The purpose of this paper is to defend the so-called Ostrich Nominalism against the influential criticism that has been put forward by David M. Armstrong. First, I reconstruct Armstrong’s “One over Many” argument for universals (§§ 1-2), reviewing his main reasons for rejecting the foremost kinds of nominalism (§ 3). I then argue that Ostrich Nominalism has been underrated by Armstrong (§ 4) and that, consequently, his strategy for dealing with it results in misleading and elusive conclusions. I conclude that (...) Ostrich Nominalism represents an arduous challenge to Armstrong’s Realism in that it compels him either to give up his sparse Realism, or to acknowledge that all the solutions to the problem of universals are utterly meaningless (§§ 5-6). (shrink)

David Malet Armstrong has been one of the most influential contemporary metaphysicians working in the analytic tradition and surely the greatest 20th century Australian philosopher. His main merit is to have reestablished metaphysics as a respectable branch of philosophy placing it at the centre of the philosophical debate, and giving it the status of an authoritative and competent interlocutor of both rational and empirical sciences. By means of a rigorously argumentative approach and a sharp prose, Armstrong has built a whole (...) metaphysical system, that is, a comprehensive and unified picture of the fundamental structure of the world. The various chapters of the book address the key issues concerning Armstrong' view about the problem of universals, the nature of states of affairs, the ontological ground of possibility, nomic necessity, and dispositions, the truthmaker theory, and the theory of mind. This volume aims to celebrate Armstrong’s memory bringing new understanding, and hopefully stimulating more work, on his philosophy, with the conviction that it constitutes an invaluable heritage for contemporary research in metaphysics. (shrink)

Achille Varzi è uno dei maggiori metafisici viventi. Nel corso degli anni ha scritto testi fondamentali di logica, metafisica, mereologia, filosofia del linguaggio. Ha sconfinato nella topologia, nella geografia, nella matematica, ha ragionato di mostri e confini, percezione e buchi, viaggi nel tempo, nicchie, eventi e ciambelle; e non ha disdegnato di dialogare con gli abitanti di Flatlandia, con Neo e con Terminator. Tra le sue opere principali: Holes and Other Superficialities e Parts and Places. The Structures of Spatial Representation, (...) entrambi scritti insieme a R. Casati per MIT Press; Il mondo messo a fuoco, Laterza; e il suo libro più recente: Le tribolazioni del filosofare, con C. Calosi, per Laterza. -/- Da una giornata all’Università di Urbino nasce questa conversazione a molte voci sulla e con la filosofia di Achille C. Varzi. In un dialogo critico al quale l’Autore si presta con generosità e onestà intellettuale, Andrea Borghini, Francesco Calemi, Claudio Calosi, Elena Casetta, Valeria Giardino, Pierluigi Graziani, Patrizia Pedrini, Daniele Santoro e Giuliano Torrengo lo interrogano e mettono alla prova sui temi affrontati, nel corso degli anni, in campi diversi. Il risultato è un percorso che si snoda attraverso molti mondi, dalla logica alla metafisica, dalla filosofia del linguaggio alla filosofia della matematica, dalla mereologia alla filosofia del tempo, spingendosi in qualche caso oltre i confini del saggio filosofico. (shrink)

Bu araştırma, İbn Sînâcı ve İbn Sînâ-sonrası temsilciliğe ve kavramcılığa yönelik Fahreddin er-Râzî’nin tutumunun g mini, onu bu gibi öğretilere karşı giderek daha çok şüpheye düşüren nedenleri irdelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. İbn Sînâ’nın temsilciliğine göre bilgiye, zorunlu olarak, bilgi nesnelerinin mahiyetleriyle özdeş olan zihnî suretler aracılık eder. İbn Sînâ-sonrası bazı düşünürler, zihnî suretleri mahiyetleri açısından nesnelerden farklı olarak, onların yalnızca birer imgeleri olarak dikkate alıp bu açıklamayı yeniden biçimlendirirler. Râzî her iki yaklaşımı da eleştirir. Varlığın eş sesli olmayışına dayanarak İbn Sînâcı temsilciliğin (...) iki kurucu öncülünü (zihnî varlığın ayrılığını ve saf mahiyetin varoluşsal farksızlığını) reddettiği gibi, İbn Sînâ’nın teorisinin sonuçlarından birine (mahiyetlerin zihin-dışı lazımlarını bilmenin imkânsızlığına) dayanarak temsilciliğin kendisini de reddeder. Râzî başlı başına temsilciliğe karşı olarak, temsilciliğin öncüllerinden birinin (bilgi bilende yerleşik olan, izafî-olmayan belirli bir araz gerektirir) yeterince yeterince gerekçelendirilmediğini iddia eder ve ayrıca bilginin tamamen izafet olduğuna ilişkin kendi teorisine dayanarak burhanî açıdan yanlış olduğunu ileri sürer. İbn Sînâ’nın kavramcılığı şeylerin üç sınıfıyla ilgilidir; var olmayan bilgi nesneleri, basit mahiyetlerin tanımsal parçaları ve ikincil akledilirler (mantıksal nitelikler). İbn Sînâ-sonrası kavramcılar Şeyh’i aşarak, üçüncü sınıfı sadece mantıksal nitelikleri değil varlık, birlik, şeylik, kipler ve genel olarak izafetler gibi nitelikleri de içerecek şekilde genişletir. Râzî’nin var olmayan bilgi nesneleri konusunda kavramcılığa yönelik saldırısı, hem varlığın kaplam bakımından sınırsız olduğu şeklindeki genel öncülü hem de hayal nesnelerinin zihin-dışında var olmayan mahiyetlere sahip olduğu şeklindeki özel öncülü eleştirir. Râzî ayrıca (mütekabiliyet argümanı, zihnin ortadan kaldırılması argümanı gibi) genel olarak kavramcılığa karşı olan argümanlar da geliştirir. (shrink)

The Ultimatum Game is one of the most successful experimental designs in the history of the social sciences. In this article I try to explain this success—what makes it a “paradigmatic experiment”—stressing in particular its versatility. Despite the intentions of its inventors, the Ultimatum Game was never a good design to test economic theory, and it is now mostly used as a heuristic tool for the observation of nonstandard preferences or as a “social thermometer” for the observation of culture‐specific norms. (...) †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Sociology and Philosophy, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Exeter EX4 4DT, UK; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Modern conservatism was born in the crisis of the French Revolution that sought to overturn Christianity, monarchy, tradition, and a trust in experience rather than reason. In the name of reason and progress, the French Revolution led to the guillotine, the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a decade of continental war. Today Western Civilization is again in crisis, with an ever-widening progressive campaign against religion, tradition, and ordered liberty; Francesco Giubilei's cogent reassessment of some of conservatism's greatest thinkers could (...) not be timelier. Within these pages, English-speaking readers will come across some familiar names: Burke, Disraeli, Chesterton, and Scruton. Americans get their own chapter too, including penetrating examinations of John Adams, Richard Weaver, Henry Regnery, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Barry Goldwater. But perhaps most interesting is Giubilei's coverage of the continental European tradition–largely Catholic, monarchical, traditionalist, and anti-Jacobin, anti-Communist, and anti-Fascist. Giubilei offers insightful intellectual portraits of statesmen and philosophers like Count Klemens von Metternich, the man who restored Europe after the Napoleonic Wars; Eric Voegelin, the German political philosopher who made his career in America and traced recurrent strains of leftism to an early Christian heresy; Joseph de Maistre, the leading French counterrevolutionary philosopher; George Santayana, a Spaniard who became an American philosopher and conservative pragmatist; Jose Ortega y Gasset, who warned of the "revolt of the masses"; and a wide variety of Italian thinkers whose conservatism was forged against a Fascist ideology that presented itself as a force for stability and respect for the past, but that was fundamentally modernist and opposed to conservatism. Unique and written by one of Italy's youngest and brightest conservative thinkers, Francesco Giubilei's History of European Conservative Thought is sure to enlighten and inform. (shrink)

"Teoría o ciencia general del Derecho son la misma cosa. Se dice teoría, en el fondo, porque los alemanes comenzaron a hablar no de allgemeine Rechtswissenschaft, sino de allgemeine Rechtslehre; y después, y tras ellos, se ha ido formando una costumbre. Pero me parece más bien una expresión muy modesta, aunque sólo fuera porque el vocablo teórico –a diferencia del científico– se usa a menudo para indicar un vicio más bien que una virtud. Ciertamente, puesto que ciencia general es una (...) scientia altior, en comparación con la ciencia particular, el problema de la teoría o ciencia general del Derecho es, ante todo, el problema mismo de la ciencia del Derecho". F. Carnelutti. (shrink)

v. 1. A-B -- v. 2. C -- v. 3. D-F --- v. 4. G-L -- v. 5. M-Q -- v. 6. R-Z.

Vol I. A -- Vol II. B -- Vol. III. C -- Vol. IV. D -- Vol. V. E-F -- Vol VI. G -- Vol VII. H-L -- Vol. VIII. M -- Vol. IX. N-Q -- Vol X. R-S -- Vol XI. T-V -- Vol XII. X-Z.

In this short note I would like to reflect again upon paragraphs 39–40 of Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus and, more specifically, on the text printed in the last critical edition by Tiziano Dorandi, which I quote below together with the critical apparatus :495 ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὸ πᾶν ἐστι · σώματα μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔστιν, αὐτὴ ἡ αἴσθησις ἐπὶπάντων μαρτυρεῖ, καθ’ ἣν ἀναγκαῖον τὸ ἄδηλον τῷλογισμῷ τεκμαίρεσθαι, ὥσπερ προεῖπον. [40] τόπος δὲ εἰ500 μὴ ἦν ὃ κενὸν καὶ χώραν καὶ ἀναφῆ (...) φύσιν ὀνομάζομεν, οὐκἂν εἶχε τὰ σώματα ὅπου ἦν οὐδὲ δι’ οὗ ἐκινεῖτο, καθάπερφαίνεται κινούμενα.495–496 de scholiis glossematibusque in tribus Epicuri epistulis et in RS i, vid. Dorandi, Epicuro 277–8 496–497 σώματα καὶ κενόν duce Gass. suppl. V. d. Muehll: σώματα καὶ τόπος Us. Traditam lectionem defendere conatur Arndt 26. Vid. K. Algra, Elenchos 15 100 et D. Obbink, Philodemus On Piety. Part 1 338–9 497 σώματα ΦFP4: σώμα· τὰ BP1498 πάντων om. Φ 499 τόπος δὲ Us.: τὸ πρόσθε B1: τὸ πρόσθεν B2PΦ: πρόσθεν F Cf. Lucr. 1.426–7 et vid. Sedley, Phronesis 183–4 εἰ δὲ Φ 500 ὃ Φ: ὃ* B2: ὃν B1, ut vid.: ὂν PF ὃ post κενὸν traiecit Φ προεῖπον τὸ πρόσθεν· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἦν ὃ κενὸν Brieger, Seele 5 Vid. Dorandi, Epicuro 282–4 501 ἦν B: εἴη ΦFP4: ἔνι P1 502 οὐδ’ Us.: οὔτε B2PF: ὅτε B1503 περιληπτικῶς rec. (shrink)

Meta-ontology (in van Inwagen's sense) concerns the methodology of ontology, and a controversial meta-ontological issue is to what extent ontology can rely on linguistic analysis while establishing the furniture of the world. This paper discusses an argument advanced by some ontologists (I call them unifiers) against supporters of or coincident entities (I call them multipliers) and its meta-ontological import. Multipliers resort to Leibniz's Law to establish that spatiotemporally coincident entities a and b are distinct, by pointing at a predicate F (...) () made true by a and false by b . Unifiers try to put multipliers in front of a dilemma: in attempting to introduce metaphysical differences on the basis of semantic distinctions, multipliers either (a) rest on a fallacy of verbalism, entailed by a trade-off between a de dicto and a de re reading of modal claims, or (b) beg the question against unifiers by having to assume the distinction between a and b beforehand. I shall rise a tu quoque, showing that unifiers couldn't even distinguish material objects (or events) from the spatiotemporal regions they occupy unless they also resorted to linguistic distinctions. Their methodological aim to emancipate themselves from linguistic analysis in ontological businesses is therefore problematic. (shrink)

Il volume raccoglie saggi dedicati alla Fenomenologia dello spirito di G.W.F. Hegel e ad alcune sue principali interpretazioni. A scritti dal taglio più nettamente storiografico che ne ricostruiscono le influenze in autori quali Marx, Gentile, Heidegger, Kojève, Paci, Lacan e Brandom, si affiancano contributi volti a ricostruire alcuni nodi categoriali che, sollecitati dal testo hegeliano, hanno segnato le riflessioni etiche, teoretiche, filosofico-politiche e psicoanalitiche successive: dialettica, cultura, negazione, desiderio, corpo, fenomeno, riconoscimento. Questa raccolta non intende quindi né riproporre la lettera (...) del testo hegeliano, né avanzare una sua specifica interpretazione. Piuttosto, gli autori hanno condiviso lo sforzo di illustrare in actu exercito le possibilità di movimento tra questi due estremi – testo e interpretazione – tra cui la cultura filosofica si muove. Attraverso questo movimento la Fenomenologia dello spirito continua a produrre filosofia, ossia ad essere occasione e strumento per la comprensione del “proprio tempo col pensiero”. (shrink)

Il presente contributo vuole prendere in esame l’omelia Quod frequenter conveniendum sit (CPG 4441.03) del vescovo di Costantinopoli Giovanni Crisostomo (ca. 350-407). In particolare, scopo del lavoro è quello di pubblicare per la prima volta il testo, criticamente edito, di una porzione dell’omelia mancante nel codice Ott. gr. 431 – utilizzato da Bernard de Montfaucon per la prima edizione delle Undecim novae homiliae che esso trasmette – a causa della caduta del f. 171. Grazie alla scoperta del codice Stavronikita 6, (...) avvenuta a metà degli anni ’50 del XX secolo, è ora possibile colmare la mutilazione del codice ottoboniano, dal momento che il manoscritto atonita trasmette la medesima serie di omelie, offrendo però il testo integrale laddove quello del ms. vaticano è lacunoso. Tale lavoro si compone dunque, oltre che del testo critico del passo finora ignoto, anche della relativa traduzione italiana e di alcune brevi note di commento. (shrink)

La vita e le opere di Landolfo Caracciolo O.F.M. sono state descritte in modo sistematico da Salerno.1 Rispetto a questa descrizione, che ha posto il bacellierato sentenziario di Caracciolo intorno al 1320, va assunta la ricostruzione di Schabel, che ha spiegato come Caracciolo abbia letto le Sententiae a Parigi dopo Pietro Aureolo e prima di Francesco d’Ascoli e Francesco di Meyronnes.2 Successivamente Landolfo avrebbe ricevuto la prima cattedra in teologia dello Studium fran-cescano di Napoli, inaugurandovi la tradizione scotista.3Landolfo (...) fu ministro provinciale della Terra di Lavoro e svolse parecchie missioni diplomatiche per conto della regina Giovanna I di Napoli. Nel 1327 fu designato vescovo di.. (shrink)

Plato's Republic continues to arouse intense controversy among commentators, both for its ethical and political project and for its psychological, epistemological, and ontological implications for the knowledge of philosophers, who, says Plato, should be set as guides for such a project. Considering just a few examples from recent years, we might recall that a new critical edition of the dialogue has been published 1 that contains significant innovations both in the text and in the attribution of lines to speakers. Moreover, (...) this new edition has been accompanied by a volume of philological commentary edited by the same author. 2 Numerous translations in the main modern languages have also been published with a more or less detailed apparatus of notes. 3 An equally significant quantity of works of commentary, individual or miscellaneous, of extremely varied origin and composition has appeared, from the monumental work coordinated by M. Vegetti , to the volumes of O. Höffe , E. N. Ostenfeld , S. Sayers , R. Gutiérrez , B. Mitchell and J. R. Lucas , S. Rosen , M. Dixsaut , G. Santas , and G. R. F. Ferrari . Just this brief indication of the mass of philological, historical, and philosophical studies suggests the constant—and constantly renewed—appeal of a dialogue that is rightly considered as one of the most influential and representative of Plato's thought. (shrink)

Downward causation plays a fundamental role in many theories of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is strictly connected with many topics in philosophy, including but not limited to: emergence, mental causation, the nature of causation, the nature of causal powers and dispositions, laws of nature, and the possibility of ontological and epistemic reductions. _Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation_ brings together experts from different fields—including William Bechtel, Stewart Clark and Tom Lancaster, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Robin F. Hendry, (...) Max Kistler, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum—who delve into classic and unexplored lines of philosophical inquiry related to downward causation. It critically assesses the possibility of downward causation given different ontological assumptions and explores the connection between downward causation and the metaphysics of causation and dispositions. Finally, it presents different cases of downward causation in empirical fields such as physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences. This volume is both a useful introduction and a collection of original contributions on this fascinating and hotly debated philosophical topic. (shrink)