10 APhEx num 10, anno 2014

I review and critically assess the main insights of Michael Strevens' "Bigger than Chaos", a book with a novel application of certain mathematical results stemming from chaos theory. Specifically, the book applies such results to explain the phenomenon of inter-level reduction of complexity in certain natural sciences such as meteorology, economics, or ecology. The motivation for this review is that while "Bigger than chaos" provides original results to the philosophy of science, it is especially demanding in certain stages, requiring certain mathematical background, and so it is difficult to properly assess without a deep involvement in its reading. I also orient the reader commenting other reviews and further papers by the same author that elaborate core points of the book.

The text offers a Critical Review of "Vaghezza. Confini, cumuli e paradossi" by Sebastiano Moruzzi. The author critically reflects on the book by considering its methodologies, its arguments, and its relation with other books of the same type and on the same subject.

The philosophical inquiry of Arthur Prior (1914-1969) has involved topics ranging from formal logics to ethics, while giving crucial contributions in modal logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of time. Prior is considered the father of temporal logic and a forerunner of both current hybrid logic and Kripke's possible worlds semantics; also, he has supported a refined and go-ahead version of actualism, which is in turn grounded on a specific view on the relation between existence, facts and truth. Prior's approach to philosophy has been highly sensitive to the traditional questions in metaphysics and ontology, and at the same time has laid the grounds of new areas of research in modal logic. This entry aims at presenting and discussing some of Prior's most important contributions to philosophy and their relevance. In particular, the entry presents and discuss branching-time semantics and their application to the problem of determinism, hybrid logics and the reduction of instants to propositions, the modal logic Q and the problem of predication about contingently non-existing individuals.

Game theory studies the rational decisions of agents involved in strategic interactions. These include, for instance, playing chess and bargaining, negotiation and war. In all these situations, the rational choices of each participant in the “game” are determined both by his expectations concerning the intentions of other agents and by their actual choices. The present paper outlines the main motivations, conceptual tools and limitations of “classical” game theory; it also offers a brief survey of its most recent developments and of its applications in the social sciences.