, both because of the in trinsic value and increasing prominence of the nonstandard sector of logic, and because this particular sector is of the greatest interest from the standpoint of philosophical implications and applications. This book unites a series of studies in philosophical logic, drawing for the most part on material which I have contributed to the journal liter ature of the subject over the past ten years. Despite the fact that some of these essays have been published in various journals at different times, they possess a high degree of thematic and methodological unity. All of these studies deal with material of substantial current interest in philo sophical logic and embody a fusion of the modern techniques of logical and linguistic-philosophical analysis for the exploration of areas of logic that are of substantial philosophical relevance.