In che cosa crede chi pratica la meditazione buddhista? Dare una risposta univoca e coerente è assai difficile; il Buddhismo infatti si concretizza in una molteplicità di scuole e dottrine caratterizzate da complesse logiche e metafisiche. Ci sono tuttavia delle indicazioni minimali che fungono da denominator comune per chi si accosta alla meditazione. Esse riguardano soprattutto l’assenza di punti di vista determinati, l’esperienza del tempo e la relazione di dipendenza reciproca di ogni cosa con ogni altra. Utilizzando gli strumenti della (...) filosofia analitica, questo libro propone una interpretazione dei princìpi basilari che guidano la meditazione buddhista, facendo leva sulle potenzialità del senso comune, inteso non semplicemente come l’opinione generica della maggioranza – troppo spesso già infarcita di presupposti metafisici discutibili - bensì come insieme di credenze che tutti noi possediamo, ma di cui non sempre siamo consapevoli. (shrink)

The primitivist theory of truth, i.e., the view that truth cannot be analysed in more fundamental terms, has been cleverly revamped by Jamin Asay, who has combined a primitivist approach to the concept of truth with a deflationary approach to the (metaphysical) property of being true. This paper aims to adjust Asay’s primitivist theory to consistently include the primitiveness of the (pre-theoretical) correspondence relation, grasped by our correspondence intuition, alongside the primitiveness of truth. In the process, I apply a thesis (...) by Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson, according to which the correspondence of beliefs to facts (broadly construed) can occur with no commitment to a correspondence theory of truth. Then I argue why Asay’s theory might not be able to account for the primitiveness of the pre-theoretical correspondence relation. Finally, I use a suggestion by André Kukla concerning the possible entailment between an ineffable insight and its effable consequences, to build a revised primitivist theory of truth. (shrink)

Nesse papel, tentarei mostrar que uma leitura da lógica de Hegel baseada em mundos possíveis, particularmente da rejeição de um mundo possível absolutamente vazio poderia fornecer a confirmação da tese hegeliana de acordo com a qual a noção de ser puro implica a noção de ser determinado. Na seção 1, eu retomo o desenvolvimento hegeliano do ser puro ao ser determinado através da interpretação de Stephen Houlgate da abertura da lógica de Hegel. Na seção 2, eu retomo brevemente a noção (...) de mundo possível. Na seção 3, tento conceber a supracitada implicação hegeliana através dos mundos possíveis e através da substituição da autocontradição do vir-a-ser com a rejeição de um mundo vazio e argumento que tal operação respeita fundamentalmente a dialética hegeliana. Nas seções 4-8, analiso algumas objeções possíveis a minha tese e argumento que substituir a categoria do devir com a noção de mundo vazio melhora o projeto de Hegel de um começo sem pressuposições. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy metaphysical nihilism is the thesis according to which there might be nothing, i.e. a possible world with no concreteobjects in it, but that can contain abstract objects. After summarizing the set of premises from which analytic metaphysics deals with nothing, I propose a set of premises that could fit continental metaphysics. Then I propose a new set of premises for the question of nothing that derives from a synthesis of the two above mentioned sets. By means (...) of this new set, I try to show that nothing as a possible world with no objects at all is not a self-contradictory entity and I propose an argument for proving that an empty possible world exists. (shrink)

Review of Casati, Filippo. "Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being. An Analytic Interpretation of the Late Heidegger." Routledge, 2022.

Fin dalle origini la filosofia occidentale ha cercato di liberare il pensiero dall'enorme scandalo rappresentato dal nulla assoluto, proibendo persino di nominarlo (Parmenide), oppure volgendo lo sguardo da un'altra parte (ad esempio Platone e Heidegger, verso la differenza rispettivamente ontica e ontologica), o mostrandone la auto-negazione (Severino). Questo libro propone un modo nuovo di avvicinarsi al "non-essere" e alla sua aporia: un modo che, invece di eliminarlo dal pensiero, afferma la libertà del nulla da ogni forma di negazione. Si tratta, (...) certo, di raddoppiare lo scandalo, tanto da mettere in questione anche il linguaggio stesso, dove già solo la parola nulla si costituisce "via negationis (nec-ulla)". Ma il presente saggio indica un ripensamento radicale del legame tra il nulla e la negazione proprio per tentare di risolvere l'aporia, articolandola attraverso una struttura diversa da quella tradizionale, sebbene la forma dell'argomentazione resti fondata sulla logica della non contraddizione -/- [dalla prefazione di Emanuele Severino] «Nei miei scritti l’assolutamente innegabile è chiamato “struttura originaria” […] Appartengono alla struttura originaria anche le aporie che sorgono al suo interno […] Anche queste aporie non possono che essere apparenti, ma, anche qui, la loro presenza e la loro risoluzione accresce la concretezza - non l’innegabilità! - dell’assolutamente innegabile. Il libro di Marco Simionato, che sono lieto di presentare, appartiene a questa forma di discorso aporetico, che viene da lui sviluppato con lucidità e grande perizia, capace com’è di muoversi in mezzo a tematiche di complessità e difficoltà quanto mai rilevanti». (shrink)

The philosophical question of nothingness has often been controversial. The main core of the question is the use of ‘nothing’ or ‘nothingness’ as a noun phrase rather than a quantifier phrase. This work deals with the question of nothingness and metaphysical nihilism in analytic philosophy. After evaluating an account of nothingness based on the notion of an empty possible world, the present work proposes two original arguments for metaphysical nihilism. With a preface by Graham Priest. -/- “Simionato’s book delivers (...) a welcome deepening of our understanding of nothing.” Graham Priest. (shrink)

This paper compares metaphysical nihilism, as it occurs in analytic metaphysics, with the solution to the puzzle of nothing by the Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino.

Critical considerations on the fourth chapter of Emanuele Severino's work "La struttura originaria" about the puzzle of nothing.

I filosofi che possono essere considerati grandi e classici sono quelli che hanno saputo integrare l’aspetto prettamente argomentativo con l’aspetto che potrebbe essere chiamato “narrativo”. Da un lato, infatti, la filosofia procede da premesse e arriva a conclusioni, attraverso passaggi regolati da una logica; dall’altro essa può costruire narrazioni sul destino dell’uomo e del mondo. Il grande filosofo — quello che diventa un classico — è tale perché racconta storie e insieme fornisce gli strumenti per saggiarne la fondatezza e la (...) consistenza. Emanuele Severino appartiene ormai a pieno titolo ai classici della filosofia; il presente volume vuole essere una testimonianza di come le sue opere e i suoi insegnamenti continuino a far “partorire” idee nuove, riconoscendo nella filosofia severiniana un punto di partenza imprescindibile. (shrink)

Neste artigo, propõe-se uma leitura das categorias no tratado aristotélico homônimo como um primeiro esboço de uma ontologia regional, centrada nas substâncias sensíveis. Tendo por foco substância, quantidade, qualidade, relativo, agir e sofrer, este trabalho busca expor as duas estratégias principais que Aristóteles parece empregar para chegar a uma lista das categorias: (a) características básicas, cuja satisfação ou não satisfação de cada uma determina a natureza categorial de cada item e (b) a propriedade única que caracteriza cada categoria em contraste (...) com todas as outras. São, então, feitas considerações para vincular esse primeiro esboço ontológico a temas discutidos nos livros Lambda e Zeta da Metafísica, de modo a sugerir as direções principais que a sua ontologia nova (e geral) seguirá ao evoluir para uma teoria unificada da substância. (shrink)

Recent anglophone scholarship on Chinese philosophy provides students and scholars with a great variety of introductory materials, especially when it comes to encyclopedias and manuals on the history of Chinese philosophical traditions. It is therefore increasingly difficult for scholars to produce innovative studies on the subject that can provide a significant and original contribution to the field, especially when addressing both specialists and enthusiasts. In this context, The History of Chinese Philosophy Through its Key Terms by Nanjing University’s Wang Yueqing (...) 王月清, Bao Qinggang 暴庆刚, and Guan Guoxing 管国兴 certainly represents a valuable and innovative contribution. Instead of presenting the history of... (shrink)

With the rapid proliferation of New Confucian studies since the mid 1980s, it has become an unquestioned dogma that one particular event at the beginning of 1958 marks a watershed in the movement’s development. This event is the publication of the Manifesto that Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, and Zhang Junmai 张君劢 co-signed and published almost simultaneously in the two journals Minzhu pinglun 民評論 (Democratic Tribune) and Zaisheng 再生(National Renaissance) with the title 为中国文化敬告世界人士宣言─我们对中国学术研究及中国文化与世界文前途之共同认识 (Wei Zhongguo wenhua (...) jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan –women dui Zhongguo xueshu yanjiu ji Zhongguo wenhua yu shijiewen qiantu zhi gongtong renshi; translated in English as A Manifesto on the Reappraisal of Chinese Culture – our Joint Understanding of the Sinological Study relating to World Cultural Outlook). Scholars have interpreted the document as an emblematic expression of cultural conservatism, in reaction to the intellectual trend of 1920s best represented by the so-called Scienticist School (kexuejia 科学家). Concepts such as cultural identity and cultural conservatism, however, do not account for the philosophical richness articulated in the Manifesto, whose main purpose is to benefit Western intellectuals in ‘aiding them to appreciate Chinese culture’. In order to do so, the authors employ a strategic terminology, which allows them to build a consistent cross-cultural dialogue between Western and Chinese philosophy by means of an unprecedented discourse on Chinese Rationalism (Zhongguo xinxing zhi xue 中国心性之学). Interestingly, the latter is described by the authors as «the essence of Chinese Culture» and, beside its comparative value, it represents the most comprehensive configuration of Confucianism in the context of 20th century. Academic interest in Chinese Studies and Chinese Philosophy should take into account the articulation of Chinese Rationalism in the Manifesto of 1958 as representing a paradigm of post-comparative dialogue that exemplifies the underlying philosophical continuity beyond consistently different traditions of thought. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about COVID-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only part of the differences between people in their susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more (...) susceptible to believing COVID-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US adult sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale that captures features of the current competing analyses of epistemic vice in the literature. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about COVID-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

This essay will discuss how the Theory of Communicative Action incorporates the systemic complexification process and the Systems and Life World duality. Part of this process will be carried out with the discussion of communicative action, as a space for dialogue between people seeking understanding. The process of new forms of understanding and construction of knowledge is possible through the integrative structure of the lifeworld, such as semantic dimension, social space, and historical time. However, there is the other side, the (...) Systems, where the manifestations of crisis and disturbances, the pathologies of society, which in cultural reproduction appear as a loss of meaning of culture, loss of legitimacy of society and in personality, there is a crisis of belonging. (shrink)

The Oscar Wilde trials (1895) have usually been interpreted either as a historical document which gives insight into the regulation of sexuality in the late nineteenth century, or as literary biography explicating the playwright's life and works. Taking its cue from recent scholarship in ‘law and literature’, and also from Wilde's own conception of the relationship between art and life, this article proposes a reading of the trials which blurs the distinction between legal history and literary criticism by considering them (...) as a form of literature. It argues that the trial transcripts enact and reflect Wilde's vision of what literature is and how it should be read, and as such should be given a place amongst his literary works, alongside such aesthetic manifestos as ‘The Decay of Lying’ and ‘The Critic as Artist’. (shrink)

Residências Integradas Multiprofissionais em Saúde são programas de pós-graduação caracterizados por ensino em serviço. A ULBRA oferece o programa com ênfase em Saúde do Adulto e do Idoso e Saúde Comunitária. Objetiva-se descrever as atividades realizadas em ambiente hospitalar por enfermeiras. Trata-se de um relato de experiência de enfermeiras residentes em relação ao primeiro ano de formação especializada. O primeiro ano de residência abrangeu atividades em unidades de internação, centro cirúrgico e unidade de tratamento intensivo. Diversas foram as atividades desenvolvidas (...) pelas residentes, abrangendo aperfeiçoamento técnico, produção de conhecimento científico e atuação em gestão e gerenciamento. A presença de tutores e preceptores é fundamental no sentido de discutir, orientar e facilitar a inserção e o desenvolvimento profissional do residente. O programa de residência permitiu aperfeiçoar habilidades nos três campos de atuação da categoria: assistência, gerenciamento e pesquisa. (shrink)

A spatial logic is a formal language interpreted over any class of structures featuring geometrical entities and relations, broadly construed. In the past decade, spatial logics have attracted much attention in response to developments in such diverse fields as Artificial Intelligence, Database Theory, Physics, and Philosophy. The aim of this handbook is to create, for the first time, a systematic account of the field of spatial logic. The book comprises a general introduction, followed by fourteen chapters by invited authors. Each (...) chapter provides a self-contained overview of its topic, describing the principal results obtained to date, explaining the methods used to obtain them, and listing the most important open problems. Jointly, these contributions constitute a comprehensive survey of this rapidly expanding subject. (shrink)

This article gives a practice-based overview of the implementation aspects of Corporate Responsibility. After discussing the success factors for implementing Corporate Responsibility, the article describes a model for implementing Corporate Responsibility. Special attention is given to the success factors in the subsequent phases of implementation (sensitivity to the organizational environment, awareness of core values and clear leadership), to ensure that the most optimal results attainable for the organization can be reached. The implementation-model is clarified by looking at experiences in implementing (...) Corporate Responsibility at Chiquita. (shrink)

This article gives a practice-based overview of the implementation aspects of Corporate Responsibility. After discussing the success factors for implementing Corporate Responsibility, the article describes a model for implementing Corporate Responsibility. Special attention is given to the success factors in the subsequent phases of implementation (sensitivity to the organizational environment, awareness of core values and clear leadership), to ensure that the most optimal results attainable for the organization can be reached. The implementation-model is clarified by looking at experiences in implementing (...) Corporate Responsibility at Chiquita. (shrink)

We prove that the category of Nachbin’s compact ordered spaces and order-preserving continuous maps between them is dually equivalent to a variety of algebras, with operations of at most countable arity. Furthermore, we observe that the countable bound on the arity is the best possible: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any variety of finitary algebras. Indeed, the following stronger results hold: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any finitely accessible (...) category, any first-order definable class of structures, and any class of finitary algebras closed under products and subalgebras. An explicit equational axiomatisation of the dual of the category of compact ordered spaces is obtained; in fact, we provide a finite one, meaning that our description uses only finitely many function symbols and finitely many equational axioms. In preparation for the latter result, we establish a generalisation of a celebrated theorem by Mundici: our result—whose proof is independent of Mundici’s theorem—asserts that the category of unital commutative distributive lattice-ordered monoids is equivalent to the category of what we call MV-monoidal algebras.Abstract taken directly from the thesis.E-mail: marco[email protected]: https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/812809/1698986/phd_unimi_R11882.pdf. (shrink)

Debates on the moral status of human embryos have been highly and continuously controversial. For many, these controversies have turned into a fruitless scholastical endeavor. However, recent developments and insights in cellular biology have cast further doubt on one of the core points of dissent: the argument from potentiality. In this article we want to show in a nonscholastical way why this argument cannot possibly survive. Getting once more into the intricacies of status debates is a must in our eyes. (...) Not merely intellectual coherence but the standing and self-understanding of current stem cell research might profit from finally taking leave of the argument from potentiality. (shrink)

This paper discusses how to define logics as deductive limits of sequences of other logics. The case of da Costa's hierarchy of increasingly weaker paraconsistent calculi, known as $ \mathcal {C}$n, 1 $ \leq$ n $ \leq$ $ \omega$, is carefully studied. The calculus $ \mathcal {C}$$\scriptstyle \omega$, in particular, constitutes no more than a lower deductive bound to this hierarchy and differs considerably from its companions. A long standing problem in the literature (open for more than 35 years) is (...) to define the deductive limit to this hierarchy, that is, its greatest lower deductive bound. The calculus $ \mathcal {C}$min, stronger than $ \mathcal {C}$$\scriptstyle \omega$, is first presented as a step toward this limit. As an alternative to the bivaluation semantics of $ \mathcal {C}$min presented thereupon, possible-translations semantics are then introduced and suggested as the standard technique both to give this calculus a more reasonable semantics and to derive some interesting properties about it. Possible-translations semantics are then used to provide both a semantics and a decision procedure for $ \mathcal {C}$Lim, the real deductive limit of da Costa's hierarchy. Possible-translations semantics also make it possible to characterize a precise sense of duality: as an example, $ \mathcal {D}$min is proposed as the dual to $ \mathcal {C}$min. (shrink)

Across two studies, one of which was pre-registered, we find that a simple questionnaire that measures intellectual virtue and vice predicts how many fake news articles and conspiracy theories participants accept. This effect holds even when controlling for multiple demographic predictors, including age, household income, sex, education, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and news consumption. These results indicate that self-report is an adequate way to measure intellectual virtue and vice, which suggests that they are not fully immune to introspective awareness or (...) “stealthy” in the sense that Cassam (2015) argues. This is an important methodological result and may pave the way for future research on intellectual virtue and vice. (shrink)

Interest in _dream_ and _madness_, conceived as the loss of a world shared with others, and the individual’s entry into a private world governed by a personal logic unrelated to the waking state and to common feeling, recurs in at least three of Kant’s works: _Essay on the Diseases of the Head,_ (1764), _Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_ (1766), and _Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View_ (1798). Hegel too, from an early age, showed a strong fascination and a precocious interest (...) in psychopathological matters (states of altered consciousness, prophetic dreams, somnambulism, catalepsy, witchcraft etc.) to which he devoted intriguing reflections in various works from different periods: from the Berne Ms _Philosophy of Subjective Spirit_ (1794/95) to the _Phenomenology _(1807), from the _Philosophical __Propaedeutics_ (1808ff.) to the _Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences_ (1830 3 ). Starting from the remarks of the two philosophers, this paper aims to underline the conceptual links between their thought and that of some renowned psychologists and psychiatrists of the 1800s-1900s (Pinel, Janet, Adler, James, Binswanger, Freud et al.). On the other hand, the paper also seeks to show – within the framework of an idea of _reason_ dating back to Heraclitus (about 544/483 B.C.) – some murky motifs, not always adequately emphasized in the past, found in the figurative and literary works of the late 1700s (e.g. Fuseli’s_ The Nightmare_, Coleridge’s _The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner_, and, in particular, plate Nr. 43 of the _Caprichos _by Goya, _El sueño de la razón produce monstruos_), where there emerges a «dark side» of psychic activity emblematically described as the cryptic relationship between _dream_ and_ madness._. (shrink)

Heterogeneity of Being goes beyond the standard interpretations of Octavio Paz as a thinker of national identity and proposes a radical rethinking of the relationship between literature and philosophy. Dorfsman analyzes how Paz’s “tradition of rupture” properly displays a continuity between self and other, identity and difference, time and space.

From the early 1840s on, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian doctrine aroused the joint interest of Marx and Engels, who saw the English philosopher as one of the forerunners of socialism. Later, however, in the various editions (German, French, English) of Book 1 of Capital (1867/90), Bentham would be sarcastically branded by Marx as a “genius of bourgeois stupidity”. In their youth, both Engels and Marx had independently become interested in Bentham’s ideas, admiring some social-ethical themes, seen as heralding interesting developments for (...) the cause of the proletariat. On Engels’s suggestion, Marx included Bentham’s name, alongside those of the major 18th–19th century English and French exponents of protosocialism, in a planned Library of the most outstanding foreign socialist writers (1845), which however remained only a draft. From his first stay in England (1842/44), the young Engels had embraced in particular the famous utilitarian principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” advocated by Bentham. Marx, on the other hand, after initially praising Bentham’s work, which he had read in a French translation during his exile in Paris (1844), harshly criticized the ambiguous implications of this principle. In fact, he believed thatbehind a misleading progressive façade, it constituted the philosophical equivalent of the later economic theory of labour productivity propounded by D. Ricardo in opposition to the theory of its mere quantitative extension put forward by A. Smith. In the London Manuscripts (1861/63) Marx will reveal the affinity betweenBentham’s principle of the happpiness of the greatest number of people, and Ricardo’s assumption of the ineliminable misery of the minority condemned to productive labour. Based on the collection of Marx’s and Engels’s texts (letters, drafts, notebooks, manuscripts, printed works), made available today thanks to the critical edition by MEGA1, this paper sets out to re-examine, im großen und ganzen, the main moments in their critique of Bentham’s Utilitarianism. (shrink)

This novel contributed volume advances the current debate on free will by bridging the divide between analytic and historically oriented approaches to the problem. With thirteen chapters by leading academics in the field, the volume is divided into three parts: free will and determinism, free will and indeterminism, and free will and moral responsibility. The contributors aim to initiate a philosophical discourse that profits from a combination of the two approaches. On the one hand, the analytic tools familiar from the (...) debate – arguments, concepts, and distinctions – can be used to sharpen our understanding of classical philosophical positions. On the other hand, the rich philosophical tradition can be reconstructed so as to inspire new solutions. In recent years, the problem of free will has received special attention in the analytic arena. This is the first anthology to combine historical and analytic perspectives, significantly furthering the debate, and providing a crucial resource to academics and advanced students alike. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to show that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. I try to show that Kripke’s proposal fails because it entails that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions has also good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. However, there were philosophers who had good reasons to believe that there are no propositions even though they didn’t have good reasons to believe that they (...) do not exist. I conclude that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. (shrink)

Abstract. This paper argues that the “Argument from Moral Peer Disagreement” fails to make a case for widespread moral skepticism. The main reason for this is that the argument rests on a too strong assumption about the normative significance of peer disagreement (and higher-order evidence more generally). In order to demonstrate this, I distinguish two competing ways in which one might explain higher-order defeat. According to what I call the “Objective Defeat Explanation” it is the mere possession of higher-order evidence (...) that explains defeat. I argue that this type of explanation is problematic and that it at best collapses into another explanation I call the “Subjective Defeat Explanation”. According to this explanation, it is coming to believe that one’s belief fails to be rational that explains defeat. Then I go on to argue that the Subjective Defeat Explanation is able to provide a straightforward explanation of higher-order defeat but that it entails that peer disagreement (and higher-order evidence more generally) only contingently gives rise to defeat, and importantly, that the condition it is contingent upon is very often not satisfied when it comes to moral peer disagreement specifically. As a result, it appears that moral knowledge is seldom threatened by moral peer disagreement. (shrink)

We prove that the opposite of the category of coalgebras for the Vietoris endofunctor on the category of compact Hausdorff spaces is monadic over $\mathsf {Set}$. We deliver an analogous result for the upper, lower, and convex Vietoris endofunctors acting on the category of stably compact spaces. We provide axiomatizations of the associated (infinitary) varieties. This can be seen as a version of Jónsson–Tarski duality for modal algebras beyond the zero-dimensional setting.

In this paper, I argue that the German morphological tradition made a major contribution to twentieth-century study of form. Several scientists paved the way for this research: paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, entomologist Hermann Weber, and biologist Johann-Gerhard Helmcke together with architect Frei Otto. All of them sought to examine morphogenetic processes to illustrate their inherent structural properties, thus challenging the neo-Darwinian framework of evolutionary theory. I point out that the German theoretical challenge to adaptationist thinking was possible through an exchange and (...) transfer of practices, data, technologies, and knowledge between biologically oriented students of form and architects, designers, and engineers. This exchange of practices and knowledge was facilitated by the establishment of two collaborative research centers at the beginning of the 1970s. Hence, by showing the richness of topics, methods, and technologies discussed in German-speaking morphology between 1950 and the 1970s, this paper paves the way to a much broader comprehension of the shifts that have shaped twentieth-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

In the substitutional framework, validity is truth under all substitutions of the nonlogical vocabulary. I develop a theory where □ is interpreted as substitutional validity. I show how to prove soundness and completeness for common modal calculi using this definition.

In Husserlian scholarship it is common to characterize Husserl’s early analyses in the Philosophy of Arithmetic as an epistemology without a subject. The article questions this reading. First, I introduce the method used by Husserl in his analyses of the concept of number in the Philosophy of Arithmetic. Second, I outline Husserl’s critique of Kant’s conception of synthesis and contrast it with its phenomenological alternative, namely relation theory. Finally, I focus on the product of synthesis, that is, the number, and (...) argue that even if Husserl’s early analyses of the concept of number contains a reference to the subject of synthesis, his theory cannot be regarded as psychologistic. (shrink)

Recent work has formally linked the traditional axiomatisation of incomplete preferences à la Anscombe-Aumann with the theory of desirability developed in the context of imprecise probability, by showing in particular that they are the very same theory. The equivalence has been established under the constraint that the set of possible prizes is finite. In this paper, we relax such a constraint, thus de facto creating one of the most general theories of rationality and decision making available today. We provide the (...) theory with a sound interpretation and with basic notions, and results, for the separation of beliefs and values, and for the case of complete preferences. Moreover, we discuss the role of conglomerability for the presented theory, arguing that it should be a rationality requirement under very broad conditions. (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz möchte den Beitrag der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls zur Debatte über die Fundierung der Geisteswissenschaft in groben Zügen enthüllen. Zunächst wird eine schematische Zusammenfassung der aus der deutschen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts stammenden Debatte über die Fundierung der Geisteswissenschaften dargeboten. Dies soll dazu dienen, den philosophisch-historischen Hintergrund, in den Husserls Denkmotiv über die Beziehung zwischen Phänomenologie und Geisteswissenschaften eingebunden ist, zu begreifen. Danach wird Husserls Beitrag in dieser Debatte abgewägt, wobei im Besonderen die neuen Begriffe und Denkmotive, die von (...) ihm in die Diskussion eingefügt wurden, nämlich der der regionalen Ontologie und der der personalistischen Einstellung, betrachtet werden. Dieser zweite und letzte Teil schließt mit einer Erörterung des von Husserl angegebenen Vorrangs der Geisteswissenschaften und des Geistes als ihr Korrelat, vor den Naturwissenschaften ab. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to show how Patocˇka’s work since the 1960 s has reconceptualized the theory of intentionality. Never abandoning the referential character of the intentional relation, the Bohemian philosopher situates intentionality in its original matrix: the world. This change has the effect of moving the cause of appearing from consciousness to the world, framing it as what appears and what makes appear. Intentionality is not only connected to transcendental consciousness; intentions also must be interpreted as lines of (...) force (Kraftlinien) inside the field of appearing. Patocˇka moreover locates the origin of all intentional theory in the Aristotelian theory of the soul. Patocˇka thus wants, on the one hand, to overcome the substantialist argument that considers consciousness a permanent presence and, on the other, to move beyond an idealistic conception of consciousness. Movement is the category that allows us to express these aspects of intentionality. Inserting motion into being is a privilege unique to the soul. (shrink)

Between 1909 and 1913, Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde unearthed more than 225 tons of fossils in former German East Africa and transported them to Berlin. Among them were the bones of Brachiosaurus brancai, which would eventually become the biggest mounted dinosaur in the world. By analyzing the social and communicative strategies that made this expedition possible, this paper aims to reveal several aspects of natural history knowledge production at the end of the long nineteenth century. Using rhetoric, the director of (...) the Geological–Paleontological Museum in Berlin, Wilhelm von Branca, conducted a highly successful campaign to market the dinosaurs in Prussia and to convince public opinion and the Prussian central state of the value of paleontology. He fired the Prussian imagination and took advantage of the competitive urge to emulate American paleontology and industry. This work examines how his public relations strategies shaped the German biological “landscape” of the first decades of the twentieth century. It asks: when and under what conditions did paleontology successfully appeal to the public? How does communication dictate, shape, and constrain the development of a specific epistemic agenda? And what kind of power do the public and money have? (shrink)

During his celebrated 1922 debate with Bergson, Einstein famously proclaimed: “the time of the philosopher does not exist, there remains only a psychological time that differs from the physicist’s.” Einstein’s dictum, I maintain, has been metabolized by the natural sciences, which typically presuppose, more or less explicitly, the existence of a single, univocal, temporal substratum, ultimately determined by physics. This reductionistic assumption pervades much biological and biomedical practice. The chronological age allotted to individuals is conceived as an objective quantity, allowing (...) one to straightforwardly assign and compare the biological age of organisms. This essay argues that the standard practice of assessing the age and aging of organisms against the backdrop of a physical conception of time is problematic. This becomes especially evident in light of recent discoveries of various levels of senescence underlying the development of individual organisms—a phenomenon known as ‘age mosaicism.’ The bottom line is that the study of age and aging requires a biological conception of time, as opposed to a physical one. Einstein clearly wasn’t wrong about his operationalization of time in relativity theory. Still time may be less monolithic than he surmised. (shrink)