The first comprehensive account of the concept and practices of deduction covering philosophy, history, cognition and mathematical practice.

This comprehensive account of the concept and practices of deduction is the first to bring together perspectives from philosophy, history, psychology and cognitive science, and mathematical practice. Catarina Dutilh Novaes draws on all of these perspectives to argue for an overarching conceptualization of deduction as a dialogical practice: deduction has dialogical roots, and these dialogical roots are still largely present both in theories and in practices of deduction. Dutilh Novaes' account also highlights the deeply human and in fact social nature of deduction, as embedded in actual human practices; as such, it presents a highly innovative account of deduction. The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from advanced students to senior scholars, and from philosophers to mathematicians and cognitive scientists.

Examines the cognitive impact on formal languages for human reasoning, drawing on philosophy, historical development, psychology and cognitive science.

A wide-ranging study of the central concepts in epistemology - belief, truth and knowledge. Professor Armstrong offers a dispositional account of general beliefs and of knowledge of general propositions. Belief about particular matters of fact are described as structures in the mind of the believer which represent or 'map' reality, while general beliefs are dispositions to extend the 'map' or introduce casual relations between portions of the map according to general rules. 'Knowledge' denotes the reliability of such beliefs as representations of reality. Within this framework Professor Armstrong offers a distinctive account of many of the main questions in general epistemology - the relations between beliefs and language, the notions of proposition, concept and idea, the analysis of truth, the varieties of knowledge, and the way in which beleifs and knowledge are supported by reasons. The book as a whole if offered as a contribution to a naturalistic account of man.

This book presents a learned and ingenious attempt to understand the origin and nature of philosophical inquiry. It draws on material from numerous disciplines and from all periods of philosophy and provides challenging arguments on a wide range of topics. The author constructs a hierarchy of ontological claims, beginning with perceptual experience, moving to language and science. He traces subtle and unexpected relations among these and concludes by offering a system for classifying philosophical theories which reveals why they take the form they do and why philosophical dispute is ineradicable. The book offers many fresh insights into such topics as the nature of experience, the nature of language and that of philosophy itself. It will interest a wide range of philosophers, in particular those concerned with categorical schemes, grammar and ontology.

Explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression.

Marková offers a dialogical perspective to problems in daily life and professional practices involving communication, care, and therapy.