Online research in philosophy

In the preface of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein says that his “most fruitful ideas” are due to the stimulus of Sraffa's criticism, but Sraffa is not mentioned anywhere else in the book. It remains a puzzle in the literature how and why Sraffa influenced Wittgenstein. This paper presents a solution to this puzzle. Sraffa's criticism led Wittgenstein away from the calculus conception of language of the Big Typescript (arguably, an adaptation of the calculus of the Tractatus), and towards the “anthropological (...) view,” which structures both the opening sections of the Philosophical Investigations and Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

I argue that Wittgenstein’s engagement with Russell’s The Analysis of Mind was crucial for the development of his new method. First, I show that Wittgenstein’s criticism of the causal theory of meaning (namely: that it generates an infinite regress and that it does not determine the depiction of a fact) is motivated by its incompatibility with the pictorial conception of language. Second, I show that in reacting against that theory he comes to invent the calculus conception of language. Third, I (...) argue that the calculus conception is vulnerable to critiques that parallel those presented against Russell’s theory (a rule-following regression and the indeterminacy of depicted facts). Fourth, the striking similarity between the problems present in Russell’s theory and in Wittgenstein’s own views makes him realize that both were working under misleading trains of thought and false analogies. It is this realization that brings Wittgenstein to the view that his task is to investigate the genesis of philosophical puzzlement in order to stop philosophical theorizing right from the beginning. Thus, in explaining the invention of Wittgenstein’s new method I show its relation to Russell’s philosophy and indicate the origins of the rule-following problem. (shrink)

The paper introduces Vailati’s life and works, investigating Vailati’s education, the relation to Peano and his school, and the interest for pragmatism and modernism. A detailed analysis of Vailati’s scientific and didactic activities, shows that he held, like Peano, a a strong interest for the history of science and a pluralist, anti-dogmatic and anti-foundationalist conception of definitions in mathematics, logic and philosophy of language. Vailati’s understanding of mathematical logic as a form of pragmatism is not a faithful interpretation of Peano’s (...) conception, but it is essential to understand the relations of Peano’s logic with other philosophical traditions and some epistemological aspects of Peano’s perspective, such as the search for a universal language. (shrink)

This article investigates the nature of Aristotelian syllogistics and shows that the categorical syllogism is fundamentally about showing the connection, in the premises of the syllogism, between the major and minor terms as stated in the conclusion. It discusses how this is important for the use of the syllogism in scientific demonstration. The article then examines modern deductive logic with an eye to they way in which it contrasts with Aristotelian syllogistics. It shows howmodern logic is about making necessary connections (...) between each proposition by means of external or second order rules. In the syllogism, on the other hand, the necessity between the premises as a whole unit and the conclusion is based on the internal middle term. The article concludes with a discussion of Günther Patzig’s claim that Aristotelian syllogisms are best thought of as tautological propositions. If this were the case, then the differences asserted to exist between syllogistic and modern logic would not hold. However, it is shown that Patzig’s assimilation of syllogistics to modern deductive logic is illegitimate. (shrink)

Any cognitive orientation toward nature is interconnected with how the metaphysical structure of nature itself is understood. In the Aristotelian tradition, the primary unit of being is considered to be the substantial form, which constitutes the being and essence of entities. In the mechanistic tradition, the primary units are considered to be minute particles out of which larger entities are constructed. Correspondingly, Aristotelian scientific methodology seeks to gain insight into the substantial forms through a study of the outer properties of (...) entities. This is accomplished in demonstration. On the other hand, scientific methodology inthe mechanist tradition seeks to reduce entities to their smallest particles in order to determine how properties are produced through the interaction of such particles. This paper shows how, through certain transformations in Aristotelian techne, mechanistic metaphysics arose with its attendant methodological stance of seeking an operational knowledge of nature. (shrink)

We explore the interaction between oculomotor control and language comprehension on the sentence level using two well-tested computational accounts of parsing difficulty. Previous work (Boston, Hale, Vasishth, & Kliegl, 2011) has shown that surprisal (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008) and cue-based memory retrieval (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) are significant and complementary predictors of reading time in an eyetracking corpus. It remains an open question how the sentence processor interacts with oculomotor control. Using a simple linking hypothesis proposed in Reichle, Warren, and (...) McConnell (2009), we integrated both measures with the eye movement model EMMA (Salvucci, 2001) inside the cognitive architecture ACT-R (Anderson et al., 2004). We built a reading model that could initiate short “Time Out regressions” (Mitchell, Shen, Green, & Hodgson, 2008) that compensate for slow postlexical processing. This simple interaction enabled the model to predict the re-reading of words based on parsing difficulty. The model was evaluated in different configurations on the prediction of frequency effects on the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. The extension of EMMA with postlexical processing improved its predictions and reproduced re-reading rates and durations with a reasonable fit to the data. This demonstration, based on simple and independently motivated assumptions, serves as a foundational step toward a precise investigation of the interaction between high-level language processing and eye movement control. (shrink)

This essay seeks to ground the ontological integrity of natural things by examining the dialectic between substantial form, which is the “being-in-itself ”of substances, and second acts, the “being-toward-others” of substances. It is found that a new category of causality needs to be established, that of “expressivecausality.” The effects of expressive causality—second acts—are expressions of their substantial form, their cause. It is determined that second acts are sufficientconditions for substantial form, while substantial form itself is a necessary condition for its (...) second acts. This implies that substantial form is ontologically priorto its second acts, which are proper attributes. These proper attributes are distinct from yet essentially connected with substantial form, and can never exhaust thecontent of the form. (shrink)

This is a review of Mauro Dorato's book "The Software of the Universe: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of the Laws of Nature".

Review of "Introdução à Teoria da ciência", de Luiz Henrique de A. Dutra.

It was Paul Engelmann who stimulated Wittgenstein to consider art as the avenue of access to what is higher, the "mystical" in the Tractatus. Unlike the course of their personal friendship, it is not easy to reconstruct the nature of their philosophical confrontation with one another. In the light of their correspondence, Wittgenstein's notebooks and the bit we know from biographers, Wittgenstein's development in the period immediately before he met Engelmann is sketched, discussing the influence of Hertz and (...) Weininger, and determining what his meeting with Engelmann meant for his philosophy. (shrink)

Recently the complexity of discursive practices has been widely acknowledged by the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourse. The "discursive turn" in psychology may be considered as a new paradigm oriented to a correct study of (wo)man only if it is able to grasp the semiotical ground of psychic experience both as an "effort after meaning" and as a "struggle over meaning." In this sense the notion of (...) "diatext" has been proposed as a contribution in working out a psychosemiotical approach to understand how the discursive practices assign subject-positions to the agents of each interlocution scenario. (shrink)

We investigate how stochastic asset price dynamics with herding and financial constraints in heterogeneous agents’ decisions explain the presence of a period of financial distress (PFD) following the peak and preceding the crash of a bubble, documented by Kindleberger [2000, Appendix B] as common among most major historical speculative bubbles. Simulations show the PFD is due to agents’ wealth distribution dynamics, selling because of financial constraints after the bubble’s peak in relation to switching behavior of agents. An increase in switching (...) tendency increases the length of the PFD and decreases bubble amplitude, while increasing strength of interaction between the agents increases bubble amplitude. (shrink)

In this first English publication of a well-known and widely respected Italian scholar, readers will encounter the preeminent interpreter of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty engaged in a dialogue of critical concern to contemporary philosophy. In subtle and sensitive language eminently suited to the style and substance of Merleau-Ponty's own writings, Mauro Carbone fashions four essays around a central theme-the relations of the sensible and the intelligible, and of philosophy and non-philosophy-that occupied Merleau-Ponty in his later work. An original (...) and innovative interpretation of the ontology of Merleau-Ponty--and themselves a significant contribution to the field of Continental thought--these essays constitute a sustained exploration of what Merleau-Ponty detected, and greeted, as a "mutation within the relations of man and Being," which would provide him with the basis for a new idea of philosophy or "a-philosophy." In lucid, often elegant terms, Carbone analyzes key elements of Merleau-Ponty's thought in relation to Proust's Recherche, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit , the new biology of Von Uexkull, Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant , and Heidegger's conception of "letting-be." His work clearly demonstrates the vitality of Merleau-Ponty's late revolutionary philosophy by following its most salient, previously unexplored paths. This is essential reading for any scholar with an interest in Merleau-Ponty, in the questions of embodiment, temporality and Nature, or in the possibility of philosophy today. (shrink)

DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO ITABORAHY, Luiz Carlos. O horizonte da juventude na educação e pastoral populares : história, diálogo e configuração de Medellín a Puebla (1968-1979). 2012. 207 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.

Paul Engelmann hat über zwanzig Jahre seines Lebens an einer systematischen Darstellung der Psychologie mittels einer von ihm entwickelten graphischen Methode gearbeitet. Das Resultat dieser Arbeit bildet seine Psychologie graphisch dargestellt, die sich in seinem Nachlaß befindet. In diesem Werk will Engelmann die Klärung geistiger Aufgabengebiete, wie sie seine Lehrer Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos und Ludwig Wittgenstein betrieben haben, in der Psychologie fortsetzen. Hierbei fiihrt er Freuds Methode weiter, psychische Erscheinungen räumlich darzustellen, und wendet die Bildtheorie Wittgensteins auf (...) seine Theorie psychischer Vorgänge an. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical assessment of the current state of the debate about the identity and individuality of material objects. Its main aim, in particular, is to show that, in a sense to be carefully specified, the opposition between the Leibnizian ‘reductionist’ tradition, based on discernibility, and the sort of ‘primitivism’ that denies that facts of identity and individuality must be analysable has become outdated. In particular, it is argued that—contrary to a widespread consensus—‘naturalised’ metaphysics supports both the acceptability (...) of non-qualitatively grounded (both ‘contextual’ and intrinsic) identity and a pluralistic approach to individuality and individuation. A case study is offered that focuses on non-relativistic quantum mechanics, in the context of which primitivism about identity and individuality, rather than being regarded as unscientific, is on the contrary suggested to be preferable to the complicated forms of reductionism that have recently been proposed. More generally, by assuming a plausible form of anti-reductionism about scientific theories and domains, it is claimed that science can be regarded as compatible with, or even as suggesting, the existence of a series of equally plausible grades of individuality. The kind of individuality that prevails in a certain context and at a given level can be ascertained only on the basis of the specific scientific theory at hand. (shrink)

After a brief but necessary characterization of the notion of determinism, I discuss and critically evaluate four views on the relationship between determinism and free will by taking into account both (i) what matters most to us in terms of a free will worth-wanting and (ii) which capacities can be legitimately attributed to human beings without contradicting what we currently know from natural sciences. The main point of the paper is to argue that the libertarian faces a dilemma: on the (...) one hand, the possibility of ?doing otherwise? ? a necessary condition of a free will according to the libertarian ? requires indeterminism or chance, but any kind of indeterminism has the undesirable consequence of separating our actions from our character and our past. On the other hand, if our character has to be fully expressed by our actions, determinism becomes necessary and we seem to be metaphysically unfree. I conclude by showing that the dispute between compatibilists and libertarians possesses an important but hitherto very neglected pragmatic component as well, dependent on two different ethical attitudes toward a meaningful life. (shrink)

The main claim that I want to defend in this paper is that the there are logical equivalences between eternalism and perdurantism on the one hand and presentism and endurantism on the other. By “logical equivalence” I mean that one position is entailed and entails the other. As a consequence of this equivalence, it becomes important to inquire into the question whether the dispute between endurantists and perdurantists is authentic, given that Savitt (2006) Dolev (2006) and Dorato (2006) have cast (...) doubts on the fact that the debate between presentism and eternalism is about “what there is”. In this respect, I will conclude that also the debate about persistence in time has no ontological consequences, in the sense that there is no real ontological disagreement between the two allegedly opposite positions: as in the case of the presentism/eternalism debate, one can be both a perdurantist and an endurantist, depending on which linguistic framework is preferred. (shrink)

In recent times, there have been notable attempts to introduce an objective present in Minkowski spacetime, a structure that, however, should also be capable to explain some aspects of our experience of time. I claim that the “interactive present” introduced by Arthur and Savitt for such purposes is inadequate, since it turns out to be neither a physically relevant property nor a good explanans of our temporal experience. In its conclusive part, and after having proposed a more adequate model for (...) the time of our experience, I draw some general morals about the relationship between physical time and experiential time. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the debate between the so-called “presentists” – according to whom only the present is real – and the “eternalists”, according to whom past present and future are equally real, has no ontological significance. In particular, once we carefully distinguish between a tensed and a tenseless sense of existence, it is difficult to find a single ontological claim on which the two parties could disagree. Since the choice of using a tense or a tenseless language (...) is dictated by purely pragmatic reasons, we should abstain from bringing to bear pseudo-debates generated by the “tensed” or the “tenseless theories” of time on the question of understanding the philosophical implications of contemporary spacetime theories, or notions like becoming, change and persistence in time. (shrink)

The paper argues that the formulation of quantum mechanics proposed by Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber (GRW) is a serious candidate for being a fundamental physical theory and explores its ontological commitments from this perspective. In particular, we propose to conceive of spatial superpositions of non-massless microsystems as dispositions or powers, more precisely propensities, to generate spontaneous localizations. We set out five reasons for this view, namely that (1) it provides for a clear sense in which quantum systems in entangled states (...) possess properties even in the absence of definite values; (2) it vindicates objective, single-case probabilities; (3) it yields a clear transition from quantum to classical properties; (4) it enables to draw a clear distinction between purely mathematical and physical structures, and (5) it grounds the arrow of time in the time-irreversible manifestation of the propensities to localize. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I try to clear the ground from frequent misconceptions about the relationship between fact and value by examining some uses of the adjective “natural” in ethical controversies. Such uses bear evidence to our “natural” tendency to regard nature (considered in a descriptive sense, as the complex of physical and biological regularities) as the source of ethical norms. I then try to account for the origin of this tendency by offering three related explanations, the (...) most important of which regards it as the outcome of an adaptation: if any behaviour that favours our equilibrium with the environment is potentially adaptive, nothing can be more effective for this goal than developing an attitude toward the natural world that regards it as a dispenser of sacred norms that must be invariably respected. By referring to the Aristotelian notion of human flourishing illustrated in the first part of the paper, in the second I discuss some ethical problems raised by mini-chips implantable under in our bodies. I conclude by defending the potential beneficial effects of such new technological instruments. (shrink)

After some suggestions about how to clarify the confused metaphysical distinctions between dispositional and non-dispositional or categorical properties, I review some of the main interpretations of QM in order to show that – with the relevant exception of Bohm’s minimalist interpretation – quantum ontology is irreducibly dispositional. Such an irreducible character of dispositions must be explained differently in different interpretations, but the reducibility of the contextual properties in the case of Bohmian mechanics is guaranteed by the fact that the positions (...) of particles play the role of the categorical basis, a role that in other interpretations cannot be filled by anything else. In Bohr’s and Everett-type interpretations, dispositionalism is instrumentalism in disguise. (shrink)

The resurgent science of consciousness has been accompanied by a recent emphasis on the problem of measurement. Having dependable measures of consciousness is essential both for mapping experimental evidence to theory and for designing perspicuous experiments. Here, we review a series of behavioural and brain-based measures, assessing their ability to track graded consciousness and clarifying how they relate to each other by showing what theories are presupposed by each. We identify possible and actual conflicts among measures that can stimulate new (...) experiments, and we conclude that measures must prove themselves by iteratively building knowledge in the context of theoretical frameworks. Advances in measuring consciousness have implications for basic cognitive neuroscience, for comparative studies of consciousness and for clinical applications. (shrink)

1. Abstract: In this paper I discuss Putnam’s view on time and the special theory of relativity. I first locate Putnam’s philosophical approach within a more general framework, essentially making reference to Sellar’s distinction between the scientific image and the manifest image of the world. I then reconstruct Putnam’s argument in favour of the reality of the future and the determinateness of truth-value for future tense sentences (Putnam 1967) by showing that it is based on three premises that generate a (...) contradiction. In the second part of the paper I discuss Putnam’s argument both by using later results belonging to the foundations of STR and quantum mechanics (Putnam 2005), and by invoking some conceptual analysis on the pseudo-predicate “is real”. Since I will show that the presentists/eternalists debate is ill-founded if regarded as ontological, I will conclude that it boils down to our different practical attitudes towards past, present and future. (shrink)

An influential position in the philosophy of biology claims that there are no biological laws, since any apparently biological generalization is either too accidental, fact-like or contingent to be named a law, or is simply reducible to physical laws that regulate electrical and chemical interactions taking place between merely physical systems. In the following I will stress a neglected aspect of the debate that emerges directly from the growing importance of mathematical models of biological phenomena. My main aim is to (...) defend, as well as reinforce, the view that there are indeed laws also in biology, and that their difference in stability, contingency or resilience with respect to physical laws is one of degrees, and not of kind . (shrink)

In 1877 Peirce distinguished four different methods of “fixating our beliefs”, among which I here concentrate on what could be called the “method of tenacity” and the “method of science”. I then use these distinctions to argue that despite their apparent conflict, pragmatism, relying on the method of tenacity, and naturalism, relying on the method of science, can and should coexist, both in science and in metaphysics.

In this paper we argue that structural explanations are an effective way of explaining well known relativistic phenomena like length contraction and time dilation, and then try to understand how this can be possible by looking at the literature on scientific models. In particular, we ask whether and how a model like that provided by Minkowski spacetime can be said to represent the physical world, in such a way that it can successfully explain physical phenomena structurally. We conclude by claiming (...) that a partial isomorphic approach to scientific representation can supply an answer only if supplemented by a robust injection of pragmatic factors. (shrink)

Mechanisms are a way of explaining how biological phenomena work rather than why single elements of biological systems are there. However, mechanisms are usually described as physiological entities, and little or no attention is paid to malfunction as an independent theoretical concept. On the other hand, malfunction is the main focus of interest of applied sciences such as medicine. In this paper I argue that malfunctions are parts of pathological mechanisms, which should be considered separate theoretical entities, conceptually having a (...) priority over physiological sequences. While pathological mechanisms can be described in terms of a Cummins-like mechanistic explanation, they show some unnoticed peculiarities when compared to physiological ones. Some features of pathological mechanisms are considered, such as outcome variability, ambivalence and dependence on a range. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that quantum mechanics provides a genuine kind of structural explanations of quantum phenomena. Since structural explanations only rely on the formal properties of the theory, they have the advantage of being independent of interpretative questions. As such, they can be used to claim that, even in the current absence of one agreed-upon interpretation, quantum mechanics is capable of providing satisfactory explanations of physical phenomena. While our proposal clearly cannot be taken to solve all interpretive issues (...) raised by quantum theory, we will argue that it can be successfully applied to some of its most puzzling phenomena, such Heisenberg's uncertainty relations and quantum non-locality. The discussion of these two case studies will also serve to illustrate the main properties of structural explanations and compare them to the DN and the unificationist models. Finally, we briefly discuss how structural explanations might relate to structural realism. (shrink)

My first and main claim is that physics cannot provide empirical evidence for the objectivity (mind-independence) of absolute becoming, for the simple reason that it must presuppose it, at least to the extent that classical (i.e., non-quantum) spacetime theories presuppose an ontology of events. However, the fact that a theory of absolute becoming must be situated in the a priori realm of metaphysics does not make becoming completely irrelevant for physics, since my second claim will consist in showing that relational (...) becoming, once appropriately defined and understood, properly belongs to the tangled set of issues usually referred to with the label “the arrow of time”. In this respect it is argued that the arrow of becoming is more fundamental both than the causal arrow and of other well-known physical processes that are temporally asymmetric. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature it needs an “interpretation”. As I understand it, an interpretation of a physical theory amounts to offering (1) a precise formulation of its ontological claims and (2) a clear account of how such claims are related to the world of our experience. Notably, metaphysics enters importantly in both tasks: in (1), because interpreting our best physical theories requires going beyond a merely instrumentalist view (...) of science and therefore using our best metaphysical theories; in (2), because a philosophical elaboration of the theories of the world that are implicit in our experience is one of the tasks of analytic metaphysics, and bridging possible explanatory gaps or even conflicts between the physical image and the manifest image of the world is a typical philosophical task that involves science and metaphysics. (shrink)

The paper is a review of Talal Debs and Michael Redhead's 2007 book, Objectivity, Invariance, and Convention, Harvard, Harvard University Press.

The paper defends two claims;(1) Viewed from the perspective of the substantivalism/relationism debate, structural spacetime realism (i.e., the view that spacetime is exemplified structure) is a form of relationism; (2) However, if we managed to reinforce Rynasiewicz’s (1996) point that the general theory of relativity makes the substantivalism/relationism dispute “outdated”, the re-elaboration of Stein’s 1967 version of structural spacetime realism to be proposed here proves to be a good, antimetaphysical solution to the problem of the ontological status of spacetime.

The topic of disease mechanisms is of clinical importance, as our understanding of such mechanisms plays an important role in how we approach devising treatments for disease. In this paper, I critique an argument made by Mauro Nervi, in which he asserts that pathology is often better viewed in the context of distinct theoretical mechanisms. I use this critique as a starting point to argue that viewing pathology as a broken-normal, malfunctioning mechanism is more therapeutically practical and more relevant (...) to clinical drug design, than creating a theoretical separation of pathology from physiology. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze the difficult question of the truth of mature scientific theories by tackling the problem of the truth of laws. After introducing the main philosophical positions in the field of scientific realism, I discuss and then counter the two main arguments against realism, namely the pessimistic metainduction and the abstract and idealized character of scientific laws. I conclude by defending the view that well-confirmed physical theories are true only relatively to certain values of the variables that (...) appear in the laws. (shrink)

The main aim of our paper is to show that interpretative issues belonging to classical General Relativity (GR) might be preliminary to a deeper understanding of conceptual problems stemming from on-going attempts at constructing a quantum theory of gravity. Among such interpretative issues, we focus on the meaning of general covariance and the related question of the identity of points, by basing our investigation on the Hamiltonian formulation of GR. In particular, we argue that the adoption of a peculiar gauge-fixing (...) within the canonical reduction of ADM metric gravity may yield a new solution to the debate between substantivalists and relationists, by suggesting a \emph{tertium quid} between these two age-old positions. Such a third position enables us to evaluate the controversial relationship between entity realism and structural realism in a well-defined case study. After having indicated the possible developments of this approach in Quantum Gravity, we discuss the structuralist and holistic features of the class of spacetime models that are used in the above mentioned canonical reduction. (shrink)

Experiments on scene perception and change blindness suggest that the visual system does not construct detailed internal models of a scene. These experiments therefore call into doubt the traditional view that vision is a process in which detailed representations of the environment must be constructed. The non-existence of such detailed representations, however, does not entail that we do not perceive the detailed environment. The “grand illusion hypothesis” that our visual world is an illusion rests on (1) a problematic “reconstructionist” conception (...) of vision, and (2) a misconception about the character of perceptual experience. (shrink)

(1) The main issue with regard to modal and amodal completion is not which phenomena are cognitive, and which perceptual. At the level of the animal, both are visuo-cognitive. At the level of visual processing, however, we need to dissect the different functional effects of these kinds of completion. (2) Resonant binding between distributed cortical areas may play a role in perceptual completion, but evidence is needed.

Since the onset of logical positivism, the general wisdom of the philosophy of science has it that the kantian philosophy of (space and) time has been superseded by the theory of relativity, in the same sense in which the latter has replaced Newton’s theory of absolute space and time. On the wake of Cassirer and Gödel, in this paper I raise doubts on this commonplace by suggesting some conditions that are necessary to defend the ideality of time in the sense (...) of Kant. In the last part of the paper I bring to bear some contemporary physical theories on such conditions. (shrink)

In the literature on the compatibility between the time of our experience and the time of physics, the special theory of relativity has enjoyed central stage. By bringing into the discussion the general theory of relativity, I suggest a new analysis of the misunderstood notion of becoming, developed from hints in Gödel’s published and unpublished arguments for the ideality of time. I claim that recent endorsements of such arguments, based on Gödel’s own “rotating” solution to Einstein’s field equation, fail: once (...) understood in the right way, becoming can be shown to be both mind-independent and compatible with spacetime physics. Being a needed tertium quid between views of time traditionally regarded as in conflict, such a new approach to becoming should also help to dissolve a crucial aspect of the century-old debate between the so-called A and B theories of time. (shrink)

In a reply to Nicholas Maxwell, Stein has proved that Minkowski spacetime can leave room for the kind of indeterminateness required both by certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and by objective becoming. By examining the consequences of outcome dependence in Bell-type experiments for the co-determinateness of spacelike-related events, I argue that the only becoming relation that is compatible with both causal and noncausal readings of the quantum correlations is the universal relation. This result might also undermine interpretations of quantum mechanics (...) requiring non-epistemically indeterminate states before measurement and hyperplane-dependent wave collapse. (shrink)

One of the leading member of logical positivism, he was born in Orianenburg, Germany, in 1905. Between March 17 and 24, 1982, Hempel gave an interview to Richard Nolan; the text of that interview was published for the first time in 1988 in Italian translation (Hempel, 'Autobiografia intellettuale' in Oltre il positivismo logico , Armando : Rome, Italy : 1988). This interview is the main source of the following biographical notes.

In the first section of the chapter, I scrutinize Howard Stein’s 1991 definition of a transitive becoming relation that is Lorentz invariant. I argue first that Stein’s analysis gives few clues regarding the required characteristics of the relation complementary to his becoming—i.e. the relation of indefiniteness. It turns out that this relation cannot satisfy the condition of transitivity, and this fact can force us to reconsider the transitivity requirement as applied to the relation of becoming. I argue that the relation (...) of becoming need not be transitive, as long as it satisfies the weaker condition of “cumulativity”: for a given observer the area of the events that have become real should not diminish as time progresses. I show that there are actually two relations of becoming that meet this weakened condition: Stein’s (transitive) relation of causal past connectibility and the (non-transitive) relation that is the logical complement of the future causal connectibility. In the second part of the chapter I defend Stein’s notion of temporal becoming against the attack that appeals to quantum-mechanical non-locality. I critically evaluate the argument given by Mauro Dorato (1996) that purports to show that space-like separated measurements done on the EPR system have to be mutually determinate. Finally, in order to account for the truth of counterfactual statements that link the space-like separated outcomes, I propose a dynamic conception of becoming, according to which the sphere of determinate events as of a given point may depend on the physical phenomena transpiring at this point. (shrink)

This paper is chiefly aimed at individuating some deep, but as yet almost unnoticed, similarities between Aristotle's syllogistic and the Stoic doctrine of conditionals, notably between Aristotle's metasyllogistic equimodality condition (as stated at APr. I 24, 41b27–31) and truth-conditions for third type (Chrysippean) conditionals (as they can be inferred from, say, S.E. P. II 111 and 189). In fact, as is shown in §1, Aristotle's condition amounts to introducing in his (propositional) metasyllogistic a non-truthfunctional implicational arrow '', the truth-conditions of (...) which turn out to be logically equivalent to truth-conditions of third type conditionals, according to which only the impossible (and not the possible) follows from the impossible. Moreover, Aristotle is given precisely this non-Scotian conditional logic in two so far overlooked passages of (Latin and Hebraic translations of) Themistius' Paraphrasis of De Caelo (CAG V 4, 71.8–13 and 47.8–10 Landauer). Some further consequences of Aristotle's equimodality condition on his logic, and notably on his syllogistic (no <span class='Hi'>matter</span> whether modal or not), are pointed out and discussed at length. A (possibly Chrysippean) extension of Aristotle's condition is also discussed, along with a full characterization of truth-conditions of fourth type conditionals. (shrink)

Up until only a few decades ago, not many scholars recognized scientific dignity in the problem of consciousness. In the last few years this scenario has changed. The rapid development of non-invasive research techniques that explore cerebral functions has not only increased our knowledge on the correlations between mental processes and cerebral structures, but it has fed our hopes for the possibility of facing the ancient and elusive question about the mind-brain relationship with a new way of thinking. The meeting (...) between neurosciences and phenomenology represents one of the most promising frontiers of current research. Neurophenomenology , a paradigm of research inaugurated by the Chilean neuroscientist Francisco Varela, tries to indicate a remedy to the various explicatory philosophical and scientific gaps, establishing a methodological and epistemological bridge between the so-called phenomenological reports in “first person” and the scientific evidence in “third person,” incorporating the experience on neurodynamic levels in an explicit and rigorous way and, above all, avoiding every alternative in the direction of any form of ontological reduction. (shrink)

... bénAtouïL (Université de nancy, Lphs-archives Henri Poincaré) cet article s' inscrit dans un projet plus large d'étude des rapports entre σχολή et ...

In this paper it is argued that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature, it needs an interpretation, namely (i) a clear formulation of its ontological/metaphysical claims and (ii) and a precise understanding of how such claims are related to the world of our experience, which is the most important reservoir of traditional, merely aprioristic metaphysical speculations. Such speculations − especially if conducted in full autonomy from physics, or imposed upon it “from the outside” − risk to (...) turn analytic metaphysics into a “rigorous” but fully sterile intellectual game. (shrink)

Among the many logical works by Ab? Nasr Muhammad al-F?r?b? (870?950), there are two commentaries on particular books or points of Aristotle's Topics, whose original Arabic text has been apparently lost. A number of quotations of one or both of them, translated into Hebrew, has been recently found in a philosophical anthology by a fourteenth-century Provençal Jewish scholar, Todros Todrosi. In this article, a detailed list of these quotations is given, and a tentative short examination of the contents of each (...) of them is offered. (shrink)

In this work I search for elements that contribute to the development of the ethical dimension of environmental education. I start with the existence of what C.A. Bowers calls “areas of silence” in the curriculum in both schools and universities. The reason for this silence, I argue, is to be found in the Cartesian conceptual structures of curricula. I suggest that the works of Bacon, Galileo and Descartes provoke a twofold process that I have termed the forgetting of tradition and (...) objectification of nature. As a corrective to this process, I explore the possibilities that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer opens for rehabilitation of tradition and de-objectification of nature. I work with the concept of the “dignity of things” present in Greek dialectics: that nature is not simply a projection of mind (as the neo-Kantians claim), but something that thought suffers. In my conclusions I argue that for nature to be reinserted into almost all areas of knowledge it is necessary that we respect “the otherness of nature.”. (shrink)