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标签：possible worlds

Notes from Today’s Xindao Salon, 09-07-04

Life & Notes2009.07.04
Notes from Today’s Xindao Salon, 09-07-04
Today, NKM’s grand visit saved me from turning into a solitary castaway. I showed him his logic paper, “Counterfactual Conditionals in Situational Semantics,” and we tossed around a few things about counterfactual conditionals and possible-world logic. I am completely a layman when it comes to logic, so my opinions probably won’t be of much help to him either (exchanging ideas with laypeople is beneficial for philosophical thinking, but I do not know how it works in a strange specialty like logic). Personally, I do not concern myself with technical details such as the construction of related formal semantic systems. What I mainly care about, as far as counterfactual conditionals are…
everyday life AI logic counterfactuals
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2009年7月4日
Roderick M. Chisholm: Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions

Philosophy & Thought2006.05.20
Roderick M. Chisholm: Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions
I hadn’t expected that the reading assignment I was given for the philosophy of logic course would be the only one for which I couldn’t find a Chinese translation…………not even an English electronic version was easy to find. At last I found the original PDF version, http://www.jstor.org/view/00294624/di982797/98p0002q/0 I ran it through Hanwang Text King OCR myself, and after some preliminary correction it is as follows. Turning it into an electronic text makes it a little easier to read with the help of Kingsoft PowerWord……but it is still awfully painful…… Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions Roderick M. Chisholm Noûs, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Mar., 1967), pp. 1-8. Stable…
philosophy book reading notes possible worlds
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2006年5月20日
Some Counterfactual Conditionals in the Natural Sciences

History of Science & Scholarship2006.03.30
Some Counterfactual Conditionals in the Natural Sciences
Construct two counterfactual conditionals, and consider whether the relation between counterfactual conditionals and the laws of natural science is intrinsic or merely superficial. The sentences you construct should involve natural-science content and be as creative or original as possible. 1.Frege: If the density of iron were less than that of water, it would float on water.[①] 2.Einstein’s “first naive thought experiment” concerning relativity: If a person were to run along with a light wave at the speed of light, then he would find himself in a wave field that does not change with time. (But it seems that this would not happen!)[②] 3.Hawking’s discussion of the origin of the universe…
philosophy science history of science counterfactuals
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2006年3月30日
Causality and Scientific Explanation

History of Science & Scholarship2006.03.23
Causality and Scientific Explanation
In discussing “causality,” people often consciously or unconsciously confuse it with the “principle of sufficient reason.” The principle of sufficient reason is the belief that for every event there exists a “sufficient reason” that makes it be thus rather than otherwise. This is actually a rather strong claim, and to take it as the basis of scientific explanation seems to set the starting point too high. Then what is “causality”? I think a weaker formulation is “connectedness among events,” that is, the belief that “the occurrence of any event is always associated with other events.” Of course, causality should not be conflated with mere connectedness either. When we speak of…
philosophy science philosophy of science causality
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2006年3月23日