Introduction: 8 Bridges between Mainstream and Formal Epistemology

Demonstrating the anities between epistemology and epistemic logic is also the topic of Johan van Benthems Epistemic Logic and Epistemology: The State of Aairs where epistemic logic is pertinently pitched back and forth between its importance to mainstream epistemology and its interdisciplinary relations and applications in computer science, game theory and social software.2 In On Logics of Knowledge and Belief Robert Stalnaker examines the logics of knowledge and belief and their semantics in greater detail and connects mainstream defeasibility and causal theories of knowledge to epistemic and doxastic logic.The intertwined relationship between the two goals of epistemology is discussed further in Rationality and Value: The Epistemological Role of Interdeterminate and Agent-Dependent Values by Horacio Arlo Costa; then attention is specically directed to epistemological classics like theory selection, changing view, xing beliefs and some new solutions are presented when dealing with indeterminate epistemic values like simplicity and coherence. For a monograph-length systematic survey of forcing in mainstream and formal epistemology, refer to Hendricks (2005) (for a new perspective on knowledge and skepticism in the limiting case refer to Hendricks and Pritchard (2006)).2 Social software is a term coined by Rohit Parikh denoting the use of methods from epistemic logic, game theory, belief revision and decision theory to study social phenomena. Trends in Logic: Studia Logica Library Series, Kluwer Academic Pubishers.Hendricks, V.F. (2003): Active Agents, Journal of Logic, Language andInformation 12(4), 469495.Hendricks, V.F. (2005): Mainstream and Formal Epistemology, New York:Cambridge University Press.Hendricks,V.F. and Pritchard, D. (eds.) (2006): New Waves in Epistemology, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.Hendricks, V.F. and Symons, J. (2005a): Epistemic Logic, StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy.Hendricks, V.F. and Symons, J. (2005b): Limiting Skepticism, (forthcoming).Hansen, P.G., Hendricks, V.F., Pedersen, S.A. and Rabinowicz, W. (eds.)(2005): Social Software, forthcoming as special issue of Synthese.