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.

Any intelligent discussion of terrorism must demarcate its subject matter, for the term ‘terrorism’ is differently understood and where there is no accord on its meaning there is little chance for agreement on its application or normative status. The best course is to sketch a morally neutral definition that classifies as ‘terrorist’ as many widely-agreed upon cases as possible. Definitions that explicitly render terrorism illegitimate make classification contentious, and it is more informative to base moral assessment on an examination of the case rather than through apriori stipulation. Most writers on the topic agree that terrorism is (i) a deliberate use or threat of violence, (ii) politically-motivated, and (iii) directed against non-military personnel, that is, against civilians or noncombatants. Taking these as the only essential features of terrorism, the simplest and more accurate reportive definition is this: Terrorism is deliberate, politically-motivated violence, or the threat of such, directed against civilians.1 By contrast, Ted Honderich describes terrorism as small-scale violence, driven by a political aim, that violates national or international law and is prima facie morally wrong. He thereby counts a good deal of resistance activity and guerilla warfare as terrorist, even when directed against military personnel, while excluding the large-scale military actions of governments. Of course, he may define the word as he chooses, but given its common..

In "Omniprescient Agency" (Religious Studies 28, 1992) David P. Hunt challenges an argument against the possibility of an omniscient agent. The argument—my own in "Agency and Omniscience" (Religious Studies 27, 1991)—assumes that an agent is a being capable of intentional action, where, minimally, an action is intentional only if it is caused, in part, by the agent's intending. The latter, I claimed, is governed by a psychological principle of "least effort," viz., that no one intends without antecedently feeling that (i) deliberate effort is needed to achieve desired goals, (ii) such effort has a chance of success, and (iii) it is yet contingent whether the effort will be expended and the goals realized. The goals can be anything from immediate intentional doings, tryings or basic actions, to remote and perhaps unlikely consequences of actions, e.g., global justice. The thrust of the principle is that it would be impossible for a wholly rational self-aware agent to intend without a background presumption of an open future as concerns the desired state and the means to it. But this presumption embodies a sense of contingency which, in turn, requires an acknowledged ignorance about what the future holds, otherwise the future would appear closed relative to present knowledge with the desired state presented as either guaranteed (necessary) or ruled out (impossible). Regardless whether this self-directed attitude is accurate, it follows that intentional action precludes complete knowledge of one's present and future. Consequently, no omniscient or omniprescient being can be an agent.

Towards the end of the first world war, a “principle of self-determination” was proposed as a foundation for international order. In the words of its chief advocate, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, it specified that the “settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship” is to be made “upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for sake of its own exterior influence or mastery” (Wilson 1927, 233). The principle played a significant role in deliberations about lands newly liberated by the first world war, and, in the aftermath of the second, it was enshrined within Article 1 of the United Nations Charter which called upon member nations “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Its status within international law was further heightened by the 1966 Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, whose first articles specify the following: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.” In 1970, General Assembly Resolution 2625 added that, “every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provision of the Charter.”.

Indexicals are inevitably autobiographical, even when we are not talking about ourselves. For example, if you hear me say, "That portrait right there is beautiful," you can surmise not only that I ascribe beauty to an object of my immediate awareness but also something about my spatial relation to it. Again, if I praise you directly within earshot of others by using the words, "You did that very well!," my concern need not be to cause them to think the exact thought I have; they might not be in a position to address you as you and I might not care what they think of your performance. My purpose is to get them to ascribe to me an attitude that I express with a second-person indexical, to convince them that I am an encouraging and supportive person inasmuch as I addressed someone with words of praise. Indexicals are autobiographical not only because they issue from a speaker--all utterances do--but because they reveal something about the speaker's orientation toward and encounter with objects in a way that non-indexical language fails to do. For this reason, care must be taken in reporting indexically-expressed thoughts. Suppose the Chair of my Department informs me, (1)I am upset about the Dean's report. I cannot relate what he said by reiterating his words within indirect discourse, viz., (2)The Chair said that I am upset about the Dean's report. Because 'I' expresses speaker's reference, my assertion of (2) would cause a hearer to misconstrue who is said to be upset.i Alternatively, the sentence, (3)The Chair said that the Chair is upset about the Dean's report