Nuel Belnap on Indeterminism and Free Action

Description

This volume seeks to further the use of formal methods in clarifying one of the central problems of philosophy: that of our free human agency and its place in our indeterministic world. It celebrates the important contributions made in this area by Nuel Belnap, American logician and philosopher. Philosophically, indeterminism and free action can seem far apart, but in Belnap’s work, they are intimately linked. This book explores their philosophical interconnectedness through a selection of original research papers that build forth on Belnap’s logical and philosophical work. Some contributions take the form of critical discussions of Belnap's published work, some develop points made in his publications in new directions, and others provide additional insights on the topics of indeterminism and free action. In Nuel Belnap’s work on indeterminism and free action, three formal frameworks figure prominently: the simple branching histories framework known as "branching time;" its relativistic spatio-temporal extension, branching space-times; and the “seeing to it that” (stit ) logic of agency. As those frameworks provide the formal background for the contributed papers, the volume introduction gives an overview of the current state of their development. It also introduces case-intensional first order logic (CIFOL), a general intensional logic offering resources for a first-order extension of the mentioned frameworks and a recent research focus of Belnap’s. The volume also contains an extended biographical interview with Nuel Belnap. Front Matter....Pages i-vi Introduction: The Many Branches of Belnap’s Logic....Pages 1-28 Decisions in Branching Time....Pages 29-56 Internalizing Case-Relative Truth in CIFOL $$+$$ + ....Pages 57-74 A stit Logic Analysis of Morally Lucky and Legally Lucky Action Outcomes....Pages 75-98 Worlds Enough, and Time: Musings on Foundations....Pages 99-121 Open Futures in the Foundations of Propositional Logic....Pages 123-145 On Saying What Will Be....Pages 147-158 The Intelligibility Question for Free Will: Agency, Choice and Branching Time....Pages 159-174 What William of Ockham and Luis de Molina Would have said to Nuel Belnap: A Discussion of Some Arguments Against “The Thin Red Line”....Pages 175-190 Branching for General Relativists....Pages 191-221 Some Examples Formulated in a ‘Seeing to It That’ Logic: Illustrations, Observations, Problems....Pages 223-256 In Retrospect: Can BST Models be Reinterpreted for What Decisions, Speciation Events and Ontogeny Might Have in Common?....Pages 257-276 A Theory of Possible Ancestry in the Style of Nuel Belnap’s Branching Space-Time....Pages 277-290 Connecting Logics of Choice and Change....Pages 291-314 Intentionality and Minimal Rationality in the Logic of Action....Pages 315-341 Group Strategies and Independence....Pages 343-376 Biographical Interview....Pages 377-409