Reflexivity, Indexicality and Names

2003

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1977

Currently, a transition from Science I, the traditional science regime from the 16 th century onward to the turn of the 20 th century, to Science II, the emerging new epistemic regime since 1900/1950, is on its way. This transition has been described, so far, as a complexity revolution. However, this transition can also be classified as a reflexivity revolution in multiple dimensions and practically across all scientific disciplines. Reflexivity is characterized by a circular configuration between two components x, y like in x causes y and y causes x or between a single building block like in x ↔ x. The current reflexivity revolution manifests itself, above all, in a new form of science, called second-order science, which fulfils vital functions for the overall science system in terms of quality control, of creating robust forms of knowledge and of providing challenging new research problems and large opportunities for innovations.

1988

Page 1. VITA (10/03) Barry Loewer Department of Philosophy Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ 732-932-9181, 9146 e-mail: [email protected] Education: Amherst College BA with honors (in Philosophy and Greek) Stanford University Ph.D. 1975 Dissertation: Knowledge, Names, and Necessity - Advisor: J. Hintikka Areas of Specialization: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Physics (esp Quantum Theory), Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophical Logic, Deontic Logic.

Since Kaplan(1978) first provided a logic for context-sensitive expressions, it has been thought that the only way to construct a logic for indexicals is to restrict it to arguments which take place in a single context -- that is, instantaneous arguments, uttered by a single speaker, in a single place, etc. In this paper, I propose a logic which does away with these restrictions, and thus places arguments where they belong, in real world conversations. The central innovation is that validity depends not just on the sentences in the argument, but also on certain abstract relations between contexts. This enrichment of the notion of logical form leads to some seemingly counter-intuitive results: a sequence of sentences may make up a valid argument in one sequence of contexts, and an invalid one in another such sequence. I argue that this is an unavoidable result of context sensitivity in general, and of the nature of indexicals in particular, and that reflection on such examples will lead us to a better understanding of the idea of applying logic to context sensitive expressions, and thus to natural language in general.

2020

An indexical view of propositions.

Philosophy of Computing. Themes from IACAP 2019, 2022

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Reflexive research can be grouped into five clusters with circular relations between two elements x ↔ x, namely circular relations between observers, between scientific building blocks like concepts, theories or models, between systemic levels, between rules and rule systems or as circular relations or x ↔ y between these four components. By far the most important cluster is the second cluster which becomes reflexive through a re-entry operation RE into a scientific element x and which establishes its circular formation as x(x). Many of the research problems in these five clusters in reflexivity research are still unexplored and pose grand challenges for future research.