Tomis Kapitan

MEDIEVAL LOGICCARLOS A. DUFOUR, Die Lehre der Proprietates Terminorum. Sinn und Referenz in mittelalterlicher Logik. München, Hamden, Wien: Philosophia, 1989. 312 pp. 148 DM.NORMAN KRETZMANN and BARBARA ENSIGN KRETZMANN The Sophismata of Richard Kilvington. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1990. xx + 156 pp. £27.50.LOGIC AND MATHEMATICSSOULEYMANE BACHIR DIAGNE, Boole. Paris: Editions Belin, 1989. 262pp. 75 Ffr.M.-M. TOEPELL, Über die Entstehung von David Hilberts “Grundlagen der Geometrie”. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1986. vii + 293 pp. 82 DM.VOLKER PECKHAUS, Hilbertprogramm und Kritische Philosophie. Das Göttinger Model1 interdisziplinarer Zusammenärbeit zwischen Mathematik und Philosophie. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1990. vi + 291 pp. 78 DM.E. WELTI, Die Philosophie des Strikten Finitismus, Entwicklungstheoretische und mathematische Untersuchungen iiber Unendlichkeitsbegriffe in Ideengeschichte und Mathematik, Bern, Frankfurt am Main und New York: Peter Lang, 1986. xxix + 652pp. $79.90.Philosophy of logicMARK A. NOTTURNO, Perspectives on psychlogism. Leiden, New York, Copenhagen and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1989. viii + 504 pp. 225 Dfl/$112.50.ROBERT N. MCLAUGHLIN, On the logic of ordinary conditionals. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. xvii + 202 pp. $54.50 /$17.95.JAAKKO HINTIKKA and MERRILL HINTIKKA, The logic of epistemology and the epistemology of logic: selected essays. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.J. NORMAN and R. SYLVAN, Directions in relevant logic. Foreword by N. D. Belnap. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. xii + 453 pp. £72.00.LOGIC AND LANGUAGEC. J. F. WILLIAMS, What is identity? Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. xx + 207 pp. £25.00.GREGORY MCCULLOCH, The game of the name. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. xvi + 320pp. £30.00, £9.95.GRAEME FORBES, Languages of possibility. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. x + 181 pp. £27.50.

According to C. S. Peirce, abduction is a rational attempt to locate an explanation for a puzzling phenomenon, where this is a process that includes both generating explanatory hypotheses and selecting certain hypotheses for further scrutiny. Since inference is a controlled process that can be subjected to normative standards, essential to his view of abductive rasoning is that it is correlated to a unique species of correctness that cannot be reduced to deductive validity or inductive strength. This irreducibility claim is of considerable importance for the logical and epistemological scrutiny of scientific methods, but it is not clear that Peirce produced a convicing argument for it. To the contrary, when the full structure of abductive argumentation is clarified, especially as presented in Peirce’s later writings on the topic, a good case can be made for viewing every inferential step in the abductive process as dissolving into familiar forms of deductive and inductive reasoning. Specifically, hypothesis-selection is a special type of practical inference that, if correct, is deductively valid, while the creative phase, hypothesis-generation, is not inferential at all. Once this is understood, it emerges that the familiar descriptions of abduction as “inference to the best explanation” or as a process of “belief revision” are, at best, misleading.

The role of reason, and its embodiment in philosophical-scientific theorizing, is always a troubling one for religious traditions. The deep emotional needs that religion strives to satisfy seem ever linked to an attitudes of acceptance, belief, or trust, yet, in its theoretical employment, reason functions as a critic as much as it does a creator, and in the special fields of metaphysics and epistemology its critical arrows are sometimes aimed at long-standing cherished beliefs. Understandably, the mere approach to these beliefs through organized philosophical activity, however well-intended, is viewed with suspicion by ecclesiastical authorities and the devout. The attitude towards philosophical inquiry on the part of the Islamic religious community might be thought to typify this reaction. As one of the great prophetic religions, the self-avowed image of Islam is of a tradition which already possesses the truth as set forth in the divine revelation of the Qur'an. What need is there for philosophizing on fundamental matters, e.g., the ultimate nature of reality, the foundations of morality, the modes whereby the divine is connected with the temporal? The structure of creation is already made clear, the "straight path" for living already manifest. how can philosophical activity be anything but a source of divisive controversy, for as it turns its gaze to the foundations upon which the Shari`a' (Islamic Law) rests, or to the grounds for religious belief itself, it cannot avoid turning up alternative viewpoints, different perspectives on divine revelation, noting various weaknesses in received 1 interpretations? In short, isn't the practice of philosophy a threat to Islam's promise of providing a comprehensive way of living devoid of skepticism and uncertainty about the place of a human in God's creation and his or her role in the 'umma (Islamic community)? This problem is not unique to Islam, nor is it a new one within Islam. We know that it has been debated by Islamic thinkers since the translations of the Greek philosophers began to appear in an organized Islamic world during the 8th Century A..

François Recanati describes a metarepresentation as a representation of linguistic and mental representations. Two levels of content are involved, that of a metarepresentation dS, and that of the object representation S. According to Recanati’s “iconicity thesis,” dS contains S semantically as well as syntactically, so that one cannot entertain dS without also entertaining S. Iconicity “suggests” the doctrine of semantic innocence, whereby an embedded object-representation has the same content it would have when uttered in isolation—its “normal” semantic value—and one of Recanati’s principal aims is to show how the opacity of oratio obliqua and oratio recta constructions can be explained without sacrificing innocence. His treatment is set firmly within the framework of Kaplan 1989 and is inspired by the account of quotation in Davidson 1968. Though devoid of technical and metaphysical encumbrance, his book is not a lean display of a single vision, since Recanati spends considerable time on proposals that he ends up rejecting or modifying. Some readers might become impatient with the detailed comparisons, but the dedicated student will welcome the learned discussion of alternatives. In all, Recanati has given us an excellent study of metarepresentation, enlivened by state-of-the-art pragmatics and at the forefront of the latest discourse on attitudinal ascriptions.

The use of predicate and sentential operators to express the practical modalities -- ability, control, openness, etc. -- has given new life to a fatalistic argument against determinist theories of responsible agency. A familiar version employs the following principle: the consequences of what is unavoidable (beyond one's control) are themselves unavoidable. Accordingly, if determinism is true, whatever happens is the consequence of events in the remote past, or, of such events together with the laws of nature. But laws and the remote past are not under our control and, by the principle, neither are their consequences. Therefore, none of our choices and actions, nor anything that results from them, is under our control.1 Whether refinements of the closure principle underlying this unavoidability argument are acceptable depends upon the precise sense of 'consequence' and 'unavoidable' involved. Roughly, a proposition P is a consequence of a set of propositions M iff it is impossible that P be false when each member of M is true, or, conversely, when M necessitates P. Since P is unavoidable for S when P is true and S is (was) unable to prevent P from being true, it might seem that if P is unavoidable the same should hold of what is necessitated by P. There is, in fact, 1 an easy defense of the principle which utilizes the incompatibilist condition that S is able to do action K only if it is as yet undetermined whether or not S will K. With it, there is no question but that one is unable to accomplish what is already determined by what one was unable to prevent. Of course, this reasoning is unlikely to impress the compatibilist who rejects the condition outright and, expectedly, it is not the procedure of the proponents of the unavoidability argument. The latter might rest content with appeals to intuition, but more significant are defenses of the closure principle and independent derivations of the unavoidability argument that rely upon distinct principles concerning the logic of the practical modalities, for example, closure of ability under entailment (Cross 1986, Brown 1988) or, claims about the "fixity of the past" and the "inescapability of laws" (Ginet 1990)..

Preface The conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has endured for a century. It centers on control of territory and, as common in such disputes, is characterized by conquest, destruction, and revenge, with all the animosity and sorrow that these actions bring. Because the land in question is terra sancta to three major religions, the conflict evokes powerful passions involving identity, honor, and the propriety of cultural claims. That its disputants employ sophisticated arguments and armaments, that they are willing to combat not only each other but rival voices within their own ranks, and that decades of international diplomacy have failed to produce a satisfactory solution, render it "one of the most difficult political problems of our time, perhaps the most difficult of them all". Marked by a series of surprising achievements, deceptions and atrocities in which each side has underestimated the tenacity and resourcefulness of the other, it guarantees fascinating study

Philip E. Devine has presented insightful proposals for defining religion in his essay “On the Definition of Religion” (Faith and Philosophy, July 1986). But despite his illuminating discussion, particularly the treatment of borderline cases, his account fails to distinguish religion as a process or goal-oriented activity from religion as a body of doctrine, and is mistaken (or perhaps unclear) in its proposal that religion per se is committed to the existence of superhuman agents. These deficiencies are exposed herein, and a sketch of an alternative view of religion, inspired by the views of both William James and Josiah Royce, is set forth.

As practical beings, we act with a sense of freedom, or, to use Kant’s memorable phrase, “unter der Idee der Freiheit.” This attitude is present whenever we are deciding what to do, and it is most clearly revealed when we reflect on what we take for granted while deliberating. Consider a young man, Imad, who lives under an oppressive military occupation and deliberates about whether to join the resistance, leave the country, or continue quietly in his studies hoping that the occupation will be eliminated through the efforts of others. Taking any of these alternatives is likely to have momentous consequences upon his physical safety, his self-esteem, and realization of his goals. Yet, he can no longer tolerate his indecision and feels that he must commit himself somehow. One thing is apparent; Imad faces alternative courses of action, each of which he regards as open for him to undertake at the time. Were he to come to believe of any of the alternatives that it is no longer a genuine option, he would cease deliberating about whether to take it. An agent’s “sense” or “awareness” of personal freedom is nothing more than a presumption of open alternatives made explicit in reflection. But what exactly is its content? What does one accept in presuming a course of action to be “open”? To fix..