Existence and Explanation: Essays presented in Honor of Karel Lambert PDF
Preview Existence and Explanation: Essays presented in Honor of Karel Lambert
EXISTENCE AND EXPLANATION THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE A SERIES OF BOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, AND RELATED FIELDS Managing Editor ROBERT E. BUTTS Dept. ofP hilosophy, University ofW estern Ontario, Canada Editorial Board JEFFREY BUB, University ofM aryland L. JONATHAN COHEN, Queen's College, Oxford WILLIAM DEMOPOULOS, University of Western Ontario WILLIAM HARPER, University of Western Ontario JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University CLIFFORD A. HOOKER, University ofN ewcastle HENRY E. KYBURG, JR., University ofR ochester AUSONIOMARRAS, University o/Western Ontario JORGEN MITTELSTRASS, Universitiit Konstanz JOHN M. NICHOLAS, University o/Western Ontario GLENN A. PEARCE, University o/Western Ontario BAS C. VAN FRAAS SEN, Princeton University VOLUME 49 KAREL LAMBERT EXISTENCE AND EXPLANATION Essays presented in Honor of Karel Lambert Edited by WOLFGANG SPOHN University of Bielefeld BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN Princeton University and BRIAN SKYRMS University of California at lrvine •• SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B . V . Llbrary of Congress Cataloglng-In-Publlcatlon Data Exlstence and explanatlon : essays presen+ed In honor of Karel Lambert / edited by Wolfgang Spohn, Bas C. van F~aassen, Brian Skyrms. p. Cw. -- (The University of Western Ontario series in phi losophy of science ; v. 49) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-94-010-5430-0 ISBN 978-94-011-3244-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-3244-2 1. Science--Philosophy. 2. Phi losophy, Modern. 3. Lambert, Karel, 1928- 1. Lambert, Karel, 1928- II. Spohn, Wolfgang. III. Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1941- IV. Skyrms, Brian. V. Series. Q175.3.E95 1991 501--dc20 91-15399 ISBN 978-94-010-5430-0 printed on acid free paper All Rights Reserved © 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, inc1uding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. To Joe TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ri BAS C. VA N FRAASSEN / On (the x) (x = Lambert) 1 ERMANNO BENCIVENGA / Five Easy Pieces 19 GORDON G. BRITTAN, JR./TheCartesianCogitos 25 CHARLES B. DANIELS / Undefined Definite Descriptions 39 DANIEL HUNTER / Maximum Entropy Updating and Con- ditionalization 45 WOLFGANG LENZEN / Leibniz on Ens and Eristence 59 KEVIN MULLIGAN / Colours, Corners and Complexity: Meinong and Wittgenstein on Some Internal Relations 77 TERENCE PARSONS / Atomic Sentences as Singular Terms in Free Logic 103 ERHARD SCHEIBE / EPR-Situation and Bell's Inequality 115 PETER M. SIMONS / On Being Spread Out in Time: Temporal Parts and the Problem of Change 131 BRIAN SKYRMS / Stability and Chance 149 WOLFGANG SPOHN / A Reason for Explanation: Explana- tions Provide Stable Reasons 165 JULES VUILLEMIN / The Systems of Plato and Aristotle Compared as to Their Contributions to Physics 197 PAUL WEINGARTNER / A Note on Aristotle's Theory of Definition and Scientific Explanation 207 PETER W. WOODRUFF / Actualism, Free Logic and First- Order Supervaluations 219 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF KAREL LAMBERT 233 INDEX 237 PREFACE This collection of essays is dedicated to 'Joe' Karel Lambert. The contributors are all personally affected to Joe in some way or other, but they are definitely not the only ones. Whatever excuses there are - there are some -, the editors apologize to whomever they have neglected. But even so the collection displays how influential Karel Lambert has been, personally and through his teaching and his writings. The display is in alphabetical order - with one exception: Bas van Fraassen, being about the earliest student of Karel Lambert, opens the collection with some reminiscences. Naturally, one of the focal points of this volume is Lambert's logical thinking and (or: freed of) ontological thinking. Free logic is intimately connected with description theory. Bas van Fraassen gives a survey of the development of the area, and Charles Daniels points to difficulties with definite descriptions in modal contexts and stories. Peter Woodruff addresses the relation between free logic and supervaluation semantics, presenting a novel condition which recovers desirable metatheoretic properties for free logic under that semantics. Terence Parsons shows how free logic can be utilized in interpreting sentences as purporting to denote events (true ones succeed and false ones fail) and how this helps to understand natural language. Free logic has ample historical roots and applications. Wolfgang Lenzen reconstructs the place Leibniz assigns to the notions of exis tence and of possible individuals within his logic which is in fact a quantificational extension of the intensional algebra of concepts. And Gordon Brittan applies Lambertian logical tools in order to shed further light on Descartes' 'cogito, ergo sum' and to construe it in effect as a plausible, if not sound argument. Two essays jump right into old ontological questions. Peter Simons discusses whether an account of change requires objects to be contin uants without temporal parts or to be temporally extended occurrents, and he defends the former view against recent criticism of David Lewis. And Kevin Mulligan is concerned with particularly problematic entities, Xl Xli PREFACE namely with colours and orientations and their internal relations, reviewing, comparing, and in fact reviving Meinong's and Wittgenstein's opinions on that subject matter. Ermanno Bencivenga, finally, adds five nice pieces. The other focal point of the collection is Lambert's philosophy of science. Three essays span historical space. Jules Vuillemin explains some difficulties with kinematics and dynamics and in the development of physics in general by the philosophical analysis of motion given by Plato and Aristotle. Paul Weingartner shows that Aristotle anticipated both Meinong's principle of independence, as Lambert called it, and the modern requirement of finding interpolation sentences for giving scientific explanations. And Erhard Scheibe sharply distinguishes the problems raised in the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen paradox and those raised by Bell's inequality. Wolfgang Spohn takes up the relation between scientific explanation and understanding in the way proposed by Lambert and arrives at a positive view in which search for explanation is construed as search for coherentistic truth. It is no accident that the notion of stability is also crucial for Brian Skyrms who develops and refines a de Finettian picture of objective probability by generalizing what has been called Miller's principle and by employing ergodic theory. Daniel Hunter, finally, is rather occupied with subjective probability; he defends the method of maximum entropy updating against objections by Brian Skyrms and interprets it as a sound method of belief revision not reducible to any forms of conditionalization. Thus the collection demonstrates the far-reaching direct and indirect philosophical impact of Karel Lambert's work for which his friends wish to offer warm thanks. Finally three words of indebtedness: We are very grateful to Ulrike Kleemayer for preparing the index, to Kluwer Academic Publishers, in particular to Mrs. Annie Kuipers, for the effective and friendly co operation and to Domenico Costantini who invited all three of us to a wonderful conference at the Lago Maggiore in May 1988 where the idea of this Festschrift was born. WOLFGANG SPOHN BAS C. VAN FRAAS SEN BRIAN SKYRMS BAS C. VAN FRAAS SEN ON (THE X) (X = LAMBERT) The first few years of my philosophical life were so entangled with learning from Karel Lambert that I can scarcely separate the two. In the fall of 1959 I entered my first philosophy class at the University of Alberta, a class of about seventy students with Lambert as instructor. He told us firmly that he had no intention of discussing ethics or morals, told us to read something about the pre-Socratics for next time, and dismissed the class. It became clear quite soon that he expected us to learn philosophy by doing: despite the size of the class, there was a great deal of discussion and we were constantly challenged. His response was always measured. People who were struggling found sympathy, and he would turn their questions into something significant for discussion. But students who were catching on would immediately find themselves made to face greater difficulties. It was also, I can think of no other way to put it, a lot of fun. Twice, I remember, he put me down, to everyone's amusement. The first time I wouldn't back down from a point when I was clearly losing, and Lambert ended the discus sion with "Van Fraassen, you are logical, but you are not reasonable." The second time we had gotten into that subject he did not want to do at all, and I brought up Sartre's famous example of the moral dilemma of the young Frenchman, who had to choose between care for his aging mother and joining the Free French. Lambert listened patiently, then retorted: "Van Fraassen, there comes a time when a boy has to leave his mother." The course - which like all our courses then, was a year long - ended with Russell, and the theory of definite descriptions. I was working in the university library, part time and then as a summer job, and I immediately started reading as much of Russell as I could. That was also when Lambert called me into his office, to ask me to think about going into philosophy. I said it's all right, I've already decided to do that. So he offered me a Coke, and told me to come see him and talk with him as often as I liked. Looking back on that period, and the courses I took from him, I think one thing stands out most of all. Although he was teaching us logic and related subjects, very near to his Wolfgang Spohn et at. (eds.), Existence and Explanation, 1-18. © 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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