Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Vintage Enthusiasms: Essays in Honour of John L. Bell

✍ Scribed by William Demopoulos (auth.), David DeVidi, Michael Hallett, Peter Clarke (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 506
• Series: The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science 75
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The volume includes twenty-five research papers presented as gifts to John L. Bell to celebrate his 60th birthday by colleagues, former students, friends and admirers. Like Bell’s own work, the contributions cross boundaries into several inter-related fields. The contributions are new work by highly respected figures, several of whom are among the key figures in their fields. Some examples: in foundations of maths and logic (William Lawvere, Peter Aczel, Graham Priest, Giovanni Sambin); analytical philosophy (Michael Dummett, William Demopoulos), philosophy of science (Michael Redhead, Frank Arntzenius), philosophy of mathematics (Michael Hallett, John Mayberry, Daniel Isaacson) and decision theory and foundations of ecomonics (Ken Bimore). Most articles are contributions to current philosophical debates, but contributions also include some new mathematical results, important historical surveys, and a translation by Wilfrid Hodges of a key work of arabic logic.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xviii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
On Logicist Conceptions of Functions and Classes....Pages 3-18
Metaphysical Necessity....Pages 19-34
Ibn Sīnā and Conflict in Logic....Pages 35-67
A Minimalist Foundation at Work....Pages 69-96
The Municipal By-Laws of Thought....Pages 97-112
Front Matter....Pages 113-113
Truth and the Liar....Pages 115-134
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Undecidability of the Gödel Sentence and its Truth....Pages 135-152
Paraconsistent Set Theory....Pages 153-169
Paradox, ZF, and the Axiom of Foundation....Pages 171-187
Absoluteness and the Skolem Paradox....Pages 189-218
Front Matter....Pages 219-219
Equalisers of Frames in Constructive Set Theory....Pages 221-228
Analogy and Its Surprises: An Eyewitness’s Reflections on the Emergence of Real Algebraic Geometry....Pages 229-247
Euler’s Continuum Functorially Vindicated....Pages 249-254
Natural Numbers and Infinitesimals....Pages 255-286
Logic in Category Theory....Pages 287-324
Front Matter....Pages 325-325
Gunk, Topology and Measure....Pages 327-343
Pitholes in Space-Time: Structure and Ontology of Physical Geometry....Pages 345-360
A Silly Answer to a Psillos Question....Pages 361-380
The Vacuum in Antiquity and in Modern Physics....Pages 381-384
Falsifiability, Empirical Content and the Duhem-Quine Problem....Pages 385-404
Front Matter....Pages 405-405
Can Knowledge Be Justified True Belief?....Pages 407-412
The Stochastic Concept of Economic Equilibrium: A Radical Alternative....Pages 413-421
Collective Choice as Information Theory: Towards a Theory of Gravitas....Pages 423-438
Scientific Knowledge and Structural Knowledge....Pages 439-447
Front Matter....Pages 449-449
Musing on Music....Pages 451-466
Inscrutable Harmonies: The Continuous and the Discrete as Reflected in the Playing of Jascha Heifetz and Glenn Gould....Pages 467-471
Back Matter....Pages 473-486

✦ Subjects

Logic; Philosophy of Science; Epistemology; Mathematical Logic and Foundations; History of Mathematical Sciences; Metaphysics