Thursday, May 29, 2008

YouTube Classics

On the Ideas of Quine: Section 1


Hilary Putnam on the Philosophy of Science: Section 1


Searle on the Philosophy of Language : Section 1



Ayer on Frege and Russell :

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Lucie Menager

lundi prochain 26 mai de 14h à 16h dans la grande salle de l'IHPST, Philform reçoit Lucie Ménager (Paris II): "La connaissance interactive en économie et en théorie des jeux"

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

P. Mancosu

La prochaine séance du séminaire général de l'IHPST se tiendra le jeudi 22 mai (à l'IHPST) de 11H à 13H. Paolo Mancosu (Université de Berkeley) fera une conférence sur le sujet suivant :
"Quine and Tarski on nominalism"

Le même jour à l'ENS, salle Weil à 16h, se tiendra la première séance de son séminaire sur les théories de la vérité.

Abstract (Quine and Tarski on nominalism):

Quine and Tarski were kindred philosophical spirits. They rejected the
analytic/synthetic distinction and shared a strong distaste for modal
notions. Moreover, both had nominalistic leanings. In this talk I
trace the nominalistic engagement of these two giants of contemporary
analytic philosophy. Using recently discovered materials from the
Quine archive at Harvard, I begin by describing Quine's engagement
with nominalism up to 1940. I will then summarize the impact of the
1940-1941 discussions on nominalism between Carnap, Quine and Tarski
and mention their influence on Goodman. The third part of the talk
will be on Quine's allegiance to nominalism and his subsequent
reluctant acceptance of Platonism. The fourth part of the talk will
then focus on Tarski's defense of nominalism in Amersfoort in 1953.
Finally, I will compare Quine's and Tarski's approaches to nominalism
with some contemporary nominalistic programs (Field, Hellman etc.)

Monday, May 19, 2008

Albert J.J. Angelberger

Albert J.J. Angelberger (Salzburg) est l'invité du séminaire Philform ce lundi 19 mai 2008 : "Dynamic Deontic Logic".

Friday, May 16, 2008

Handbook on the philosophy of information

Versions of the chapters are online here.
"This handbook is one volume in a 14 volumes set entitled Handbook of the philosophy of science, dealing with all aspects of the philosophy of science.
This multi-volume Handbook is to be published by Elsevier under the general editorship of Dov Gabbay, Paul Thagard, and John Woods. Editors : Johan van Benthem, Pieter Adriaans

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Thomas Forster

Found on T.E. Forster's page.



As a matter of fact, I'm reading Forster's nice book Logic, Induction, and Sets and was looking for a list of errata. A list that, unfortunately, I didn't find.
If you're familiar with the book, by the way, I was concerned with the second paragraph on page 59 : ok, on the third line, I guess, "continuous" should be replaced by "complete" and on the tenth line, it is the set of fn(x) for *n* in N that is of interest (I write fn(x) for the nth iteration of the function f). But on line 6-7, what's going on exactely ? Is it tacitly assumed that x is sound in the sense that x≤ f(x) [for the sup of {x, fx, etc} to be a fixed point of the continuous operator f defined on a poset assumed to be chain-complete] ? Or does it have something to do with inflationary functions, defined a few pages earlier ? The intuition on continuity is, I think, clear enough, but I'm a bit baffled by the details of the development of the discussion in this paragraph.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Abramsky & Jung on Domain Theory

A corrected and expanded version of Abramsky & Jung's survey for the Handbook for logic in computer sciences is available online: Domain Theory

Monday, May 05, 2008

M. Gomez-Torrente

Mercredi à 17h30 à l'IHPST, le séminaire Philmath reçoit M. Gomez-Torrente (Philosophie, Université de Mexico) :
"Rereading Tarski on Logical Consequence"

Le matin M. Gomez-Torrente donnera un premier exposé de 10h à 12h en salle de réunion du DEC-IJN, sur le thème
"The Sorites, Linguistic Preconceptions, and the Dual Picture of Vagueness".

Abstract ( Rereading Tarski on Logical Consequence):
I will argue against some recent defenses of the view that, in 1936, Tarski always required all interpretations of a language to share one same domain of quantification. I hope to offer a more detailed examination of some of the relevant textual evidence on the issue than in my earlier work. If time permits, I will also offer some new considerations on subsisting issues of interpretation concerning Tarski's views on the logical correctness of certain omega arguments, on the Tarskian proof that Etchemendy took to be modal and fallacious, or on Tarski's appeals to the "common concept of consequence".