We present a logical calculus for reasoning about information flow in quantum programs. In particular we introduce a dynamic logic that is capable of dealing with quantum measurements, unitary evolutions and entanglements in compound quantum systems. We give a syntax and a relational semantics in which we abstract away from phases and probabilities. We present a sound proof system for this logic, and we show how to characterize by logical means various forms of entanglement (e.g. the Bell states) and various (...) linear operators. As an example we sketch an analysis of the teleportation protocol. (shrink)

Ancien élève de Heidegger, Alexandru Dragomir (1916-2002) est une figure atypique de la philosophie. Abandonnant l'idée d'une carrière universitaire après la Seconde guerre mondiale, il navigua d'un métier à un autre, refusant catégoriquement d'être publié de son vivant. Il laisse aujourd'hui à nos curiosités ses Banalités métaphysiques, extraites des cahiers dans lesquels il griffonait des notes à sa propre intention. Banalités métaphysiques est la première publication de ce philosophe hors norme, tiré malgré lui de son retrait volontaire.

The past decade or so has witnessed an increase in the number of philosophical discussions about emergence and reduction in science. However, many of these discussions (though not all) remain too abstract and theoretical, and are wanting with respect to concrete examples taken from the sciences. This dissertation studies the topics of reduction and emergence in the context of a case study. I focus on the case of chemistry and investigate how emergentism can help us secure the autonomy of this (...) discipline in relation to the underlying microphysics. I develop an account of emergence (called functional emergence) that is, I argue, capable of answering the question of why we have chemistry instead of just applied quantum mechanics. I argue that functionally emergent properties in chemistry -- properties that are defined by their behaviour, not by some shared microphysical constituent -- can help us defend the autonomy of chemistry; they allow for the existence of sui generis chemical regularities, which can be used in sui generis chemical explanations. Functional emergence generates difficulties for some accounts of inter-theoretic reduction, but unlike other theories of emergence it is compatible with weaker forms of reductionism. (shrink)

This paper brings in discussion some key moments in semiotic field in the process of modern reconstruction of logic and of philosophy of language. We arefollowing the construction of logical semiotic (from Frege to Carnap and 'semantic of the possible worlds') and the central position of the concept 'possible worlds' in the interpretation process, which creates a meta-semantic. This concept is essential to understand 'the worlds from the poetic space'.

In the present paper, I examine the possibility of doing phenomenology in a collaborative manner. Faced with the fading of the ethos of seeing for oneself and the predominance of meta-phenomenology passing for phenomenological work, Herbert Spiegelberg proposed the organization of phenomenology workshops. After offering an analysis of the method of philosophical workshops exemplified by a contemporary proponent of philosophical practice, Oscar Brenifier, I identify several problems such a workshop can face and several commitments that can help create the co-subjectivity (...) necessary for sym-phenomenologizing. (shrink)

Résumé Des artistes roumains se rassemblent pour collaborer, dans leur pratique indissociablement artistique et politique, mais aussi bien au-delà. À travers leurs forces collectives, ils peuvent mieux résister contre le contrôle des forces de polices qui occupent tout espace d’organisation. Le collectif les aide aussi à voir en quoi l’amitié est aujourd’hui une valeur éminemment politique.

In this paper, we investigate the social herding phenomenon known as informational cascades, in which sequential inter-agent communication might lead to epistemic failures at group level, despite availability of information that should be sufficient to track the truth. We model an example of a cascade, and check the correctness of the individual reasoning of each agent involved, using two alternative logical settings: an existing probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic, and our own novel logic for counting evidence. Based on this analysis, we (...) conclude that cascades are not only likely to occur but are sometimes unavoidable by "rational" means: in some situations, the group’s inability to track the truth is the direct consequence of each agent’s rational attempt at individual truth-tracking. Moreover, our analysis shows that this is even so when rationality includes unbounded higher-order reasoning powers, as well as when it includes simpler, non-Bayesian forms of heuristic reasoning. (shrink)

The classical rule of Repetition says that if you take any sentence as a premise, and repeat it as a conclusion, you have a valid argument. It's a very basic rule of logic, and many other rules depend on the guarantee that repeating a sentence, or really, any expression, guarantees sameness of referent, or semantic value. However, Repetition fails for token-reflexive expressions. In this paper, I offer three ways that one might replace Repetition, and still keep an interesting notion of (...) validity. Each is a fine way to go for certain purposes, but I argue that one in particular is to be preferred by the semanticist who thinks that there are token-reflexive expressions in natural languages. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way to distinguish between indexicals, like “I” and “today”, and demonstratives, like “she” and “this”. The main test case is the second person singular pronoun “you”. The tradition would generally count it as a demonstrative, because the speaker’s intentions play a role in providing it with a semantic value. I present cross-linguistic data and explanations offered of the data in typology and semantics to show that “you” belongs on the indexical side, and argue (...) that they can be generalized to a novel criterion for distinguishing between indexicals and demonstratives. The central theoretical claim is that the semantic values of indexicals are objects which play certain utterance-related roles, which are fixed independently of the words being used in the utterance. For instance, the speaker plays the speaker role whether or not she uses the word “I”, and the addressee plays that role whether or not the speaker uses the word “you”. Demonstratives, on the other hand, pick out objects that play no such role, and are instead helped by the speaker’s word-specific intentions. (shrink)

In this annotated critical edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda Stefan Alexandru draws upon many hitherto unexplored sources of the direct and indirect tradition, inter alia upon an independent Greek manuscript he has discovered in the Vatican Library.

The domain of modal epistemology tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (i.e., possibility and necessity), and what justifies our beliefs about modalities. Virtue epistemology, on the other hand, aims at explaining epistemological concepts like knowledge and justification in terms of properties of the epistemic subject, i.e., cognitive capacities and character traits. While there is extensive literature on both domains, almost all attempts to analyze modal knowledge elude the importance of the agent’s intellectual character traits in justifying (...) beliefs about what is possible or necessary. My aim in this paper is to argue that intellectual traits of character, like thoroughness, autonomy, epistemic courage and open-mindedness, are relevant to modal epistemology. (shrink)

In the Dune universe, humans relied on computers for thousands of years. Their immense capacity for mathematical calculations made space travel possible, until the Butlerian Jihad ended that era. Humans found the means to cognitively and physically enhance themselves to replace and outmatch intelligent machines by using nootropic drugs, revolutionary training methods, artificial selection, and genetic engineering. There are also moral and social problems that come along with human enhancement technologies. In a society where enhancement is popular, the poor would (...) have fewer chances to succeed in social and economic competitions. Many moral philosophers argue that our freedoms and basic rights are guaranteed by a special moral status, personhood. Nicholas Agar has proposed that post‐personhood could be seen as the end of a continuum of intelligence and reasoning abilities. The Bene Gesserit education and selective breeding program claims to be all about producing human beings who maximize the well‐being of all humankind. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to provide a novel account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism. I first claim that the standard version of this argument is questionable due to its reliance on a problematic central premise, namely that excessive wealth damages democracy because of its detrimental impact on political equality. Subsequently, I relocate the fundamental democratic worry in regard to excessive wealth in the process of backsliding, and more specifically in the relation between excessive wealth and political polarization. I (...) then offer a new account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism which envisages wealth capping as instrumental for democratic resilience, but I maintain that the argument is not unambiguously successful. (shrink)

We construct logical languages which allow one to represent a variety of possible types of changes affecting the information states of agents in a multi-agent setting. We formalize these changes by defining a notion of epistemic program. The languages are two-sorted sets that contain not only sentences but also actions or programs. This is as in dynamic logic, and indeed our languages are not significantly more complicated than dynamic logics. But the semantics is more complicated. In general, the semantics of (...) an epistemic program is what we call aprogram model. This is a Kripke model of ‘actions’,representing the agents' uncertainty about the current action in a similar way that Kripke models of ‘states’ are commonly used in epistemic logic to represent the agents' uncertainty about the current state of the system. Program models induce changes affecting agents' information, which we represent as changes of the state model, called epistemic updates. Formally, an update consists of two operations: the first is called the update map, and it takes every state model to another state model, called the updated model; the second gives, for each input state model, a transition relation between the states of that model and the states of the updated model. Each variety of epistemic actions, such as public announcements or completely private announcements to groups, gives what we call an action signature, and then each family of action signatures gives a logical language. The construction of these languages is the main topic of this paper. We also mention the systems that capture the valid sentences of our logics. But we defer to a separate paper the completeness proof. (shrink)

Bien que vivant au quotidien dans l'existence, nous n'avons que tres rarement le sentiment de l'existence: nous faisons quelque chose, nous allons et venons, et par la faisons partie de ce tout qu'est l'existence sans toutefois y penser veritablement. A de rares moments cependant, contemplant un paysage du haut d'une montagne, regardant le ciel etoile, nous realisons non sans frissonner qu'une chose comme l'existence existe. Nous nous extirpons alors de l'affairement pour nous plonger dans l'integralite de cette vaste existence: nous (...) existons avec l'existence, non parce que le champ de notre vision se trouverait etre considerablement elargi, mais parce que c'est le fait meme d'embrasser l'espace qui nous libere et nous permet d' entendre ce passage de l'existence, son ecoulement. (shrink)

The value in Hartmann’s point of view can be watched from the perspective of some heteronymous plans - an ideal one, which would be “the modality of existence”, and a real one, which would be “the modality of knowing” the value. In Hartmann’s expression we deal with “the absolute character” 1 of values and “the apriority of knowing the values”. It’s interfering here the problem of the validity of values. The question is if the existence of values is reduced to (...) their validity, or if they exist without the dependence of the real states of the world. This validity, for Hartmann, is strictly referring to the second plan, the real one, which is dealing with values. The values are valid “for” – we have here the connection with the existing- but they have their own “world” beside this nip with reality that we call unbiased 2 . The validity of value is aprioristic, no matter the appreciation - like one “pure subjective”, arbitrary - the apriority of value is not depending of some constrain and converge at the level of the logical schemes of thinking. In the general conception of Hartmann’s philosophy the problem of value is diminishing in the analysis of the distinction between the theory of knowledge plan, which is aiming at the subject-object domain, and the ontological one, represented by the relation objective - trans-objective. Although the philosophical analysis will be done from the perspective of the theory of knowledge domain of the relation subject-object, the problem that will concern mostly Hartman will be the objective - trans-objective report seen from the angle of one “critic ontology”, trying to solve the problem of the report between general and specific in the way of being of the axiological structure. (shrink)

The present article represents an attempt to argue in the favor of the thesis that, in the First Meditation, in the fragment where the problem of madness is spoken of, Descartes’ view aims to exclude the possibility that the knowing subject, the Cogito, could be insane, and not only to avoid the problem of madness because of various reasons or to replace the madness-example with a dreaming-example. In other words, this research aims to expose and to argue for Michel Foucault’s (...) point of view regarding the Cartesian problem of madness, and also to argue against Jacques Derrida’s view on the same issue. More broadly speaking, beyond the highlight of a possible different approach to Descartes’ text or the analysis of the Derrida-Foucault controversy, the main aim of this article is to emphasize a problem maybe less discussed of the act of knowing: beyond the proper usage of a wrong method, the misusage of a correct method or the poor practice of some spiritual exercises, the errors in the act of knowledge could as well follow from a deficiency in the knowing subject itself. (shrink)

Even if the theoretical prestige of the notion of ecology is recent, an ecological writing has already been racticed, without receiving this name, by Roland Barthes. On several occasions, progressively after Writing Degree zero, Roland Barthes envisaged writing as a multifaceted practice, the most suitable for overturning the only order worth to be revolutionized, the symbolic order. We will take a fresh look at Barthes' writing as a theoretical concept in the early 1950s, along a shift that takes the term (...) first to the name of a technique. Finally, in the mid-1970s, writing comes to be defined by Barthes as a practice that ignores the dichotomy between matter or body and mind or idea, and which arrives, in a spiral return movement, at an inclusive conception that recovers both the concept and the practice. This is where writing meets, in Barthes' work, the act that Latour calls "greening" and which he defines above all as a new relationship between facts and values. In the light of the latest research in "Barthesian studies" we would like to show that the future of "theory", if it is ecology today, lies in the practice and ecological commitment of writing, as a mediator of meaning, a tool of "charitable fiction", at the confines of spirit and matter. (shrink)

Built in between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in a mountainous region in Romania, the Peleş Castle and its gardens were conceived according to the mid sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries landscape design principles. Thus, the surrounding landscape, the park and gardens at the royal residence in Sinaia make up an overall image of a Mannerist landscape in which the Villa or, in this case, the castle, is integrated in a complex allegorical, (...) alchemical and political programme. To explore this chronologically incongruent design and to explore gardening principles perhaps invisible in plain sight for modern eyes, the following study aims to emphasize the presence of early modern Western European gardens in the design of the park and gardens at Peleş. This analysis will also reveal the various ways in which, by manipulating nature according to Late Renaissance and Mannerism principles, nature was staged to achieve political goals. (shrink)

In the following lines, we consider the current debate concerning the origin, the specificity and evolution of analytical philosophy. We will try to motivate the idea that the origins and evolution of analytical philosophy are not entirely due to the British philosophers; in fact, this problem cannot be properly explained in terms of a single tradition, which would come true by the removal of another one. Regarding the evolution of analytic philosophy, we identify aspects of the German tradition, the British (...) tradition as well as some new elements generated by the interaction between positivism and American pragmatism. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to examine a novel view on distributive justice, i.e. limitarianism, which claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich. Our main goal is to assess the two arguments provided by Ingrid Robeyns in favour of limitarianism, namely the democratic argument and the argument from unmet urgent needs and the two distinct limitarian views which these arguments give rise to. We claim that strong limitarianism, which is supported by the democratic argument, should be rejected as (...) it fails to fully instantiate the value of political equality, while having some other unattractive implications as well. By contrast, we argue that weak limitarianism, which is supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs, should be endorsed, albeit in a qualified version which also takes responsibility constraints into consideration. (shrink)

Synonymy, at its most basic, is sameness of meaning. A token-reflexive expression is an expression whose meaning assigns a referent to its tokens by relating each particular token of that particular expression to its referent. In doing so, the formulation of its meaning mentions the particular expression whose meaning it is. This seems to entail that no two token-reflexive expressions are synonymous, which would constitute a strong objection against token-reflexive semantics. In this paper, I propose and defend a notion of (...) synonymy for token-reflexive expressions that allows such expressions to be synonymous, while being a fairly conservative extension of the customary notion of synonymy. (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another important (...) Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only on (...) the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Okasha imports Arrow’s impossibility theorem into the context of theory choice. He shows that there is no function (satisfying certain desirable conditions) from profiles of preference rankings over competing theories, models or hypotheses provided by scientific virtues to a single all-things-considered ranking. This is a prima facie threat to the rationality of theory choice. In this paper we show this threat relies on an all-or-nothing understanding of scientific rationality and articulate instead a notion of rationality by (...) degrees. The move from all-or-nothing rationality to rationality by degrees will allow us to argue that theory choice can be rational enough. (shrink)