Bøger i Texts in Philosophy S. serien

Knowledge and BeliefAn Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notionsby Jaakko HintikkaPrepared by Vincent F. Hendricks & John SymonsIn 1962 Jaakko Hintikka published Knowledge and Belief: An Introductionto the Logic of the Two Notions with Cornell University Press. Almostevery paper or a book on epistemic and doxastic logic that has appearedsince then has referred to this seminal work. Although many philosophersworking in logic, epistemology, game-theory, economics, computer scienceand linguistics mention the book, it is very likely that most have neverliterally had their hands on it, much less owned a copy. After a fourthprinting in 1969, Knowledge and Belief went out of print and as many ofus have found to our dismay, it has become increasingly difficult tofind used copies at our local shops or online. It is our pleasure toprovide the interdisciplinary community with this reprint edition ofKnowledge and Belief.Knowledge and Belief is a classic on which a generation - my generation- of epistemologists cut their teeth. This reissue is welcome. It willprovide something for the next generation to chew on. - Fred Dretske,Duke UniversityIt is wonderful to see this classic being reissued after so many yearsout of print. It was extremely influential in its day; its influencecontinues to this day, through the impact of epistemic logic in fieldsas diverse distributed computing, artificial intelligence, and gametheory. This reissue should make it possible for a new generation ofresearchers to appreciate Hintikka's groundbreaking work. - JosephHalpern, Cornell University

This volume is a collection of papers that explore various areas of common interest between philosophy, computing, and cognition. The book illustrates the rich intrigue of this fascinating recent intellectual story. It begins by providing a new analysis of the ideas related to computer ethics, such as the role in information technology of the so-called moral mediators, the relationship between intelligent machines and warfare, and the new opportunities offered by telepresnece, for example in teaching and learning. The book also ties together the concerns of epistemology and logic, showing, for example, the connections between computers, bio-robotics, and scientific research and between computational programs and scientific discovery. Important results coming from recent computational models of deduction, the dynamic nature of meaning, and the role of reasoning and learning in spatial, visual and exemplar-based compuational frameworks are also addressed. Some stimulating papers carefully study how the interplay between computing and philosophy has also shed new light on the role of rational acceptance in the logic of belief and on the status of old philosophical topics like embodiment and consciousness, the role of information and the problem of realism in the new digital world. Finally, a considerable part of the book addresses the role of intenal and external representations in scientific reasoning and creative inferences as well as the place of manipulation of objects and artifacts in human cognition. Taking these topics together this book describes an aspect of an emerging agenda which is likely to carry the interaction between philosophy, cognition and computing forward into the twenty-first century. The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the International European Conference Computing and Philosophy, E-CAP2004, Italy, held at the University of Paiva, Paiv, Italy in June 2004, chaired by Lorenzo Magnani.

Causal inference is perhaps the most important form ofreasoning in the sciences. A panoply of disciplines, ranging fromepidemiology to biology, from econometrics to physics, makeuse of probability and statistics in order to infer causalrelationships. However, the very foundations of causal inferenceare up in the air; it is by no means clear which methods of causalinference should be used, nor why they work when they do.This book brings philosophers and scientists together to tackle these important questions. The papers in this volume shed light on the relationship between causality and probability and the application of these concepts within the sciences. With its interdisciplinary perspective and its careful analysis, "Causality and Probability in the Sciences" heralds the transition of causal inference from an art to a science.

The realism/anti-realism debate is one of the traditional central themes in the philosophy of mathematics. The controversies about the existence of the irrational numbers, the complex numbers, the infintesimals, etc. will be familiar to all who are acquainted with the history of mathematics.This book aims mainly at presenting and defending a non-Platonist form of mathematical structural realism which, in the respect of the history of mathematics, harmonizes with a plausible epistemology that naturally arises from it."Gianluigi Oliveri's book embodies a masterly survey of salient questions in the philosophy of mathematics, and propounds a challenging, if controversial, theory of the subject." Michael Dummett