Bøger i Synthese Library serien

This collection highlights the new trend away from rationalism and toward empiricism in the epistemology of modality. Early chapters focus on challenges to rationalist theories, essence-based approaches to modal knowledge, and the prospects for naturalizing modal epistemology.

This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate.This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s.

This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science.

This edited volume explores the different and seminal ways colours matter to philosophy. Each chapter provides an insightful analysis of one or more cases in which colours raise philosophical problems in different areas and periods of philosophy.  This historically informed discussion examines both logical and linguistic aspects, covering such areas as the mind, aesthetics and the foundations of mathematics. The international contributors look at traditional epistemological and metaphysical issues on the subjectivity and objectivity of colours. In addition, they also assess phenomenological problems typical of the continental tradition and contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind. The chapters include coverage of such topics as Newton¿s and Goethe¿s theory of light and colours, how primary qualities are qualitative and colours are primary, explaining colour phenomenology, and colour in cognition, language and philosophy. "This book beautifully prepares the ground for the next steps in our research on and philosophising about colour" Daniel D. Hutto (University of Wollongong)"It is not an overstatement to say that How Colours to Philosophy is a ground breaking publication" Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Pittsburgh)"Anyone interested in philosophical issues about color will find it highly stimulating." Martine Nida-Rümelin (Université de Fribourg)"The high quality papers included in this anthology succeed admirably in enriching current philosophical thinking about colour¿ Erik Myin (University of Antwerp)¿This is certainly the most complete collection of philosophical essays on colours ever published¿ André Leclerc (University of Brasília)¿All in all this collections represents a new milestone in the ongoing philosophical debate on colours and colour expressions¿ Ingolf Max (University of Leipzig)

This comprehensive review of the methods used in explaining biology and history provides fresh insights into the debate over mechanisms in the sciences. Specially commissioned essays analyze the profoundly illuminating mutuality of these two core disciplines.

According to TEM, someone justifiably believe an interesting modal claim if and only if (a) she justifiably believes a theory according to which that claim is true, (b) she believes that claim on the basis of that theory, and (c) she has no defeaters for her belief in that claim.

This monograph looks at causal nets from a philosophical point of view. The author shows that one can build a general philosophical theory of causation on the basis of the causal nets framework that can be fruitfully used to shed new light on philosophical issues.

This volume provides an overview of applications of conceptual spaces theory, beginning with an introduction to the modeling tool that unifies the chapters.

This book presents four bridges connecting work in virtue epistemology and work in philosophy of science (broadly construed) that may serve as catalysts for the further development of naturalized virtue epistemology.

This book analyzes Bas van Fraassen's characterization of representation and models in science.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn?

This volume offers a wide range of both reconstructions of Nikolai Vasiliev's original logical ideas and their implementations in the modern logic and philosophy.

This monograph offers a fresh perspective on the applicability of mathematics in science. It explores what mathematics must be so that its applications to the empirical world do not constitute a mystery. In the process, readers are presented with a new version of mathematical structuralism.The author details a philosophy of mathematics in which the problem of its applicability, particularly in physics, in all its forms can be explained and justified. Chapters cover: mathematics as a formal science, mathematical ontology: what does it mean to exist, mathematical structures: what are they and how do we know them, how different layers of mathematical structuring relate to each other and to perceptual structures, and how to use mathematics to find out how the world is.The book simultaneously develops along two lines, both inspired and enlightened by Edmund Husserl¿s phenomenological philosophy. One line leads to the establishment of a particular version of mathematical structuralism, free of ¿naturalist¿ and empiricist bias. The other leads to a logical-epistemological explanation and justification of the applicability of mathematics carried out within a unique structuralist perspective. This second line points to the ¿unreasonable¿ effectiveness of mathematics in physics as a means of representation, a tool, and a source of not always logically justified but useful and effective heuristic strategies.

Essays on Husserl's Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics sets out to fill up a lacuna in the present research on Husserl by presenting a precise account of Husserl's work in the field of logic, of the philosophy of logic and of the philosophy of mathematics.

He takes into consideration both the situation of logic in Russia and the state of logic in Western Europe, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th. This logic allows the author to deal with incomplete objects just as imaginary logic does with contradictory ones.

Hanson brought Wittgensteinian ordinary language philosophy to bear on the concepts of science, and his treatments of observation, discovery, and the theory-ladenness of scientific facts remain central to the philosophy of science.

This monograph examines truth in fiction by applying the techniques of a naturalized logic of human cognitive practices.

This book is about our ordinary concept of matter in the form of enduring continuants and the processes in which they are involved in the macroscopic realm. Quantities of matter, which don't gain or lose parts over time, are distinguished from individuals, which are typically constituted of different quantities of matter at different times.

Its central thesis is that there is no such thing as a correct answer to the question of what is logical form: two significantly different notions of logical form are needed to fulfill two major theoretical roles that pertain respectively to logic and to semantics.

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order.The authors devise axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime.The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally.

In this first volume of The Sylvan Jungle, the editors present a scholarly edition of the first chapter, "Exploring Meinong's Jungle," of Richard Routley's 1000-plus page book, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. Going against the Quinean orthodoxy, Routley's aim was to support Meinong's idea that we can truthfully refer to non-existent and even impossible objects, like Superman, unicorns and the (infamous) round-square cupola on Berkeley College. The tools of non-classical logic at Routley's disposal enabled him to update Meinong's project for a new generation.This volume begins with an Introduction from Dominic Hyde, "The 'Jungle Book' in Context," an essay that situates Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond historically. We provide the original Preface by Routley, followed by Chapter 1: "Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond." In Chapter 2, Nicholas Griffin argues that Sylvan's project was insufficiently radical with his essay, "Why the Original Theory of Items Didn't (Quite) Go Far Enough." Sylvan revisits his position from this time in Chapter 3, with his article, "Re-Exploring Item-Theory." Filippo Casati, who has worked in the Routley Archives then takes up the question of the future of Sylvan's research program in his essay, "The Future Perfect of Exploring Meinong's Jungle."Iconic and iconoclastic Australian philosopher Richard Routley (né Sylvan) published Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond in 1980. This work has fallen out of print, yet without great fanfare it has influenced two generations of philosophers and logicians.

This monograph details a new solution to an old problem of metaphysics. These include: the problem of predication, the problem of abstract reference, and the One Over Many as well as the Many Over One and the Similar but Different variants. This book will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary metaphysics.

By explaining the functional nature of point of view, and by providing a concrete definition of point of view as a window through which to see the world, it offers a scientific realist theory that explains that points of view are real structures that ground properties and objects as well as perspectives.

This book collects 13 papers that explore Wittgenstein's philosophy throughout the different stages of his career. Five papers examine different aspects of it: one on the philosophy of young Wittgenstein, one on his transitional period, and the final three on the philosophy of mature Wittgenstein, chiefly his Philosophical Investigations.

This volume explores evidentialism, a major theory of epistemic justification. It contains more than 20 papers that examine its nuances, its challenges, as well as its future directions. Written by leading and up-and-coming epistemologists, the papers cover a wide array of topics related to evidentialism. The contributors present both sides of the theory: some are advocates of evidentialism, while others are critics. This provides readers with a comprehensive, and cutting-edge, understanding of this epistemic theory. Overall, the book is organized into six parts: The Nature of Evidence, Understanding Evidentialism, Problems for Evidentialism, Evidentialism and Social Epistemology, New Directions for Evidentialism, and Explanationist Evidentialism. Readers will find insightful discussion on such issues as the ontology of evidence, phenomenal dogmatism, how experiences yield evidence, the new evil demon problem, probability, norms of credibility, intellectual virtues, wisdom, epistemic justification, and more. This title provides authoritative coverage of evidentialism, from the latest developments to the most recent philosophical criticisms. It will appeal to researchers and graduate students searching for more information on this prominent epistemological theory.

This monograph presents new ideas in nomic truth approximation. It features original and revised papers from a (formal) philosopher of science who has studied the concept for more than 35 years.Over the course of time, the author's initial ideas evolved. He discovered a way to generalize his first theory of nomic truth approximation, viz. by dropping an unnecessarily strong assumption. In particular, he first believed to have to assume that theories were maximally specific in the sense that they did not only exclude certain conceptual possibilities, but also that all non-excluded possibilities were in fact claimed to be nomically possible.Now, he argues that the exclusion claim alone, or for that matter the inclusion claim alone, is sufficient to motivate the formal definition of being closer to the nomic truth. The papers collected here detail this generalized view of nomic truthlikeness or verisimilitude.Besides this, the book presents, in adapted form, the relation with several other topics, such as, domain revision, aesthetic progress, abduction, inference to the best explanation, pragmatic aspects, probabilistic methods, belief revision and epistemological positions, notably constructive realism.Overall, the volume presents profound insight into nomic truth approximation. This idea seeks to determine how one theory can be closer to, or more similar to, the truth about what is nomically, e.g. physically, chemically, biologically, possible than another theory. As a result, it represents the ultimate goal of theory oriented empirical science.Theo Kuipers is the author of Studies in Inductive Probability and Rational Expectation (1978), From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (2000) and Structures in Science (2001). He is the volume-editor of the Handbook on General Philosophy of Science (2007).In 2005 there appeared two volumes of Essays in Debate with Theo Kuipers, entitled Confirmation, Empirical Progress, and Truth Approximation and Cognitive Structures in Scientific Inquiry.