Preface Paradox
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Preface Paradox
The preface paradox, or the paradox of the preface, was introduced by David Makinson in 1965. Similar to the lottery paradox, it presents an argument according to which it can be rational to accept mutually incompatible beliefs. While the preface paradox ''nullifies'' a claim contrary to one's belief, it is opposite to Moore's paradox which ''asserts'' a claim contrary to one's belief. Overview The argument runs along these lines: It is customary for authors of academic books to include in the preface of their books statements such as "any errors that remain are my sole responsibility." Occasionally they go further and actually claim there are errors in the books, with statements such as "the errors that are found herein are mine alone." (1) Such an author has written a book that contains many assertions, and has factually checked each one carefully, submitted it to reviewers for comment, etc. Thus, he has reason to believe that each assertion he has made is true. (2) Howeve ...
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David Makinson
David Clement Makinson (born 27 August 1941), is an Australian mathematical logician living in London, England. Career Makinson began his studies at Sydney University in 1958 and was an associate of the Libertarian Society and Sydney Push. He is a Visiting Professor in the London School of Economics, University of London, and an associate member of the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée (CREA), École Polytechnique, Paris. He has held professorial rank positions in King's College London, University of London and in the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. From 1980 till 2001 he worked for UNESCO, Paris. Contributions David Makinson is highly regarded for his work on belief revision, uncertain reasoning, and modal logic. While studying in Oxford University (Worcester College) for his D.Phil under the supervision of Michael Dummett, he identified the preface paradox. In belief revision he created the AGM account of theory change with Carlos Alchour ...
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Lottery Paradox
The lottery paradoxKyburg, H. E. (1961). ''Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief'', Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, p. 197. arises from Henry E. Kyburg Jr. considering a fair 1,000-ticket lottery that has exactly one winning ticket. If that much is known about the execution of the lottery, it is then rational to accept that some ticket will win. Suppose that an event is very likely only if the probability of it occurring is greater than 0.99. On those grounds, it is presumed to be rational to accept the proposition that ticket 1 of the lottery will not win. Since the lottery is fair, it is rational to accept that ticket 2 will not win either. Indeed, it is rational to accept for any individual ticket ''i'' of the lottery that ticket ''i'' will not win. However, accepting that ticket 1 will not win, accepting that ticket 2 will not win, and so on until accepting that ticket 1,000 will not win entails that it is rational to accept that ''no'' ticket will win, whic ...
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Moore's Paradox
Moore's paradox concerns the apparent absurdity involved in asserting a first-person present-tense sentence such as "It is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining" or "It is raining, but I believe that it is not raining." The first author to note this apparent absurdity was G. E. Moore. These 'Moorean' sentences, as they have become known, are paradoxical in that while they appear absurd, they nevertheless # Can be true; # Are (logically) consistent; and # Are not (obviously) contradictions. The term 'Moore's paradox' is attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein, who considered the paradox Moore's most important contribution to philosophy. Wittgenstein wrote about the paradox extensively in his later writings, which brought Moore's paradox the attention it would not have otherwise received. Moore's paradox has been connected to many other well-known logical paradoxes, including, though not limited to, the liar paradox, the knower paradox, the unexpected hanging paradox, and th ...
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Classical Logic
Classical logic (or standard logic or Frege-Russell logic) is the intensively studied and most widely used class of deductive logic. Classical logic has had much influence on analytic philosophy. Characteristics Each logical system in this class shares characteristic properties: Gabbay, Dov, (1994). 'Classical vs non-classical logic'. In D.M. Gabbay, C.J. Hogger, and J.A. Robinson, (Eds), ''Handbook of Logic in Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming'', volume 2, chapter 2.6. Oxford University Press. # Law of excluded middle and double negation elimination # Law of noncontradiction, and the principle of explosion # Monotonicity of entailment and idempotency of entailment # Commutativity of conjunction # De Morgan duality: every logical operator is dual to another While not entailed by the preceding conditions, contemporary discussions of classical logic normally only include propositional and first-order logics. Shapiro, Stewart (2000). Classical Logic. In Stanford En ...
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Deductive Logic
Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. For example, the inference from the premises "all men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" to the conclusion "Socrates is mortal" is deductively valid. An argument is ''sound'' if it is ''valid'' and all its premises are true. Some theorists define deduction in terms of the intentions of the author: they have to intend for the premises to offer deductive support to the conclusion. With the help of this modification, it is possible to distinguish valid from invalid deductive reasoning: it is invalid if the author's belief about the deductive support is false, but even invalid deductive reasoning is a form of deductive reasoning. Psychology is interested in deductive reasoning as a psychological process, i.e. how people ''actually'' draw ...
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Rational Acceptance
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either ''arational'', if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or ''irrational'', if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards. There are many discussions about the essential features shared by all forms of rationality. According to reason-responsiveness accounts, to be rational is to be responsive to reasons. For example, dark clouds are a reason for taking an umbrella, which is why it is rational for an agent to do so in response. An important rival to this approach are coherence-based accoun ...
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Rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either ''arational'', if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or '' irrational'', if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards. There are many discussions about the essential features shared by all forms of rationality. According to reason-responsiveness accounts, to be rational is to be responsive to reasons. For example, dark clouds are a reason for taking an umbrella, which is why it is rational for an agent to do so in response. An important rival to this approach are coherence-based ac ...
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Conjunction Principle
Conjunction may refer to: * Conjunction (grammar), a part of speech * Logical conjunction, a mathematical operator ** Conjunction introduction, a rule of inference of propositional logic * Conjunction (astronomy), in which two astronomical bodies appear close together in the sky * Conjunction (astrology) In astrology, an aspect is an angle that planets make to each other in the Horoscope; as well as to the Ascendant, Midheaven, Descendant, Lower Midheaven, and other points of astrological interest. As viewed from Earth, aspects are measured ..., astrological aspect in horoscopic astrology * '' Conjunctions'', an American literary journal {{disambig ...
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Henry E
Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) * Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, Henry of Burgundy, Count of Portugal (father of Portugal's first king) ** Prince Henry the Navigator, Infante of Portugal ** Infante Henrique, Duke of Coimbra (born 1949), the sixth in line to Portuguese throne * King of Germany ** Henry the Fowler (876–936), first king of Germany * King of Scots (in name, at least) ** Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545/6–1567), consort of Mary, queen of Scots ** Henry Benedict Stuart, the 'Cardinal Duke of York', brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was hailed by Jacobites as Henry IX * Four kings of Castile: ** Henry I of Castile ** Henry II of Castile **Henry III of Castile **Henry IV of Castile * Five kings of France, spelt ''Henri'' in Modern French since the Renaissance to italianize the name ...
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Paraconsistent Logic
A paraconsistent logic is an attempt at a logical system to deal with contradictions in a discriminating way. Alternatively, paraconsistent logic is the subfield of logic that is concerned with studying and developing "inconsistency-tolerant" systems of logic which reject the principle of explosion. Inconsistency-tolerant logics have been discussed since at least 1910 (and arguably much earlier, for example in the writings of Aristotle); however, the term ''paraconsistent'' ("beside the consistent") was first coined in 1976, by the Peruvian philosopher Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias. The study of paraconsistent logic has been dubbed paraconsistency, which encompasses the school of dialetheism. Definition In classical logic (as well as intuitionistic logic and most other logics), contradictions entail everything. This feature, known as the principle of explosion or ''ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet'' (Latin, "from a contradiction, anything follows") can be expressed ...
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Principle Of Explosion
In classical logic, intuitionistic logic and similar logical systems, the principle of explosion (, 'from falsehood, anything ollows; or ), or the principle of Pseudo-Scotus, is the law according to which any statement can be proven from a contradiction. That is, once a contradiction has been asserted, any proposition (including their negations) can be inferred from it; this is known as deductive explosion. The proof of this principle was first given by 12th-century French philosopher William of Soissons. Priest, Graham. 2011. "What's so bad about contradictions?" In ''The Law of Non-Contradicton'', edited by Priest, Beal, and Armour-Garb. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 25. Due to the principle of explosion, the existence of a contradiction ( inconsistency) in a formal axiomatic system is disastrous; since any statement can be proven, it trivializes the concepts of truth and falsity. Around the turn of the 20th century, the discovery of contradictions such as Russell's par ...
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