Books about Inconsistency from Amazon.com

This book reclaims Marx's Capital from the myth of inconsistency An accessible account written for non-specialist readers, it shows that the inconsistencies are actually caused by misinterpretation; the recent temporal single-system interpretation eliminates all of the alleged inconsistencies..
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How should we react as readers and as critics when two passages in a literary work contradict one another? Classicists once assumed that all inconsistencies in ancient texts needed to be amended, explained away, or lamented. Building on recent work on both Greek and Roman authors, this book explores the possibility of interpreting inconsistencies in Roman epic. After a chapter surveying Greek background material including Homer, tragedy, Plato and the Alexandrians, five chapters argue that comparative study of the literary use of inconsistencies can shed light on major problems in Catullus' Peleus and Thetis, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Bellum Civile. Not all inconsistencies can or should be interpreted thematically, but numerous details in these poems, and some ancient and modern theorists, suggest that we can be better readers if we consider how inconsistencies may be functioning in Greek and Roman texts..
Price: $15.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency.
The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint.
The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics..
Price: $57.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In July 2006, John W. Dean published "Conservatives Without Conscience," a book condemning the modern conservative movement for being authoritarian Dean's book became an instant bestseller. But does it really prove that today's conservatives lack conscience? In his latest book, Peter Thomas explains why "Conservatives Without Conscience" is not persuasive to rational readers. If you've read Dean's book, then you owe it to yourself to read "Liberals Without Logic.".
Price: $13.71 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Paraconsistent logic is one of the most important and challenging developments in modern logic. Many of the papers in the book are by those who have already made significant advances in the subject It is unlikely that so many of the founders of this subject will be gathered together again. The work is at the cutting edge of this rapidly advancing subject. Paraconsistent logic, logic in which inconsistent information does not deliver arbitrary conclusions, is one of the fastest growing areas of logic, with roots in profound philosophical issues, and applications in information processing and philosophy of science. This book contains selected, edited papers presented at the First World Congress on Paraconsistency, held in Ghent in 1997; a milestone event in the subject. The book will be invaluable to all who want to learn what the subject is, and where it is currently going..
Price: $90.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The need for resolution of knowledge inconsistency arises in many practical applications of computer systems. This kind of inconsistency results from the use of various resources of knowledge in realizing practical tasks. These resources often are autonomous and use different mechanisms for processing knowledge about the same real world. This can lead to inconsistency. This book provides a wide snapshot of intelligent technologies for inconsistency resolution.

Features and topics include: Knowledge inconsistency resolving; consensus and conflict theories; inconsistency of knowledge – syntactic and semantic; methods based on inconsistency measures for inconsistency processing; knowledge conflict profiles; conflicts of ontologies; practical aspects of applications of proposed methods.

This book presents state-of-the-art research, filling a void in the literature within the field and offers researchers and graduates an invaluable source of reference on the topic.

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Price: $76.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary, recognize the truth - viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be": with these words of the Metaphysics, Aristotle introduced the Law of Non-Contradiction, which was to become the most authoritative principle in the history of Western thought. However, things have recently changed, and nowadays various philosophers, called dialetheists, claim that this Law does not hold unrestrictedly - that in peculiar circumstances the same thing may at the same time be and not be, and contradictions may obtain in the world. This book opens with an examination of the famous logical paradoxes that appear to speak on behalf of contradictions (e.g., the Liar paradox, the set-theoretic paradoxes such as Cantor's and Russell's), and of the reasons for the failure of the standard attempts to solve them. It provides, then, an introduction to paraconsistent logics - non-classical logics in which the admission of contradictions does not lead to logical chaos -, and their astonishing applications, going from inconsistent data base management to contradictory arithmetics capable of circumventing Gödel's celebrated Incompleteness Theorem. The final part of the book discusses the philosophical motivations and difficulties of dialetheism, and shows how to extract from Aristotle's ancient words a possible reply to the dialetheic challenge. How to Sell a Contradiction will appeal to anyone interested in non-classical logics, analytic metaphysics, and philosophy of mathematics, and especially to those who consider challenging our most entrenched beliefs the main duty of philosophical inquiry. Francesco Berto is Lecturer in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Venice, Italy. He has published articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Dialectica, Logique et Analyse, The European Journal of Philosophy, and the books La dialettica della struttura originaria [The Dialectics of the Basic Structure, Padua 2003], Che cos'è la dialettica hegeliana [What is Hegel's Dialectics?, Padua 2005], Teorie dell'assurdo [Theories of the Absurd, Rome 2006] and Logica da zero a Gödel [Logic, from Zero to Gödel, Rome 2007]..
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Paraconsistent logics are logics which allow solid deductive reasoning under contradictions by offering a mathematical and philosophical support to contradictory yet non-trivial theories. Due to its role in models of scientific reasoning and to its philosophical implications, as well as to its connections to topics such as abduction, automated reasoning, logic programming, and belief revision, paraconsistency has becoming a fast growing area. During the III World Congress on Paraconsistency (WCP3) held in Toulouse, France, in July, 2003, it became apparent that there is a need for a Handbook covering the most recent results on several aspects of paraconsistent logic, including philosophical debates on paraconsistency and its connections to philosophy of language, argumentation theory, computer science, information theory, and artificial intelligence. This book is a basic tool for those who want to know more about paraconsistent logic, its history and philosophy, the various systems of paraconsistent logic and their applications. The present volume is edited by Jean-Yves Beziau, Walter Carnielli and Dov Gabbay, expert logicians versed in a variety of logics..
Price: $33.68 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This volume is produced from digital images from the Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection.
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