'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. (...) Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference. (shrink)

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to draw attention to the (...) complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

An examination of a particular passage in Cicero's De fato—Fat. 13–17—is crucial to our understanding of the Stoic theory of the truth-conditions of conditional propositions, for it has been uniquely important in the debate concerning the kind of connection the antecedent and consequent of a Stoic conditional should have to one another. Frede has argued that the passage proves that the connection is one of logical necessity, while Sorabji has argued that positive Stoic attitudes toward empirical inferences elsewhere suggest that (...) that cannot be the right interpretation of the passage. I argue that both parties to the debate have missed a position somewhere between them which both renders a connection between antecedent and consequent that is not merely empirical and makes sense of the actual uses to which the Stoics put the conditional. This will be an account which grounds the connection between antecedent and consequent in a prolêpsis, a special kind of concept which plays a special epistemological role for the Stoics, especially in grounding scientific explanations. My contention will be that Stoic conditionals are true when there is a conceptually necessary connection between antecedent and consequent such that the former explains the latter via a prolêpsis. (shrink)

It has been noted before in the history of logic that some of Frege's logical and semantic views were anticipated in Stoicism. In particular, there seems to be a parallel between Frege's Gedanke (thought) and Stoic lekton; and the distinction between complete and incomplete lekta has an equivalent in Frege's logic. However, nobody has so far claimed that Frege was actually influenced by Stoic logic; and there has until now been no indication of such a causal connection. In this essay, (...) we attempt, for the first time, to provide detailed evidence for the existence of this connection. In the course of our argumentation, further analogies between the positions of Frege and the Stoics will be revealed. The classical philologist Rudolf Hirzel will be brought into play as the one who links Frege with Stoicism. The renowned expert on Stoic philosophy was Frege's tenant and lived in the same house as the logician for many years. In der Geschichte der Logik ist häufig bemerkt worden, dass einige der logischen und semantischen Auffassungen Freges in der Stoa antizipiert worden sind. Genannt wurden insbesondere die Parallelen zwischen dem Fregeschen Gedanken und dem stoischen Lekton sowie die Unterscheidung zwischen vollständigen und unvollständigen Lekta, die bei Frege ihre Entsprechung hat. Ein Wirkungszusammenhang ist allerdings nicht behauptet worden. Dazu gab es bislang auch keinen Anlass. Der vorliegende Beitrag versucht erstmalig, einen detaillierten Indizienbeweis für das Bestehen eines solchen Zusammenhangs vorzulegen. Dabei werden weitere charakteristische Übereinstimmungen zwischen Frege und der Stoa aufgewiesen. Als Mittelsmann wird der Altphilologe Rudolf Hirzel vorgestellt. Er wohnte lange Jahre als Mieter zusammen mit Frege im selben Haus und war ein anerkannter Experte der stoischen Philosophie. (shrink)

Modern logicians have complained that Aristotelian logic lacks a distinction between predication and assertion, and that predication, according to the Aristotelians, implies assertion. The present paper addresses the question of whether this criticism can be levelled against Aristotle’s logic. Based on a careful study of the De interpretatione, the paper shows that even if Aristotle defines what he calls simple assertion in terms of predication, he does not confound predication and assertion. That is because, first, he does not understand compound (...) assertion in terms of predication, and secondly, he acknowledges non-assertive predicative thoughts that are truth-evaluable. Therefore, the implications of Aristotle’s ‘predication theory of assertion’ are not as devastating as the critics believe. (shrink)

An argument for the existence of gods given by the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon and reported by Sextus Empiricus appears to be an ancient version of the ontological argument. In this paper I present a new reconstruction of Diogenes' argument that differs in certain important respects from the reconstruction presented by Jacques Brunschwig. I argue that my reconstruction makes better sense of how Diogenes' argument emerged as a response to an attack on an earlier Stoic argument presented by Zeno of (...) Citium. Diogenes' argument as reconstructed here is an example of a modal ontological argument that makes use of the concept of being of such a nature as to exist. I argue that this concept is a modal concept that is based on the Philonian definition of possibility, and thus that Diogenes' argument is a source of important evidence about the use of non-Stoic modalities in the post-Chrysippean Stoa. I conclude by arguing that the objections made against considering Diogenes' argument as ontological are unfounded and that Diogenes' argument clearly resembles modern versions of modal ontological arguments. (shrink)

In Roman rhetoric, contrarium was variably considered either a figure of speech or an argument. The paper examines the logical pattern of this type of argument, which according to Cicero is based on a third Stoic indemonstrable syllogism: $$ \neg ({\hbox{p}} \wedge {\hbox{q}});<$> <$>{\hbox{p}} \to \neg {\hbox{q}}{\hbox{.}} $$ The persuasiveness of this type of argument, however, vitally depends on the validity of the alleged ‹incompatibility’ forming its major premiss. Yet this appears to be the argument’s weak point, as the ‹incompatibilities’ (...) employed generally hold for the most part only, and are reducible to topical argument schemes. This is why in practical usage such arguments are most often phrased as rhetorical questions, the persuasive force of which, enhanced by certain strategical maneuverings and fallacies, makes the audience swallow the argument. (shrink)

The arguments of the Stoic Chrysippus recorded in Cicero's De Fato are of great importance to Deleuze's conception of events in The Logic of Sense. The purpose of this paper is to explicate these arguments, to which Deleuze's allusions are extremely terse, and to situate them in the context of Deleuze's broader project in that book. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on the Stoics, I show the extent to which Chrysippus' views on compatibilism, hypothetical inference and astrology support Deleuze's claim that (...) the Stoics developed a theory of compatibilities and incompatibilities of events independent of corporeal states of affairs. (shrink)