Este artículo establece una fecha nueva, más precisa, para la conclusión del trabajo de Maquiavelo en El Príncipe . Documentos de julio de 1515 descubiertos recientemente en archivos florentinos revelan que Nicolás Maquiavelo y su familia se estuvieron esforzando para salir de una crisis inesperada en la que habían caído durante los meses anteriores. Lo que motivó dicha crisis no fue otra cosa sino el fracaso del Príncipe de Maquiavelo a la hora de lograr el favor de la persona a (...) la que estaba dedicado: Lorenzo II de’ Medici. Así, la presentación del libro a Lorenzo puede ahora datarse entre el 15 de mayo y el 3 de julio de 1515, siendo más probable que sucediera a principios de este periodo. La versión final del texto fue completada en algún momento entre el 14 de febrero de 1515 y la presentación, varios meses después. (shrink)

Despite recent essentialist approaches to Kant’s laws of nature, it is unclear whether Kant’s critical philosophy is compatible with core tenets of essentialism. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s position by identifying the key metaphysical and epistemological features of his notion of ‘nature’ or ‘essence’. Two theses about natures can be found in the literature, namely that they are noumenal in character (_noumenal thesis_) and that they guide scientific investigation as regulative ideas of reason (_regulative thesis_). I argue that (...) Kant’s notion of nature does not entail the noumenal thesis and, based on his model of causal explanation, I propose a novel, _phenomenal thesis_, that allows for a better understanding of the function of natures as regulative ideas. In the last part of the paper, I show that Kant’s ‘essentialism’ is a genuine form of essentialism committed to _de re_ modality, although it differs in several respects from major contemporary essentialist accounts. I conclude by suggesting that Kant’s essentialism (if appropriately updated) can be relevant to the contemporary debate, which has so far been dominated by Humean and Aristotelian proposals. (shrink)

A number of experiences have demonstrated how digital solutions are effective in improving quality of life (QoL) and health outcomes for older adults. Smart Health Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) is a new concept introduced in Europe since 2017 that combines the concept of Age-Friendly Environments with Information Technologies, supported by health and community care to improve the health and disease management of older adults and during the life-course. This chapter aims to provide an initial overview of the experiences available not only (...) in Europe, based on the research work of the participants of the International Interdisciplinary Network on Health and Well-being in an Age-Friendly Digital World (NET4Age-Friendly), which could be of interest to preventive, health and social authorities. The chapter reports good practices, pain points, and bottlenecks that may require a collaborative, interdisciplinary research approach to facilitate the transformations towards smart, sustainable, health and age-friendly cities and communities. (shrink)

According to most interpreters, Aristotle explains death as the result of material processes of the body going against the nature of the living being. Yet, this description is incomplete, for it does not clarify the relationship between the process of decay and the teleological system in which it occurs: this makes it impossible to distinguish between natural and violent death. In this paper, I try to fill this gap by looking at his so-called ‘biological works’ and mainly at the De (...) Juventute. I first introduce the specific concept of life at play in this treatise and prove its complementarity with the framework of the De Anima. Then, I illustrate in detail the process of dying and the reasons why a merely material description is insufficient to account for the distinction between natural and violent death. Finally, I show that for Aristotle natural death is a by-product of teleologically directed life activities: only against the background of this teleological structure is natural death fully explained in terms of essence and causes. To support this claim, I compare death to two analogous cases in Aristotle’s biology, namely dreams and the features of GA V. (shrink)

Este artigo trata da possibilidade de renovar o entendimento da eugenia no mundo contemporâneo. A biologia e a genética são fontes científicas da eugenia, mas não fazem parte de seu núcleo filosófico. Essa é a razão pela qual vemos a ontologia subjacente à eugenia como nossa principal preocupação. O estatuto da eugenia como uma prática está mudando rapidamente e a vida é tanto o objeto como a dimensão oculta dessa mudança. Entendida por meio da história dos seres, a dispersão da (...) ontologia permite um entendimento renovado tanto da humanidade quanto da animalidade. Como se pode entender que uma ciência completamente reconhecida no início do século XX se tenha tornado uma prática silenciosa no século XXi? A disseminação das novas técnicas genéticas e a discrição atual acerca da eugenia parecem estar ligadas ao avanço de sua reabilitação. Ainda estamos em um estágio inicial de nosso entendimento da genética humana. Não há razão para pensar que esse conhecimento não será explorado pela eugenia. A plasticidade de nossa condição humana encontra nisso uma de suas possibilidades. This article is about the possibility of renewing the understanding of eugenics in contemporary world. Biology and genetics are scientific resources of eugenics, but they are not alone at its philosophical core. This is the reason why we regard the ontology behind eugenics as our main concern. The status of eugenics as a practice is rapidly changing, and life is both the object and the hidden dimension of this change. Understood through the history of being(s), ontology's dispersion allows a renewed understanding of both humanity and animality. How can we understand that a fully recognized science at the beginning of the twentieth century became a silent practice of the twenty-first century? The dissemination of new genetic techniques and today's discretion with respect to eugenics appear to be connected within steps towards its rehabilitation. We are still at an early stage of our understanding of human genetics. There's no reason to think that such knowledge will not be explored through eugenics. After all, the plasticity of our human condition finds in it one of its possibilities. (shrink)

How many notions of cause are there? The causality literature is witnessing a flourishing of pluralist positions. Here I focus on a recent debate on whether interpreting causality in terms of inferential relations commits one to semantic pluralism (Reiss 2011) or not (Williamson 2006). I argue that inferentialism is compatible with a ‘weak’ form of monism, where causality is envisaged as one, vague cluster concept. I offer two arguments for this, one for vagueness, one for uniqueness. Finally, I qualify in (...) what sense the resulting form of monism is ‘weak’.¿Cuántas nociones de causa hay? Hay un resurgir de posiciones pluralistas en la bibliografía sobre causalidad. Me ocuparé aquí de un debate reciente sobre si la interpretación de la causalidad en términos de relaciones inferenciales nos compromete con el pluralismo semántico (Reiss 2011) o no (Williamson 2006). Defiendo que el inferencialismo es compatible con una forma ’debil’ de monismo, donde la causalidad se presenta como un único concepto vago y de agrupación (cluster). Ofrezco para ello dos argumentos, uno sobre vaguedad y otro sobre unicidad. Finalmente, matizaré en qué sentido esta forma demonismo es ’débil’. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, constitutive explanations have attracted much attention since Craver’s influential book Explaining the Brain (2007). His Mutual Manipulability (MM) theory of constitution aimed to explicate constitution as a non-causal explanatory relation and to demarcate between constituents and non-constituents. But MM received decisive criticism. In response, Craver et al. (2021) have recently proposed a new theory, called Matched Interlevel Experiments (MIE), which is currently gaining traction in various fields. The authors claim that MIE retains “the spirit of MM (...) without conceptual confusion.” Our paper argues that this claim is not borne out: neither does MIE meet MM’s objectives nor is it free of conceptual confusion. At the same time, we show that it is possible to meet MM’s objectives in a conceptually sound manner—by adopting the so-called No De-Coupling theory of constitution. (shrink)

In this essay I revisit Ricœur’s famous greffe in light of Husserl’s method. In other words, I try to highlight the anti-idealist interpretation of phenomenology exposed by Ricœur in his early project (Philosophie de la volonté) and in some later works, in order to present the necessity of the graft of hermeneutics onto the worn out body of western reflexive philosophy. This surgery has a radical effect on the “Subject”: far from provoking a “rejection crisis”, the hermeneutical graft provides the (...) Cogito with a new heart, and gives new life to Ricœur’s homme capable – the ultimate character of his long philosophical journey. The essay closes with an alternative interpretation of this “capability”. (shrink)

According to Bentham's utilitarian mode of reasoning, the legitimacy of an intervention was not to be valued on the grounds of the underlying intentions or the means employed, but rather in light of its (expected) consequences. What at first would seem as incoherent, arbitrary or ambivalent attitudes towards intervention were in fact consistent with his situational and pragmatic mode of reasoning. Rather than a disjuncture between ideal theory and practical reasoning, his positions on intervention reflected the inevitably local nature of (...) his principled 'moral casuistry', characterised by the attempt to reconcile self-regarding interests with extra-regarding interests. The key to this move resided in Bentham's concept of 'effective benevolence'. The 'business of the Deontologist' - and the essence of his principled moral casuistry - was that of exposing the dictates of 'effective benevolence' wherever possible, and Bentham himself took up this challenge in his writings on Tripoli and... (shrink)

In her book Abductive Reasoning Atocha Aliseda (2006) stresses the attention to the logical models of abduction, centering on the semantic tableaux as a method for extending and improving both the whole cognitive/philosophical view on it and on other more restricted logical approaches. I will provide further insight on two aspects. The first is re-lated to the importance of increasing logical knowledge on abduction: Aliseda clearly shows how the logical study on abduction in turn helps us to extend and modernize (...) the classical and received idea of logic. The second refers to some ideas coming from the so-called distributed cognition and concerns the role of logical models as forms of cognitive exter-nalizations of preexistent in-formal human reasoning performances. The logical externalization in objective systems, communicable and sharable, is able to grant stable perspectives endowed with symbolic, abstract, and rigorous cogni-tive features. I will also emphasize that Aliseda especially stresses that this character of stability and objectivity of logical achievements are not usually present in models of abduction that are merely cognitive and epistemological, and of ex-treme importance from the computational point of view. (shrink)

While lawers and philosophers of law show the difference between matters of fact and normative situations, this paper proves that the difference is not crisp, since, in accordance with usual international private law, foreign juridical norms are, in principle, considered facts, but only up to a certain degree.

Um dos aspectos característicos da fundamentação epistemológica da etologia de Konrad Lorenz é a tentativa de síntese entre a teoria darwiniana e a gnosiologia kantiana. A partir dessa premissa, delinearemos, antes de tudo, uma breve história da tradição transcendentalista, focalizando a atenção em alguns elementos que seus críticos consideraram insustentáveis. Em segundo lugar, analisaremos a tentativa de Lorenz de implantar a estrutura transcendental em suas pesquisas etológicas, com uma consequente naturalização do conceito de "a priori". Em terceiro lugar, veremos como (...) a atribuição de a priori próprios das espécies particulares abre a possibilidade de interpretar a epistemologia de Lorenz de duas maneiras distintas, aparentemente conflitantes. Finalmente, preferiremos uma dessas interpretações e mostraremos como ela permite o entendimento das distintas modalidades de conhecimento animal e humano. One of the main features of Konrad Lorenz's epistemological foundation of ethology is the attempt of synthesis between Darwinian theory and Kantian gnosiology. Starting from this premise I will outline, first of all, a brief history of transcendentalist tradition, focusing attention on some elements that its critics have regarded as untenable. Secondly, I will analyze Lorenz's attempt to implant the transcendental structure in his ethological researches as being a consequence of the naturalization of the concept of "a priori". Thirdly, I will see how the attribution of a priori proper to single species opens the possibility of interpreting the epistemology of Lorenz in two apparently conflicting ways. Finally, I will prefer one of these interpretations and I will show that it enables us to understand the distinct modalities of animal and human knowledge. (shrink)

In his 1686 essay GI Leibniz undertook to reduce sentences to noun-phrases, truth to being. Such a reduction arose from his equating proof with conceptual analysis. Within limits Leibniz’s logical calculus provides a reasonable way of surmounting the dichotomy, thus allowing a reduction of hypothetical to categorical statements. However it yields the disastrous result that, whenever A is possible and so is B, there can be an entity being both A and B. Yet, Leibniz was in the GI the forerunner (...) of 20th century combinatory logic, which (successfully!) practices - sometimes for reasons not entirely unlike Leibniz’s own grounds - reductions of the same kinds he tried to carry out. (shrink)

Propongo en este artículo reducir: las oraciones imperativas a asertos de cierto carácter performativo, los jusivos; y los mandamientos legislativos, ya sea a oraciones imperativas, ya a otro tipo de asertos también performativos, los promulgativos; y, en cada caso, distingo esas oraciones de sus respectivos contenidos, que son estados de cosas imperativos o deónticos; éstos últimos son las normas. Sostengo que esos asertos performativos son verdaderos en virtud de la propia prolación en la que se enuncian, en lugar de ser (...) frases sin valor veritativo. I propose to reduce: imperative sentences to certain performative assertions, jussives; and legislative mandates to either imperative sentences or another kind of performative assertions, promulgatives; in each case, I make a distinction between those sentences and contents thereof, which are imperative or deontic states of affairs; the latter are the norms. I maintain that those performative assertions are true in virtue of the utterance wherein they are stated, and so that they do not lack truth value. (shrink)

Este artigo destina-se a introduzir a conferência de Heisenberg "A doutrina goethiana e newtoniana das cores à luz da física moderna", proferida em 1941, cuja tradução é aqui publicada. Analisa-se primeiramente o projeto filosófico de uma ordenação da realidade, desenvolvido pelo físico no início da década de 1940, o qual subjaz à discussão sobre as doutrinas das cores em Goethe e Newton. No segundo momento, faz-se uma exposição de algumas das implicações filosóficas da teoria quântica, com ênfase na interpretação da (...) assim denominada escola de Copenhague. Por fim, procura-se mostrar como a querela entre Goethe e Newton é utilizada para defender as abstrações da física teórica dos ataques da assim denominada "física ariana" e, ao mesmo tempo, preservar o valor das considerações intuitivas de Goethe. This paper aims at exposing the Heisenberg's conference "The teachings of Goethe and Newton on colors in the light of modern physics", presented in 1941, whose translation is presented here. In the first place the paper analyzes the philosophical project of an ordination of the reality, developed by the physicist in the early 1940s and which is the basis for the discussion of the "Teachings of Goethe and Newton on colors". Secondly it exposes some philosophical implications of the quantum theory by emphasizing the point of view of the Copenhagen school. Finally, it shows how the dispute between Goethe and Newton is exploited to defend the abstractions of the theoretical physics against the attacks of the so called "German physicists" and, at the same time, to preserve the worth of the Goethe's intuitive analysis. (shrink)

En este artículo se hace una crítica de los enfoques teóricos, aquí llamados por analogía o analógicos, que pretenden abstraer conceptos darwinistas del sustrato biológico para aplicarlos a dominios ontológicos (parcialmente) distintos, estrategia adoptada por versiones de la epistemología evolutiva y, sobre todo, por la teoría memética. Para ello se utiliza el argumento de la exclusión causal, tomado en préstamo de la filosofía de la mente; se hace evidente la existencia de un paralelismo entre causalidad mental y memética, y se (...) muestra cómo cualquier posible caracterización de la segunda a partir de la primera conduce a graves problemas metafísicos y epistemológicos. En las conclusiones se esbozan, sin intención de exhaustividad, algunas ideas sobre cómo evitar posiciones reduccionistas sin adoptar una postura teórica analógica. The main purpose of this paper is criticize theoretical approaches -here called by analogy, or analogical- which aim to extract Darwinian concepts from a biological substrate to apply them to (partially) different ontological domains. This strategy is adopted by some versions of evolutionary epistemology and, especially, by memetics theory. An argument borrowed from philosophy of mind, namely, the argument of causal exclusion, is used to carry out the critique. The existence of a parallelism between memetics and mental causation will be shown, and it will be argued that any possible characterization of the first in terms of the second implies serious metaphysical and epistemological problems. In the conclusions, with no intention of completeness, some ideas on how to avoid reductionist positions, without taking an analogical posture, will be outlined. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to save "the sexual" from the oblivion to which certain strands in queer theory tend to condemn it, and at the same time to limit the risks of anti-politics and solipsism contained in what has been termed antisocial queer theory. It takes a journey from Sigmund Freud to Mario Mieli and Guy Hocquenghem, from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to Teresa de Lauretis, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Tim Dean, and from all of these thinkers (...) back to Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes. At the end, through readings of Bruce LaBruce's movies on gay zombies, the elitism of antisocial queer theory is brought into contact with popular culture. The living dead come to represent a dispossessed form of subjectivity, whose monstrous drives are counterposed to predatory desires of liberal individuals. The reader is thus lead into the interstitial spaces of the Queer Apocalypses, where the past and the future collapse onto the present, and sexual minorities resurrect to the chance of a non-heroic political agency. (shrink)

Résumé — Le Dialogue sur le sujet de la divinité, publié en 1631 dans les Cinq autres Dialogues sceptiques de La Mothe Le Vayer, se nourrit d’un franc scepticisme et d’un naturalisme « à l’imitation des Anciens », et La Mothe, en disciple de Sextus, adopte une attitude « de philosophe ancien et payen in puris naturalibus ». Dans ce dialogue, axé sur le thème de la diversité des religions, émerge le fidéisme propre à La Mothe et à son écriture (...) « libertine ». S’il est difficile de voir dans ce dialogue l’expression d’un fidéisme sincère et convaincu ou la profession fidéiste d’un controversiste antiprotestant , on retrouve plutôt dans ces pages le scepticisme d’un libertin qui masque son incrédulité et ses doutes religieux par une prudente circonspection et par la soumission à l’autorité extérieure de la religion établie.— The Dialogue sur le sujet de la divinité, published by La Mothe Le Vayer in 1631 as one of the sceptical Cinq autres Dialogues, shows a scepticism and a naturalism derived from the classical philosophy : La Mothe is not only an admirer of Sextus Empiricus, but he also follows the attitude of « philosophe ancien et payen in puris naturalibus ». From this dialogue on the diversity between religions emerges the typical fideism of La Mothe and of his « libertine » writing. It is quite difficult to see in this dialogue the expression of a sincere fideism or the fideism of an antiprotestant controversist ; most probably these pages exhibit the scepticism of a free-thinker that dissimulates his disbelief and his doubts under the authority of the established religion. (shrink)

Excerpt from L'Esiglio di Sant'agostino: Note Sulle Contraddizioni di un Sistema di Filosofia per Decreto; L'Objet De la Connaissance Humaine l'Essere e la Conoscenza l'Unité De la Philosophie Et la Théorie De la Connaissance Il solo occuparsi di queste cose pare ad alcuni indizio di spirito non libero, non filosofico. E da costoro che io mi aspetto un rimprovero di questo genere: Voi perdete. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at (...) www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Las Relaciones Geográficas son textos escritos en español con el fin de obtener descripciones fiables del dominio colonial. Investigaciones anteriores con repertorios muy diferentes han establecido que la heterogeneidad léxica es una tendencia común a toda la producción escrita colonial. El objetivo de esta investigación es comprobar si un repertorio más concreto como las relaciones de la gobernación de Yucatán representa un conjunto homogéneo o heterogéneo en la incorporación del préstamo indígena. Con una metodología cuantitativa y cualitativa se analiza la (...) potencial pluralidad léxica de estos textos asociada a determinados factores. Las conclusiones corroboran la heterogeneidad léxica a pesar de ser un corpus uniforme y muestran tres tendencias a la hora de incluir los prehispanismos en los documentos españoles. Relaciones Geográficas are texts in Spanish that aim at obtaining reliable descriptions from the colonialism period. Previous research with very different repertoires have established that lexical heterogeneity is a common trend in the entire colonial written production. The objective of this research is to check whether a particular repertoire, such as relations of the Government of Yucatán represents a homogeneous or heterogeneous body of indigenous loans incorporation. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies are used to analyse the potential lexical plurality of these texts which are associated with certain specific factors. The findings corroborate that lexical heterogeneity is present, despite being a uniform corpus, and show three different trends when including prehispanic concepts in Spanish documents. (shrink)

I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say that that [ ] which we concluded [ ] had thus far been neglected by all the commentators of the Symposium and that, for this reason, our commentary is a date in the continuation of the history of the development of the virtualities which are concealed by this dialogue. Lacan, Seminar VIII, lesson of 1 March 1961.

Zaks’ essay is a commentary of Plato’s Sophist, offering a comprehensive discussion of the dialogue from the first page to the last. Such a feat can prove challenging due to both the inherent complexity of the text itself and the extensive body of critical literature surrounding it. Significantly, Zaks manages to both achieve great clarity and offer new interpretations of some passages of the dialogue. Zaks’ main argument is that the central focus of the dialogue is on dialectic as the (...) form o... (shrink)

Custom is a complex phenomenon, and one that is hardly given a satisfying account, especially if it is assumed, as many legal positivists do, that law is only produced through acts of will. After examining five main reasons for the complexity of custom, I will consider Uberto Scarpelli’s thesis that customary law can be given an account within legal positivism through a reinterpretation of norm-generating facts as the manifestations of a will. But what kind of will is implied here, and (...) how can the underlying norm be inferred? I will first briefly examine Gaetano Carcaterra’s analysis of abduction as a method to infer norms from behaviors, and then distinguish six different forms of will possibly implied in a behavior which is relevant for the formation of a customary norm. I will finally focus on norm-oriented, or nomotropic will, and especially on nomotrophic will, that is, the will –implied and expressed in the reaction to the violation of a norm– that the infringed norm be valid. (shrink)

En este artículo se busca indagar, por un lado, las aporías que Gadamer detecta en la propuesta epistemológica de Dilthey y, por el otro lado, las aporías que el propio Dilthey encuentra en el obrar de las ciencias del espíritu. El objetivo de este artículo será mostrar las limitaciones de la crítica gadameriana y reconocer que la obra de Dilthey excede el análisis exclusivamente objetivista. Esto permitirá demostrar que la filosofía de Dilthey es una indagación del mundo humano entendido como (...) mundo activo. En otros términos, sus estudios son más que una investigación epistemológica. Se buscará sostener que la fundamentación de las ciencias del espíritu desarrollada por él se sostiene gracias a su investigación sobre la dinámica de la vida humana, del mundo común e histórico donde actúa el hombre. This paper seeks to investigate, on one hand, the aporiae that Gadamer detects in Dilthey's epistemological theory, and, on the other hand, the aporiae that Dilthey himself finds in the work of the human sciences. The goal of this paper is to show the limitations of Gadamer's critique and to recognize that Dilthey's work exceeds the objectivist analysis. This will allow proving that Dilthey's philosophy is an inquiry into the human world understood as an active world. In other words, his studies are more than an epistemological investigation. I will seek to claim that the basis of the human sciences developed by him is the result of his research on the dynamics of human life, on the common and historical world where man acts. (shrink)

A major study of Futurist movement of Marinetti in the Rio de la Plata region (Argentina, Uruguay and the qualities that unite two cultures, in this case, beween Italian Futurism, and the vanguard of the Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires and Montevideo). With a wide variety of reproductions of photographs, paintings, magazine covers and books and documents in general, the author shows what was meant in this movement and what were their influences and impacts on the Rio de la (...) Plata. (shrink)

RESUMEN Frente a la hybris de la subjetividad que culmina en el proyecto moderno-humanista, surge la necesidad de pensar de otra manera la esencia del hombre ya sin el lastre de toda la tradición filosófica occidental. Este viraje que Heidegger imprime al pensar se explica aquí desde lo que denomino tesis para la reconstrucción de un posthumanismo en la perspectiva de la kénosis y que se resume en: la superación de las leyes de la gramática y el acento en el (...) decir poético; el reconocimiento del mientras tanto de la existencia humana finita siempre en camino; y, por último, el preciso abajamiento del pensar tal y como corresponde no ya a la incontestable potestad del señor del ente sino a la esencial pobreza del pastor. ABSTRACT Before the hybris of subjectivity that culminates in the modern-humanist project, there arises the need to think the essence of man, in another way, a way already without the burden of the entire western philosophical tradition. This turn that Heidegger gives to thinking is here explained from what I call: thesis for the reconstruction of post-humanism in the perspective of kenosis, which can be summarized as overcoming the laws of grammar and accent in the poetic saying, recognition of a meanwhile of the finite human existence always on its way and, finally, the precise reduction of thinking as it corresponds not to the power of the lord of the being but to the essential shepherd’s poverty. (shrink)

Many-Valued logics can harbour nonclassical connectives expressing truth-nuances. The course of development of many-valued logics has given rise to paraconsistent systems wherein a sentence can be both negated and asserted just in case it is only partly true. A recently implemented family of such logics is shown to be a useful tool in coping with a number of philosophical difficulties, such as Zeno’s paradox of the arrow. This family is somehow akin to fuzzy logics initiated by Zadeh, but unlike them (...) it contains as a tautology the principle of excluded middle. (shrink)

Castañeda’s most significant insights iie in his awareness of serious ontologicaI problems, which beset usual treatments. Among this outstandlng proposals are these about the structure of relational facts, guise theory and the bundle view of individuals, the I, and practitions. Castañeda’s metaphysics Is one of the most remarkable achievements in anaytical philosophy.

A systematic introduction to mathematical logic which does not take classical logic for granted. The books develops a system of contradictorial gradualistic logic.

Three (apparent ) deontic antinomies are discussed: the paradoxes of the watchman and the praiser, as weIl as deontic dilemmas. A paraconsistent deontic logic, Ad, is put forward whose underlying 1st-order calculus is an infinite-valued tensorial logic. Several arguments are offered bearing out be existence of deontic contradictions, while two ways of dealing with conditional obligation paradoxes within the framework of Ad are canvassed. While the aggregation rule and the ought-implies-can principle are upheld, sundry schemata are shown not to obtain (...) which involve iterated deontic operators (most conspicuously: that whatever ought to be obligatory is obligatory; and that it is obligatory that whatever ought to be the case should in fact be the case). (shrink)

Scientists often make use of epistemic representations in order to perform investigations about the real world. So far, philosophers of science interested in epistemic representation of this sort have mostly focused on scientific models. In this thesis, I argue that there are other interesting instances of representation besides models: thought experiments, experimental organisms, and mechanically-produced pictures. These represent portions of the world in the same way as models do, if the concept of epistemic representation is properly understood. In Chapter 1, (...) I introduce and develop the idea that a system functions as an epistemic representation of a designated target system insofar as it is interpreted as a symbol that both possesses and highlights some properties that are then to be imputed to that target system via a proper de-idealising function. In the main body of the thesis, I analyse the above-mentioned types of representations and argue that they function as representations in the same way as scientific models. Chapter 2 discusses the use of thought experiments in physics, with particular focus on Galileo’s thought experiment that illustrates the principle of inertia. Chapter 3 focuses on experimental organism research in biology, with specific attention to the Drosophila melanogaster. Finally, Chapter 4 is about the epistemic use of mechanically produced pictures with the picture of a black hole as the primary case study. In each chapter, I further show that by studying these types of representation through the lens of the account developed in Chapter 1, one can (dis)solve specific issues about thought experiments, model organisms, and pictures respectively. In Chapter 5, I further defend my proposal from scepticism about the concept of representation and its application to these different cases. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by illustrating the most general implications of my analysis and proposing routes for future enquiry. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo do presente ensaio consiste em esclarecer a concepção nietzschiana de ceticismo presente em Schopenhauer como educador - em especial, à luz do §3 da aludida obra. Sem passar ao largo das principais preocupações de Nietzsche em sua filosofia de juventude como um todo, bem como do horizonte hermenêutico pós-kantiano que lhe é contemporâneo, o texto conta enfatizar que, na terceira Consideração extemporânea, Nietzsche está sobretudo preocupado com as consequências corrosivas do ceticismo à filosofia, e, potencialmente, à inteira (...) cultura de sua época, razão pela qual estaria empenhado, já, na elaboração de uma sabedoria capaz de neutralizar tal periculosidade, fornecendo uma orientação aos nossos mais profundos e efetivos problemas vitais.: This article aims at clarifying Nietzsche’s conception of scepticism in Schopenhauer as Educator - especially in light of its third section. Without ignoring Nietzsche’s principal concerns within his early writings as a whole, as well as their post-Kantian hermeneutic framework, the text intends to highlight that, in the third Untimely meditation, Nietzsche is principally concerned with the detrimental consequences of scepticism for philosophy and potentially for the entire culture of the age, so that he would already be committed to creating a kind of wisdom capable of neutralize such a dangerousness, providing a guidance for our most deep and real vital problems. (shrink)

To study Severian of Gabala from the point of view of anti-heretical polemic allows us to delve into a character who is obscure and often overlooked. When looking at the argument against the Apollinarists, a task which requires a capacity for extensive speculation, Severian comes out as less significant in comparison to the other great theologians of his time, like the Cappadocian Fathers, although he adheres to the same doctrinal line. The more demanding arguments – as in his homily De (...) centurione, fully devoted to this controversy – are missing. Despite a common Antiochene origin, he also separates himself from Chrysostom by engaging in a more allegorical form of exegesis and by his defense of orthodoxy, whereas in John the pastoral concern for the lives of the faithful stands out. This study does not intend to re-evaluate or diminish Severian even more than has been done, but attempts to contextualize him and his anti-Apollinarian work morecompletely. (shrink)