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Debates current in the philosophy of mind regarding the gathering and processing of information, and the nature of perception and representation, also animated some of the most important figures in early modern philosophy, among them Descartes, Hume, and Berkeley. The authors of Descartes's Legacy: Minds and Meaning in Early Modern Philosophy use certain problems in contemporary information theory to elucidate the concerns of the early modern philosophers. This critical study attempts to uncover what was once called the logic of the theory of ideas, and to explore the questions it was meant to solve, given the limits of the ontological categories available. The authors begin their discussion of Descartes by examining his response to established models of perception in light of his understanding of the contemporary new science. Since Descartes proposed that any likeness between representation and the thing represented was unreliable, what was his solution to how an internal representation, an idea, gives us information? The authors' central claim is that Descartes's answer to the problem of how the mind knows matter involves a theory of 'intentional ideas.' This provocative divergence from recent discussions of Descartes's philosophy of mind, which have revolved around whether he is a 'realist' or a 'representationalist,' leads the authors to consider the idealism of Hume and Berkeley in light of Descartes's notion of the intentional. Hume and Berkeley, they maintain, explored alternatives to Descartes's conception, which led them to abandon traditional notions of meaning and truth. Descartes's Legacy concludes by suggesting that Descartes's picture can be reconciled with twentieth-century materialism, and asking whether the philosophy of mind can live without a primitive notion of the intentional.By shedding light on Descartes's crucial ontological innovation and on Hume's and Berkeley's reactions to it, the authors of Descartes's Legacy have repositioned early modern philosophy within a truly contemporary framework.
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A comprehensive introduction to formal logic, Logic and Philosophy: A Modern Introduction is a rigorous yet accessible text, appropriate for students encountering the subject for the first time. Abundant, carefully crafted exercise sets accompanied by a clear, engaging exposition build to an exploration of sentential logic, first-order predicate logic, the theory of descriptions, identity, relations, set theory, modal logic, and Aristotelian logic. And as its title suggests, Logic and Philosophy is devoted not only to logic but also to the philosophical debates that led to the development of the field. Much new material has been added for the 13th edition. An introduction to set theory and its relationship to logic and mathematics, including philosophical issues, is now part of Chapter 13. Chapter 15 is an introduction to modal logic and Kripke semantics, concluding with a discussion of philosophical problems with any logical accommodation of modalities. Instructors who do not wish to present proof methods will find chapters on truth trees for both sentential and first-order logic, and a presentation of trees for modal logic. Special features of this text include presentations of the history of logic, alternatives to traditional methods of conditional and indirect proof, and a discussion of semantic problems with universal and existential instantiations. Throughout, the authors are sensitive to philosophical issues that arise from the relationship between ordinary language, symbolic logic, and justifications for the syntax and semantics of the various symbolic languages. Discussions range from the justification of the truth table for the sentential rendering of if . . . then statements to semantic and syntactic paradoxes, including some troubling paradoxes that arise in ordinary language (e.g., the so-called hangman or surprise quiz paradox). Logic and Philosophy includes ample material for a one-semester or two-semester course and provides a thorough preparation for more advanced logic courses.