Of the four chapters in this book, the first two discuss (albeit in consider ably modified form) matters previously discussed in my papers 'On the Logic of Conditionals' 1] and 'Probability and the Logic of Conditionals' 2], while the last two present essentially new material. Chapter I is relatively informal and roughly parallels the first of the above papers in discussing the basic ideas of a probabilistic approach to the logic of the indicative conditional, according to which these constructions do not have truth values, but they do have probabilities (equal to conditional...

These two volumes contain all of my articles published between 1956 and 1975 which might be of interest to readers in the English-speaking world. The first three essays in Vol. 1 deal with historical themes. In each case I have attempted a rational reconstruction which, as far as possible, meets con temporary standards of exactness. In The Problem of Universals Then and Now some ideas of W.V. Quine and N. Goodman are used to create a modem sketch of the history of the debate on universals beginning with Plato and ending with Hao Wang's System: E. The second article concerns Kant's Philosophy...

This book is intended to serve as an advanced text and reference work on modal logic, a subject of growing importance which has applications to philosophy and linguistics. Although it is based mainly on research which I carried out during the years 1969-1973, it also includes some related results obtained by other workers in the field (see the refer- ences in Part 7). Parts 0, 1 and 2, can be used as the basis of a one year graduate course in modal logic. The material which they contain has been taught in such courses at Stanford since 1970. The remaining parts of the book contain more than...

Proceedings of the Conference for Formal Methods in the Methodology of Emperical Sciences, Warsaw, June 17-21, 1974, Poland.

1. A WORD ABOUT PRESUPPOSITIONS This book is addressed to philosophers, and not necessarily to those philosophers whose interests and competence are largely mathematical or logical in the formal sense. It deals for the most part with problems in the theory of partial judgment. These problems are naturally formulated in numerical and logical terms, and it is often not easy to formulate them precisely otherwise. Indeed, the involvement of arithmetical and logical concepts seems essential to the philosophies of mind and action at just the point where they become concerned with partial judgment...

This anthology consists of a collection of papers on the nature of dis- positions and the role of disposition concepts in scientific theories. I have tried to make the collection as representative as possible, except that problems specifically connected with dispositions in various special sciences are relatively little discussed. Most of these articles have been previously published. The papers by Mackie, Essler and Trapp, Fetzer (in Section 11), Levi, and Tuomela appear here for the first time, and are simultaneously published in Synthese 34, No. 4, which is a special issue on dispositions....

This book grew out of previously published papers of mine composed over a period of years; they have been reworked (sometimes beyond recognition) so as to form a reasonably coherent whole. Part One treats of informative inference. I argue (Chapter 2) that the traditional principle of induction in its clearest formulation (that laws are confirmed by their positive cases) is clearly false. Other formulations in terms of the 'uniformity of nature' or the 'resemblance of the future to the past' seem to me hopelessly unclear. From a Bayesian point of view, 'learning from experience' goes by...

Logical empiricism - not to be confused with logical positivism (see pp. 40-44) - is a movement which has left an indelible mark on twentieth century philosophy; Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953) was one of its found ers and one of its most productive advocates. His sudden and untimely death in 1953 halted his work when he was at the height of his intellectual powers; nevertheless, he bequeathed to us a handsome philosophical inheritance. At the present time, twenty-five years later, we can survey our heritage and see to what extent we have been enriched. The present collection of essays...

Simple seeing. Plain talking. Language in use and persons in action. These are among the themes of Virgil Aldrich's writings, from the 1930's onward. Throughout these years, he has been an explorer of conceptual geography: not as a foreign visitor studying an alien land, but close up 'in the language in which we live, move, and have our being'. This is his work. It is clear to those who know him best that he also has fun at it. Yet, in the terms of his oft-cited distinction, it is equally clear that he is to be counted not among the funsters of philosophy, but among its most committed...

Modern logic has Wldergone some remarkable developments in the last hun- dred years. These have contributed to the extraordinary use of formal logic which has become essentially the concern of mathematicians. This has led to attempts to identify logic with formal logic. The claim has even been made that all non-formal reasoning, to the extent that it cannot be formalized, no longer belongs to logic. This conception leads to a genuine impoverishment of logic as well as to a narrow conception of reason. It means that as soon as demonstrative proofs are no longer available reason will no longer...