Emergent phenomena are quite interesting and amazing, but they present two main scientific obstacles: to be rationally understood and to be mathematically modelled. In this paper we propose a powerful mathematical tool for modelling emergent phenomena by applying category theory. Furthermore, since great part of biological phenomena are emergent, we present an essay of how to access an emergence from observational data. In the mathematical perspective, we utilize constructs (categories whose objects are structured sets), their operations and their corresponding generalized (...) underlying functor (which are not necessarily faithful) to define emergence. From this definition, we elaborate several results concerning homomorphism between emergences, representability, pull-back, push-out, equalizer, product and co-product of emergences among other results. After we have presented such mathematical model, we utilize a hierarchical structure as example—from molecules to a flatworm—, in order to understand the relation between biological systems and its underlying emergence in a hierarchical model. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the fiction of the retroaction of the condition in contracts, a very old tool of law which may be traced back to Roman antiquity. In the first part, I introduce the notion of a contract with a suspensive condition, i.e. a contract whose efficacy is subordinated to a future uncertain event. As will be addressed in the second part, this kind of contracts is often linked to the fiction of the retroaction of the condition (...) (e.g. the French Code Civile 1179 and the Italian Codice Civile 1360): When the condition of the contract is fulfilled we should do as if the condition was fulfilled at the very time of the stipulation of the contract. In the third part, I turn to an attempt by the young Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to rationalize this fiction: Although – as every fiction – false, the retroaction of the condition allows us to reach true conclusions with respect to a deterministic metaphysics. Eventually, after having raised some objections to the Leibnizian account, I develop an alternative rationalization of the fiction: The fiction does indeed lead us to true conclusions because the same conclusions may be reached by relying on an equity-principle or, alternatively, on a merely possible yet expedient law. (shrink)

Cet article étudie la réflexion de Pierre Gassendi sur la puissance divine, son rapport à la rationalité humaine et aux lois de la nature. La pensée du philosophe de Digne sur cette question a souvent donné lieu à des interprétations historiographiques marquées par la comparaison avec la théologie de Descartes, laquelle était vue comme l’expression d’une orientation de la pensée radicalement opposée. Néanmoins, à la lumière de la relecture d’une série de textes de Gassendi (principalement tirés de son Syntagma philosophicum (...) ), il apparaît que ces deux auteurs sont loin d’être irréconciliables et que leur opposition découle moins de deux visions divergentes de la puissance de Dieu que de deux méthodes antagonistes pour fonder et justifier leurs thèses respectives sur la nature. (shrink)

The philosophy of Aristotle and its impact on the process of empirical scientific inquiry has been substantial. The influence of the clarity and orderliness of his thinking, when applied to the acquisition of knowledge in nursing, can not be overstated. Traditional empirical approaches have and will continue to have an important influence on the development of nursing knowledge through nursing research. However, as nursing is primarily a practice discipline, the transition from empirical and syllogistic reasoning is problematic. Other types of (...) inquiry are essential in the application of nursing knowledge obtained by empirical scientific approaches and to understand how that knowledge can best be used in the care of patients. This paper reviews the strengths and limitations of syllogistic reasoning by applying it to a recently published study on temperature measurement in nursing. It then discusses possible ways that the empirical knowledge gained from that study and confirmed in its reasoning by logical analysis could be used in the daily care of critically ill patients. It concludes by highlighting the utility of broader approaches to knowledge development, including interpretative approaches and contemporary empiricism, as a way to bridge the gap between factual empirical knowledge and the practical application of that knowledge in everyday clinical nursing practice. (shrink)

To a greater extent than in other technical domains, research and progress in Artificial Intelligence has always been entwined with the fictional. Its language echoes strongly with other forms of cultural narratives, such as fairytales, myth and religion. In this essay we present varied examples that illustrate how these analogies have guided not only readings of the AI enterprise by commentators outside the community but also inspired AI researchers themselves. Owing to their influence, we pay particular attention to the similarities (...) between religious language and the way in which the potential advent of greater than human intelligence is presented contemporarily. We then move on to the role that fiction, science fiction most of all, has historically played and is still playing in the discussion of AI by influencing researchers and the public, shifting the weights of different scenarios in our collectively perceived probability space. We sum up by arguing that the lore surrounding AI research, ancient and modern, points to the ancestral and shared human motivations that drive researchers in their pursuit and fascinate humanity at large. These points of narrative entanglement where AI meets the wider culture should serve to amplify the call to engage ourselves with the discussion of the potential destination of this technology. (shrink)

In principle, it should be for the Courts, which are not majoritarian institutions, to stand for the rights, even more for the new rights, that are minoritarian by definition. How far can the Courts safely go, when the recognition of such rights raises intense divergencies of opinion, confrontations between different collective identities, that populist movements can support and amplify? When should they leave the decision to the parliaments, which represent the will and the opinions of the citizens?

The problem of existence is reputed to be one of the oldest and most intractable of philosophy: What do we mean when we say that something exists or, even more challengingly, that something does not exist? Intuitively, it seems that we all have a firm grip upon what we are saying. But how should we explain the difference–if there is any–between statements about existence and other, garden-variety predicative statements? What is the difference between saying that something exists and saying, for (...) instance, that something is red, heavy, soft, etc.? These questions provide the focus of the present study. In the first part, this study addresses those authors that have been most effective and influential at widening the gap between statements about existence and garden-variety predicative statements. These are David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Franz Brentano, and Gottlob Frege. According to this family of approaches, existence becomes something very different from a property of objects. In the second part, this study turns to more recent attempts that have moved in the opposite direction by trying to reduce existence to a–more or less–plain property of objects. The philosophers that are going to be discussed here are Alexius Meinong, Richard Routley, Terence Parsons, William Rapaport, Edward Zalta, and Graham Priest. Between the first and the second part, an extensive chapter is dedicated to the approaches to existence developed under the heading of free logics. Finally, the third part of this study develops a deflationist account of existence: We should abandon the assumption shared by all accounts discussed in this study, namely that the notion of existence adds something to the content of a statement. To the contrary, we should think of existence as a redundant notion. The advantage of this strategy is that it does not make it contradictory to say that something does not exist – a frequent upshot of the approaches discussed in the first part. At the same time, this strategy avoids the epicycles common to the approaches discussed in the second part, which are strictly linked to the reduction of existence to a property of objects. (shrink)

A propósito de una reciente biblografía, este trabajo apunta algunas cuestiones esenciales de la teoría del derecho de Grocio, y en relación con ella algunos puntos importantes de la filosofía de Vico.Related with a recent bibliography, this paper arises some fundamental questions about Grocio's legal theory and the relationship it has with Vico's philosophy.

Estas páginas esbozan algunas claves de investigación que buscan trazar un horizonte interpretativo a propósito de una crítica de la razón evaluadora y sus implicancias ético-políticas en educación. De aquí la necesidad de analizar las relaciones de dicho tipo de racionalidad con la alteridad, preguntándonos por sus lugares y efectos en los procesos educativos. Por ello se propone una primera definición de esta racionalidad, para luego caracterizarla y profundizarla críticamente, lo cual permitirá identificar distintas formas de plantearse el problema de (...) la evaluación —históricamente abordado desde miradas ajenas al campo de la filosofía de la educación y de la ética como ramas de la filosofía práctica—. Nuestro planteo pone en cuestión las retóricas técnicas, psico-didácticas o sociológico-pedagógicas, que hace siglos se preguntan cuál sería la mejor forma de evaluar o directamente coadyuvan a naturalizar la razón evaluadora. Finalmente, intentamos pensar gestos micro-políticos de una potencial educación no-evaluadora y, por tanto, no-fascista. (shrink)

This article analyses Lorenzo Valla’s dialectics in order to uncover an epistemological theory of truth undergirding Valla’s production. Based on the analysis of Valla’s Retractatio totius dialecticae, I argue that Valla rejects the notion of one-sided possibility, and considers both possibility and contingency as incompatible with necessity and absolute truth. This assumption inevitably hinders inquiries in fields of knowledge that deal with inherently possible or particular data. Analysing Valla’s philological works, this article shows that, in specific cases, Valla tries to (...) overcome this obstacle thanks to the notion of intellectual acumen, a faculty that transcends the rules of logical inference and puts the inquirer in contact with truth. (shrink)

In Temporal Experience, Torrengo considers the core facts of temporal experience and their interconnections, ultimately defending the atomist dynamic model of temporal experience.

As far as our experience goes, we live in a dynamic present. Those two phenomenal features of experience—presentness and dynamism—are obviously connected. However, how they are connected is not obvious at all. In this paper, I criticise the view according to which the former can explain the latter, which I call sophisticated representationalism. My criticism will be based on an ambiguity in the notion of tense found in the philosophical literature, that between the perspectival understanding and the dynamic understanding of (...) tenses. The distinction is not just of independent interest, but it has a role in providing indirect evidence for the claim that the feeling of passage of time should be understood in non-representationalist terms. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a problem for the realist with respect to the institutional sphere, and suggest a solution. Roughly, the problem lies in a contradiction that arises as soon as institutional contexts are allowed to influence the institutional profile of objects and events not only in the present, but also in the past. If such “retroactive enactments” are effective, in order to avoid contradiction the realist seems to have to accept the unpleasant conclusion that institutions can create a (...) past that has never been present. I will defend a solution which involves a distinction between temporal and atemporal types of institutional kinds that has, I maintain, independent interest. (shrink)

This article analyses Valla’s historiographical stance in the light of his dialectical assumptions about possibility, verisimilitude, and truth. I argue that, at variance with most humanists, Valla believed that historical truth should satisfy the requirements of logical necessity, being therefore incompatible with verisimilar reconstructions of past events. However, Valla also realized that a critical method of assessment grounded in verisimilitude was indispensable to the analysis of doubtful accounts and traditions. In order to explore these matters, Valla developed a genre distinct (...) from history proper and closer to the forensic, inquisitorial tradition. While history had to deal with necessary truths, the aim of ‘historical inquisitio’ was to draw probable conclusions from pieces of conjectural evidence. According to Valla’s dialectical principles, these conclusions were not absolutely true but could be considered true thanks to the notion of intellectual acumen, which allowed Valla to take a leap from the field of possibility or verisimilitude to that of truth and necessity. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of Lewis' counterfactuals. By exploiting the structural properties of the recently introduced boolean algebras of conditionals, we show that counterfactuals can be expressed as formal combinations of a conditional object and a normal necessity modal operator. Specifically, we introduce a class of algebras that serve as modal expansions of boolean algebras of conditionals, together with their dual relational structures. Moreover, we show that Lewis' semantics based on sphere models can be reconstructed in (...) this framework. As a consequence, we establish the soundness and completeness of a slightly stronger variant of Lewis' logic for counterfactuals with respect to our algebraic models. In the second part of the paper, we present a novel approach to the probability of counterfactuals showing that it aligns with the uncertainty degree assigned by a belief function, as per Dempster-Shafer theory, to its associated conditional formula. Furthermore, we characterize the probability of a counterfactual in terms of Gärdenfors' imaging rule for the probabilistic update. (shrink)

The growing interest in fragmentalism is one of the most exciting trends in philosophy of time and is gradually reshaping the contemporary debate. Providing an extensive interpretation of this view, Samuele Iaquinto and Giuliano Torrengo articulate a novel theory of the passage of time and argue that it is the most effective in vindicating the inherent dynamism of reality. Iaquinto and Torrengo offer the first full-range application of fragmentalism to a number of metaphysical topics, including the open future, causation, (...) the A-theoretic interpretation of special relativity and time travel. The resulting picture, they argue, conveys the potential of a radically new understanding of time. (shrink)

Opponents of presentism have often argued that the presentist has difficulty in accounting for what makes true past-tensed propositions true in a way that is compatible with her metaphysical view of time and reality. The problem is quite general and concerns not only strong truth-maker principles, but also the requirement that truth be grounded in reality. In order to meet the challenge, presentists have proposed many peculiar present aspects of the world as grounds for truths concerning the past, such as (...) uninstantiated haecceities, Meinongian non-existents, ersatz times, and dispositional and distributional properties. The main problem with all such solutions is that any explanation of what grounds a TptP that involves the past is eo ipso a better explanation than any that involves only the present. Thus, the quest for an account of grounding for TptP that is compatible with the presentist ontology and ideology is doomed to be explanatorily deficient with respect to eternalism. In a recent article, Ben Caplan and David Sanson have claimed that presentists should change their strategy and, rather than seeking for exotic grounds for TptP, should adopt a more liberal view of explanation. That is, they should allow themselves to resort to “past directed” explanations, even if they do not accept the past in their ontology and ideology. I argue that such a proposal is not compatible with the tenet that there is a substantial distinction between the ideology of such a version of presentism and that of eternalism. Therefore, the presentist cannot endorse such “deflationist” explanations as an easy way out to the problem of the grounding of TptP. (shrink)

Sceptics about substantial disputes in ontology often argue that when two philosophers seem to disagree on a quantified claim, they are actually equivocating on the notion of existence that they are using. When temporal elements play a central role, as in the debate between presentists and eternalists, the hypothesis of an equivocation with respect to existence acquires more plausibility. However, the anti-sceptic can still argue that this hypothesis is unjustified.

The logico-algebraic study of Lewis's hierarchy of variably strict conditional logics has been essentially unexplored, hindering our understanding of their mathematical foundations, and the connections with other logical systems. This work aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive logico-algebraic analysis of Lewis's logics. We begin by introducing novel finite axiomatizations for varying strengths of Lewis's logics, distinguishing between global and local consequence relations on Lewisian sphere models. We then demonstrate that the global consequence relation is strongly algebraizable in (...) terms of a specific class of Boolean algebras with a binary operator representing the counterfactual implication; in contrast, we show that the local consequence relation is generally not algebraizable, although it can be characterized as the degree-preserving logic over the same algebraic models. Further, we delve into the algebraic semantics of Lewis's logics, developing two dual equivalences with respect to particular topological spaces. In more details, we show a duality with respect to the topological version of Lewis's sphere models, and also with respect to Stone spaces with a selection function; using the latter, we demonstrate the strong completeness of Lewis's logics with respect to sphere models. Finally, we draw some considerations concerning the limit assumption over sphere models. (shrink)