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18College, 124 Raymond avenue, poughkeepsie, ny 12604, usa. In a review, a reference “jsl xliii 148,” for example, refers either to the publication reviewed on page 148 of volume 43 of the journal, or to the review itself (which contains full bibliographical information for the reviewed publication). Analogously, a reference “bsl VII 376” refers to the review beginning on page 376 in volume 7 of this bulletin, or (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 16 (3). 2010.
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386New Life for Carnap’s Aufbau?Synthese 180 (2): 265-299. 2011.Rudolf Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) is generally conceived of as being the failed manifesto of logical positivism. In this paper we will consider the following question: How much of the Aufbau can actually be saved? We will argue that there is an adaptation of the old system which satisfies many of the demands of the original programme. In order to defend this thesis, we have to show how a new 'Aufbau-like' programme may solve or circumvent the probl…Read more
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80Interpreted Dynamical Systems and Qualitative Laws: from Neural Networks to Evolutionary SystemsSynthese 146 (1-2): 189-202. 2005.. Interpreted dynamical systems are dynamical systems with an additional interpretation mapping by which propositional formulas are assigned to system states. The dynamics of such systems may be described in terms of qualitative laws for which a satisfaction clause is defined. We show that the systems Cand CL of nonmonotonic logic are adequate with respect to the corresponding description of the classes of interpreted ordered and interpreted hierarchical systems, respectively. Inhibition networ…Read more
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The Association for Symbolic Logic publishes analytical reviews of selected books and articles in the field of symbolic logic. The reviews were published in The Journal of Symbolic Logic from the founding of the Journal in 1936 until the end of 1999. The Association moved the reviews to this Bulletin, beginning in 2000. The Reviews Section is edited by Steve Awodey (Managing Editor). John Baldwin, John (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 15 (2). 2009.
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135A way out of the preface paradox?Analysis 74 (1). 2014.The thesis defended in this article is that by uttering or publishing a great many declarative sentences in assertoric mode, one does not actually assert that their conjunction is true – one rather asserts that the vast majority of these sentences are true. Accordingly, the belief that is expressed thereby is the belief that the vast majority of these sentences are true. In the article, we make this proposal precise, we explain the context-dependency of belief that corresponds to it, we point ou…Read more
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372The Stability Theory of BeliefPhilosophical Review 123 (2): 131-171. 2014.This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rational belief and rational degree of belief figure simultaneously. In spite of what is commonly believed, this essay will show that this combination of principles is satisfiable (and indeed nontrivially so…Read more
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102An impossibility result on semantic resemblanceDialectica 62 (3): 293-306. 2008.We show that a set of prima facie plausible assumptions on the relation of meaning resemblance – one of which is a compositionality postulate – is inconsistent. On this basis we argue that either there is no theoretically useful notion of semantic resemblance at all, or the traditional conception of the compositionality of meaning has to be adapted. In the former case, arguments put forward by Nelson Goodman and Paul Churchland in favor of the concept of meaning resemblance are defeated. In the …Read more
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196Scientific Philosophy, Mathematical Philosophy, and All ThatMetaphilosophy 44 (3): 267-275. 2013.This article suggests that scientific philosophy, especially mathematical philosophy, might be one important way of doing philosophy in the future. Along the way, the article distinguishes between different types of scientific philosophy; it mentions some of the scientific methods that can serve philosophers; it aims to undermine some worries about mathematical philosophy; and it tries to make clear why in certain cases the application of mathematical methods is necessary for philosophical progr…Read more
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176How Serious Is the Paradox of Serious Possibility?Mind 121 (481): 1-36. 2012.The so-called Paradox of Serious Possibility is usually regarded as showing that the standard axioms of belief revision do not apply to belief sets that are introspectively closed. In this article we argue to the contrary: we suggest a way of dissolving the Paradox of Serious Possibility so that introspective statements are taken to express propositions in the standard sense, which may thus be proper members of belief sets, and accordingly the normal axioms of belief revision apply to them. Inst…Read more
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121On the Ramsey Test without TrivialityNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 51 (1): 21-54. 2010.We present a way of classifying the logically possible ways out of Gärdenfors' inconsistency or triviality result on belief revision with conditionals. For one of these ways—conditionals which are not descriptive but which only have an inferential role as being given by the Ramsey test—we determine which of the assumptions in three different versions of Gärdenfors' theorem turn out to be false. This is done by constructing ranked models in which such Ramsey-test conditionals are evaluated and wh…Read more
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Logic and Philosophy of MathematicsJournal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 27 (2). 2010.
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93God − Moore = Ramsey (A Reply to Chalmers and Hájek)Topoi 30 (1): 47-51. 2011.Famously, Frank P. Ramsey suggested a test for the acceptability of conditionals. Recently, David Chalmers and Alan Hájek (2007) have criticized a qualitative variant of the Ramsey test for indicative conditionals. In this paper we argue for the following three claims: (i) Chalmers and Hájek are right that the variant of the Ramsey test that they attack is not the correct way of spelling out an acceptability test for indicative conditionals. But there is a suppositional variant of the Ramsey tes…Read more
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2What is a self-referential sentence? Critical remarks on the alleged mbox(non-)circularity of Yablo's paradoxLogique and Analyse 177 (178): 3-14. 2002.
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477An Objective Justification of Bayesianism I: Measuring InaccuracyPhilosophy of Science 77 (2): 201-235. 2010.One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its sequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In this paper, we make this norm mathematically precise in various ways. We describe three epistemic dilemmas that an agent might face if she attempts to f…Read more
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96Theories of truth which have no standard modelsStudia Logica 68 (1): 69-87. 2001.This papers deals with the class of axiomatic theories of truth for semantically closed languages, where the theories do not allow for standard models; i.e., those theories cannot be interpreted as referring to the natural number codes of sentences only (for an overview of axiomatic theories of truth in general, see Halbach[6]). We are going to give new proofs for two well-known results in this area, and we also prove a new theorem on the nonstandardness of a certain theory of truth. The results…Read more
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75While the Gödel centenary year 2006 triggered a lot of conference and workshop activity on Gödel, the years leading to it stand out by exhibiting several excellent publications on Gödel's life and work, most notably the completion of the Kurt Gödel Collected Works series . The two volumes of Kurt Gödel. Wahrheit & Beweisbarkeit, written in German and edited by E. Köhler et al., constitute something like the ‘German-Austrian contribution’ to this renewal of interest in Gödel's legacy, even though…Read more
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117Reducing belief simpliciter to degrees of beliefAnnals of Pure and Applied Logic 164 (12): 1338-1389. 2013.Is it possible to give an explicit definition of belief in terms of subjective probability, such that believed propositions are guaranteed to have a sufficiently high probability, and yet it is neither the case that belief is stripped of any of its usual logical properties, nor is it the case that believed propositions are bound to have probability 1? We prove the answer is ‘yes’, and that given some plausible logical postulates on belief that involve a contextual “cautiousness” threshold, there…Read more
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12The Association for Symbolic Logic publishes analytical reviews of selected books and articles in the field of symbolic logic. The reviews were published in The Journal of Symbolic Logic from the founding of the Journal in 1936 until the end of 1999. The Association moved the reviews to this Bulletin, beginning in 2000. The Reviews Section is edited by Steve Awodey (Managing Editor), John Baldwin, John (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 16 (1). 2010.
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32On formal and informal provabilityIn Ø. Linnebo O. Bueno (ed.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics, . pp. 263--299. 2009.
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102I—The Humean Thesis on BeliefAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 89 (1): 143-185. 2015.This paper suggests a bridge principle for all-or-nothing belief and degrees of belief to the effect that belief corresponds to stably high degree of belief. Different ways of making this Humean thesis on belief precise are discussed, and one of them is shown to stand out by unifying the others. The resulting version of the thesis proves to be fruitful in entailing the logical closure of belief, the Lockean thesis on belief, and coherence between decision-making based on all-or-nothing beliefs a…Read more
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Mechanizing InductionIn Dov Gabby, Hartmann M., Woods Stephan & John (eds.), Handbook of the History of Logic: Inductive Logic, Elsevier: Amsterdam. pp. 719--772. 2009.
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306Beliefs in conditionals vs. conditional beliefsTopoi 26 (1): 115-132. 2007.On the basis of impossibility results on probability, belief revision, and conditionals, it is argued that conditional beliefs differ from beliefs in conditionals qua mental states. Once this is established, it will be pointed out in what sense conditional beliefs are still conditional, even though they may lack conditional contents, and why it is permissible to still regard them as beliefs, although they are not beliefs in conditionals. Along the way, the main logical, dispositional, representa…Read more
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111Timothy Williamson, knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2000Grazer Philosophische Studien 65 (1): 195-205. 2002.
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99A Lottery Paradox for Counterfactuals Without AgglomerationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3): 605-636. 2013.We will present a new lottery-style paradox on counterfactuals and chance. The upshot will be: combining natural assumptions on the truth values of ordinary counterfactuals, the conditional chances of possible but non-actual events, the manner in which and relate to each other, and a fragment of the logic of counterfactuals leads to disaster. In contrast with the usual lottery-style paradoxes, logical closure under conjunction—that is, in this case, the rule of Agglomeration of counterfactuals—w…Read more
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18Towards a logic 0f type-free modality and truthIn Costas Dimitracopoulos (ed.), Logic Colloquium 2005: Proceedings of the Annual European Summer Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, Held in Athens, Greece, July 28-August 3, 2005, Cambridge University Press. pp. 28--68. 2008.
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170Possible-worlds semantics for modal notions conceived as predicatesJournal of Philosophical Logic 32 (2): 179-223. 2003.If □ is conceived as an operator, i.e., an expression that gives applied to a formula another formula, the expressive power of the language is severely restricted when compared to a language where □ is conceived as a predicate, i.e., an expression that yields a formula if it is applied to a term. This consideration favours the predicate approach. The predicate view, however, is threatened mainly by two problems: Some obvious predicate systems are inconsistent, and possible-worlds semantics for p…Read more
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122Logic in general philosophy of science: old things and new thingsSynthese 179 (2). 2011.This is a personal, incomplete, and very informal take on the role of logic in general philosophy of science, which is aimed at a broader audience. We defend and advertise the application of logical methods in philosophy of science, starting with the beginnings in the Vienna Circle and ending with some more recent logical developments