Logic Language And Probability

A Selection of Papers Contributed to Sections IV, VI, and XI of the Fourth International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Bucharest, September 1971

The Fourth International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philos ophy of Science was held in Bucharest, Romania, on August 29-September 4, 1971. The Congress was organized, under the auspices of the Inter national Union for History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, by the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Romania, the Academy of Social and Political Sciences of the Socialist Republic of Romania, and the Ministry of Education of Romania. With more than eight hundred participating scholars from thirty-four countries, the Congress was one of the major scientific events of the year 1971. The dedicated efforts of the organizers, the rich and carefully planned program, and the warm and friendly atmosphere contributed to making the Congress a successful and fruitful forum of exchange of scientific ideas. The work of the Congress consisted of invited one hour and half-hour addresses, symposia, and contributed papers. The proceedings were organized into twelve sections of Mathematical Logic, Foundations of Mathematical Theories, Automata and Programming Languages, Philos ophy of Logic and Mathematics, General Problems of Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Foundations of Probability and Induction, Methodology and Philosophy of Physical Sciences, Methodology and Philosophy of Biological Sciences, Methodology and Philosophy of Psychological Sciences, Methodology and Philosophy of Historical and Social Sciences, Methodology and Philosophy of Linguistics, and History of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science.

The present study is an extension of the topic introduced in Dr. Hailperin's Sentential Probability Logic, where the usual true-false semantics for logic is replaced with one based more on probability, and where values ranging from 0 to 1 are subject to probability axioms. Moreover, as the word "sentential" in the title of that work indicates, the language there under consideration was limited to sentences constructed from atomic (not inner logical components) sentences, by use of sentential connectives ("no," "and," "or," etc.) but not including quantifiers ("for all," "there is"). An initial introduction presents an overview of the book. In chapter one, Halperin presents a summary of results from his earlier book, some of which extends into this work. It also contains a novel treatment of the problem of combining evidence: how does one combine two items of interest for a conclusion-each of which separately impart a probability for the conclusion-so as to have a probability for the conclusion basedon taking both of the two items of interest as evidence? Chapter two enlarges the Probability Logic from the first chapter in two respects: the language now includes quantifiers ("for all," and "there is") whose variables range over atomic sentences, notentities as with standard quantifier logic. (Hence its designation: ontological neutral logic.) A set of axioms for this logic is presented. A new sentential notion-the suppositional-in essence due to Thomas Bayes, is adjoined to this logic that later becomes the basis for creating a conditional probability logic. Chapter three opens with a set of four postulates for probability on ontologically neutral quantifier language. Many properties are derived and a fundamental theorem is proved, namely, for anyprobability model (assignment of probability values to all atomic sentences of the language) there will be a unique extension of the probability values to all closed sentences of the language. The chapter concludes by showing the Borel's early denumerableprobability concept (1909) can be justified by its being, in essence, close to Hailperin's probability result applied to denumerable language. The final chapter introduces the notion of conditional-probability to a language having quantifiers of the kind

This book provides a systematic, self-sufficient and yet short presentation of the mainstream topics on introductory Probability Theory with some selected topics from Mathematical Statistics. It is suitable for a 10- to 14-week course for second- or third-year undergraduate students in Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, or Economics, who have completed some introductory course in Calculus. There is a sufficient number of problems and solutions to cover weekly tutorials.

Authoritative account of the development of Boole's ideas in logic and probability theory ranges from The Mathematical Analysis of Logic to the end of his career. The Laws of Thought formed the most systematic statement of Boole's theories; this volume contains incomplete studies intended for a follow-up volume. 1952 edition.

An introductory 2001 textbook on probability and induction written by a foremost philosopher of science.