We have become estranged from the cosmic movements, according to Bataille. We are confined by the error linked to the representation of ‘the stationary earth’. We have negated the immersive immanence of the whole and made nature into a fixed world of tools and things. How then do we recognise ourselves as part of the ‘rapture of the heavens’? Bataille urges us to consider life as a solar phenomenon, the free play of solar energy on the earth. This paper argues (...) how Bataille’s cosmic vision anticipates both planetary and ecological thinking. This entails a base materialism of difference based on a radical Nietzschean and Heraclitean theory of becoming and flux. This thought is developed along Bataillean concepts such as the movement of the whole, the labyrinthine, and compound beings, ipseity, as well as the concept of a communifying movement. This materialism paired with Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere lays the foundation for the laws of the general economy, which also constitutes an economy inclusive of a general ecology: a tragic vision of Gaia and Dionysos. Finally, poetry is considered, as a way we might reconnect with the universe and stimulate ecological imagination. (shrink)

In this article, I will try to elucidate the relevance of Deleuze and Guattari’s approaches in the philosophy of education, along the lines of the Deleuzean pedagogy of ‘do with me’ and the absence of pre-established rules for learning or methodological anarchism. To do so, I will consider three important milestones in Deleuze and Guattari’s thought: (i) antihumanism as the matrix of a pedagogy of generosity, (ii) the primacy of functioning over meaning as a vindication of practical learning versus rote (...) learning, (iii) the concepts of ‘deterritorialisation-reterritorialisation’ as the unlearning required by all true learning. (shrink)

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the sheer (...) physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice. (shrink)

The topic this semester will be “methodology,” with special (but not exclusive) reference to the recent, voluminous literature on this topic in legal philosophy. There are two central questions: (1) Is there a distinctive method of philosophical inquiry? (2) What is the relationship between philosophical methods and the methods (and results) of the empirical sciences (broadly construed)?

One important activity in conceptual ethics and conceptual engineering involves proposing to associate a new semantics with an existing word. Many philosophers think that one important way to evaluate such a proposal concerns whether it preserves the “topic” picked out by the existing word, and several have offered competing proposals concerning what is required to preserve topic. Our paper is focused on the conceptual ethics question of how conceptual engineers should use the term ‘topic continuity’. We provide and defend a (...) context-sensitive answer to this question. Our answer is motivated by the idea that there are several distinct considerations that we can reasonably care about (and which many conceptual engineers already do care about) in thinking about “topic continuity”, and, moreover, that how best to weigh them against each other can vary from context to context. On our proposal, ‘topic continuity’ can function as a useful representational device that enables coordination by inquirers with respect to these concerns. We conclude by locating our account in a broader way of thinking about topic continuity across a range of inquiries. (shrink)

The article discusses topics in the context of contemporary legal argumentation. It starts with a sketch of the development of topics from ancient times until the present day. Here the author focuses on the theory of the German legal philosopher Theodor Viehweg, which was most influential to legal argumentation in the 20th century. Then a modern concept of topics is introduced and finally the author discusses the role of topics in contemporary legal argumentation. In this part the distinction between topoi (...) in the weak sense (practically all argumentation schemes) and in the strong sense (specific legal topoi as listed by Gerhard Struck in 1971 is introduced. The author argues that Viehweg’s claim that topics plays an important role in legal argumentation is problematic, because topoi in the weak sense are certainly of high importance, but this is almost trivial. Topoi in the strong sense on the other hand are only of minor importance for legal practice. What characterises legal discourse much more is a set specific pragmatic discourse rules, discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Key Topics in Clinical Research aims to provide a short, clear, highlighted reference to guide trainees and trainers through research and audit projects, from first idea, through to data collection and statistical analysis, to presentation and publication. This book is also designed to assist trainees in preparing for their specialty examinations by providing comprehensive, concise, easily accessible and easily understandable information on all aspects of clinical research and audit.

• Why does topicalization decline in Middle English but not disappear? If the change a parametric one, it should go to completion. Otherwise, topicalization, a clear case of stylistic variation might be expected to be stable in frequency over time.

A persuasion dialogue is a dialogue in which a conflict between agents with respect to their points of view arises at the beginning of the talk and the agents have the shared, global goal of resolving the conflict and at least one agent has the persuasive aim to convince the other party to accept an opposing point of view. I argue that the persuasive force of argument may have not only extreme values but also intermediate strength. That is, I wish (...) to introduce two additional types of the effects of persuasion in addition to successful and unsuccessful ones (cf. Van Eemeren and Houtlosser in Argumentation 14(3):293–305, 2000; Advances in pragma-dialectics. Sic Sat, Amsterdam, 2002; Walton in A pragmatic theory of fallacy. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1995; Walton and Krabbe in Commitment in dialogue: basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 1995). I propose a model which provides for modified versions of the standpoint of an agent needed in order to bring about two possible outcomes of a persuasion dialogue. These two outcomes I label partially-successful and over-successful. I call the potential, not yet verbalised, standpoint of an agent here the original topic t. Based on some aspects of relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson in Relevance: communication and cognition. Blackwell, Oxford, 1986; Wilson and Sperber in The handbook of pragmatics. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, 2006), I explain that the modified version of the original topic t is an implicature created from the original topic t and from a specific mental topic which belongs to, what I call the beneficial cognitive model (hence BCM). I define BCMi,t as a set of topics which are within the area of agent i’s interest of persuasion with respect to t. (shrink)

1.1 Manifolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Tangent Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (...) . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.3 Vector Fields, Integral Curves, and Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1.4 Tensors and Tensor Fields on Manifolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 1.5 The Action of Smooth Maps on Tensor Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 1.6 Lie Derivatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 1.7 Derivative Operators and Geodesics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 1.8 Curvature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 1.9 Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 1.10 Hypersurfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 1.11 Volume Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96.. (shrink)

This paper details methods for teaching a topic-based approach to an introductory philosophy course. The problem with course surveys is that they sacrifice depth because of their fast pace, which often leaves students behind. Students are unable to grasp the scope of survey courses and only high functioning students appear to benefit from the structure. The single topic method can serve as a point of entry to the history of philosophy and students can gain a more intimate relationship with the (...) material. The author outlines the benefits of teaching a topic-based course centered on the problem of evil. The course allows students to immediately gain an intimacy with the material because it has intellectual and emotional connections to their lives. This approach to philosophy on a personal level also allows students to branch out into larger philosophical issues, such as justice, epistemology, politics, and metaphysics. (shrink)

This work provides some interesting new results on the notion of the topos and the theory of hypothetical syllogisms in Aristotle based on an incisive interpretation of Aristotle's _Topics_ and certain passages of the _Analytics_.

them. Though Aristotle does not say so, presumably the questioner who conceals in this way must be prepared, when challenged, to show that the conclusion...

Keeping a conversation going is the social glue of friendships. The DSM criteria for autism list difficulties with back-and-forth conversation but does not necessitate that all autistic children will be equally impacted. We carried out three studies (two pre-registered) with verbally-fluent school children (age 5-9 years) to investigate how autistic and neurotypical children maintain a conversation topic. We also investigated within-group relationships between conversational ability and cognitive and socio-cognitive predictors. Study 1 found autistic children were more likely than neurotypical controls (...) to give off-topic and generic minimal responses (e.g. ‘mm’, ‘oh’) and were less likely to give non-verbal responses (e.g. nodding or use of facial affect to respond). Nonetheless, the autistic group provided topic-supporting responses 62% of the time, indicating some aspects of conversation topic maintenance are a relative strength. Studies 2 and 3 found large individual differences in topic-supporting conversational responding amongst both neurotypical and autistic children. These were positively related to theory of mind ability and age in both groups. Conversational skills lie on a continuum for the general population and differences by diagnostic group are a matter of degree. Given the importance for peer relationships, we suggest a whole-classroom approach to supporting conversation skills in all children. (shrink)

Since 1951, English-language readers of Leibniz’s Theodicy have been well-served by the elegant and readable translation of E. M. Huggard, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul and Open Court, and edited by Austin Farrer. However, this edition has some conspicuous failings: it leaves Latin, Greek, and German phrases untranslated; provides a name index only, thus omitting Leibniz’s own useful topical index; and completely omits the interesting and substantial synopsis, Causa Dei Asserta. The French paperback edition of the Essais de Théodicée (...) published by Garnier-Flammarion does provide Leibniz’s own topical index to his work, as well as compendious and invaluable notes on the text, but of course, this does not help readers with no French. There exists, then, very little help for the reader wishing to mine the depths of Leibniz’s massive work, and who is thus forced to read it through from end to end to find out what is in it. (shrink)

What is the point of developing an epistemology for a topic—for example, morality? When is it appropriate to develop the epistemology of a topic? For many topics—for example, the topic of socks—we see no need to develop a special epistemology. Under what conditions, then, does a topic deserve its own epistemology? I seek to answer these questions in this article. I provide a criterion for deciding when we are warranted in developing an epistemological theory for a topic. I briefly apply (...) this criterion to moral epistemology and argue that some approaches to moral epistemology should be abandoned. I also argue that we can develop an epistemology for a topic without committing ourselves to a specific substantive theory of justification, such as reliabilism or coherentism, if we work within a suitably neutral framework. (shrink)

This article is first in a series dedicated to issues in the intellectual history of Mīmāṃsā in early modern India and part of a larger effort to broaden the basis for understanding the new formulations of central topics of the Mīmāṃsā textual-ritual complex in this period. It examines how the Varanasi scholar Khaṇḍadevamiśra makes use of Navyanyāya tools of analysis by putting under the microscope the example of his investigation and new formulation of the signification of agent and agency by (...) the verbal affix in his ample analysis of the cognition of the meaning elements of a sentence. Authors of Mīmāṃsā works in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gradually and selectively adopt the tools and techniques of cognitive analysis and the characteristic new idiom elaborated by Navyanaiyāyikas a few centuries earlier. This process of adoption arises on the sidelines of the Advaita–Dvaita Vedānta controversy in South India, then subsequently flourishes in Varanasi, as I have followed elsewhere. In his analysis of the topic studied here, Khaṇḍadeva uses the new tools to revisit the Mīmāṃsā tradition in order to advance his new formulation while refuting certain Navyanyāya rival positions. (shrink)

As new energy vehicle is the future of automobile development, it is of great significance to dig deeper into the technical topics and development trends of new energy vehicles for accurately understanding the technical trends of the new energy vehicle industry, grasping development opportunities, and scientifically formulating strategic plans. This paper takes the patent texts in the field of new energy vehicles from 2000 to 2020 in the patent database of CNKI as the data source, identifies 25 technical topics implied (...) in the patent texts by using the LDA topic model, analyzes the evolution trend of the 25 technical topics in terms of importance and popularity, and predicts the popularity and development trend of each technical topic in new energy vehicles from 2021 to 2025 by constructing the ARIMA model. The popularity and development trend of each technology topic of new energy vehicles in China from 2021 to 2025 are predicted by constructing ARIMA model. Drawing on quantitative evidence, the study found that there are top five technical topics in terms of importance in this field, namely, Topic 8, Topic 5, Topic 14, Topic 9, and Topic 15. From 2014 to 2020, the importances of Topic 5, Topic 8, Topic 6, Topic 9, and Topic 15 are gradually rising. In terms of popularity of technical topics, from 2014 to 2020, the first to fifth topics are Topic 20, Topic 8, Topic 3, Topic 15, and Topic 10. Based on the prediction of ARIMA model, it is found that the popularity of these five technical topics is steadily increasing from 2021 to 2025, among which the popularity of Topic 20 will increase from 63.58 to 113.07, the largest increase in popularity among all technical topics. The paper provides implications for countries dedicated to developing the new energy vehicle industry. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories play a troubling role in political discourse. Online forums provide a valuable window into everyday conspiracy theorizing, and can give a clue to the motivations and interests of those who post in such forums. Yet this online activity can be difficult to quantify and study. We describe a unique approach to studying online conspiracy theorists which used non-negative matrix factorization to create a topic model of authors' contributions to the main conspiracy forum on Reddit. This subreddit provides a (...) large corpus of comments which spans many years and numerous authors. We show that within the forum, there are multiple sub-populations distinguishable by their loadings on different topics in the model. Further, we argue, these differences are interpretable as differences in background beliefs and motivations. The diversity of the distinct subgroups places constraints on theories of what generates conspiracy theorizing. We argue that traditional “monological” believers are only the tip of an iceberg of commenters. Neither simple irrationality nor common preoccupations can account for the observed diversity. Instead, we suggest, those who endorse conspiracies seem to be primarily brought together by epistemological concerns, and that these central concerns link an otherwise heterogenous group of individuals. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine a number of relevant logics’ variable sharing properties from the perspective of theories of topic or subject-matter. We take cues from Franz Berto’s recent work on topic to show an alignment between families of variable sharing properties and responses to the topic transparency of relevant implication and negation. We then introduce and defend novel variable sharing properties stronger than strong depth relevance—which we call cn-relevance and lossless cn-relevance—showing that the properties are satisfied by the weak (...) relevant logics and , respectively. We argue that such properties address a sort of semantic lossiness of strong depth relevance. (shrink)

A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to “reengineer” a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there’s only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual (...) role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things. (shrink)

These are the slides of the five lectures in the series "Topics in Philosophy of Language", offered as a course at the 23rd ESSLLI in Ljubljana, in August 2011.

This article is part of a larger study on teachers’ co-construction of social support on a social networking site. The aim of this article is to elucidate how a topic introduced in the Facebook Status updates are negotiated with/by Friends through the Comment function. Adopting discourse topic management as its theoretical framework, the article presents the findings related to topical action of continuing topic observed in the Comments on Timelines, which reflects the strong presence of support on the site in (...) the sense that Friends show their interest in taking up the topic. The analysis shows that strategies for continuing topics in face-to-face conversations are creatively employed by teachers on Timelines and this leads to the emergence of unique characteristics of this new mode of online interaction. In this respect, this article contributes to the expansion of discourse topic theory by highlighting the characteristics of Timeline conversations that emerged from the analysis of topic continuation. (shrink)

Changing concepts comes with a risk of creating merely verbal disputes. Accounts of topic continuity (such as Herman Cappelen’s) are supposed to solve this problem. As this paper shows, however, no existing solution avoids the danger of mere verbalness. On the contrary, accounts of topic continuity in fact increase the danger of overlooking merely verbal disputes between pre- and post-ameliorators. Ultimately, this paper suggests accepting the danger of mere verbalness resulting from a change in topic as a downside of conceptual (...) engineering. Changing the topic under discussion may be worth the risk, however, in many cases. In fact, this paper proposes that the main goal of conceptual engineering should be seen as changing topics for the better. (shrink)

It is a longstanding if not altogether coherent tradition of logic and rhetorical studies that an argument can be incorrect or fallacious in virtue of some ...

Some of these authors have “mixed” views: for example, MacKenzie (and perhaps Arbini) ... Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, Studies in the History ..

Wikipedia can be utilized as a controlled vocabulary for identifying the main topics in a document, with article titles serving as index terms and redirect titles as their synonyms. Wikipedia contains over 4M such titles covering the terminology of nearly any document collection. This permits controlled indexing in the absence of manually created vocabularies. We combine state-of-the-art strategies for automatic controlled indexing with Wikipedia’s unique property—a richly hyperlinked encyclopedia. We evaluate the scheme by comparing automatically assigned topics with those chosen (...) manually by human indexers. Analysis of indexing consistency shows that our algorithm performs as well as the average person. (shrink)

When one thinks—knows, believes, imagines—that something is the case, one’s thought has a topic: it is about something, towards which one’s mind is directed. What is the logic of thought, so understood? This book begins to explore the idea that, to answer the question, we should take topics seriously. It proposes a hyperintensional account of the propositional contents of thought, arguing that these are individuated not only by the set of possible worlds at which they are true, but also by (...) their topic: what they are about. The book then builds epistemic, doxastic, probabilistic, and conditional logics based on this view. It applies them to issues ranging from dogmatism, scepticism, and epistemic fallibilism, to imagination and suppositional reasoning, belief revision, framing effects, and the acceptability of indicative conditionals. (shrink)

This is probably an overly ambitious Syllabus for a ten week seminar. I regard the early part of the Syllabus (roughly, §§1-9) as pretty fixed. We may have to choose among the later topics (§§10- 12), and I welcome student input on these decisions. Required readings are preceded by `(A)`; recommended readings are preceded by `(B)`. Full references are available on the Select Bibliography. Most of the required readings come from the required texts. Required readings not found in the required (...) texts, and some recommended readings, can be found on Electronic Reserves. If you have trouble locating any of the recommended readings, let me know; I can try to help. (shrink)

We investigated the impact of situational awe on topic-specific interest and recognition memory for information presented in immersive planetarium films. Adult participants (N = 131) were recruited among science centre visitors who were going to view one of the films shown in the science centre’s planetarium. Participants responded to questions about prior knowledge, topic-specific interest in the film and background information before viewing one of the three planetarium films. After the film, they completed the topic-specific interest scale, epistemically-related emotion scales, (...) situation-specific awe scale, critical thinking disposition scale and a recognition task of the film contents. The results showed that during viewing planetarium films participants experienced awe, but the strength of this emotion varied among films. Additionally, situation-specific awe was strongly associated with another epistemic emotion, namely surprise. As for the recognition task performance, awe decreased error and nonsense detection, and increased false recognition of inferential statements. Finally, awe was found to substantially increase topic-specific interest. These results present evidence that awe has potential to prompt individuals to become more interested in science-related topics. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for volunteers to complement overwhelmed public health systems. This study aims to explore Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we identify the latent topics in volunteerism-related microblogs on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter using the topic modeling analysis via Latent Dirichlet Allocation. To further investigate the public sentiment toward the topics generated by LDA, we also conducted sentiment analysis on the sample posts using the open-source (...) natural language processing technique from Baidu. Through an in-depth analysis of 91,933 Weibo posts, this study captures 10 topics that are, in turn, distributed into five factors associated with volunteerism in China as motive fulfillment, fear of COVID-19, individual characteristic, government support, and community effect. The results show that motive fulfillment, government support, and community effect are the factors that could enhance positive attitudes toward volunteerism since the topics related to these factors report high proportions of positive emotion. Fear of COVID-19 and individual characteristic are the factors inducing negative sentiment toward volunteerism as the topics related to these factors show relatively high proportions of negative emotion. The provision of tailored strategies based on the factors could potentially enhance Chinese people’s willingness to participate in volunteer activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This volume contains the first modern commentary to Boethius's last logical monograph entitled 'De topicis differentiis', his most original work written around 522 A.D., just before the incarceration and death of the Roman philosopher. His textbook aims at providing a method for the discovery of arguments, that is an art that teaches how to solve any kind of question through the use of the topics, litteraly 'places' of our mind able to produce arguments subsequently developed into argumentations. Boethius inherited this (...) teaching from two different traditions, the Greek and Latin. In light of the differences found in them, the Roman scholar undertook the writing of the 'De topicis differentiis' precisely in order to show the possible way of reconciling these two philosophical traditions. In this way Boethius was able to disseminate a unified vision of this matter to the Latin world, restoring the centrality that the Topics had in the Aristotelian Logic and restoring their noblest function, that of being instruments at the service of the search for Truth. Finally, he also provided the list of the rhetorical topics by showing the differences with dialectical topics. This study provides a full reconstruction of the structure of the Boethian work, retraces and evaluates the sources, investigates the implications, and explains why the 'De topicis differentiis' remains a foundational work for anyone who wants to understand the development of European Logic through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (shrink)

This is a clear, accurate translation of Books I and VIII of Aristotle's Topics, with a philosophical commentary on these books and additional extracts from both Books II and III, and a related Aristotle work. It is ideal for students, especially those who do not know Greek.

In order respectfully and adequately to compare Confucian and Christian conceptions of creativity, it is necessary to have proper comparative categories. Put roughly, we need to know what creativity is in order to see how Confucianism and Christianity have various versions of it. In respect of what do they agree or differ? So the first order of business is to put forward, however briefly, a theory of creativity in light of which comparisons can be made. Creativity, of course, is a (...) very complicated notion in the West and in East Asia. Two philosophical topics can reveal something of its complication: the problem of the one and the many, and the nature of change. (shrink)

This paper offers a new and very simple alternative to Bochvar's well known nonsense -- or meaninglessness -- interpretation of Weak Kleene logic. To help orient discussion I begin by reviewing the familiar Strong Kleene logic and its standard interpretation; I then review Weak Kleene logic and the standard interpretation. While I note a common worry about the Bochvar interpretation my aim is only to give an alternative -- and I think very elegant -- interpretation, not necessarily a replacement.

INTRODUCTION WERNER ABRAHAM, LACI MARÁCZ, SJAAK DE MEY & WIM SCHERPENISSE University of Groningen The Groningen Conference on Topic, ...

In this paper we show that focus structure determines the interpretation of bare plurals in English: topic bare plurals are interpreted generically, focused bare plurals are interpreted existentially. When bare plurals are topics they must be specific, i.e. they refer to kinds. After type-shifting they introduce variables which can be bound by the generic quantifier, yielding characterizing generics. Existentially interpreted bare plurals are not variables, but denote properties that are incorporated into the predicate.The type of predicate determines the interpretation of (...) its bare plural subject. The individual/stage-level distinction, though important, is not sufficient: since only arguments can be topics, only those stage-level predicates which have locative arguments can have existential bare plural subjects.Certain verbs (e.g., hate) fail to incorporate their bare plural objects; therefore no existential reading of the object is available. We provide a novel solution to this puzzle based on the following two claims: (i) incorporated bare plurals do not introduce discourse referents; (ii) nonincorporating verbs are presuppositional. (shrink)

Formal dialectic has its roots in ancient dialectic. We can trace this influence in Charles Hamblin’s book on fallacies, in which he introduced his first formal dialectical systems. Earlier, Paul Lorenzen proposed systems of dialogical logic, which were in fact formal dialectical systems avant la lettre, with roles similar to those of the Greek Questioner and Answerer. In order to make a comparison between ancient dialectic and contemporary formal dialectic, I shall formalize part of the Aristotelian procedure for Academic debates. (...) The resulting system will be compared (1) with Van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s system of rules of Critical Discussion (the pragma-dialectical discussion procedure), which must, however, first itself be reconstructed as a formal dialectical system, and (2) with a Hamblin-type system, and (3) a Lorenzen-type system. When drawing comparisons, it will become clear that there is a line to be drawn from Aristotle to formal dialectic and pragma-dialectics, extending to contemporary computational models of argument. (shrink)

This book discusses a range of important issues in current philosophical work on the nature of possible worlds. Areas investigated include the theories of the nature of possible worlds, general questions about metaphysical analysis and questions about the direction of dependence between what is necessary or possible and what could be.

Stoicism is one of the richest and most influential intellectual traditions of antiquity. Leading scholars here contribute new studies of a set of topics which are the focus of current research in this area. They combine careful analytical attention to the original texts with historical sensitivity and philosophical acuity, to provide the basis for a better understanding of Stoic ethics, political theory, logic, and physics.