Readings in Formal Epistemology: Sourcebook

by Horacio Arló-Costa (Editor), Vincent F. Hendricks (Editor), Johan van Benthem (Editor), Henrik Boensvang (Contribution by), Rasmus K. Rendsvig (Contribution by)

Overview

This volume presents 38 classic texts in formal epistemology, and strengthens the ties between research into this area of philosophy and its neighbouring intellectual disciplines. The editors provide introductions to five subsections: Bayesian Epistemology, Belief Change, Decision Theory, Interactive Epistemology and Epistemic Logic.

'Formal epistemology' is a term coined in the late 1990s for a new constellation of interests in philosophy, the origins of which are found in earlier works of epistemologists, philosophers of science and logicians. It addresses a growing agenda of problems concerning knowledge, belief, certainty, rationality, deliberation, decision, strategy, action and agent interaction – and it does so using methods from logic, probability, computability, decision and game theory. The volume also includes a thorough index and suggestions for further reading, and thus offers a complete teaching and research package for students as well as research scholars of formal epistemology, philosophy, logic, computer science, theoretical economics and cognitive psychology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319204512
Publisher:	Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Series:	Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

The late Horacio Arló-Costa was Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. Arló-Costa served as editor for the Review of Symbolic Logic, as area editor in epistemology for Synthese and as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Vincent F. Hendricks is Director of the Center for Information and Bubble Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His recent publications include Handbook of Formal Philosophy (2012), Epistemic Logic: 5 Questions (2010), Probability and Statistics: 5 Questions (2009), Mainstream and Formal Epistemology (2007) and The Convergence of Scientific Knowledge (2001). Johan van Benthem is University Professor emeritus of pure and applied logic at the University of Amsterdam, Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and Distinguished Foreign Expert at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His recent publications include Logical Dynamics of Information and Interaction (2011), Modal Logic for Open Minds (2010), Exploring Logical Dynamics (1996) and Language in Action (1995). Van Benthem is co-editor, with Alice ter Meulen, of the Handbook of Logic and Language (1997).

Table of Contents

Introduction.- 1. Agency and interaction: what we are and what we do in formal epistemology; Jeffrey Helzner and Vincent F. Hendricks.- Part 1. Bayesian Epistemology: Introduction.- 2. Truth and probability; Frank P. Ramsey.- 3. Probable knowledge; Richard C. Jeffrey.- 4. Fine-­‐grained opinion, probability and the logic of full belief; Bas C. van Fraassen.- 5. A theory of higher order probabilities; Haim Gaifman.- 6. On indeterminate probabilities; Isaac Levi.- 6. On indeterminate probabilities; Isaac Levi.- 7. Why I am not a Bayesian; Clark Glymour.- 8. A mistake in dynamic coherence arguments? Brian Skyrms.- 9. Some problems for conditionalization and reflection; Frank Arntzenius.- 10. Stopping to reflect; Mark J. Schervish, Teddy Seidenfeld and Joseph B. Kadane.-  Part II. Belief Change: Introduction.- 11. On the logic of theory change: partial meet contraction and revision functions; Carlos Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors and David Makinson.- 12. Theory contraction and base contraction unified; Sven Ove Hansson.- 13. How infallible but corrigible full belief is possible; Isaac Levi.- 14. Belief contraction in the context of the General Theory of Rational Choice; Hans Rott.- 15. A survey of ranking theory; Wolfgang Spohn.- Part III. Decision Theory: Introduction.- 16. Allais's Paradox; Leonard Savage.- 17. Decision theory without 'independence' or without 'ordering'; Teddy Seidenfeld.- 18. Ambiguity and the Bayesian paradigm; Itzhak Gilboa and Massimo Marinacci.- 19. State dependent utilities; Mark J. Schervish, Teddy Seidenfeld and Joseph B. Kadane.- 20. Causal decision theory; James M. Joyce and Allan Gibbard.- 21. Advances in prospect theory: cumulative representation of uncertainty; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnemann.- Part IV. Logics of Knowledge and Belief: Introduction.- 22. Epistemology without knowledge and without belief; Jaakko Hintikka.- 23. Epistemic operators; Fred Dretske.- 24. Elusive knowledge; David Lewis.- 25. Knowledge and skepticism; RobertNozick.- 26. On logics of knowledge and belief; Robert Stalnaker.- 27. Sentences, belief and logical omniscience, or what does deduction tell us? Rohit Parikh.- 28. The logic of justification; Sergei Artemov.- 29. Learning theory and epistemology; Kevin T. Kelly.- 30. Some computational constraints in epistemic logic; Timothy Williamson.- Part V. Interactive Epistemology: Introduction.- 31. Convention (an excerpt); David Lewis.- 32. Three views of common understanding; Jon Barwise.- 33. The logic of public announcements, common knowledge and private suspicions; Alexandru Baltag, Lawrence S. Moss and Sławomir Solecki.- 34. A qualitative theory of dynamic interactive belief revision; Alexandru Baltag and Sonja Smets.- 35. Agreeing to disagree; Robert J. Aumann.- 36. Epistemic conditions for Nash equilibrium; Robert J. Aumann and Adam Brandenburger.- 37. Knowledge, belief and counterfactual reasoning in games; Robert Stalnaker.- 38. Substantive rationality and backward induction; JosephY. Halpern.​

Editorial Reviews

The book serves its purpose. The editors include an introductory chapter for each part, which makes the book worth reading. It is an interesting read for philosophers, historians … .” (Lalit Saxena, Computing Reviews, October 4, 2021)

“The editors perform a valuable service in collecting and organizing a set of essays that can provide the dedicated reader with a firm and comprehensive background in formal epistemology. … Readings in Formal Epistemology is a wonderful set of skillfully edited essays. Every graduate student and young researcher working in formal epistemology should read the essays in this volume.” (Conor Mayo-Wilson, Metascience, Vol. 26, 2017)

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