Gathers the pre-Sand Country Almanac writings of Aldo Leopold, showing that he was not born an ecologist, but evolved over time through experimentation and thought.

Insurgent Universality offers a novel attempt to access history through a problematisation of the notion of universalism. Its main argument is based on three notions articulated in revolutionary events: temporalities, universality and insurgency. In this article we review their theoretical aspects, comment on their limitations, and outline potential reformulations.

Leopold first discusses the conservation of natural resources in the southwestern United States in economic tenns, stressing, in particular, erosion and aridity. He then concludes his analysis with a discussion of the moral issues involved, developing his general position within the context of P. D. Ouspenky’s early philosophy of organism.

Human coalitions frequently persist through multiple, overlapping membership generations, requiring new members to cooperate and coordinate with veteran members. Does the mind contain psychological adaptations for interacting within these intergenerational coalitions? In this paper, we examine whether the mind spontaneously treats newcomers as a motivationally privileged category. Newcomers—though capable of benefiting coalitions—may also impose considerable costs (e.g., they may free ride on other members, they may be poor at completing group tasks). In three experiments we show (1) that the mind (...) categorizes coalition members by tenure, including newcomers; (2) that tenure categorization persists in the presence of orthogonal and salient social dimensions; and (3) that newcomers elicit a pattern of impressions consistent with their probable ancestral costs. These results provide preliminary evidence for a specialized component of human coalitional psychology: an evolved concept of newcomer. (shrink)

Measurement is a process aimed at acquiring and codifying information about properties of empirical entities. In this paper we provide an interpretation of such a process comparing it with what is nowadays considered the standard measurement theory, i.e., representational theory of measurement. It is maintained here that this theory has its own merits but it is incomplete and too abstract, its main weakness being the scant attention reserved to the empirical side of measurement, i.e., to measurement systems and to the (...) ways in which the interactions of such systems with the entities under measurement provide a structure to an empirical domain. In particular it is claimed that (1) it is on the ground of the interaction with a measurement system that a partition can be induced on the domain of entities under measurement and that relations among such entities can be established, and that (2) it is the usage of measurement systems that guarantees a degree of objectivity and intersubjectivity to measurement results. As modeled in this paper, measurement systems link the abstract theory of measuring, as developed in representational terms, and the practice of measuring, as coded in standard documents such as the International Vocabulary of Metrology. (shrink)

Choice under uncertainty is treated in economics by different approaches. We can distinguish three of them, two of which concern individual choice, while the third frames individual choices within the analysis of the social system. The first approach can determine how a rational decision-maker must choose; the second one how a real decision-maker behaves; and the third one how decision-makers are represented in the general economic theory. The main theories that result from these approaches are briefly presented. This paper considers, (...) in particular, the third approach, which is the most general since it represents preferences by means of a continuous utility function of the possible outcomes, without any specification with regard to uncertainty. The link between the reservation prices of bets on events and their subjective probabilities is examined. It is shown as the additivity condition for these price-probabilities is not required by the Dutch book argument if preferences are represented by a continuous utility function that is not differentiable. (shrink)

English summary: Aldo Giorgio Gargani innovates in his use of Wittgensteinian concepts to argue that the formation of scientific and philosophical knowledge is not a linear progression, but a collection of instruments or conceptual and behavioral models, decisional procedures that are born of the different forms of human life as extensions of their anthropological contexts. Through this book Gargani demonstrates how Wittgensteins thinking can be used a truly efficient toolbox. French description: Aldo Giorgio Gargani (1933-2009) fait dans ce (...) livre un usage novateur des concepts wittgensteiniens pour soutenir que la formation du savoir scientifique et philosophique n'est pas une progression lineaire, cumulative et definitive de techniques cognitives: le savoir est plutot un recueil d'instruments, d'habitus conceptuels, de modeles comportementaux, de conduites operationnelles et de procedures decisionnelles qui naissent des formes de vie des hommes, en tant qu'extensions de leurs contextes anthropologiques. Si l'expression savoir sans fondements est maintenant tres repandue dans les sciences humaines, c'est Gargani qui a magistralement elabore toutes les consequences de cette idee, et son livre est l'analyse la plus riche de ces rituels epistemologiques qui decoulent de notre agir humain, lui-meme depourvu de fondements. A travers ce livre on voit comment la pensee de Wittgenstein peut etre utilisee comme une boite a outils veritablement efficace. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza algunos de los dilemas definitorios más relevantes del campo de la educación inclusiva. Sus desarrollos cognitivos actuales no son más que un peculiar sistema de ignorancia sancionada que opera con gran fuerza a través de la metáfora del engañador-engañado, es decir, una espacialidad argumentativa que nace engañada y que produce múltiples formas de engaño. Lo que conocemos como educación inclusiva no es más que una racionalidad que trabaja sin referencias objetivas sobre sí mismas. Lo cierto es (...) que la inclusión es un fenómeno dinámico y variable, cuyos significantes cambian, mutan y se transforman sistemáticamente de acuerdo con el contexto que dialoga. Es esto lo que permite sostener que la inclusión es un concepto maleta –esta metáfora nos informa cómo algo puede servir para múltiples cosas–, con usos y aplicaciones diferentes. Es un fenómeno y un cuerpo de conocimiento no fijo que, a partir de él, permite leer una multiplicidad de categorías teóricas y prácticas sociales. De ello se infiere que no estamos tratando con un cuerpo de conocimientos fijos. El conocimiento auténtico de la educación inclusiva ni su repertorio metodológico pueden escaparse de las relaciones de poder. Ambos están profundamente arraigados en aquello que se proponen comprender. Su conocimiento nunca es políticamente neutral. El trabajo concluye observando que una de las tensiones más relevantes que enfrenta la construcción epistemológica de la educación inclusiva consiste en aprender a utilizar en el trabajo empírico sus fundamentos cognitivos para evitar que su práctica no pueda defender las desigualdades sociales –estructurales y relaciones– que pretende comprender. Tomar la educación inclusiva como cualquier enfoque teórico que analiza problemas sociales puede incurrir en una praxis laxa que conduzca a la producción de más errores que respuestas. (shrink)

The evaluation of subjectivity and the birth of aesthetics represent the presuppositions of the modern idea of civilization, intended as an endless progress ofsociety. In the contemporary world, the degeneration of subjectivity into narcissism and aesthetics into intimism has destroyed the productive relationship between individual sentiments and society, leading to the phenomenon of neo-cynical decivilization.

In this paper we investigate the class of MV-algebras equipped with two quantifiers which commute as a natural generalization of diagonal-free two-dimensional cylindric algebras. In the 40s, Tarski first introduced cylindric algebras in order to provide an algebraic apparatus for the study of classical predicate calculus. The diagonal–free two-dimensional cylindric algebras are special cylindric algebras. The treatment here of MV-algebras is done in terms of implication and negation. This allows us to simplify some results due to Di Nola and Grigolia (...) :125–139, 2004) related to the characterization of a quantifier in terms of some special sub-algebra associated to it. On the other hand, we present a topological duality for this class of algebras and we apply it to characterize the congruences of one algebra via certain closed sets. Finally, we study the subvariety of this class generated by a chain of length n + 1. We prove that the subvariety is semisimple and we characterize their simple algebras. Using a special functional algebra, we determine all the simple finite algebras of this subvariety. (shrink)

Antisthène (444-365 av. J.-C.) est le fondateur de l'école cynique. Cet ouvrage restitue la vraie figure d'Antisthène, altérée par la tradition qui le présente abusivement comme un sophiste, un éristique ou un théoricien de la légitimité exclusive des jugements d'identité. L'auteur le replace dans la lignée socratique et décrit sa réflexion sur la philosophie du langage et la sophistique.

The algorithm has become an increasingly important concept in understanding human behavior in recent years. In the case of sport, human bodies are seen as superficial to the driving force of the algorithm, whether it be genetic, behavioral or surveillance-technological algorithms (Harari Citation2015, 2020; Zuboff Citation2019). However, the French mathematician and philosopher Michel Serres (1930–2019) structurally relate algorithms to sports and bodily experience at multiple places in his oeuvre. According to Serres, sport actually enables us to reprogram and rewrite our (...) behavior, moods and thoughts, and therefore modifies our algorithmic status (Serres Citation1999, Citation2019). Against deterministic conceptions of the body, Serres argues that human bodies possess a ‘metamorphic’ nature that is similar to the procedural character of computer programs. This paper investigates the relationship between the algorithm and bodily existence through a reading of both Harari and Serres on sport. It will be argued that, against deterministic conceptions of the algorithm, the algorithm can actually broaden an understanding of the role of sports and physical activity. (shrink)

This is a title on the foundations of defeasible logic, which explores the formal properties of everyday reasoning patterns whereby people jump to conclusions, reserving the right to retract them in the light of further information. Although technical in nature the book contains sections that outline basic issues by means of intuitive and simple examples. This book is primarily targeted at philosophers interested in the foundations of defeasible logic, logicians, and specialists in artificial intelligence and theoretical computer science.

In this chapter, it is argued on two different grounds that sentences in natural languages can be seen as systems. First, beyond their linear order, sentences exhibit a syntactic hierarchical structure. Therefore, they are structured entities. Although this structure is usually interpreted as independent of meaning, many semanticists believe that syntactic structure indicates the order in which the meanings of the parts are combined. Second, although the principle of compositionality—which states that the meaning of a sentence is a function of (...) the meanings of the parts of that sentence—is valid in general for natural languages, this principle has been shown to have many exceptions, where interpretation does not proceed bottom-up but top-down, from the meaning of the whole to the meaning of the parts. For this reason, a radical version of the principle of compositionality is untenable; if the whole depends on its parts and the parts on the whole, then the sentence is a system that cannot be dissected into separate parts without losing something essential. (shrink)

Economics bases the choice theory on the mental experiment that introduces the choice correspondence, which associates to every set of possible actions the subset of preferred actions. If some conditions are satisfied, then the choice correspondence implies a binary preference ordering on actions and an ordinal utility function. This approach applies both to decisions under certainty and decisions under uncertainty. The preference ordering depends on the consequence of actions. Under certainty, there is only one consequence to every action, while, under (...) uncertainty, many consequences are possible, associated with the states of the world. These consequences are represented by the action itself, the states of the world, and the corresponding outcomes. Current theories consider only outcomes, but some theories include state dependent preference. Preference for the action itself is not considered, but it might be relevant. The rationality of the theory is a different question from the rationality of the decision-maker. Moreover, the rationality of the theory may imply the rationality of a preference ordering, but this does not require the rationality of the decision-maker. It is only assumed that he/she behaves according to the calculation made by the theorist. The rationality of the preference ordering requires the rationality of the preference on outcomes, of the expectations on the events, and of their connection with the preference ordering on actions. The normative relevance of rational preferences is removed by the introduction of many alternative rational theories, which justify contrasting behaviors in identical situations. (shrink)

El problema de la memoria moral colectiva es abordado por MauriceHalbwach en su obra Memoria colectiva, concepto a retomar en esteensayo para aclarar el proceso de la memoria axiológica como un asuntode alteridad, así como Nietzsche y Freud serán los autores referidos paraestablecer la existencia de una Mnemotecnia moral y cómo se transgredela capacidad humana del olvido.El título Mnemotecnia moral engloba el origen de la memoria moraly qué mecanismos se tuvieron que forjar para hacerla indeleble. Lapropuesta es que existe una (...) técnica para la memoria, en la que la participaciónde la violencia es sugerida como una herramienta en la formacióny mantenimiento de preceptos morales, pues como Nietzsche señala,“para que algo permanezca en la memoria se lo graba a fuego; sólo lo queno cesa de doler permanece en la memoria. (shrink)

A compreensão epistemológica da Educação Inclusiva expressa um funcionamento diaspórico, isto é, as formas de construção do seu conhecimento, operam através de uma dispersão do conhecimento, distribuída por uma multiplicidade de geografias epistêmicas, entre elas, Feminismo, Teoria Queer, Estudos Postcolonial, entre outros. Neste caso, as contribuições do Feminismo e dos Estudos Queer, tornam-se instâncias chave do conhecimento para promover a proposta de uma nova racionalidade - cada vez mais ampla em suas propostas e sistemas de raciocínio - para justificar a (...) relevância da inclusão para além da produção de ficções baseadas na inclusão no mesmo - dentro da Ciência da Educação no século XXI. Retornando à idéia de Educação Inclusiva como "categoria de análise" e "dispositivo macroeducativo", esta entrevista analisa as interseções políticas, epistêmicas e pedagógicas que a Pedagogia Queer compartilha com a Educação Inclusiva; reconhecendo o primeiro como uma das suas principais memórias epistêmicas de transformação. Nessa ocasião, o Dr. Nilson Dinis, acadêmico do Departamento de Educação e Não-Programa de Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal de São Carlos, nos dá reflexões interessantes sobre a configuração de um campo que, embora exprima uma longa história em epistemologias subalternas, é conhecida e entendida a partir de uma posição de afastamento e periferia na educação e no treinamento de professores. O Dr. Dinis também aprofunda a compreensão do trans, sua agência e repercussões políticas nas gramáticas educacionais. Ao mesmo tempo, dá idéias-chave para abordar o currículo, as lógicas operacionais das instituições educacionais e a co-gestão das identidades sexuais no contexto educacional. Indubitavelmente, suas contribuições contribuem para posicionar um tópico que as políticas públicas e educacionais no campo da produção de Educação Inclusiva, é subalternizado, gerando novas estratégias de apartheid do conhecimento ou em termos de Spivak ou Foucault, a violência epistêmica, se tornam os chamados "vazios da diversidade", que são apenas declarações que atraem a noção de diferença para o centro do capitalismo, sem abordá-lo, deixando-o em uma situação permanente de desvalorização social e indefesa. Em suma, a entrevista espelha uma crescente complexidade, convidando-nos a superar as simplicidades pedagógicas a este respeito. Palavras-chave: pedagogia queer, educação inclusiva, multiplicidade de diferenças, ação e resistência política. (shrink)

Starting from an implicit quotation from Machiavelli’s Discourses on the Ten Books of Titus Livy contained in the Tractatus politicus, we would like to show that the Spinozian idea of democracy is aporetic, because the strategies that Spinoza suggests for the establishment of a democratic regime contrast with his ontology of conservation. Thus, we believe that the absence of the part on democracy in the Tractatus politicus represents an opportunity to rethink politics as the art of understanding and managing social (...) conflicts rather than neutralizing them. In this sense, democracy for Spinoza is the manifestation of the natural conflictuality of society, a request for equality between men that leads to the permanent questioning of private rights and property, as well as of every institutionalized State form. (shrink)

Can stable regularities be explained without appealing to governing laws or any other modal notion? In this paper, I consider what I will call a ‘Humean system’—a generic dynamical system without guiding laws—and assess whether it could display stable regularities. First, I present what can be interpreted as an account of the rise of stable regularities, following from Strevens [2003], which has been applied to explain the patterns of complex systems (such as those from meteorology and statistical mechanics). Second, since (...) this account presupposes that the underlying dynamics displays deterministic chaos, I assess whether it can be adapted to cases where the underlying dynamics is not chaotic but truly random—that is, cases where there is no dynamics guiding the time evolution of the system. If this is so, the resulting stable, apparently non-accidental regularities are the fruit of what can be called statistical necessity rather than of a primitive physical necessity. (shrink)

In our paper, monadic modal pseudocomplemented De Morgan algebras are considered following Halmos’ studies on monadic Boolean algebras. Hence, their topological representation theory is used successfully. Lattice congruences of an mmpM is characterized and the variety of mmpMs is proven semisimple via topological representation. Furthermore and among other things, the poset of principal congruences is investigated and proven to be a Boolean algebra; therefore, every principal congruence is a Boolean congruence. All these conclusions contrast sharply with known results for monadic (...) De Morgan algebras. Finally, we show that the above results for mmpM are verified for monadic tetravalent modal algebras. (shrink)

If the laws of nature are as the Humean believes, it is an unexplained cosmic coincidence that the actual Humean mosaic is as extremely regular as it is. This is a strong and well-known objection to the Humean account of laws. Yet, as reasonable as this objection may seem, it is nowadays sometimes dismissed. The reason: its unjustified implicit assignment of equiprobability to each possible Humean mosaic; that is, its assumption of the principle of indifference, which has been attacked on (...) many grounds ever since it was first proposed. In place of equiprobability, recent formal models represent the doxastic state of total ignorance as suspension of judgment. In this paper I revisit the cosmic coincidence objection to Humean laws by assessing which doxastic state we should endorse. By focusing on specific features of our scenario I conclude that suspending judgment results in an unnecessarily weak doxastic state. First, I point out that recent literature in epistemology has provided independent justifications of the principle of indifference. Second, given that the argument is framed within a Humean metaphysics, it turns out that we are warranted to appeal to these justifications and assign a uniform and additive credence distribution among Humean mosaics. This leads us to conclude that, contrary to widespread opinion, we should not dismiss the cosmic coincidence objection to the Humean account of laws. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to offer a sociological concept of crisis that, defined as the expected yet non-lineal outcome of the internal dynamics of modern societies, builds on the synergies between critical theory and systems theory. It contends that, notwithstanding important differences, both traditions concur in addressing crises as a form of self-reproduction of social systems as much as a form of engagement with the complexities and effects of such processes of reproduction. In order to make our (...) comparison exhaustive, this article explores critical and systems theories’ notions of crisis at three levels: (1) their conceptual delimitation of crises; (2) their methodological proposals to empirically observe crises; and (3) their normative attempts to contribute to their resolution. As crises remain a distinctive structural feature of the social world and a rich source of knowledge about it, reflexivity must be seen as a crucial form of engagement with the negative expressions of social life itself. (shrink)

Frege's logicist program requires that arithmetic be reduced to logic. Such a program has recently been revamped by the "neologicist" approach of Hale and Wright. Less attention has been given to Frege's extensionalist program, according to which arithmetic is to be reconstructed in terms of a theory of extensions of concepts. This paper deals just with such a theory. We present a system of second-order logic augmented with a predicate representing the fact that an object x is the extension of (...) a concept C, together with extra-logical axioms governing such a predicate, and show that arithmetic can be obtained in such a framework. As a philosophical payoff, we investigate the status of the so-called Hume's Principle and its connections to the root of the contradiction in Frege's system. (shrink)

The IKt-algebras that we investigate in this paper were introduced in the paper An algebraic axiomatization of the Ewald’s intuitionistic tense logic by the first and third author. Now we characterize by topological methods the subdirectly irreducible IKt-algebras and particularly the simple IKt-algebras. Finally, we consider the particular cases of finite IKt-algebras and complete IKt-algebras.

In this paper, we continue the study of the Łukasiewicz residuation algebras of order $n$ with Moisil possibility operators initiated by Figallo. More precisely, among other things, a method to determine the number of elements of the $MC_n$-algebra with a finite set of free generators is described. Applying this method, we find again the results obtained by Iturrioz and Monteiro and by Figallo for the case of Tarski algebras and $I\varDelta _{3}$-algebras, respectively.

Certain results, most famously in classical statistical mechanics and complex systems, but also in quantum mechanics and high-energy physics, yield a coarse-grained stable statistical pattern in the long run. The explanation of these results shares a common structure: the results hold for a 'typical' dynamics, that is, for most of the underlying dynamics. In this paper I argue that the structure of the explanation of these results might shed some light --a different light-- on philosophical debates on the laws of (...) nature. In the explanation of such patterns, the specific form of the underlying dynamics is almost irrelevant. The conditions required, given a free state-space evolution, suffice to account for the coarse-grained lawful behaviour. An analysis of such conditions might thus provide a different account of how regular behaviour can occur. This paper focuses on drawing attention to this type of explanation, outlining it in the diverse areas of physics in which it appears, and discussing its limitations and significance in the tractable setting of classical statistical mechanics. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the testimonium of Aristotle’s Rhetoric concern­ing Diogenes the Cynic. This piece of evidence is the most ancient source of Diogenes and proves that Aristotle was familiar with his writings. I also study the testimonium on Diogenes that is hand­ed down by Theophrastus, which confirms the interest of the ancient Peripatos in this philosopher. Finally, I examine a passage of Book 1 of the Politics where Aristotle refers to the thesis on the aboli­tion of money. I (...) argue that such a thesis could be ascribed to Diogenes. In particular, I attempt to demonstrate that several theses of political philosophy put forward by Diogenes should be considered as constitut­ing a polemical overthrow of the corresponding theses of Aristotle in Book 1 of his Politics. (shrink)

In this paper we will focus on the following points in Epictetus. First, we will concentrate our attention on the celebrated distinction between things up to us and things not up to us. Second, we will survey the distinction between the material and its use. According to this distinction, all external things are not up to us and consequently have no intrinsic value, although, as materials for the capacity of choice, their use has value, since humans can use things well (...) or badly. Third, we will demonstrate that the use of the materials corresponds to the use of presentations. Finally, we will present the three topics of Epictetus’ philosophy: the topic relative to desire, the topic relative to impulse and the topic relative to assent, being the first concerned with judgments about things and our desires; the second, about impulses and adequate actions; and the third, about assent and persuasiveness of presentations. The knowledge contained in these three topics constitute, for Epictetus, what we should know to make good use of presentations and, consequently, to achieve the human good, which is a capacity of choice according to nature that has at its disposal a comprehensive set of correct opinions about reality. (shrink)

The Choquet expected utility model deals with nonadditive probabilities (or capacities). Their dependence on the information the decision-maker has about the possibility of the events is taken into account. Two kinds of information are examined: interval information (for instance, the percentage of white balls in an urn is between 60% and 100%) and comparative information (for instance, the information that there are more white balls than black ones). Some implications are shown with regard to the core of the capacity and (...) to two additive measures which can be derived from capacities: the Shapley value and the nucleolus. Interval information bounds prove to be satisfied by all probabilities in the core, but they are not necessarily satisfied by the nucleolus (when the core is empty) and the Shapley value. We must introduce the constrained nucleolus in order for these bounds to be satisfied, while the Shapley value does not seem to be adjustable. On the contrary, comparative information inequalities prove to be not necessarily satisfied by all probabilities in the core and we must introduce the constrained core in order for these inequalities be satisfied. However, both the nucleolus and the Shapley value satisfy the comparative information inequalities, and the Shapley value does it more strictly than the nucleolus. (shrink)

In economics and in the social sciences, the study of decision making of the single individual is an important preliminary step to provide a sound foundation for the analysis of equilibria in economic and social systems. Neuroeconomic analysis of the process has been a recent fruitful development in this direction. In the more recent past a new direction of research has emerged, studying the interplay of the decision making of the single individual with the economic and social environment that surrounds (...) him. We review some of the results in this field, both theoretical and experimental, and suggest that a closer development of these two methods of research will be necessary in the future. (shrink)