Arnold Koslow | Graduate Center of the City University of New York (original) (raw)
Papers by Arnold Koslow
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
1. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszynska (edited by): Personal recollections about JYB by Newton da Costa a... more 1. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszynska (edited by): Personal recollections about JYB by Newton da Costa and others.- 2. Jean-Yves Beziau: Logical Autobiography 50.- 3. Marcos Antonio Alves and Itala M. Loffredo D'Ottaviano: A quantitative-informational approach to logical consequence.- 4. Hajnal Andreka and Istvan Nemeti: Finite-variable logics do not have weak Beth definability property.- 5. Irving Anellis: Peirce's Role in the History of Logic: Lingua Universalis and Calculus Ratiocinator.- 6. Ignacio Angelelli: The Meaning(s) of "is": Normative vs. Naturalistic Views of Language.- 7. Regis Angot-Pelissier: The relation between logic, set theory and topos theory as it is used by Alain Badiou.- 8. Jonas Becker Arenhart and Decio Krause: Potentiality and Contradiction in Quantum Mechanics.- 9. Diderik Batens: Two, many and differently many.- 10. Hilan Bensusan, Alexandre Costa-Leite and Edelcio Goncalves de Souza: Logics and their galaxies.- 11. Otavio Bueno: Can Identity be relativized?.- 12. Luis Estrada-Gonzalez: From (paraconsistent) topos logic to Universal (topos) Logic.- 13. Yvon Gauthier: A Note on the Internal Logic of Constructive Mathematics: The Gel'fond-Schneider Theorem in Transcendental Number Theory.- 14. I. Grattan-Guinness: Is logic universal or hierarchical?.- 15. Dany Jaspers: The English Tenses, Blanche and the Logical Kite.- 16. Azriel Laufer and Dov Gabbay: Topological Aspects of Matrix Abduction 1.- 17. Mai Ben Adar Bessos and Dov Gabbay: Topological Aspects of Matrix Abduction 2.- 18. Sergio Marcelino, Carlos Caleiro and Pedro Baltazar: Deciding theoremhood in fibred logics without shared connectives.- 19. Amirouche Moktefi and Fabien Schang: On rules and refereeing in football.- 20. Alessio Moretti: Arrow - Hexagons.- 21. Till Mossakowski, Mihai Codescu, Fabian Neuhaus, and Oliver Kutz: The Distributed Ontology, Modelling and Specification Language - DOL.- 22. Sergei Odintsov: Belnap constants and Nelson logic.- 23. Hitoshi Omori and Toshiharu Waragai: Negative modalities in the light of paraconsistency.- 24. Olga Pombo: Operativity and Representativity of the Sign in Leibniz.- 25. Henri Prade and Didier Dubois: Being consistent about inconsistency: Toward the rational fusing of inconsistent propositional logic bases.- 26. Giuseppe Primiero: Realist consequence, epistemic inference, computational correctness.- 27. Christian de Ronde: Epistemological and Ontological Paraconsistency in Quantum Mechanics: For and Against Bohrian Philosophy.
Laws and Explanations; Theories and Modal Possibilities, 2019
In the preceding chapter, we explored the possibility of how serious criticism of the Hempel mode... more In the preceding chapter, we explored the possibility of how serious criticism of the Hempel model of explanation might have been met by assuming that laws were representable as counterfactuals. That assumption only made matters worse. We now wish to look at a weaker claim that has had many advocates: It is the idea that laws are distinguished from true contingent generalizations in that they support their corresponding counterfactual conditionals, while mere contingent generalizations do not. We think that even this weaker connection is untenable. There are two widely endorsed criteria that have been used to distinguish those generalizations that are laws from the rest. One is that laws support their corresponding counterfactual conditionals,the counterfactual connection, and the other is that laws possess a special kind of necessity that non-laws don't have. These two criteria are closely connected, but neither one is intended to be both a necessary and sufficient condition. In this chapter we will consider only the counterfactual connection, and we will postpone modal considerations for a later chapter. The counterfactual connection for laws is simply that laws support their corresponding counterfactual conditionals. The notion of "support" needs some explanation. It cannot mean evidential support. There can be evidence for laws, but there are almost no cases where some laws are evidence for, or confirm other laws. I suggest, following the few leads in the literature, according to which "support" of the corresponding counterfactual means "logical implication". Thus we understand the counterfactual connection to be the claim that (C) Laws imply their corresponding counterfactuals. We will refer to (C) as The Counterfactual Connection. The immediate problem is that this formulation is ambiguous. There are at least two possible readings: (1) If A is a law, then A implies its corresponding counterfactual conditional. and (2) ℒ(A) implies the counterfactual corresponding to A, where "ℒ(A)" just states that it is a law that A.
Laws and Explanations; Theories and Modal Possibilities, 2019
With this chapter we begin the development of a view about those scientific laws each of which ha... more With this chapter we begin the development of a view about those scientific laws each of which has associated with it, a background that consists either of some theory, or a loosely knit collection of statements that involves various physical magnitudes that are involved in the expression of the law. We shall refer to the latter kind of background as the theoretical scenario for the law.
Laws and Explanations; Theories and Modal Possibilities, 2019
From the beginning of philosophical interest in laws and explanation, the emphasis was on laws as... more From the beginning of philosophical interest in laws and explanation, the emphasis was on laws as playing a fundamental role in explanations. This was evident in Aristotle (if one understands that his reference to four kinds of causes should be understood as his interest in four kinds of explanations.) In our time, the emphasis was very clear in C. Hempel and P. Oppenheim’s seminal essay (Cf. Chap. 1).
The story here involves F. Ramsey’s realization that the nineteenth century mathematical debate a... more The story here involves F. Ramsey’s realization that the nineteenth century mathematical debate about functions had implications for the expression of statements of arithmetic in Russell and Whitehead’s Principia. We believe that it is the same flaw, – expressive inadequacy – that lies at the heart of what is wrong with D. Armstrong’s account of scientific laws.
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
Time and Motion, New York, 1967
Carnap in the 1930s discovered that there were non-normal interpretations of classical logic - on... more Carnap in the 1930s discovered that there were non-normal interpretations of classical logic - ones for which negation and conjunction are not truth-functional so that a statement and its negation could have the same truth value, and a disjunction of two false sentences could be true. Church argued that this did not call for a revision of classical logic. More recent writers seem to disa-gree. We provide a definition of "non-normal interpretation" and argue that Church was right, and in fact, the existence of non-normal interpretations tells us something important about the conditions of extensionality of the classical logical operators.
Norman Campbell rightly set the task. It is the business of science not only to discover laws, bu... more Norman Campbell rightly set the task. It is the business of science not only to discover laws, but to explain them. And he added his voice to a philosophical tradition going back to Aristotle, of taking on the task of explaining what laws are, and explaining as well what explanations of laws are. Ever since the renewed interest spurred by seminal paper of Hempel and Oppenheim on scientific explanation, philosophers have been inspired to do better on scientific explanation. But it became painfully clear, from the counter-example offered in their paper, that their account of scientific explanation could not cover the explanation of laws. It is clear that although this is the business of philosophers, it is still unfinished business.
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
Synthese Library, 2019
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The initial part of this paper explores and rejects three standard views of how scientific laws m... more The initial part of this paper explores and rejects three standard views of how scientific laws might be systematically connected with physical necessity or possibility. The first concerns laws and their consequences, the second concerns the so-called counterfactual connection, and the third concerns a possible worlds construction of physical necessity. The remaining part introduces a neglected notion of possibility, and, with the aid of some examples, illustrates the special way in which laws reduce or narrow down possibilities.
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
1. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszynska (edited by): Personal recollections about JYB by Newton da Costa a... more 1. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszynska (edited by): Personal recollections about JYB by Newton da Costa and others.- 2. Jean-Yves Beziau: Logical Autobiography 50.- 3. Marcos Antonio Alves and Itala M. Loffredo D'Ottaviano: A quantitative-informational approach to logical consequence.- 4. Hajnal Andreka and Istvan Nemeti: Finite-variable logics do not have weak Beth definability property.- 5. Irving Anellis: Peirce's Role in the History of Logic: Lingua Universalis and Calculus Ratiocinator.- 6. Ignacio Angelelli: The Meaning(s) of "is": Normative vs. Naturalistic Views of Language.- 7. Regis Angot-Pelissier: The relation between logic, set theory and topos theory as it is used by Alain Badiou.- 8. Jonas Becker Arenhart and Decio Krause: Potentiality and Contradiction in Quantum Mechanics.- 9. Diderik Batens: Two, many and differently many.- 10. Hilan Bensusan, Alexandre Costa-Leite and Edelcio Goncalves de Souza: Logics and their galaxies.- 11. Otavio Bueno: Can Identity be relativized?.- 12. Luis Estrada-Gonzalez: From (paraconsistent) topos logic to Universal (topos) Logic.- 13. Yvon Gauthier: A Note on the Internal Logic of Constructive Mathematics: The Gel'fond-Schneider Theorem in Transcendental Number Theory.- 14. I. Grattan-Guinness: Is logic universal or hierarchical?.- 15. Dany Jaspers: The English Tenses, Blanche and the Logical Kite.- 16. Azriel Laufer and Dov Gabbay: Topological Aspects of Matrix Abduction 1.- 17. Mai Ben Adar Bessos and Dov Gabbay: Topological Aspects of Matrix Abduction 2.- 18. Sergio Marcelino, Carlos Caleiro and Pedro Baltazar: Deciding theoremhood in fibred logics without shared connectives.- 19. Amirouche Moktefi and Fabien Schang: On rules and refereeing in football.- 20. Alessio Moretti: Arrow - Hexagons.- 21. Till Mossakowski, Mihai Codescu, Fabian Neuhaus, and Oliver Kutz: The Distributed Ontology, Modelling and Specification Language - DOL.- 22. Sergei Odintsov: Belnap constants and Nelson logic.- 23. Hitoshi Omori and Toshiharu Waragai: Negative modalities in the light of paraconsistency.- 24. Olga Pombo: Operativity and Representativity of the Sign in Leibniz.- 25. Henri Prade and Didier Dubois: Being consistent about inconsistency: Toward the rational fusing of inconsistent propositional logic bases.- 26. Giuseppe Primiero: Realist consequence, epistemic inference, computational correctness.- 27. Christian de Ronde: Epistemological and Ontological Paraconsistency in Quantum Mechanics: For and Against Bohrian Philosophy.
Laws and Explanations; Theories and Modal Possibilities, 2019
In the preceding chapter, we explored the possibility of how serious criticism of the Hempel mode... more In the preceding chapter, we explored the possibility of how serious criticism of the Hempel model of explanation might have been met by assuming that laws were representable as counterfactuals. That assumption only made matters worse. We now wish to look at a weaker claim that has had many advocates: It is the idea that laws are distinguished from true contingent generalizations in that they support their corresponding counterfactual conditionals, while mere contingent generalizations do not. We think that even this weaker connection is untenable. There are two widely endorsed criteria that have been used to distinguish those generalizations that are laws from the rest. One is that laws support their corresponding counterfactual conditionals,the counterfactual connection, and the other is that laws possess a special kind of necessity that non-laws don't have. These two criteria are closely connected, but neither one is intended to be both a necessary and sufficient condition. In this chapter we will consider only the counterfactual connection, and we will postpone modal considerations for a later chapter. The counterfactual connection for laws is simply that laws support their corresponding counterfactual conditionals. The notion of "support" needs some explanation. It cannot mean evidential support. There can be evidence for laws, but there are almost no cases where some laws are evidence for, or confirm other laws. I suggest, following the few leads in the literature, according to which "support" of the corresponding counterfactual means "logical implication". Thus we understand the counterfactual connection to be the claim that (C) Laws imply their corresponding counterfactuals. We will refer to (C) as The Counterfactual Connection. The immediate problem is that this formulation is ambiguous. There are at least two possible readings: (1) If A is a law, then A implies its corresponding counterfactual conditional. and (2) ℒ(A) implies the counterfactual corresponding to A, where "ℒ(A)" just states that it is a law that A.
Laws and Explanations; Theories and Modal Possibilities, 2019
With this chapter we begin the development of a view about those scientific laws each of which ha... more With this chapter we begin the development of a view about those scientific laws each of which has associated with it, a background that consists either of some theory, or a loosely knit collection of statements that involves various physical magnitudes that are involved in the expression of the law. We shall refer to the latter kind of background as the theoretical scenario for the law.
Laws and Explanations; Theories and Modal Possibilities, 2019
From the beginning of philosophical interest in laws and explanation, the emphasis was on laws as... more From the beginning of philosophical interest in laws and explanation, the emphasis was on laws as playing a fundamental role in explanations. This was evident in Aristotle (if one understands that his reference to four kinds of causes should be understood as his interest in four kinds of explanations.) In our time, the emphasis was very clear in C. Hempel and P. Oppenheim’s seminal essay (Cf. Chap. 1).
The story here involves F. Ramsey’s realization that the nineteenth century mathematical debate a... more The story here involves F. Ramsey’s realization that the nineteenth century mathematical debate about functions had implications for the expression of statements of arithmetic in Russell and Whitehead’s Principia. We believe that it is the same flaw, – expressive inadequacy – that lies at the heart of what is wrong with D. Armstrong’s account of scientific laws.
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
Time and Motion, New York, 1967
Carnap in the 1930s discovered that there were non-normal interpretations of classical logic - on... more Carnap in the 1930s discovered that there were non-normal interpretations of classical logic - ones for which negation and conjunction are not truth-functional so that a statement and its negation could have the same truth value, and a disjunction of two false sentences could be true. Church argued that this did not call for a revision of classical logic. More recent writers seem to disa-gree. We provide a definition of "non-normal interpretation" and argue that Church was right, and in fact, the existence of non-normal interpretations tells us something important about the conditions of extensionality of the classical logical operators.
Norman Campbell rightly set the task. It is the business of science not only to discover laws, bu... more Norman Campbell rightly set the task. It is the business of science not only to discover laws, but to explain them. And he added his voice to a philosophical tradition going back to Aristotle, of taking on the task of explaining what laws are, and explaining as well what explanations of laws are. Ever since the renewed interest spurred by seminal paper of Hempel and Oppenheim on scientific explanation, philosophers have been inspired to do better on scientific explanation. But it became painfully clear, from the counter-example offered in their paper, that their account of scientific explanation could not cover the explanation of laws. It is clear that although this is the business of philosophers, it is still unfinished business.
A Structuralist Theory of Logic, 1992
Synthese Library, 2019
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The initial part of this paper explores and rejects three standard views of how scientific laws m... more The initial part of this paper explores and rejects three standard views of how scientific laws might be systematically connected with physical necessity or possibility. The first concerns laws and their consequences, the second concerns the so-called counterfactual connection, and the third concerns a possible worlds construction of physical necessity. The remaining part introduces a neglected notion of possibility, and, with the aid of some examples, illustrates the special way in which laws reduce or narrow down possibilities.