Averroës, 1126-1198; views on Sufism; philosophy and islam; comparati.

The Arabic philosophical fable _Hayy Ibn Yaqzan _is a classic of medieval Islamic philosophy. Ibn Tufayl, the Andalusian philosopher, tells of a child raised by a doe on an equatorial island who grows up to discover the truth about the world and his own place in it, unaided—but also unimpeded—by society, language, or tradition. Hayy’s discoveries about God, nature, and man challenge the values of the culture in which the tale was written as well as those of every contemporary society. (...) Goodman’s commentary places _Hayy Ibn Yaqzan _in its historical and philosophical context. The volume features a new preface and index, and an updated bibliography. “One of the most remarkable books of the Middle Ages.”—_Times Literary Supplement_ “An enchanting and puzzling story.... The book transcends all historical and cultural environments to settle upon the questions of human life that perpetually intrigue men.”—_Middle East__ Journal_ “Goodman has done a service to the modern English reader by providing a readable translation of a philosophically significant allegory.”—_Philosophy East and West_ “Add[s] bright new pieces to an Islamic mosaic whose general shape is already known.”—_American Historical Review_. (shrink)

Deployment Realism resists Laudan’s and Lyons’ objections to the “No Miracle Argument” by arguing that a hypothesis is most probably true when it is deployed essentially in a novel prediction. However, Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, maintaining that Deployment Realism should be committed to all the actually deployed assumptions. But since many actually deployed assumptions proved false, he concludes that the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism fail. I reply that the essentiality condition is required by Occam’s razor. In (...) fact, there is a simpler formulation of essentiality which escapes Lyons’ criticisms and rescues the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism from their purported historical counterexamples: a hypothesis is essential when it has no proper parts (in Yablo’s sense) sufficient to derive the same prediction. Although essentiality so conceived cannot be detected prospectively, this is just natural, and it is not a problem but an advantage for Deployment Realism. (shrink)

Against certain positivistic and neopositivistic strictures still rooted in our society, Agazzi argues that knowing the invisible is possible, not just in science, but also in metaphysics, in morals, in aesthetics, and in other areas, including, in a sense, religion. The book also examines many examples of such knowledge, surveying not only the great classics of philosophy, but various immortal masterpieces of art, music and literature. It is not just a treatise in epistemology, but a book of philosophy in the (...) most complete and traditional sense, for it discusses knowledge not only for its own sake, but also as a guide to culture, morality, happiness and to the sense of life. Thus, it also provides some important suggestions on how to face our time of crisis and an uncertain future. Despite Agazzi’s proverbial rigor and clarity, his project is so momentous and demanding that I discuss certain points which might deserve further explication and argumentation. (shrink)

Volume 37, Issue 3, September 2024, Page 150-154.

In an earlier article on this journal I argued that the problem of empirical underdetermination can for the largest part be solved by theoretical virtues, and for the remaining part it can be tolerated. Here I confront two further challenges to scientific realism based on underdetermination. First, there are four classes of theories which may seem to be underdetermined even by theoretical virtues. Concerning them I argue that (i) theories produced by trivial permutations and (ii) “equivalent descriptions” are compatible with (...) the truth of standard theories; instead (iii) “as if” versions of standard theories are much worse from the point of view of theoretical virtues; finally (iv) mathematically intertranslatable theories either may become empirically decidable in the future, or can be discriminated by theoretical virtues, or realists may simply plead ignorance about their claims. Secondly, I consider Stanford’s underdetermination with respect unconceived alternatives, arguing that it essentially relies on the pessimistic meta-induction from the falsity of all past theories. Therefore, it can be resisted by (a) considering the radical advancement of present with respect to past science, and (b) arguing with selective realism that past successful theories, even if false, always included some true components. (shrink)

The book introduces to the analytic philosophy of language by presenting the main classical authors and texts of the XX Century, as well as the key problems and concepts of this discipline in their historical context. Ch. I: general introduction to the philosophy of language. Ch. II: Frege. Ch. III: Russell. Ch. IV: Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Ch: V: Neopositivism and verificationism. Ch. VI: Carnap's intensional semantics. Ch. VII: Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Ch. VIII: Quine. Ch. IX: theories of direct reference. Everything is (...) explained in plain but precise language, with many examples. Thus, the reader realizes how each author addresses the problems set by earlier investigations, in turn opening new problems for discussion and advancing the state of the art. The critical comparison among different positions raises possible objections and answers, introducing to the rational debate in the style of analytic philosophy. Whenever required the book also introduces basic notions of logics, metaphysics, philosophy of science, foundations of mathematics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Each argument is dealt with on three distinct levels: introductory, intermediate, advanced. Therefore, the book can be helpful to beginners, to graduate students, and to researchers. (shrink)

The currently most plausible version of scientific realism is probably “deployment” realism, based on various contributions in the recent literature, and worked out as a unitary account in Psillos. According to it we can believe in the at least partial truth of theories, because that is the best explanation of their predictive success, and discarded theories which had novel predictive success had nonetheless some true parts, those necessary to derive their novel predictions. According to Doppelt this account cannot withstand the (...) antirealist objections based on the “pessimistic meta-induction” and Laudan’s historical counterexamples. Moreover it is incomplete, as it purports to explain the predictive success of theories, but overlooks the necessity to explain also their explanatory success. Accordingly, he proposes a new version of realism, presented as the best explanation of both predictive and explanatory success, and committed only to the truth of best current theories, not of the discarded ones. Here I argue that Doppelt has not shown that deployment realism as it stands cannot solve the problems raised by the history of science, explaining explanatory success does not add much to explaining novel predictive success, and a realism confined to current theories is implausible, and actually the easiest prey to the pessimistic meta-induction argument. (shrink)

Many philosophers have shown great interest in the recent anti-realist turn in Hilary Putnam's thought, whereby he rejects "meta-physical realism" in favor of "internal realism". However, many have also found it difficult to gain an exact understanding, and hence a correct assessment of Putnam's ideas. This work strives for some progress on both of these accounts. ;Part one explicates what Putnam understands by "metaphysical realism" and considers to what extent Putnam himself formerly adhered to it. It reconstructs Putnam's arguments for (...) the indeterminacy of reference and for the rejection of reference and of truth as correspondence, and it shows how such arguments hinge both on considerations in the theory of reference and in metaphysics. It suggests that commentators have often missed the actual structure of Putnam's argumentation, e.g. by simply identifying it with the so called "model-theoretic" argument. Finally, Part One examines Putnam's "internal realism", stressing its ties to such authors as Kant, Goodman and Dummett, and explaining in what senses it is really a strong kind of anti-realism. Basically, Putnam does not deny that a mind-independent world exists, but he denies that we may refer to it, and claims that the world we know is thoroughly mind-dependent. ;Part two criticizes Putnam's arguments for indeterminacy along with some similar indeterminacy arguments such as Goodman's argument on confirmation, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein argument on rules. This is done by vindicating the notion of objective similarity, and by relying on it to fix reference. Putnam's claim that we have no theory showing how reference could possibly be determinate is countered by sketching a possible account of reference--distinctly owing to functionalism--which might answer such question. Putnam's notorious "brains in the vat" argument is also discussed and criticized. ;Putnam's metaphysical picture, by which the mind-independent world is not sorted out into objects or properties, is granted. But it is argued that nonetheless we may refer to the mind-independent world, and have beliefs which are true of it. (shrink)

The contributions to this book touch the different aspects of Popper's philosophy of science.

Abū al-Ḥajj¿j Yūsuf b. Muḥammad Ibn Ṭumlūs (Alhagiag Bin Thalmus, d. 620/1223) was a philosopher, physician and direct disciple of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198), who lived and practiced rational sciences in Alzira and Marrakesh, a quarter of a century after the demise of his teacher. Ibn Ṭumlūs was not Ibn Rushd's only student who engaged in work on logic, but one of dozens of disciples, suggesting that the supposed simultaneous death of the latter's philosophy is "grossly exaggerated". As a (...) valuable window into the practice of logic in 13th century al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Ṭumlūs' Compendium on Logic (Al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-manṭiq) covers all the parts of "the expanded Organon", as it was known since al-F¿r¿bī (d. 339/951). The present volume offers a complete critical Arabic edition of this work, with an English and Arabic introduction, notes and indices. (shrink)

Predictivists use the no miracle argument to argue that “novel” predictions are decisive evidence for theories, while mere accommodation of “old” data cannot confirm to a significant degree. But deductivists claim that since confirmation is a logical theory-data relationship, predicted data cannot confirm more than merely deduced data, and cite historical cases in which known data confirmed theories quite strongly. On the other hand, the advantage of prediction over accommodation is needed by scientific realists to resist Laudan’s criticisms of the (...) no miracle argument. So, if the deductivists are right, the most powerful argument for realism collapses. There seems to be an inescapable contradiction between these prima facie plausible arguments of predictivists and deductivists; but this puzzle can be solved by understanding what exactly counts as novelty, if novel predictions must support the no miracle argument, i.e., if they must be explainable only by the truth of theories. Taking my cues from the use-novelty tradition, I argue that (1) the predicted data must not be used essentially in building the theory or choosing the auxiliary assumptions. This is possible if the theory and its auxiliary assumptions are plausible independently of the predicted data, and I analyze the consequences of this requirement in terms of best explanation of diverse bodies of data. Moreover, the predicted data must be (2) a priori improbable, and (3) heterogeneous to the essentially used data. My proposed notion of novelty, therefore, is not historical, but functional. Hence, deductivists are right that confirmation is independent of time and of historical contingencies such as if the theorist knew a datum, used it, or intended to accommodate it. Predictivists, however, are right that not all consequences confirm equally, and confirmation is not purely a logical theory-data relation, as it crucially involves background epistemic conditions and the notion of best explanation. Conditions (1)–(3) make the difference between prediction and accommodation, and account for the confirming power of theoretical virtues such as non ad-hocness, non-fudging, non-overfitting, independence and consilience. I thus show that functional novelty (a) avoids the deductivist objections to predictivism, (b) is a gradual notion, in accordance with the common intuition that confirmation comes in degrees, and (c) supports the no miracle argument, so vindicating scientific realism. (shrink)

A discussion of Wolfgang's Stegmüller's ideas on the structuralist conception of theories, especially as presented in his book The Structure and Dynamics of Theories (Springer, 1976).

There are two possible realist defense strategies against the pessimistic meta-induction and Laudan’s meta-modus tollens: the selective strategy, claiming that discarded theories are partially true, and the discontinuity strategy, denying that pessimism about past theories can be extended to current ones. A radical version of discontinuity realism is proposed by Gerald Doppelt: rather than discriminating between true and false components within theories, he holds that superseded theories cannot be shown to be even partially true, while present best theories are demonstrably (...) completely true. I argue that this position, running counter both the cumulativity of science and fallibilism, is untenable; it cannot account for the success of past theories, nor for the failures of current theories, and rather than shutting the door to the pessimistic historical objections it opens it wide. The best strategy, instead, joins the selective idea there was both some truth and some falsity in discarded theories, like in current ones, with the moderate discontinuity idea that the truth rate in present best theories is much greater than in past ones. (shrink)

Great scholars in philosophy possess a keen analytical mind, excel in logical reasoning, and exhibit meticulous attention to detail. They rigorously define terms, avoiding ambiguities and errors. Originality and the willingness to challenge conventions are their hallmarks. They make significant contributions across various philosophical fields. They transparently address the exact aim of their research, and what it is not. Finally, they anticipate the impact of their theories on the current literature, and how such an impact should blossom across the future (...) generations. In this respect, great philosophers address open problems and propose big questions for the foreseeable research efforts of those who will follow. Mario Alai embodies the qualities of a great scholar in philosophy, and the various essays in this volume are an evidence to that. It is challenging to condense a lifetime of research in one book. However, the Editors of the present volume’s aim was to face this challenge, to make a collection dedicated to Mario Alai’s work not only possible but, as metaphysicians would say, actual. The book attempts to bring together the reflections of three different generations of scholars - i.e., mentors, colleagues, and students - on Alai’s thought. Viewed from this perspective, the extensive and valuable contributions that follow, crafted in honor of Mario Alai and his scholarly endeavors, come as no surprise. All the chapters focus on a theme that was very dear to the philosophical curiosity of Mario Alai. Moreover, in engaging with these different topics, the plethora of contributions gives us a sense of the work by Alai. To make sense of the different contributions as a unified enterprise, this volume is organized into three sections, which seek to gather writings that revolve around Mario’s most substantial contributions, while elucidating their contemporary significance in the global discourse. Moreover, it endeavors to offer precious insights into the origins and development of these contributions, as observed through Mario’s writings and responses. This represents a sort of closure of the theoretical circle, clearly showing how the work by Mario Alai has been appreciated through different generations, originating from his relation to his mentors, on the one hand, while also shedding new light on his students’ research interests, on the other. Editing such a wealth of material was, again, no small feat. Still, the taxonomy we have chosen for this book will assist readers in navigating the profound depths of Alai’s philosophical research. Consequently, the book is structured into the following three parts: 1. Realism in History of Philosophy, History of Science, and Metaphysics. 2. Scientific Realism. 3. Realism in Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, and Experimental Philosophy. Each contribution actively participates in a substantial conversation with Alai’s body of work, as a deep theoretical dialogue between the author and Mario. Consequently, it appeared fitting to let Alai conclude this conversation, with direct responses to these philosophy-provoking pieces in his honor. We shall refrain from further commentary on the works within this book and allow them to express their significance independently to appreciate the river of ideas flowing through Mario’s work1. Beyond their philosophical substance, they are a vivid testament to Alai’s enduring dedication and ongoing contributions, in different moments of his research life. (shrink)

1. Uyun al-hikma, et l'opuscule d'Abu'l Faraj et la réfutation d'Ibn Sina, édité et annoté par H.Z. Ülken.--2. Les opuscules d'Ibn Sina, et Le livre de la différence entre l'esprit et l'âme, par Qosta b. Luqa; édité, étudié et onnoté [sic] par H.Z. Ülken.--3. Aşkın mâhiyeti hakkında risâle, neşreden ve Türkçeye çeviren A. Ateş.

Islam; customs and practices; Islamic ethics; Islamic law.