Indeterminism Ltd. An intervention on the free will debate

Institutions
  • Department of Philosophy
Publications
    Wagner, Verena (2017): On the analogy of free will and free belief Synthese. 2017, 194(8), pp. 2785-2810. ISSN 0039-7857. eISSN 1573-0964. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s11229-015-0851-9

On the analogy of free will and free belief

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Compatibilist methods borrowed from the free will debate are often used to establish doxastic freedom and epistemic responsibility. Certain analogies between the formation of intention and belief make this approach especially promising. Despite being a compatibilist myself in the practical debate, I will argue that compatibilist methods fail to establish doxastic freedom. My rejection is not based on an argument against the analogy of free will and free belief. Rather, I aim at showing that compatibilist free will and free belief are equally misguided because freedom is a concept that only applies to an agent’s actions and not to her mental attitudes. Compatibilist strategies that seek to define control by reason-responsiveness merely weaken the conditions for freedom such that arbitrary forms of control can be defined. I will demonstrate that these methods also commit to freedom of fear, freedom of hope and freedom of anger. However, I accept the compatibilist challenge to account for the addict’s and the paranoid’s unfreedom. I will sketch a unified approach to compatibilist free agency that does justice to these phenomena without the help of free will or free belief.

Origin (projects)

  Rumberg, Antje (2016): Transition Semantics for Branching Time Journal of Logic, Language and Information. 2016, 25(1), pp. 77-108. ISSN 0925-8531. eISSN 1572-9583. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10849-015-9231-6

Transition Semantics for Branching Time

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In this paper we develop a novel propositional semantics based on the framework of branching time. The basic idea is to replace the moment-history pairs employed as parameters of truth in the standard Ockhamist semantics by pairs consisting of a moment and a consistent, downward closed set of so-called transitions. Whereas histories represent complete possible courses of events, sets of transitions can represent incomplete parts thereof as well. Each transition captures one of the alternative immediate future possibilities open at a branching point. The transition semantics exploits the structural resources a branching time structure has to offer and provides a fine-grained picture of the interrelation of modality and time. In addition to temporal and modal operators, a so-called stability operator becomes interpretable as a universal quantifier over the possible future extensions of a given transition set. The stability operator allows us to specify how and how far time has to unfold for the truth value of a sentence at a moment to become settled and enables a perspicuous treatment of future contingents. We show that the semantics developed along those lines generalizes and extends extant approaches: both Peirceanism and Ockhamism can be viewed as limiting cases of the transition approach that build on restricted resources only, and on both accounts, stability collapses into truth.

Origin (projects)

    Müller, Thomas (2015): Time and Determinism Journal of Philosophical Logic. 2015, 44(6), pp. 729-740. ISSN 0022-3611. eISSN 1573-0433. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10992-015-9355-9

Time and Determinism

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This paper gives an overview of logico-philosophical issues of time and determinism. After a brief review of historical roots and 20th century developments, three current research areas are discussed: the definition of determinism, space-time indeterminism, and the temporality of individual things and their possibilities.

Origin (projects)

    De, Michael; Omori, Hitoshi (2015): Classical Negation and Expansions of Belnap–Dunn Logic Studia Logica. 2015, 103(4), pp. 825-851. ISSN 0039-3215. eISSN 1572-8730. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s11225-014-9595-7

Classical Negation and Expansions of Belnap–Dunn Logic

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It is known that classical negation can be recovered in some systems of non-classical logics, such as paraconsistent logic and many-valued logic. However, the notion of classical negation needs to be examined carefully. Indeed, it is often thought that classical negation can be defined uniquely. This kind of arguments usually relies on a proof-theoretic viewpoint. But, in fact, from a semantic viewpoint, the definition of classical negation is not so straightforward as we might expect. We provide such an example by considering some expansions of FDE, and present some results which give us a new insight on the notion of classical negation in systems of non-classical logic.

Origin (projects)

    Belnap, Nuel; Müller, Thomas (2014): BH-CIFOL : Case-Intensional First Order Logic ; (II) Branching histories Journal of Philosophical Logic. 2014, 43(5), pp. 835-866. ISSN 0022-3611. eISSN 1573-0433. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10992-013-9292-4

BH-CIFOL : Case-Intensional First Order Logic ; (II) Branching histories

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This paper follows Part I of our essay on case-intensional first-order logic (CIFOL; Belnap and Müller (2013)). We introduce a framework of branching histories to take account of indeterminism. Our system BH-CIFOL adds structure to the cases, which in Part I formed just a set: a case in BH-CIFOL is a moment/history pair, specifying both an element of a partial ordering of moments and one of the total courses of events (extending all the way into the future) that that moment is part of. This framework allows us to define the familiar Ockhamist temporal/modal connectives, most notably for past, future, and settledness. The novelty of our framework becomes visible in our discussion of substances in branching histories, i.e., in its first-order part. That discussion shows how the basic idea of tracing an individual thing from case to case via an absolute property is applicable in a branching histories framework. We stress the importance of keeping apart extensionality and moment-definiteness, and give a formal account of how the specification of natural sortals and natural qualities turns out to be a coordination task in BH-CIFOL. We also provide a detailed answer to Lewis's well-known argument against branching histories, exposing the fallacy in that argument.

Origin (projects)

    Müller, Thomas (2014): Things in Possible Experiments : Case-Intensional Logic as a Framework for Tracing Things from Case to Case GALAVOTTI, Maria Carla, ed., Dennis DIEKS, ed., Wenceslao J. GONZALEZ, ed., Stephan HARTMANN, ed., Thomas UEBEL, ed., Marcel WEBER, ed.. New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2014, pp. 3-14. ISBN 978-3-319-04381-4. Available under: doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-04382-1_1

Things in Possible Experiments : Case-Intensional Logic as a Framework for Tracing Things from Case to Case

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Modal notions play an important role in science. Many scientifically useful predicates are dispositional in nature, and the scientific practice of experiment presupposes the possibility of active intervention in the course of nature. It is therefore interesting to ask which kinds of modality are involved, and how we can best understand them. In this paper we focus on the representation of things in modal contexts occurring in science, and ask which formal methods of philosophical logic are adequate for reidentifying, or tracing, things from case to case. We illustrate the importance of tracing via a discussion of possible experiments in science and in everyday life. After pointing out shortcomings of standard systems of quantified modal logic, we introduce CIFOL, case-intensional first order logic, as a newly established formal framework that helps to elucidate the notion of tracing. We illustrate the framework by discussing the identity of biological individuals with lumps of matter.

Origin (projects)

  De, Michael; Omori, Hitoshi (2014): More on empirical negation GORÉ, Rajeev, ed. and others. Advances in Modal Logic, vol. 10. College Publications, 2014, pp. 114-133. ISBN 978-1-84890-151-3

More on empirical negation

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Intuitionism can be seen as a verificationism restricted to mathematical discourse. An attempt to generalize intuitionism to empirical discourse presents various challenges. One of those concerns the logical and semantical behavior of what has been called 'empirical negation'. An extension of intuitionistic logic with empirical negation was given by Michael De and a labelled tableaux system was there shown sound and complete. However, a Hilbert-style axiom system that is sound and complete was missing. In this paper we provide the missing axiom system which is shown sound and complete with respect to its intended semantics. Along the way we consider some further applications of empirical negation.

Origin (projects)

    Müller, Thomas (2013): Alternatives to histories? : employing a local notion of modal consistency in branching theories Erkenntnis. 2013, 79(S3), pp. 343-364. ISSN 0165-0106. eISSN 1572-8420. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10670-013-9453-4

Alternatives to histories? : employing a local notion of modal consistency in branching theories

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Branching theories are popular frameworks for modeling objective indeterminism in the form of a future of open possibilities. In such theories, the notion of a history plays a crucial role: it is both a basic ingredient in the axiomatic definition of the framework, and it is used as a parameter of truth in semantics for languages with a future tense. Furthermore, histories—complete possible courses of events—ground the notion of modal consistency: a set of events is modally con- sistent iff there is a history containing that set. We will explain these roles of histories and highlight some critical aspects having to do with the fact that histories are global and, in a relevant sense, "big" objects. The notion of modal consistency, on the other hand, has both local and global aspects. We ask in how far a local notion of modal consistency can serve as an alternative to the common uses of histories, and work out two recent approaches to alternatives to histories. Com- bining these approaches, we develop a novel semantics for branching time.

Origin (projects)

    Belnap, Nuel; Müller, Thomas (2013): CIFOL : Case-Intensional First Order Logic ; (I) Toward a Theory of Sorts Journal of Philosophical Logic. 2013, 43(2-3), pp. 393-437. ISSN 0022-3611. eISSN 1573-0433. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10992-012-9267-x

CIFOL : Case-Intensional First Order Logic ; (I) Toward a Theory of Sorts

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This is part I of a two-part essay introducing case-intensional first order logic (CIFOL), an easy-to-use, uniform, powerful, and useful combination of first-order logic with modal logic resulting from philosophical and technical modifications of Bressan's General interpreted modal calculus (Yale University Press 1972). CIFOL starts with a set of cases; each expression has an extension in each case and an intension, which is the function from the cases to the respective case-relative extensions. Predication is intensional; identity is extensional. Definite descriptions are context-independent terms, and lambda-predicates and -operators can be introduced without constraints. These logical resources allow one to define, within CIFOL, important properties of properties, viz., extensionality (whether the property applies, depends only on an extension in one case) and absoluteness, Bressan's chief innovation that allows tracing an individual across cases without recourse to any notion of "rigid designation" or "trans-world identity." Thereby CIFOL abstains from incorporating any metaphysical principles into the quantificational machinery, unlike extant frameworks of quantified modal logic. We claim that this neutrality makes CIFOL a useful tool for discussing both metaphysical and scientific arguments involving modality and quantification, and we illustrate by discussing in diagrammatic detail a number of such arguments involving the extensional identification of individuals via absolute (substance) properties, essential properties, de re vs. de dicto, and the results of possible tests.

Origin (projects)

    Müller, Thomas (2013): A generalized manifold topology for branching space-times Philosophy of Science. 2013, 80(5), pp. 1089-1100. ISSN 0031-8248. eISSN 1539-767X. Available under: doi: 10.1086/673895

A generalized manifold topology for branching space-times

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The logical theory of branching space-times, which provides a relativistic framework for studying objective indeterminism, remains mostly disconnected from discussions of space-time theories in philosophy of physics. Earman has criticized the branching ap- proach and suggested ``pruning some branches from branching space-time.'' This article identifies the different---order-theoretic versus topological---perspective of both discussions as a reason for certain misunderstandings and tries to remove them. Most important, we give a novel, topological criterion of modal consistency that usefully generalizes an earlier criterion, and we introduce a differential-geometrical version of branching space-times as a non-Hausdorff (generalized) manifold.

Origin (projects)

Funding sources
Name Finanzierungstyp Kategorie Project no.
Europäische Union third-party funds research funding program 589/13
Further information
Period: 01.10.2013 – 31.12.2015