Written by philosophers, cosmologists, and physicists, this collection of essays deals with causality, which is a core issue for both science and philosophy. Readers will learn about different types of causality in complex systems and about new perspectives on this issue based on physical and cosmological considerations. In addition, the book includes essays pertaining to the problem of causality in ancient Greek philosophy, and to the problem of God's relation to the causal structures of nature viewed in the light of (...) contemporary physics and cosmology. [Subject: Philosophy, Cosmology, Physics, Religious Studies]. (shrink)

The March 2002 symposium Human Dignity and Reproductive Technology brought together philosophers, theologians, scientists, lawyers, and scholars from across the United States. The essays of this book are the contributions of the symposium's participants.

By delving into the history and development of logic from its beginnings to the modern era, George Englebretsen rehabilitates term logic and demonstrates that an enhanced traditional logic remains a viable possibility. Taking inspiration from Fred Sommers' work, he creates an updated and fascinating version of term logic; one he believes to be just as legitimate as, and in ways superior to, the currently predominant mathematical logic.

The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.

Many systems of logic diagrams have been offered both historically and more recently. Each of them has clear limitations. An original alternative system is offered here. It is simpler, more natural, and more expressively and inferentially powerful. It can be used to analyze not only syllogisms but arguments involving relational terms and unanalyzed statement terms.

Es läßt sich zeigen‚ daß Leibniz' These, singuläre Subjekte könnten in gleicher Weise entweder als partikulär oder universell verstanden werden ‚ eine Folgerung aus zwei anderen Leibnizschen Thesen ist: 1. daß die Wahrheit eines Satzes eine Sache der Enthaltensbeziehung zwischen der Denotation oder Bedeutung seines Subjekt-und Prädikatbegriffs ist, und 2. daß der Begriff des Individuums vollständig ist. Hieraus ergibt sich u. a.‚ daß die These der wilden Quantität verstanden werden kann als integraler Teil von Leibniz' allgemeinem logisch-metaphysischen Programm.

Fred Sommers passed away in October of 2014 in his 92nd year. Having begun his teaching at Columbia University, he eventually became the Harry A. Wolfson Chair in Philosophy at Brandeis University, where he taught from 1963 to 1993. During his long and productive career, Sommers authored or co-authored over 50 books, articles, reviews, etc., presenting his ideas on numerous occasions throughout North America and Europe. His work was characterized by a commitment to the preservation and application of historical insights (...) and to the value of a well-articulated, coherent logical system. He was recognized for his independence and refusal to accept any view on the basis of authority alone. This made him a formidable critic but accounted in part for his many innovative and original ideas. In spite of his general contrariness in logic, Sommers earned the respect of the majority of his contemporaries, including Russell, Quine, van Benthem, Hacking, Suppes, and Strawson. In 2005, he was the subjec... (shrink)

The systematic account of deductive reasoning and the development of a formal logic to reveal the principles of such reasoning began with Aristotle's syllogistic. It was a term logic, a logic that dominated the field until the rise of modern predicate logic at the end of the Nineteenth century. That system quickly supplanted the old logic of terms. However, in the middle of the Twentieth century Fred Sommers took up the challenge to build a revised and strengthened term logic, one (...) fit to challenge the hegemony of predicate logic. The aim was to devise a formal logic that could better serve as the logic of natural language. -/- In recent years a new group of logicians have taken this version of term logic into many new directions. This book presents here for the first time some of the best examples of their work with new essays by philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, computational theorists, and historians of logic. The topics addressed include relative terms, logical copulation, Aristotelian diagrams, modality, truth, semantics, epistemic term logic, non-classical quantifiers, and more. (shrink)

This text presents a number of reasons for the reinstatement of a traditional terminist logic, contributing to the ongoing debate concerning the proper connections between formal logic, natural language, artificial reasoning, and mathematics.

Der Aufsatz wendet sich gegen die verbreitete Auffassung, Frege sei der Vater der modernen mathematischen Logik und Leibniz sei sein berühmtester Vorlaufer. Leibniz kann nur in einem sehr allgemeinen Sinne als Vorlaufer der mathematischen Logik in Anspruch genommen werden. Er mufß vielmehr als größter Vertreter der traditionellen Syllogistik bezeichnet werden. Denn Leibniz geht mit der Tradition aus vom kategorischen Satz, in welchem ein Prädikat von einem Subjekt ausgesagt wird. Im Gegensattz dazu legt Frege seiner Logik die Korrelation zwischen Fünktion und (...) Argument zugrunde. Fur Leibniz und die Tradition sind daher die Quantoren, die in der mathematischen Logik eine zentrale Rolle spielen, von untergeordneter Bedeutung. Für die Syllogistik bereiten Relationssätze besondere Probleme. Daß Leibniz versucht hat, diese Satze in die Syllogistik einzubeziehen, zeigt, daft er die Leistungsfahigkeit der formalen Logik besser erkannt hat als alle anderen. Fred Sommers und seine Schule haben Leibniz' Pläne zur Vollendung geführt. (shrink)

This essay argues that propositions are made true by facts. A proposition is the sense expressed by a statement (sentence token used to make a truth claim). Facts are positive or negative constitutive properties of the domain of discourse (usually the actual world). The presence of horses is a positive constitutive property of the world; the absence of unicorns is a negative one. This notion of constitutive properties accords well with the Hume-Kant claim that existence is not a property of (...) any individual said to exist. While Frege held existence to be a property of concepts and Russell held it to be a property of propositional functions, our view sees existence as a property of a domain of discourse. To say that Native Dancer exists is simply to say that the world is characterized by the presence of Native Dancer; to say that Pegasus does not exist is to say the world is characterized by the absence of Pegasus. Such properties of presence and absence are facts. Facts make true propositions true; nothing makes false propositions false (they simply fail to be made true). Facts are not items in the world; they are (constitutive) properties of the world. (shrink)

I argue here that recent discussions of f. sommers' "rule for enforcing ambiguity" have been mistaken on one of two grounds. either they misrepresent the sense of the rule or they misunderstand its intent. the rule is neither a sense rule nor a categorial rule, but a 'translation' rule relating senses of terms to categories of individuals. rather than a test for term ambiguity the rule is a test for theory coherence. finally, i show that there are many possible ways (...) of applying the rule. (shrink)

I argue here that r. Van straaten's four modifications of f. Sommers' 'rule for enforcing ambiguity' are based upon a misunderstanding of the basis of the rule and a failure to see the spanning/predicability distinction. The effect is that none of van straaten's several counterexamples are telling against the rule. In place of van straaten's modifications I offer the following simple but important changes in the rule: the restriction of things to individuals and the reading of 'makes sense to predicate' (...) and similar phrases in terms of the spanning relation. (shrink)

In order to confirm any statement of the form A are B we consider a sufficiently large number of A in order to check them for having or failing to have property B. But logic leads us to believe that A are B is equivalent to non-B are non-A. If this is so then it seems reasonable to suppose that we confirm and in the same way. Whatever set of things we consider for confirming one must be the same set (...) that we consider for the other. Yet in confirming the set considered seems to be the set of A, while in confirming the set considered seems to be the set of non-B. How can two logically equivalent statements be confirmable in different ways? (shrink)