Modal Justification via Theories

Modal Justification via Theories PDF Author: Bob Fischer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331949127X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
This monograph articulates and defends a theory-based epistemology of modality (TEM). 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. The book has two parts. In the first, the author motivates TEM, sets out the view in detail, and defends it against a number of objections. In the second, the author considers whether TEM is worth accepting. To argue that it is, the author sets out criteria for choosing between modal epistemologies, concluding that TEM has a number of important virtues. However, the author also concedes that TEM is cautious: it probably implies that we are not justified in believing some interesting modal claims that we might take ourselves to be justified in believing. This raises a question about TEM's relationship to Peter van Inwagen's modal skepticism, which the author explores in detail. As it turns out, TEM offers a better route to modal skepticism than the one that van Inwagen provides. But rather than being a liability, the author argues that this is a further advantage of the view. Moreover, he argues that other popular modal epistemologies do not fare better: they cannot easily secure more extensive modal justification than TEM. The book concludes by clarifying TEM’s relationship to the other modal epistemologies on offer, contending that TEM need not be a rival to those views, but can instead be a supplement to them.

Modal Justification via Theories

Modal Justification via Theories PDF Author: Bob Fischer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331949127X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
This monograph articulates and defends a theory-based epistemology of modality (TEM). 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. The book has two parts. In the first, the author motivates TEM, sets out the view in detail, and defends it against a number of objections. In the second, the author considers whether TEM is worth accepting. To argue that it is, the author sets out criteria for choosing between modal epistemologies, concluding that TEM has a number of important virtues. However, the author also concedes that TEM is cautious: it probably implies that we are not justified in believing some interesting modal claims that we might take ourselves to be justified in believing. This raises a question about TEM's relationship to Peter van Inwagen's modal skepticism, which the author explores in detail. As it turns out, TEM offers a better route to modal skepticism than the one that van Inwagen provides. But rather than being a liability, the author argues that this is a further advantage of the view. Moreover, he argues that other popular modal epistemologies do not fare better: they cannot easily secure more extensive modal justification than TEM. The book concludes by clarifying TEM’s relationship to the other modal epistemologies on offer, contending that TEM need not be a rival to those views, but can instead be a supplement to them.

Cosmological Fine-Tuning Arguments

Cosmological Fine-Tuning Arguments PDF Author: Jason Waller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351725475
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
If the physical constants, initial conditions, or laws of nature in our universe had been even slightly different, then the evolution of life would have been impossible. This observation has led many philosophers and scientists to ask the natural next question: why is our universe so "fine-tuned" for life? The debates around this question are wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary, complicated, technical, and (at times) heated. This study is a comprehensive investigation of these debates and the many metaphysical and epistemological questions raised by cosmological fine-tuning. Waller’s study reaches two significant and controversial conclusions. First, he concludes that the criticisms directed at the "multiverse hypothesis" by theists and at the "theistic hypothesis" by naturalists are largely unsuccessful. Neither of these options can plausibly be excluded. Choosing between them seems to turn on primitive (and so hard to justify) metaphysical intuitions. Second, in order to break the philosophical deadlock, Waller moves the debate from the level of universes to the level of possible worlds. Arguing that possible worlds are also "fine-tuned" in an important and interesting sense, Waller concludes that the only plausible explanation for the fine-tuning of the actual world is to posit the existence of some kind of "God-like-thing."

Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology

Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology PDF Author: Anand Jayprakash Vaidya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000840433
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This book collects original essays on the epistemology of modality and related issues in modal metaphysics and philosophical methodology. The contributors utilize both the newer "metaphysics-first" and the more traditional "epistemology-first" approaches to these issues. The chapters on modal epistemology mostly focus on the problem of how we can gain knowledge of possibilities, which have never been actualized, or necessities which are not provable either by logico-mathematical reasoning or by linguistic competence alone. These issues are closely related to some of the central issues in philosophical methodology, notably: to what extent is the armchair methodology of philosophy a reliable guide for the formation of beliefs about what is possible and necessary. This question also relates to the nature of thought experiments that are extensively used in science and philosophy. Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, as well as those whose work is concerned with philosophical methodology more generally.

Modal Epistemology After Rationalism

Modal Epistemology After Rationalism PDF Author: Bob Fischer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319443097
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This collection highlights the new trend away from rationalism and toward empiricism in the epistemology of modality. Accordingly, the book represents a wide range of positions on the empirical sources of modal knowledge. Readers will find an introduction that surveys the field and provides a brief overview of the work, which progresses from empirically-sensitive rationalist accounts to fully empiricist accounts of modal knowledge. Early chapters focus on challenges to rationalist theories, essence-based approaches to modal knowledge, and the prospects for naturalizing modal epistemology. The middle chapters present positive accounts that reject rationalism, but which stop short of advocating exclusive appeal to empirical sources of modal knowledge. The final chapters mark a transition toward exclusive reliance on empirical sources of modal knowledge. They explore ways of making similarity-based, analogical, inductive, and abductive arguments for modal claims based on empirical information. Modal epistemology is coming into its own as a field, and this book has the potential to anchor a new research agenda.

Epistemic Uses of Imagination

Epistemic Uses of Imagination PDF Author: Christopher Badura
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000399060
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book explores a topic that has recently become the subject of increased philosophical interest: how can imagination be put to epistemic use? Though imagination has long been invoked in contexts of modal knowledge, in recent years philosophers have begun to explore its capacity to play an epistemic role in a variety of other contexts as well. In this collection, the contributors address an assortment of issues relating to epistemic uses of imagination, and in particular, they take up the ways in which our imaginings must be constrained so as to justify beliefs and give rise to knowledge. These constraints are explored across several different contexts in which imagination is appealed to for justification, namely reasoning, modality and modal knowledge, thought experiments, and knowledge of self and others. Taken as a whole, the contributions in this volume break new ground in explicating when and how imagination can be epistemically useful. Epistemic Uses of Imagination will be of interest to scholars and advanced students who are working on imagination, as well as those working more broadly in epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind. Chapters 6 and 12 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Science and Necessity

Science and Necessity PDF Author: John Bigelow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521390279
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This book espouses an innovative theory of scientific realism in which due weight is given to mathematics and logic. The authors argue that mathematics can be understood realistically if it is seen to be the study of universals, of properties and relations, of patterns and structures, the kinds of things which can be in several places at once. Taking this kind of scientific platonism as their point of departure, they show how the theory of universals can account for probability, laws of nature, causation, and explanation, and explore the consequences in all these fields. This will be an important book for all philosophers of science, logicians, and metaphysicians, and their graduate students. The readership will also include those outside philosophy interested in the interrelationship of philosophy and science.

Issues in Logic, Probability, Combinatorics, and Chaos Theory: 2013 Edition

Issues in Logic, Probability, Combinatorics, and Chaos Theory: 2013 Edition PDF Author:
Publisher: ScholarlyEditions
ISBN: 1490107509
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 1039

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Book Description
Issues in Logic, Probability, Combinatorics, and Chaos Theory: 2013 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ book that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Approximation Theory. The editors have built Issues in Logic, Probability, Combinatorics, and Chaos Theory: 2013 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Approximation Theory in this book to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Logic, Probability, Combinatorics, and Chaos Theory: 2013 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

Computer Science - Theory and Applications

Computer Science - Theory and Applications PDF Author: Edward A. Hirsch
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540797084
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The Third International Computer Science Symposium in Russia (CSR-2008) was held during June 7–12, 2008 in Moscow, Russia, hosted by Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for System P- gramming of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Open Education,andInstitute ofNew Technologies.It was the third event in the series of regular international meetings following CSR-2006 in St. Petersburg and CSR-2007 in Ekaterinburg. The symposiumwascomposedof twotracks:Theory andApplications/Te- nology.The opening lecture was given by Avi Wigdersonand eight other invited plenarylecturesweregivenby EricAllender,ZurabKhasidashvili,LeonidLevin, Pavel Pudl´ ak, Florin Spanachi, Limsoon Wong, Yuri Zhuravlev and Konstantin Rudakov, and Uri Zwick. This volume contains the accepted papers of both tracks and also some of the abstracts of the invited speakers. The scope of the proposed topics for the symposium was quite broad and covered basically all areas of computer science and its applications. We received 103 papers in total. The Program Committee of the Theory Track selected 27 papers out of 62 submissions. The Program Committee of the Applications/Technology Track selected 6 papers out of 41 submissions.

Epistemic Uses of Imagination

Epistemic Uses of Imagination PDF Author: Christopher Badura
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000399036
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This book explores a topic that has recently become the subject of increased philosophical interest: how can imagination be put to epistemic use? Though imagination has long been invoked in contexts of modal knowledge, in recent years philosophers have begun to explore its capacity to play an epistemic role in a variety of other contexts as well. In this collection, the contributors address an assortment of issues relating to epistemic uses of imagination, and in particular, they take up the ways in which our imaginings must be constrained so as to justify beliefs and give rise to knowledge. These constraints are explored across several different contexts in which imagination is appealed to for justification, namely reasoning, modality and modal knowledge, thought experiments, and knowledge of self and others. Taken as a whole, the contributions in this volume break new ground in explicating when and how imagination can be epistemically useful. Epistemic Uses of Imagination will be of interest to scholars and advanced students who are working on imagination, as well as those working more broadly in epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind.

Philosophical Approaches to the Foundations of Logic and Mathematics

Philosophical Approaches to the Foundations of Logic and Mathematics PDF Author: Marcin Trepczyński
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004445951
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Eleven papers collected in the volume Philosophical Approaches to the Foundations of Logic and Mathematics address various aspects of the “roots”, basic concepts and the nature of logic and mathematics. Taken together, these papers reveal how many serious philosophical problems lie at the foundations of logic and mathematics. The topics discussed in this volume include: transcending anti-foundationalism and two concurrent trends of "anthropological" and "practical" understanding of the foundations of mathematics, new approaches to mathematical realism, the “roots” of logic in a genetic perspective, the primacy of truth or satisfaction, and the “effectiveness” of mathematics in terms of categorical semantics.