A fun yet challenging introduction to propositional logic, treating the symbolization of English sentences and developing formal-proof, truth-table, and truth-tree techniques for evaluating arguments. Material is organized around natural-deduction formal-proof procedures. Logic is applied to content commonly encountered by undergraduate students, with examples and exercises drawn from comics, newspaper articles, television, and textbooks. Each logical connective is the subject of one chapter, allowing students to master both symbolization and proof moves before tackling the next connective. This third edition contains new exercises and examples, a chapter on truth trees, and an appendix on metatheory. In this edition, derived rules are presented in two stages to facilitate learning. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Introduction to Logic: Propositional Logic

Politics & Social Sciences

Lycan, William G.

Pospesel, Howard

Philosophy

PRENTICE/HALL

Perceptual Content

Oxford University Press

In this book William G. Lycan offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term-the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases in a carefully specified sense of that term. The first half of On Evidence in Philosophy expounds a version of Moore's method and applies it to each of several issues. This version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. It is argued, in Chapters 5 and 6, that philosophical method is far less powerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. The final two chapters defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflective equilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism. In sum, William G. Lycan advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic-and nothing more, not ever.

On Evidence in Philosophy

Real Conditionals

Logicians have written a great deal on the semantics of conditional sentences. This book contends that insufficient attention has been paid to the syntax of conditionals, as investigated by linguists. Syntactic data are used to make the case that "If"-clauses tacitly quantify over items called "events," "circumstances," or "conditions." This motivates a semantic theory of conditionals that concentrates on "only if," "even if" and "unless" as well as on "If...then." The theory is then applied to a number of examples from the literature, and its predictions and successes compare favorably to those of competing semantic theories.

Clarendon Press

William G. Lycan offers a fresh approach to the long-running debate among philosophers and logicians about the best way to analyze and understand conditional sentences. Lycan attends not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax, making use of insights from linguistic theory. Real Conditionals is the definitive presentation of Lycan's view, written in his characteristically lively style.

In this book, a well-known and highly respected philosopher details the complicated anatomy of linguistic meaning, showing how its elements fit together; he explores the interface between "languages" considered as formal systems and the linguistic activities of human beings in speech situations; and he defends the autonomy of linguistic semantics as a branch of scientific psychology.  The book's first Part sets out and defends the truth-theoretic method in semantics, arguing that the notion of a sentence's truth-condition lies at the core of meaning.  Part Two considers a number of apparent differences between formal and natural languages, having chiefly to do with the context-bound features of natural-language semantics, and attempts to reconcile them. It provides a definite focus to the semantics/pragmatics distinction, and argues that few if any of the pragmatic phenomena investigated by linguists will need to be represented in semantic theory. The author offers plausible and in some cases novel solutions to the technical problems that have plagued the semantics/pragmatics border.  Part Three portrays the role of semantics in psychology and the relation of semantics to human speakers' internal functional organization. Further, the author shows how a sentence's truth-condition meshes with each of the other aspects of its meaning, and argues that traditional theories of meaning which have focused on some of these other aspects should be regarded as mutually complementary components of linguistic theory rather than being treated as rival accounts of a common subject-matter.  A Bradford Book.

Logical Form in Natural Language

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Bradford Books

In this book, William Lycan defends an original theory of mind that he calls "homuncular functionalism."

Consciousness

This sequel to Lycan's Consciousness (1987) continues the elaboration of his general functionalist theory of consciousness, answers the critics of his earlier work, and expands the range of discussion to deal with the many new issues and arguments that have arisen in the intervening years―an extraordinarily fertile period for the philosophical investigation of consciousness. Lycan not only uses the numerous arguments against materialism, and functionalist theories of mind in particular, to gain a more detailed positive view of the structure of the mind, he also targets the set of really hard problems at the center of the theory of consciousness: subjectivity, qualia, and the felt aspect of experience. The key to his own enlarged and fairly argued position, which he calls the "hegemony of representation," is that there is no more to mind or consciousness than can be accounted for in terms of intentionality, functional organization, and in particular, second-order representation of one's own mental states. A Bradford Book

Consciousness and Experience

This is the first detailed study to explore the little-understood notions of "knowing who someone is," "knowing a person's identity," and related locutions. It locates these notions within the context of a general theory of believing and a semantical theory of belief- and knowledge-ascriptions. The books's main contention is that what one knows, when one knows who someone is, is not normally an identity in the numerical sense of "a = b," but rather a certain sort of predication to know who someone is is just to know that that person is F, where "F" is a predicate that is "important," in a technical sense defined by the authors, for the purposes determined by context. Their book offers a rigorous formal semantics for ascriptions of knowing and of knowing-who in particular, solving such well-known problems and paradoxes as Kripke's Puzzle, and Quines difficulties with de re belief, along the way. The authors apply their analysis to each of several important issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and ethical theory in which the previously unexamined notion of "knowing who" has loomed large-the mechanics of linguistic referring, the foundations of epistemic logic, problems of self-knowledge and self-regarding belief, universalizability and "Golden Rule" arguments in ethics, and moral "personalism" versus "impartialism."A Bradford Book.

Knowing Who (MIT Press Classics)

Boer, Steven E. E.

MIT Press]

In this book, a well-known and highly respected philosopher details the complicated anatomy of linguistic meaning, showing how its elements fit together; he explores the interface between "languages" considered as formal systems and the linguistic activities of human beings in speech situations; and he defends the autonomy of linguistic semantics as a branch of scientific psychology. The book's first Part sets out and defends the truth-theoretic method in semantics, arguing that the notion of a sentence's truth-condition lies at the core of meaning. Part Two considers a number of apparent differences between formal and natural languages, having chiefly to do with the context-bound features of natural-language semantics, and attempts to reconcile them. It provides a definite focus to the semantics/pragmatics distinction, and argues that few if any of the pragmatic phenomena investigated by linguists will need to be represented in semantic theory. The author offers plausible and in some cases novel solutions to the technical problems that have plagued the semantics/pragmatics border. Part Three portrays the role of semantics in psychology and the relation of semantics to human speakers' internal functional organization. Further, the author shows how a sentence's truth-condition meshes with each of the other aspects of its meaning, and argues that traditional theories of meaning which have focused on some of these other aspects should be regarded as mutually complementary components of linguistic theory rather than being treated as rival accounts of a common subject-matter. A Bradford Book.

Logical Form In Natural Language (Bradford Books)

Business & Money

Economics

Mit Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lycan, William G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lycan, William G.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lycan, William G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Introduction to Logic: Propositional Logic

Perceptual Content

On Evidence in Philosophy

Real Conditionals

Real Conditionals

Logical Form in Natural Language

Consciousness

Consciousness and Experience

Knowing Who (MIT Press Classics)

Logical Form In Natural Language (Bradford Books)