Table Of ContentEXISTENCE AND EXPLANATION
THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SERIES
IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
A SERIES OF BOOKS
IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, AND RELATED FIELDS
Managing Editor
ROBERT E. BUTTS
Dept. ofP hilosophy, University ofW estern Ontario, Canada
Editorial Board
JEFFREY BUB, University ofM aryland
L. JONATHAN COHEN, Queen's College, Oxford
WILLIAM DEMOPOULOS, University of Western Ontario
WILLIAM HARPER, University of Western Ontario
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University
CLIFFORD A. HOOKER, University ofN ewcastle
HENRY E. KYBURG, JR., University ofR ochester
AUSONIOMARRAS, University o/Western Ontario
JORGEN MITTELSTRASS, Universitiit Konstanz
JOHN M. NICHOLAS, University o/Western Ontario
GLENN A. PEARCE, University o/Western Ontario
BAS C. VAN FRAAS SEN, Princeton University
VOLUME 49
KAREL LAMBERT
EXISTENCE AND
EXPLANATION
Essays presented in Honor of Karel Lambert
Edited by
WOLFGANG SPOHN
University of Bielefeld
BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN
Princeton University
and
BRIAN SKYRMS
University of California at lrvine
••
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B . V .
Llbrary of Congress Cataloglng-In-Publlcatlon Data
Exlstence and explanatlon : essays presen+ed In honor of Karel Lambert
/ edited by Wolfgang Spohn, Bas C. van F~aassen, Brian Skyrms.
p. Cw. -- (The University of Western Ontario series in
phi losophy of science ; v. 49)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-94-010-5430-0 ISBN 978-94-011-3244-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-3244-2
1. Science--Philosophy. 2. Phi losophy, Modern. 3. Lambert,
Karel, 1928- 1. Lambert, Karel, 1928- II. Spohn,
Wolfgang. III. Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1941- IV. Skyrms, Brian.
V. Series.
Q175.3.E95 1991
501--dc20 91-15399
ISBN 978-94-010-5430-0
printed on acid free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice
may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
inc1uding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from
the copyright owner.
To Joe
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ri
BAS C. VA N FRAASSEN / On (the x) (x = Lambert) 1
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA / Five Easy Pieces 19
GORDON G. BRITTAN, JR./TheCartesianCogitos 25
CHARLES B. DANIELS / Undefined Definite Descriptions 39
DANIEL HUNTER / Maximum Entropy Updating and Con-
ditionalization 45
WOLFGANG LENZEN / Leibniz on Ens and Eristence 59
KEVIN MULLIGAN / Colours, Corners and Complexity:
Meinong and Wittgenstein on Some Internal Relations 77
TERENCE PARSONS / Atomic Sentences as Singular Terms in
Free Logic 103
ERHARD SCHEIBE / EPR-Situation and Bell's Inequality 115
PETER M. SIMONS / On Being Spread Out in Time: Temporal
Parts and the Problem of Change 131
BRIAN SKYRMS / Stability and Chance 149
WOLFGANG SPOHN / A Reason for Explanation: Explana-
tions Provide Stable Reasons 165
JULES VUILLEMIN / The Systems of Plato and Aristotle
Compared as to Their Contributions to Physics 197
PAUL WEINGARTNER / A Note on Aristotle's Theory of
Definition and Scientific Explanation 207
PETER W. WOODRUFF / Actualism, Free Logic and First-
Order Supervaluations 219
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF KAREL LAMBERT 233
INDEX 237
PREFACE
This collection of essays is dedicated to 'Joe' Karel Lambert. The
contributors are all personally affected to Joe in some way or other,
but they are definitely not the only ones. Whatever excuses there are
- there are some -, the editors apologize to whomever they have
neglected.
But even so the collection displays how influential Karel Lambert
has been, personally and through his teaching and his writings. The
display is in alphabetical order - with one exception: Bas van Fraassen,
being about the earliest student of Karel Lambert, opens the collection
with some reminiscences.
Naturally, one of the focal points of this volume is Lambert's logical
thinking and (or: freed of) ontological thinking. Free logic is intimately
connected with description theory. Bas van Fraassen gives a survey of
the development of the area, and Charles Daniels points to difficulties
with definite descriptions in modal contexts and stories. Peter Woodruff
addresses the relation between free logic and supervaluation semantics,
presenting a novel condition which recovers desirable metatheoretic
properties for free logic under that semantics. Terence Parsons shows
how free logic can be utilized in interpreting sentences as purporting to
denote events (true ones succeed and false ones fail) and how this helps
to understand natural language.
Free logic has ample historical roots and applications. Wolfgang
Lenzen reconstructs the place Leibniz assigns to the notions of exis
tence and of possible individuals within his logic which is in fact a
quantificational extension of the intensional algebra of concepts. And
Gordon Brittan applies Lambertian logical tools in order to shed
further light on Descartes' 'cogito, ergo sum' and to construe it in effect
as a plausible, if not sound argument.
Two essays jump right into old ontological questions. Peter Simons
discusses whether an account of change requires objects to be contin
uants without temporal parts or to be temporally extended occurrents,
and he defends the former view against recent criticism of David Lewis.
And Kevin Mulligan is concerned with particularly problematic entities,
Xl
Xli PREFACE
namely with colours and orientations and their internal relations,
reviewing, comparing, and in fact reviving Meinong's and Wittgenstein's
opinions on that subject matter. Ermanno Bencivenga, finally, adds five
nice pieces.
The other focal point of the collection is Lambert's philosophy of
science. Three essays span historical space. Jules Vuillemin explains
some difficulties with kinematics and dynamics and in the development
of physics in general by the philosophical analysis of motion given by
Plato and Aristotle. Paul Weingartner shows that Aristotle anticipated
both Meinong's principle of independence, as Lambert called it, and
the modern requirement of finding interpolation sentences for giving
scientific explanations. And Erhard Scheibe sharply distinguishes the
problems raised in the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen paradox and those
raised by Bell's inequality.
Wolfgang Spohn takes up the relation between scientific explanation
and understanding in the way proposed by Lambert and arrives at a
positive view in which search for explanation is construed as search for
coherentistic truth. It is no accident that the notion of stability is also
crucial for Brian Skyrms who develops and refines a de Finettian
picture of objective probability by generalizing what has been called
Miller's principle and by employing ergodic theory. Daniel Hunter,
finally, is rather occupied with subjective probability; he defends the
method of maximum entropy updating against objections by Brian
Skyrms and interprets it as a sound method of belief revision not
reducible to any forms of conditionalization.
Thus the collection demonstrates the far-reaching direct and indirect
philosophical impact of Karel Lambert's work for which his friends
wish to offer warm thanks.
Finally three words of indebtedness: We are very grateful to Ulrike
Kleemayer for preparing the index, to Kluwer Academic Publishers, in
particular to Mrs. Annie Kuipers, for the effective and friendly co
operation and to Domenico Costantini who invited all three of us to a
wonderful conference at the Lago Maggiore in May 1988 where the
idea of this Festschrift was born.
WOLFGANG SPOHN
BAS C. VAN FRAAS SEN
BRIAN SKYRMS
BAS C. VAN FRAAS SEN
ON (THE X) (X = LAMBERT)
The first few years of my philosophical life were so entangled with
learning from Karel Lambert that I can scarcely separate the two. In the
fall of 1959 I entered my first philosophy class at the University of
Alberta, a class of about seventy students with Lambert as instructor.
He told us firmly that he had no intention of discussing ethics or
morals, told us to read something about the pre-Socratics for next time,
and dismissed the class. It became clear quite soon that he expected us
to learn philosophy by doing: despite the size of the class, there was a
great deal of discussion and we were constantly challenged. His
response was always measured. People who were struggling found
sympathy, and he would turn their questions into something significant
for discussion. But students who were catching on would immediately
find themselves made to face greater difficulties. It was also, I can think
of no other way to put it, a lot of fun. Twice, I remember, he put me
down, to everyone's amusement. The first time I wouldn't back down
from a point when I was clearly losing, and Lambert ended the discus
sion with "Van Fraassen, you are logical, but you are not reasonable."
The second time we had gotten into that subject he did not want to do
at all, and I brought up Sartre's famous example of the moral dilemma
of the young Frenchman, who had to choose between care for his aging
mother and joining the Free French. Lambert listened patiently, then
retorted: "Van Fraassen, there comes a time when a boy has to leave his
mother."
The course - which like all our courses then, was a year long -
ended with Russell, and the theory of definite descriptions. I was
working in the university library, part time and then as a summer job,
and I immediately started reading as much of Russell as I could. That
was also when Lambert called me into his office, to ask me to think
about going into philosophy. I said it's all right, I've already decided to
do that. So he offered me a Coke, and told me to come see him and
talk with him as often as I liked. Looking back on that period, and the
courses I took from him, I think one thing stands out most of all.
Although he was teaching us logic and related subjects, very near to his
Wolfgang Spohn et at. (eds.), Existence and Explanation, 1-18.
© 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
