A basic system of inductive logic; An axiomatic foundation for the logic of inductive generalization; A survey of inductive systems; On the condition of partial exchangeability; Representation theorems of the de finetti type; De finetti's generalizations of excahngeability; The structure of probabilities defined on first-order languages; A subjectivit's guide to objective chance.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Logic is a field studied mainly by researchers and students of philosophy, mathematics and computing. Inductive logic seeks to determine the extent to which the premisses of an argument entail its conclusion, aiming to provide a theory of how one should reason in the face of uncertainty. It has applications to decision making and artificial intelligence, as well as how scientists should reason when not in possession of the full facts. In this book, Jon Williamson embarks on a quest to find a general, reasonable, applicable inductive logic (GRAIL), all the while examining why pioneers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap did not entirely succeed in this task. Along the way he presents a general framework for the field, and reaches a new inductive logic, which builds upon recent developments in Bayesian epistemology (a theory about how strongly one should believe the various propositions that one can express). The book explores this logic in detail, discusses some key criticisms, and considers how it might be justified. Is this truly the GRAIL? Although the book presents new research, this material is well suited to being delivered as a series of lectures to students of philosophy, mathematics, or computing and doubles as an introduction to the field of inductive logic

3 in philosophy, and therefore in metaphilosophy, cannot be based on rules that avoid spending time on pseudo-problems. Of course, this implies that, if one succeeds in demonstrating convincingly the pseudo-character of a problem by giving its 'solution', the time spent on it need not be seen as wasted. We conclude this section with a brief statement of the criteria for concept explication as they have been formulated in several places by Carnap, Hempel and Stegmiiller. Hempel's account ([13J, Chapter 1) is still very adequate for a detailed introduction. The process of explication starts with the identification of one or more vague and, perhaps, ambiguous concepts, the so-called explicanda. Next, one tries to disentangle the ambiguities. This, however, need not be possible at once. Ultimately the explicanda are to be replaced (not necessarily one by one) by certain counterparts, the so-called explicata, which have to conform to four requirements. They have to be as precise as possible and as simple as possible. In addition, they have to be useful in the sense that they give rise to the formulation of theories and the solution of problems. The three requirements of preciseness, simplicity and usefulness. have of course to be pursued in all concept formation.

Pure inductive logic is the study of rational probability treated as a branch of mathematical logic. This monograph, the first devoted to this approach, brings together the key results from the past seventy years plus the main contributions of the authors and their collaborators over the last decade to present a comprehensive account of the discipline within a single unified context. The exposition is structured around the traditional bases of rationality, such as avoiding Dutch Books, respecting symmetry and ignoring irrelevant information. The authors uncover further rationality concepts, both in the unary and in the newly emerging polyadic languages, such as conformity, spectrum exchangeability, similarity and language invariance. For logicians with a mathematical grounding, this book provides a complete self-contained course on the subject, taking the reader from the basics up to the most recent developments. It is also a useful reference for a wider audience from philosophy and computer science.

Inductive Logic is number ten in the 11-volume Handbook of the History of Logic. While there are many examples were a science split from philosophy and became autonomous (such as physics with Newton and biology with Darwin), and while there are, perhaps, topics that are of exclusively philosophical interest, inductive logic — as this handbook attests — is a research field where philosophers and scientists fruitfully and constructively interact. This handbook covers the rich history of scientific turning points in Inductive Logic, including probability theory and decision theory. Written by leading researchers in the field, both this volume and the Handbook as a whole are definitive reference tools for senior undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in the history of logic, the history of philosophy, and any discipline, such as mathematics, computer science, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence, for whom the historical background of his or her work is a salient consideration. - Chapter on the Port Royal contributions to probability theory and decision theory - Serves as a singular contribution to the intellectual history of the 20th century - Contains the latest scholarly discoveries and interpretative insights

Twenty-nine collected essays represent a critical history of Shakespeare's play as text and as theater, beginning with Samuel Johnson in 1765, and ending with a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1991. The criticism centers on three aspects of the play: the love/friendship debate.

The first in-depth reference to the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, this encyclopedia brings together a team of leading scholars to provide nearly 150 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science. The areas covered include biology, chemistry, epistemology and metaphysics, physics, psychology and mind, the social sciences, and key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy. (Midwest).

Statisticians and philosophers of science have many common interests but restricted communication with each other. This volume aims to remedy these shortcomings. It provides state-of-the-art research in the area of philosophy of statistics by encouraging numerous experts to communicate with one another without feeling "restricted by their disciplines or thinking "piecemeal in their treatment of issues. A second goal of this book is to present work in the field without bias toward any particular statistical paradigm. Broadly speaking, the essays in this Handbook are concerned with problems of induction, statistics and probability. For centuries, foundational problems like induction have been among philosophers' favorite topics; recently, however, non-philosophers have increasingly taken a keen interest in these issues. This volume accordingly contains papers by both philosophers and non-philosophers, including scholars from nine academic disciplines. - Provides a bridge between philosophy and current scientific findings - Covers theory and applications - Encourages multi-disciplinary dialogue

This volume, the third in this Springer series, contains selected papers from the four workshops organized by the ESF Research Networking Programme "The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective" (PSE) in 2010: Pluralism in the Foundations of Statistics Points of Contact between the Philosophy of Physics and the Philosophy of Biology The Debate on Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences Historical Debates about Logic, Probability and Statistics The volume is accordingly divided in four sections, each of them containing papers coming from the workshop focussing on one of these themes. While the programme's core topic for the year 2010 was probability and statistics, the organizers of the workshops embraced the opportunity of building bridges to more or less closely connected issues in general philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and philosophy of the special sciences. However, papers that analyze the concept of probability for various philosophical purposes are clearly a major theme in this volume, as it was in the previous volumes of the same series. This reflects the impressive productivity of probabilistic approaches in the philosophy of science, which form an important part of what has become known as formal epistemology - although, of course, there are non-probabilistic approaches in formal epistemology as well. It is probably fair to say that Europe has been particularly strong in this area of philosophy in recent years.​