This book, the author tells us, is "about some of the ways in which the techniques of modal logic may be used to study concepts of proof theory first studied in Gödel's famous paper on the incompleteness of arithmetic." Those who, with Quine and others, think that modal logic was conceived in sin, may well doubt that its techniques will throw anything but more Dunkel on proof theory. The author attempts to show otherwise and construes "☐A", where " ☐" is (...) the symbol for modal necessity, in terms of Gödel's arithmetical predicate "Bew" for provability. The formulae in which this latter occurs are perfectly well-defined, we are told, and thus no sin can be attached to this identification. But are such formulae perfectly well-defined? Syntactically, yes; but semantically? It is usually assumed that they are, but the full array of semantical principles needed to carry out Gödel's arithmetization seems never to have been given in full detail. And it is just possible that a fallacy of ambiguity lies concealed in such formulae, as F. Rivetti-Barbò has contended and Lesniewski appears to have hinted at. In any case, not all is happy philosophically and to everyone's satisfaction, at the very foundation of Gödel's method. Although the author purports to have proved here a number of seemingly interesting and sophisticated theorems, the real semantical issues involved seem to have been skirted.--R.M.M. (shrink)

This is the collection of essays presented to Bochenski on his 60th birthday, and it contains, as a mirror of Bochenski's own work, a broad spectrum of studies ranging from formal logic and history of logic, to the philosophy of logic and language, and to the methodology of explanation in Greek philosophy. Of the seventeen articles, these are some of the more important to the reviewer: "Betrachtungen zum Sequenzen Kalkül" by Paul Bernays, which is an extensive study of Gentzen-type formulations (...) of logic; "Remarks on Formal Deduction," H. B. Curry, a further discussion of sequenzen-logics; "Marginalia on Gentzen's Sequenzen Kalkül" by Hughes Leblanc; "Method and Logic in Presocratic Explanation," Jerry Stannard; "On the Logic of Preference and Choice," H. S. Houthakker, a suggestive presentation of decision and utility theory in logical form; "Leibniz's Law in Belief Contexts," Chisholm; "On Ontology and the Province of Logic," R. M. Martin; and "N. A. Vasilev and the Development of Many-valued Logics," G. L. Kline, an important addition to the history of logic. Other contributors are: Storrs McCall, Albert Menne, E. W. Beth, Benson Mates, Ivo Thomas, J. F. Staal, F. R. Barbò, A.-T. Tymieniecka, and N. M. Luyten. There is a bibliography of Bochenski's writings through 1962.—P. J. M. (shrink)

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Brain-centered theories of consciousness seem to face insuperable difficulties. While some philosophers now doubt that the hard problem of consciousness will ever be solved, others call for radically new approaches to conscious experience. In this article I resurrect a largely forgotten approach to consciousness known as neorealism. According to neorealism, consciousness is merely a part, or cross-section, of the environment. Neorealism implies that all conscious experiences, veridical or otherwise, exist outside of the brain and are wholly independent of being perceived (...) or not; nonveridical perceptions of the environment over an arbitrarily short period of time are supposed to be objective constituents of the environment over a more extended time scale. I argue here that neorealism fares at least as well as brain-centered theories of consciousness on a number of fundamental issues. On one fundamental issue—the nature of the relation between veridical and nonveridical perceptions—neorealism outperforms its competitors. (shrink)

The leading arguments of Anquetil-Duperron's Legislation Orientale (1778) are analysed as a sustained attempt by this early Indologist to refute Montesquieu's influential theory of oriental despotism with respect to the Muslim regimes of Turkey, Persia and India (the Mogul empire). Anquetil adduces literary evidence and his own observations to refute the claim that Asian governments are invariably arbitrary, lawless and without property rights. Rather, similarities in these basic respects between European and Asian societies underline the common humanity of their inhabitants, (...) in keeping with the convictions of Enlightenment humanism and contrary to some eighteenth-century justifications for European empires. (shrink)

Exploring the connection between Bentham and Byron forged by the Greek struggle for independence, this book focuses on the activities of the London Greek Committee, supposedly founded by disciples of Jeremy Bentham, which mounted the expedition on which Lord Byron ultimately met his death in Greece. Rosen's penetrating study provides a new assessment of British philhellenism and examines for the first time the relationship between Bentham's theory of constitutional government and the emerging liberalism of the 1820s. Breaking new ground in (...) the history of political ideas and culture in the early nineteenth century, Rosen advances striking new interpretations based on recently published texts and manuscript sources of the development of constitutional theory from Locke and Montesquieu, the conflicting strands of liberalism in the 1820s, and the response in Britain to strong claims for national self-determination in the Mediterranean basin. He sets out to distinguish between Bentham's theory and the ideological context against which it is usually interpreted. (shrink)