Facing the Future
Agents and Choices in Our Indeterminist World
1st Edition
Published on 2. August 2001
518 pages
978-0-19-535007-4 (ISBN)
Description
Here is an important new theory of human action, a theory that assumes actions are founded on choices made by agents who face an open future. It is a theory that makes indeterminism not only intelligible but illuminating. Tools from philosophy of language and philosophical logic help generate a full-scale account of agents "seeing to it that." The authors then proceed to clarify a variety of action-related topics such as determinism vs. indeterminism, imperatives, promises, strategies, joint agency, "could have done otherwise," deontic constructions, and assertions about a not yet settled future.
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Nuel Belnap | Michael Perloff | Ming Xu
Facing the Future
Agents and Choices in Our Indeterminist World
Book
08/2001
Oxford University Press
€232.40
Shipment within 15-20 days
Content
- Intro
- Contents
- I: Introduction to stit
- 1 Stit: A canonical form for agentives
- 1A Agentives
- 1B Stit: Simple cases
- 1C Grammar of the modal logic of agency
- 1D Mini-history of the modal logic of agency
- 1E Conclusion and summary
- 2 Stit: Introductory theory, semantics, and applications
- 2A Theory and semantics: The two stits
- 2B Applications of stit, with many pictures
- 3 Small yet important differences from earlier proposals
- 3A Von Wright
- 3B Chisholm
- 3C Kenny
- 3D Castañeda
- 3E Davidson
- 3F Conclusion
- 4 Stit and the imperative
- 4A The theory of fiats
- 4B Ross's paradox and stit
- 4C Chellas's theory
- 4D Agentive constructions
- 4E Negations of imperatives
- 4F The many varieties of imperatives
- 4G Embedding imperatives
- 4H Conclusion
- 5 Promising: Stits, claims, and strategies
- 5A From stit to promising
- 5B From RR to promising
- 5C Strategic content of promises and word-givings
- II: Foundations of indeterminism
- 6 Indeterminism and the Thin Red Line
- 6A Preliminary considerations
- 6B Parameters of truth
- 6C The assertion problem
- 6D The Thin Red Line
- 6E Time's wingèd chariot hurries near
- 7 Agents and choices in branching time with instants
- 7A Theory of branching time
- 7B Theoretical reflections on indeterminism
- 7C Theory of agents and choices
- 7D Domain
- 8 Indexical semantics under indeterminism
- 8A Sources
- 8B Structure parameters: The "world" of the speakers
- 8C Interpretation and model: The "language" of the speakers
- 8D Points of evaluation, and policies
- 8E Generic semantic ideas
- 8F Semantics for stit-free locutions
- 8G Clauses for stit functors
- III: Applications of the achievement stit
- 9 Could have done otherwise
- 9A Could have been and might have been
- 9B Could have done and might have done
- 9C Might have been otherwise
- 9D Might not have done it
- 9E Could not have avoided doing
- 9F Could have prevented
- 9G Could have refrained
- 9H Might have refrained
- 9I Had available a strategy for not doing
- 9J Summary
- 10 Multiple and joint agency
- 10A Preliminary facts
- 10B Other-agent nested stits
- 10C Joint agency: Plain and strict
- 10D Other-agent nested joint stits
- IV: Applications of the deliberative stit
- 11 Conditional obligation, deontic paradoxes, and stit
- 11A Technical preliminaries
- 11B Semantics of obligation
- 11C Completeness
- 11D Conditional obligation
- 11E O?-statements versus ?O-statements
- 11F The Good Samaritan
- 11G Contrary-to-duty obligations
- 11H Problems with the proposed semantics of obligation
- 12 Marcus and the problem of nested deontic modalities
- 12A The parking problem
- 12B The form of obligations
- 12C The Anderson/dstit simplification
- 12D The form of prohibitions
- 12E Generalized prohibitions
- 12F Generalization on agents
- 12G Temporal generalization
- 12H The outer ought
- V: Strategies
- 13 An austere theory of strategies
- 13A Nature of austere strategics
- 13B Review of choices in branching histories
- 13C Elementary theory of strategies
- 13D Favoring
- 13E Application to finding a strategy for inaction
- 14 Deontic kinematics and austere strategics
- 14A Basic concepts
- 14B From Thomason's deontic kinematics to austere strategics
- 14C From austere strategics to Thomason's deontic kinematics
- 14D Remarks
- VI: Proofs and models
- 15 Decidability of one-agent achievement-stit theory with refref
- 15A Preliminaries
- 15B Companions
- 15C Soundness: Validity of refref equivalence
- 15D Companion sets
- 15E Alternatives and counters
- 15F Semi-ref-counters
- 15G Completeness and finite model property
- 16 On the basic one-agent achievement-stit theory
- 16A Preliminaries
- 16B Soundness
- 16C Companion sets and their alternatives
- 16D Construction of preliminary structures
- 16E Completeness
- 17 Decidability of many-agent deliberative-stit theories
- 17A Preliminaries
- 17B Soundness
- 17C Completeness and compactness
- 17D Finite model property
- 18 Doing and refraining from refraining
- 18A Preliminaries
- 18B Main results
- Appendix: Lists for reference
- 1 Stit theses: Thesis 1-Thesis 6
- 2 Structures
- 3 BT + I + AC postulates: Post. 1-Post. 10
- 4 Branching-time-with-instants definitions: Def. 1-Def. 9
- 5 Agent-choice definitions: Def. 10-Def. 14
- 6 Basic semantic definitions: Def. 15-Def. 16
- 7 Derivative semantic definitions: Def. 17-Def. 20
- 8 Grammar
- 9 Axiomatics concepts: Ax. Conc. 1, Ax. Conc. 2, and Ax. Conc. 3
- Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Z
