|9780822985839|This volume offers an unusual variety of topics presented during the fifth annual Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy. Essays topics include: a dispute of the standard deductivist account of scientific testability; two definitions of “nonsense” that are closely related and correlate to science's concern with truth and philosophy's concern with concepts; contesting the causes of voluntary actions purported in Hart and Honoré's Causation and the Law; distinguishing two kinds of metaphysical tasks-—taxonomic and evaluative; and discussions of “what a thing is” in terms of its qualities and particulars and the distinction between numerical and conceptual differences, universals and individuation.| W. H….

|9780822984009|The four main essays in this volume investigate new sectors of the theory of decision, preference, act-characteristics, and action analysis. Herbert A. Simon applies tools developed in the theory of decision-making to the logic of action, and thereby develops a novel concept of heuristic power. Adapting ideas from utility and decision theory, Nicholas Rescher proposes a logic of preference by which conflicting theories proposed by G. H. von Wright, R. M. Chisholm, and others can be systematized. Donald Davidson discusses difficulties in specifying the structure of action sentences to elucidate how their meaning depends on that structure. G. H. von…