Readings in Formal Epistemology ─ Sourcebook

This volume presents 38 classic texts in formal epistemology, and strengthens the ties between research into this area of philosophy and its neighbouring intellectual disciplines. The editors provide introductions to five subsections: Bayesian Epistemology, Belief Change, Decision Theory, Interactive Epistemology and Epistemic Logic.

'Formal epistemology' is a term coined in the late 1990s for a new constellation of interests in philosophy, the origins of which are found in earlier works of epistemologists, philosophers of science and logicians. It addresses a growing agenda of problems concerning knowledge, belief, certainty, rationality, deliberation, decision, strategy, action and agent interaction – and it does so using methods from logic, probability, computability, decision and game theory. The volume also includes a thorough index and suggestions for further reading, and thus offers a complete teaching and research package for students as well as research scholars of formal epistemology, philosophy, logic, computer science, theoretical economics and cognitive psychology.

The late Horacio Arlo-Costa was Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. Arlo-Costa served as editor for the Review of Symbolic Logic, as area editor in epistemology for Synthese and as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Vincent F. Hendricks is Director of the Center for Information and Bubble Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His recent publications include Handbook of Formal Philosophy (2012), Epistemic Logic: 5 Questions (2010), Probability and Statistics: 5 Questions (2009), Mainstream and Formal Epistemology (2007) and The Convergence of Scientific Knowledge (2001). Johan van Benthem is University Professor emeritus of pure and applied logic at the University of Amsterdam, Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and Distinguished Foreign Expert at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His recent publications include Logical Dynamics of Information and Interaction (2011), Modal Logic for Open Minds (2010), Exploring Logical Dynamics (1996) and Language in Action (1995). Van Benthem is co-editor, with Alice ter Meulen, of the Handbook of Logic and Language (1997).