Philosophical Logic Research Articles

On Putnam’s Proof of the Impossibility of a Nominalistic Physics

In his book Philosophy of Logic, Putnam (1971) presents a short argument which reads like—and indeed, can be reconstructed as—a formal proof that a nominalistic physics is impossible. The aim of this paper is to examine Putnam’s proof and show that it is not compelling. The precise way in which the proof fails yields insight into the relation that a nominalistic physics should bear to standard physics and into Putnam’s indispensability argument.

Plurals and Mereology

In linguistics, the dominant approach to the semantics of plurals appeals to mereology. However, this approach has received strong criticisms from philosophical logicians who subscribe to an alternative framework based on plural logic. In the first part of the article, we offer a precise characterization of the mereological approach and the semantic background in which the debate can be meaningfully reconstructed. In the second part, we deal with the criticisms and assess their logical, linguistic, and philosophical significance. We identify four main objections and show how each can be addressed. Finally, we compare the strengths and shortcomings of the mereological approach and plural logic. Our conclusion is that the former remains a viable and well-motivated framework for the analysis of plurals.

The logico-formalist turn in comparative and case study methods: a critical realist critique

ABSTRACT Comparative and case study researchers have responded to critiques of their methods by developing formal procedures to validate theoretical claims through set theoretical logics of causal conditions. This ‘logico-formalist turn’ has involved the stricter application of the schemas of set theory and the philosophy of logic to raise validation standards of theoretical and causal claims in comparative historical research. This paper critiques these solutions from a critical realist standpoint. It argues that the cost of such a defense has been the retention of positivist assumptions of causal inference and the downplaying of the importance of interpretive and theory-building work in comparative and case study research. By contrast, critical realism’s process of retroduction sees causal analysis not as proceeding inductively from empirical observation to causal proposition, but rather points out the constant epistemic shift from the level of empirical observation to that of the theoretical description of intransitive causal powers. The paper highlights the ways in which the meta-theoretical perspective of critical realism makes possible a full break with both positivism and the implicit empiricism of the logico-formalist turn.

Aspects of the Real Numbers: Putnam, Wittgenstein, and Nonextensionalism

AbstractI defend Putnam’s modal structuralist view of mathematics but reject his claims that Wittgenstein’s remarks on Dedekind, Cantor, and set theory are verificationist. Putnam’s “realistic realism” (1990–2016) showcases the plasticity of our “fitting” words to the world. The applications of this—in philosophy of language, mind, logic, and philosophy of computation—are robust. I defend Wittgenstein’s nonextensionalist understanding of the real numbers, showing how it fits Putnam’s view. Nonextensionalism and extensionalism about the real numbers are mathematically, philosophically, and logically robust, but the two perspectives are often confused with one another. I separate them, using Turing’s work as an example.

What Would a Phenomenology of Logic Look Like?

Abstract The phenomenological movement begins in the Prolegomena to Husserl’s Logical Investigations as a philosophy of logic. Despite this, remarkably little attention has been paid to Husserl’s arguments in the Prolegomena in the contemporary philosophy of logic. In particular, the literature spawned by Gilbert Harman’s work on the normative status of logic is almost silent on Husserl’s contribution to this topic. I begin by raising a worry for Husserl’s conception of ‘pure logic’ similar to Harman’s challenge to explain the connection between logic and reasoning. If logic is the study of the forms of all possible theories, it will include the study of many logical consequence relations; by what criteria, then, should we select one (or a distinguished few) consequence relation(s) as correct? I consider how Husserl might respond to this worry by looking to his late account of the ‘genealogy of logic’ in connection with Gurwitsch’s claim that ‘[i]t is to prepredicative perceptual experience … that one must return for a radical clarification and for the definitive justification of logic’. Drawing also on Sartre and Heidegger, I consider how prepredicative experience might constrain or guide our selection of a logical consequence relation and our understanding of connectives like implication and negation.

A “Return” to the Traditions of Philosophical Logic (Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries): A Return or a Transformation?

ABSTRACT This section reproduces the part of Bibler’s book Thinking as Creative Work (1975) that discusses the subject as a “microsocium” combining the rational intellect, reason, intelligence, and intuition. All of these were contained in and disappeared into thinking but were logically sensed as a combination of different logics. The philosopher’s task in relation to the human intellect was to realize and reproduce the interaction of these abilities into a unified action. Later in the book From the Doctrine of Science to the Logic of Culture (1991), Bibler analyzed Nicholas of Cusa’s logic in detail, where the intellect reconstructs all other cognitive abilities and endows them with historically inimitable content. Nicholas of Cusa calls logic a purely rational movement for freeing the power of the mind for properly logical transformations, ultimately linking the mind with ignorance. Later this section discusses the features of ancient, Renaissance, and early modern-era thought by turning to Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, in whose works the logical acquired a psychological justification. It was replaced by the logic of science, an analysis of which leads to the conviction that the advent of a new logic of culture is needed. Bibler shows that the logical intent of the Modern Philosophy was to order all of the previous logics into a continuous chain, which was justified by the very method of constructing scientific knowledge; logic thus became epistemology. Hegel was able to destroy all of the diversity of human abilities, incredibly expanding rational mind by introducing all of the definitions of cognition into it, but in the end it burst, revealing its truth as the truth of a holistic, dialectical reason. The development of a logic of structure, a logic of text, was a necessary process, but now we are addressing the ability to logically reproduce the predefinition of future logical systems. Now the logical development of the logic of text (formal logic) allows us to return to the potencies of philosophical logic of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and its radical transformation. This was outlined by Marx in his early writings and in his preparatory work for Capital. It became necessary and possible to master the internal logical dialogue developed by the modern era’s thought and to express it in the new logic, the logic of culture.

Subject Matter: A Modest Proposal

AbstractThe notion of subject matter is a key concern of contemporary philosophy of language and logic. A central task for a theory of subject matter is to characterise the notion of sentential subject matter, that is, to assign to each sentence of a given language a subject matter that may count as its subject matter. In this paper, we elaborate upon David Lewis’ account of subject matter. Lewis’ proposal is simple and elegant but lacks a satisfactory characterisation of sentential subject matter. Drawing on linguistic literature on focus and on the question under discussion, we offer a neo-Lewisian account of subject matter, which retains all the virtues of Lewis’ but also includes an attractive characterisation of sentential subject matter.

The Epistemology of Al-Ghazali’S Thought on Khabar Mutawatir And Khabar Ahad

Some scholars regarded al-Ghazali as not a well-known expert of the hadith. They even stated that the weakness of al-Ghazali lies in the science of hadith. This article aims to refute those opinions by providing al-Ghazali’s thoughts on hadith, mainly on khabar mutawatir and khabar ahad, as well as the epistemic paradigm that construct his idea on hadith. I argue that al-Ghazali’s thought on hadith has a wide approach i.e. the use of logical and philosophical approach. This shows that al-Ghazali tends to be more inclusive in understanding h}adi>th. Besides, I also argue that the use of logical and philosophical approach has to do with the political milieu where the Sunnite dynasty of Seljuq was in respond against the Shi‘ite Fatimid power of Egypt. The very intellectual milieu of the Fatimid dynasty was flourished by logic and Greek philosophy. As a Sunni defender of the Seljuq, it is a must to fight the intellectual Shi‘ite Isma’ilite of the Fatimid by mastering logic and philosophy. Thus, al-Ghazali’s usage of both approaches in the science of h}adi>th was to justify and defend the authority of the Sunni Ash‘ari of the Seljuq dynasty.

The Machine Scenario: A Computational Perspective on Alternative Representations of Indeterminism

In philosophical logic and metaphysics there is a long-standing debate around the most appropriate structures to represent indeterministic scenarios concerning the future. We reconstruct here such a debate in a computational setting, focusing on the fundamental difference between moment-based and history-based structures. Our presentation is centered around two versions of an indeterministic scenario in which a programmer wants a machine to perform a given task at some point after a specified time. One of the two versions includes an assumption about the future behaviour of the machine that cannot be encoded in any programming instruction; such version has models over history-based structures but no model over a moment-based structure. Therefore, our work adds a new stance to the debate: moment-based structures can be said to rule out certain indeterministic scenarios that are computationally unfeasible.

How Soviet Cold War Policies Fell Prey to the Temptations of Strategic Traps

The Cold War experience of the Soviet Union has brought about significant implications in terms contributing to the strategic thought. The Soviet strategic experience marked its place in history of strategic thought with its stress of disharmony between ideology and strategy. It indicated how a strategy under the yoke of an ideology may well impel a hegemonic power falling into strategic traps. The underlying cause of this fact was that the pre-eminence of ideological goals on the part of the Soviet regime involved much more sophisticated strategic adaptation capability which was extremely hard to achieve. Yet, her inner philosophic logic remained incoherent and weak in terms of finding correct the strategic responses faced with the dynamics of the Cold War.

Revenue Management: Estudo comparativo em hotéis de Florianópolis-SC

A competitividade do setor hoteleiro vem crescendo diariamente. Com o surgimento das práticas de Revenue Management, a maioria dos hotéis vem implantando essa ciência e utilizando suas técnicas para otimizar e aumentar sua receita. Este artigo objetivou analisar como é feita a operação de Revenue Management em três hotéis executivos da região central de Florianópolis (SC); verificando as semelhanças e diferenças entre um hotel independente, um pertencente a uma rede hoteleira nacional e outro de uma rede internacional. A metodologia utilizada foi uma pesquisa aplicada e a lógica filosófica seguida foi o método dedutivo. Quanto aos objetivos, a pesquisa possuí o caráter exploratório e descritivo. A amostra foi definida de maneira não-probabilística por julgamento. Foi realizada uma pesquisa bibliográfica sobre o assunto e uma entrevista semiestruturada de acordo com as teorias estudas. A análise dos dados foi feita de maneira qualitativa, por meio de análise de conteúdo. Pode-se destacar que as principais semelhanças encontradas entre os hotéis foram: formação acadêmica dos entrevistados, práticas para realizar a previsão da demanda, utilização de tarifas flutuantes, canais de distribuição e Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) mais utilizadas. Já algumas diferenças expressivas foram: a quanto tempo os hotéis utilizam RM, quantidade de níveis nas grades tarifárias e o tempo de antecedência que é feita a estratégia das tarifas do próximo ano.

The Logic in Philosophy of Science, by Hans Halvorson

<i>The Logic in Philosophy of Science</i>, by Hans Halvorson

Феномен правової логічної комунікації

The article focuses on one of the elements of legal communication normative culture of constructing narrative at the level of logic. The genesis of the maturation of theory and philosophy of logic is taken into account. The basic typical connections of the logic of the legal text with the norms in the statements of oral written legal discourses ah with the lexical

Editorial 37 1-2

The four research articles in this issue address various traditions in Islamic inquiry. Andrew F. March’s “Islamic Constitutionalism Before Sovereignty” explores an important moment in Islamic modernity for the purposes of drawing a contrast with twentieth-century, post-caliphal Islamist thought. He argues that although the debates of the 1860s and Ottoman constitutionalism do not lead directly to a non-sovereigntist political vision, they are representative of a pre-colonial (and thus, to a certain extent, pre-apologetic) Islamic thought that centralizes the public interest, the varieties of political judgment, and the compatibility of distinct kinds of expertise with a desacralized centralized authority. Atif Suhail Siddiqui’s “Theological and Intellectual Roots in Deobandi Thought” focuses on Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī and his Ḥujjat al-Islām. This text’s polemical methodology (critiquing and refuting Christian theological anthropology and Hindu mythology) presents a unique approach to philosophical dialectics, as based on propositional logic and pragmatic philosophy. Emad Hamdeh’s “Shaykh Google as Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿAṣr” argues that autodidactism in the traditional domains of hadith and fiqh, enabled by print media, is perceived by the ʿulamāʾ to be a threat to what they consider to be the “proper” understanding of religion, in that it constitutes a threat to traditional scholarly authority. He concludes: “This technological transformation creates competition over religious authority between ʿulamāʾ, who are trained in Islamic sciences, and religious activists, whose authority is based upon persuasion and the interpretation of texts they primarily access through print and the internet.” Finally, Akhmad Akbar Susamto’s “Toward a New Framework of Islamic Economic Analysis” proposes new conditions under which an economics can be considered “Islamic”, and then defines the scope of Islamic economics and its methods. He seeks to reinvigorate the field of Islamic economics and to build its body of knowledge.&#x0D;

THEOLOGICAL AND INTELLECTUAL ROOTS IN DEOBANDI THOUGHTS: A PARADIGM FROM MUḤAMMAD QĀSIM NĀNAWTAWĪ’S DISCOURSES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HIS ḤUJJAT AL-ISLĀM

This article focuses on one of the important books of Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī—Ḥujjat al-Islām. Many of his 32 books, epistles and letters are written in response to Christian and Hindu missionaries. From the perspective of neo-ʿilm al-kalām (Islamic scholastic theology) they have great importance. These are the works through which a lay reader can understand Nānawtawī’s methodology in polemics and his various dialectical aspects, which are based on propositional logic and pragmatic philosophy and differ from the early discourses of ʿilm al-kalām. Most of his works include his critiques and strong refutation of both Christian theological anthropology and Hindu mythology. This article examines a limited part of Nānawtawī’s dialectic discussions which include the existence of God, His essence, meaning of the monotheism, including evidence in support of monotheism and his refutation of the Trinity.

Correction to: On the Logical Philosophy of Assertive Graphs

This erratum is to correct in the paper of Daniele Chiffi and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, On the Logical Philosophy of Assertive Graphs.

İhvân-ı Safâ düşüncesinde müzik ve kosmos ilişkisi

İhvân-ı Safâ düşüncesinde müzik ve kosmos ilişkisi

On the Logical Philosophy of Assertive Graphs

The logic of assertive graphs (AGs) is a modification of Peirce’s logic of existential graphs (EGs), which is intuitionistic and which takes assertions as its explicit object of study. In this paper we extend AGs into a classical graphical logic of assertions (ClAG) whose internal logic is classical. The characteristic feature is that both AGs and ClAG retain deep-inference rules of transformation. Unlike classical EGs, both AGs and ClAG can do so without explicitly introducing polarities of areas in their language. We then compare advantages of these two graphical approaches to the logic of assertions with a reference to a number of topics in philosophy of logic and to their deep-inferential nature of proofs.

E. E. Constance Jones on the dualism of practical reason

ABSTRACT E. E. Constance Jones (1848–1922), a regular contributor to Mind and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and the author of several textbooks and a monograph, worked in both philosophical logic and ethics. The current paper focuses on Jones’ central contribution to ethics – her response to Sidgwick’s “dualism of practical reason”. Sidgwick held that practical reason has an allegiance to two distinct ‘methods’: self-love and benevolence. Yet, while both methods are independently rational, they may potentially come into conflict. This, for Jones, presented “the most important difficulty of the system of [Sidgwick’s] Universalistic Hedonism”. Jones returned to this problem a number of times in the course of her career. We discuss the evolution of her thinking on this problem and argue that her work presents an original and promising line of response to the dualism that worried Sidgwick.

Exactly true and non-falsity logics meeting infectious ones

In this paper, we study logical systems which represent entailment relations of two kinds. We extend the approach of finding ‘exactly true’ and ‘non-falsity’ versions of four-valued logics that emerged in series of recent works [Pietz & Rivieccio (2013). Nothing but the truth. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 42(1), 125–135; Shramko (2019). Dual-Belnap logic and anything but falsehood. Journal of Logics and their Applications, 6, 413–433; Shramko et al. (2017). First-degree entailment and its relatives. Studia Logica, 105(6), 1291–1317] to the case of infectious logics, namely to the case of Deutsch's logic introduced in Deutsch [Relevant analytic entailment. The Relevance Logic Newsletter, 2(1), 26–44; The completeness of S. Studia Logica, 38(2), 137–147]. The particular systems obtained in this way are and . We present them in the form of sequent calculi and prove corresponding soundness and completeness theorems. We illuminate the connection between , and two well-known systems, strong Kleene three-valued logic and Priest's Logic of Paradox . This connection allows us to investigate the characterisation of the entailment relations associated with and as well as to introduce the notion of ‘infectious analogue’ of a certain logic. We also study implicative extensions of and and prove soundness and completeness theorems for them as well.