We characterize the collapse of Buss' bounded arithmetic in terms of the provable collapse of the polynomial time hierarchy. We include also some general model-theoretical investigations on fragments of bounded arithmetic.

Van Inwagen's General Composition Question (GCQ) asks what conditions on an object and its constituents make the object a whole that these constituents compose, as opposed to an object linked to the constituents by a relation other than composition. The answer is traditionally expected to cite no mereological terms, to hold of metaphysical necessity and to be such that no defeating scenarios can be conceived (e.g., a scenario in which the conditions are met but the constituents fail to genuinely compose (...) the object). While not all writers agree on setting these high expectations on the principles that constitute answers to the GCQ (Hawley 2006), there is a yet unsettled issue concerning the principles’ naturalistic accreditation: Could putative principles be constrained and informed by advanced physical knowledge? Arguing positively, we outline two styles of principles worthy of naturalistic authority. In an explorative spirit, we notice that each style incurs certain costs. First, the principle in question may fail some of the above expectations set in an aprioristic context. Second, it may require a specific meta-theoretic understanding of what it takes to achieve naturalistic accreditation. Finally, it may address the GCQ “piecemeal” and fail to generalize to objects of all physical sorts.1. (shrink)

We show that every model of IΔ0 has an end extension to a model of a theory where log-space computable function are formalizable. We also show the existence of an isomorphism between models of IΔ0 and models of linear arithmetic LA.

In this paper we argue that data science is a coherent and novel approach to empirical problems that, in its most general form, does not build understanding about phenomena. Within the new type of mathematization at work in data science, mathematical methods are not selected because of any relevance for a problem at hand; mathematical methods are applied to a specific problem only by `forcing’, i.e. on the basis of their ability to reorganize the data for further analysis and the (...) intrinsic richness of their mathematical structure. In particular, we argue that deep learning neural networks are best understood within the context of forcing optimization methods. We finally explore the broader question of the appropriateness of data science methods in solving problems. We argue that this question should not be interpreted as a search for a correspondence between phenomena and specific solutions found by data science methods; rather, it is the internal structure of data science methods that is open to precise forms of understanding. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning literature on the governance and impact of cross-sector partnerships in the past two decades, the debate on how and when these collaborative arrangements address globally relevant problems and contribute to systemic change remains open. Building upon the notion of wicked problems and the literature on governing such wicked problems, this paper defines harnessing problems in multi-stakeholder partnerships as the approach of taking into account the nature of the problem and of organizing governance processes accordingly. The paper develops (...) an innovative analytical framework that conceptualizes MSPs in terms of three governance processes harnessing three key dimensions of wicked problems. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil provides an illustrative case study on how this analytical framework describes and explains organizational change in partnerships from a problem-based perspective. The framework can be used to better understand and predict the complex relationships between MSP governance processes, systemic change and societal problems, but also as a guiding tool in organizing governance processes to continuously re-assess the problems over time and address them accordingly. (shrink)

This chapter introduces readers to the empirical questions at issue in debates over gendered pronouns and assesses the plausibility of various possible answers to these questions. It has two parts. The first is a general introduction to the linguistics and psychology of grammatical gender. The second focuses on the meanings of gendered pronouns in English. It begins with a discussion of some methodological limitations of empirical approaches to the topic and the normative implications of those limitations. It then argues against (...) three simple theories of the semantics of gendered pronouns in English and proposes an alternative that fares better: the Gender-First View. Finally, it discusses the singular use of 'they' and its connection to nonbinary gender identities. (shrink)

Let be a saturated model of inaccessible cardinality, and let be arbitrary. Let denote the expansion of with a new predicate for. Write for the collection of subsets such that ≡. We prove that if the VC-dimension of is finite then is externally definable.

This paper explores the relationship between business experience in cross-sector partnerships and the co-creation of what we refer to as ‘dynamic capabilities for stakeholder orientation,’ consisting of the four dimensions of sensing, interacting with, learning from and changing based on stakeholders. We argue that the co-creation of dynamic capabilities for stakeholder orientation is crucial for CSPs to create societal impact, as stakeholder-oriented organizations are more suited to deal with “wicked problems,” i.e., problems that are large, messy, and complex. By means (...) of a grounded theory approach of inductive research, we collected and interpreted data on four global agri-food companies which have heterogeneous experience in participating in CSPs. The results of this paper highlight that only companies’ capability of interacting with stakeholders continually increases, while their capabilities of sensing, learning from, and changing based on stakeholders first increase and then decrease as companies gain more experience in CSP participation. To a large extent, this can be attributed to the development of corporate strategies on sustainability after a few years of CSP participation, which entails a shift from a reactive to a proactive attitude towards sustainability issues and which may decrease the need or motivation for stakeholder orientation. These findings open up important issues for discussion and for future research on the impact of CSPs in a context of wicked problems. (shrink)

We present a simple and completely model-theoretical proof of a strengthening of a theorem of Ajtai: The independence of the pigeonhole principle from IΔ0. With regard to strength, the theorem proved here corresponds to the complexity/proof-theoretical results of [10] and [14], but a different combinatorics is used. Techniques inspired by Razborov [11] replace those derived from Håstad [8]. This leads to a much shorter and very direct construction.

Since last year, major initiatives have been undertaken by the chair of theoretical philosophy at the University of Tübingen in order to enhance the reception of analytic metaphysics in the European landscape. Here we review the 2013 summer workshop, intended to be the first of an annual series, on “Existence, Truth and Fundamentality”, the invited speakers being Graham Priest (Melbourne), Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow), Dan López de Sa (Barcelona), Francesco Berto (Aberdeen), Friederike Moltmann (Paris – Pantheon Sorbonne) and Jason Turner (Leeds). (...) The workshop’s scope is fairly large, focusing on three different aspects of contemporary research in metaphysics. However, the underlying idea of organizers Thomas Sattig and Alessandro Torza consisted in exploring their interconnections and even new areas which possibly share the same problem spectrum. Also, they thought of bringing together both young and senior protagonists of the contemporary debate. In this sense, the main thread followed by the speakers consisted in enquiring the ideas of fundamentality, dependence and grounding with respect to ontology (Berto, López de Sa, Turner) and the truthmaking debate (Priest, Moltmann, Leuenberger), thus pretty much in line with some latest tendencies in metaphysics, such as, prima inter paria, the works of Kit Fine. When we say that something is more fundamental than something else, we move into a non-conventional (for the standards of 20 th century philosophy) metodological framework, hardly focusing on the question about what there is, and rather tackling the issue of how fundamentally there is what there is, or how the existence of something is required as a ground for the existence of other things. Here is how Jonathan Schaffer explains the methodological transition in his influential “On What Grounds What” (2009): -/- Among the many assumptions Quine and Carnap share is that metaphysical questions are existence questions, such as whether numbers exist. They only disagree on the further issue of whether such questions are meaningful (at least as the metaphysician might pose them). But why think that metaphysical questions are existence question of this sort? Return to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There are virtually no existence question posed. The whole discussion is about substances (fundamental units of being). At one point Aristotle pauses to ask if numbers exist, and his answer is a brief and dismissive yes. [. . . ] For Aristotle, the question about numbers is whether they are transcendent substances or grounded in concreta. The question is not whether numbers exist, but how. (Schaffer, 2009, p. 347) -/- The conference opened with Graham Priest’s intriguing and peculiar review of Buddhist cornerstone “The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way” (Mūlamadhyakamakārikā) by Nāgārjuna (ca. 150-ca. 250 AD), seen as a unrecognized forerunner of multi-valued semantics and dialetheism. Priest shows that Nagarjuna’s thought indeed has valuable analytic grip (contrary to the traditional mystical dismiss of his works altogether) and is even in accord to some formal schemas rejecting both the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction. Dan López de Sa was interested in the topic of grounding, raising concerns about how to explain the kind of “reality” exemplified by what is not fundamental, but rather derivative on something else. He proposes a conceptual and non-primitive analysis of grounding as linked to fundamentality and derivation, and argues that the view can be advocated along with the acceptance that at least something is not fundamental. Subsequently, he illustrates an impressive range of applications linked to contemporary debates in meta-ontology, truthmaking and philosophy of time. Stephan Leuenberger discussed a semantics for “total logic”, a variant of first order logic which is claimed to have several applications with respect to the issue of excluding negative existentials from the scope of theories accounting for a given ’totality’ of facts. For example, materialism is the claim that everything there is can be traced back to physical facts or to truth implied by those facts. What about the claim that “There are no angels”? According to Leuenberger, ordinary logic falls prey of modal arguments (if it is possible that there are angels, by modus tollens, that it is not metaphysically necessary that everything there is is physical). So, there is space for the introduction of a new operator, the totality operator, claiming of what enters its scope that “that’s the whole truth”. Consequently, total logic’s semantics tackles David Chalmers’ well-known conceivability-based argument in favour of zombie’s (subjects producing behaviour but experiencing no qualia) possible existence. Friederike Moltmann presented a massive array of natural language-based examples on the role played by case-constructions, such as “it is the case that Caesar crossed the Rubicon”, “the case of the stolen statue”, “the case in which it might rain”, and so forth. She suggests that we should take surface phenomena of our language very seriously with regard to the determination of ontological categories and truth-makers. Cases are provided by many natural languages with their own existence predicates (“to occur” and “to present itself ”), and these do not apply to other kind of entities, such as objects and events. Trying to derive a substantive thesis on their nature, she claims that they are filtered entities, a structure taking into account some features of the corresponding objects and events and preserving their relational pattern. Jason Turner discussed meta-ontological concerns against the claim that ontological debates are defective. Analysed the structure of a metaphysical theory and identified two different forms of defectiveness that can occur in ontological questions, the defection from without and the defection from within, the author provided an original solution in order to avoid such difficulties. He argued thus in favor of a logical constancy, a translation principle thanks to it would be possible reconceive an ontological defection. Lastly, Francesco Berto’s talk closed the workshop with a sagacious discussion of meinongian quantification. He substains that Meinongians and Quineans experience no conceptual equivocation. Even if the former claims that “There are things that do not exist”, something that the latter contrasts with the interpretation of existential quantifiers as all-including, they still rely upon the same concept of “existence” and they understand each other when they are outside the ontology room, so that it cannot be that they lack competence. Subsequently, Berto deals with the objection that Meinongians commit analytic falsehood in separating the meaning of “to be” from that of “exists”. The Quinean has no independent evidence for analytic equivalence aside from her emphatic stress on the “is” in “there is”. Meinongians, however, can retort to linguistic considerations and claim that existence predicates display fairly different functions. -/- As for what regards our internal division of the “philosophical labor”, Fabio Ceravolo reviewed Moltmann and Berto’s talks; whereas Mattia Cozzi took care of Priest’s and Leuenberger’s, and Mattia Sorgon of those given by López de Sa and Turner. Conclusively, we would like to thank Thomas Sattig and Alessandro Torza for all of their organizational efforts and the kind welcome they reserved to us. We hope we will have further opportunities to collaborate with Tübingen in supporting similarly innovative and valiant european initiatives. (shrink)

As a reply to the commentary (Humphreys in Found Sci, 2012), we explore the methodological implications of seeing artificial neural networks as generic classification tools, we show in which sense the use of descriptions and models in data analysis is not equivalent to the original empirical use of epicycles in describing planetary motion, and we argue that agnostic science is essentially related to the type of problems we ask about a phenomenon and to the processes used to find answers.

The contribution examines the notion of occasionalismo sensista, or also known by the expression of formalismo sensista, that the Italian philosopher Adelchi Baratono was proposing in the ’30s and ’40s of the twentieth century. Best known for his dense volume, Il mondo sensibile. Introduzione all’estetica, Baratono is among the first thinkers of his time in Italy to start a confrontation with Kantian criticism in aesthetic context, looking groundwork for an alternative route to the one proposed by the Italian Neo-idealism. In (...) fact, against the absolutization of the subject, which Baratono ascribes, in particular, to the thought of Giovanni Gentile, he affirms the profound otherness of subject and object in front of which philosophy is bound to be wrecked. In this perspective, the “sensible world” for Baratono is in itself, regardless of the knowing subject, because everything is resolved in the “world within and around us”. In this perspective, Baratono affirms that the feeling is all this, that is something without which are neither perception nor the concept and even the idea. The feeling, therefore, far from being considered the first stage of knowledge, is the real existence. (shrink)

The present essay seeks to analyze the reflections on cinematographic art proposed by Jean-Luc Nancy, referring in particular to his L’Évidence du film. Abbas Kiarostami (2001) as well as to other studies where the author reconsiders the concepts of image and gaze. The specifity of films lies in “evidence”, which is a way to affirm the finite character of existence-presence. Cinema addresses the world without any form of realism. It is reality itself to open out to the image. What results (...) is a possible gaze which is no longer on representation and nor can it be a representative gaze. This gaze does not look at any object; the very act of seeing can be seen through it. (shrink)

In December 1924 Wolfgang Pauli proposed the idea of an inner degree of freedom of the electron, which he insisted should be thought of as genuinely quantum mechanical in nature. Shortly thereafter Ralph Kronig and, independently, Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck took up a less radical stance by suggesting that this degree of freedom somehow corresponded to an inner rotational motion, though it was unclear from the very beginning how literal one was actually supposed to take this picture, since it (...) was immediately recognised that it would very likely lead to serious problems with Special Relativity if the model were to reproduce the electron's values for mass, charge, angular momentum, and magnetic moment. However, probably due to the then overwhelming impression that classical concepts were generally insufficient for the proper description of microscopic phenomena, a more detailed reasoning was never given. In this contribution I shall investigate in some detail what the restrictions on the physical quantities just mentioned are, if they are to be reproduced by rather simple classical models of the electron within the framework of Special Relativity. It turns out that surface stresses play a decisive role and that the question of whether a classical model for the electron does indeed contradict Special Relativity can only be answered on the basis of an exact solution, which has hitherto not been given. (shrink)

Perhaps no philosopher is more of a conundrum than Nietzsche, the solitary rebel, poet, wayfarer, anti-revolutionary Aufklärer and theorist of aristocratic radicalism. His accusers identify in his 'superman' the origins of Nazism, and thus issue an irrevocable condemnation; his defenders pursue a hermeneutics of innocence founded ultimately in allegory. In a work that constitutes the most important contribution to Nietzschean studies in recent decades, Domenico Losurdo instead pursues a less reductive strategy. Taking literally the ruthless implications of Nietzsche's anti-democratic (...) thinking - his celebration of slavery, of war and colonial expansion, and eugenics - he nevertheless refuses to treat these from the perspective of the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, he restores Nietzsche's works to their complex nineteenth-century context, and presents a more compelling account of the importance of Nietzsche as philosopher than can be expected from his many contemporary apologists. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é refletir sobre o mecanismo da negação como uma estratégia psicopolítica que articula o movimento bolsonarista. Como método de trabalho, realizamos uma discussão teórica sobre alguns aspectos do movimento bolsonarista que são estruturados pelo negacionismo. Empregamos os conceitos da psicologia política, da esquizoanálise e da psicanálise de grupo para analisar este fenômeno. Para discutir os mecanismos de negação, constatamos quatro características principais: (i) a negação como estratégia discursiva, (ii) a lógica cognitiva da negatividade, (iii) a produção (...) do antagonismo coletivo e (iv) a micropolítica do ódio, que é anterior à necessidade de um líder. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Psicologia Política. Extremismo político. Esquizoanálise. Grupo. (shrink)

DIVTranslated into English for the first time, this work portrays a different side of Hegel -- not just as a philosopher preoccupied with abstract ideas but a man deeply enmeshed and active in the pressing, concrete political issues of his time./div.

We formalize the notion of isolated objects, and we build a consistent theory to describe their evolution and interaction. We further introduce a notion of indistinguishability of distinct spacetime paths of a unit, for which the evolution of the state variables of the unit is the same, and a generalization of the equivalence principle based on indistinguishability. Under a time reversal condition on the whole set of indistinguishable paths of a unit, we show that the quantization of motion of spinless (...) elementary particles in a general potential field can be derived in this framework, in the limiting case of weak fields and low velocities. Extrapolating this approach to include weak relativistic effects, we explore possible experimental consequences. We conclude by suggesting a primitive ontology for the theory of isolated objects. (shrink)

The essay focuses on the dispute over the Kantian legacy that took place in Davos, in 1929, between Cassirer and Heidegger. The relationship between imagination, freedom and politics is at its core. Two different readings of Kant stand in a discrepancy that generates dismay. An opposition, not a hermeneutical leveling, stands between the two. It is a philosophical opposition that is intimately linked to the positivity of what is posed - and not necessarily opposed — next to the opposite position; (...) philosophical opposition as a productive figure of the negative, because it incorporates the potential for movement and transformation that the negative has, avoiding the exclusion of one interpretation from the other. One must therefore read the confrontation or dispute between Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos as a real opposition between opposing forces, both positive, because neither philosophy derives its meaning from the negation of the other, as Kant would have said. The opposites do not contradict each other, but rather face each other according to an ontological and symbolic plan which on the one hand makes them both necessary but on the other hand opposes them in a single space of knowledge. In the background stand the black shadows that stretch over Germany and Europe. Darkness that will soon throw the opposition into the darkness, imposing a night of the world in which one philosophy will save the symbolic through the exile, while the other philosophy will abandon itself to its destructive repetition leading to the annihilation of the being. (shrink)

The essay aims at interpreting some aspects of Machiavelli’s thought in the light of Benjamin’s philosophy. The topic of the origin of politics is the red thread of the arguments therein developed. In particular the essay focuses on the immanent origin in the becoming of history, which is the absolute beginning of an era; such immanent origin is not separated from time, but rather a remote and identifiable point in the time itself: a first cause which determines the path ahead. (...) Such origin has to do with the idea of absolute politics, with the idea of conflict and freedom in politics, which the essay carries to its point of catastrophe, whose vortex ruins any possible order. A final reference is made to the messianic splinters scattered in Machiavelli’s work and to Machiavelli’s idea of redemption. (shrink)

The present contribution develops some key issues of the work of Luigi Stefanini, starting from his work on cinema dating back to 1954. The relationships between philosophical esthetics and film criticism have not been particularly fruitful in Italy (or elsewhere). However it can be surmised, following Formaggio 1961, that “cinema is a testbed for contemporary esthetics, insofar as the latter tries to provide a universal theorization of art”.

The present essay seeks to analyze the reflections on cinematographic art proposed by Jean-Luc Nancy, referring in particular to his L’Évidence du film. Abbas Kiarostami (2001) as well as to other studies where the author reconsiders the concepts of image and gaze. The specifity of films lies in “evidence”, which is a way to affirm the finite character of existence-presence. Cinema addresses the world without any form of realism. It is reality itself to open out to the image. What results (...) is a possible gaze which is no longer on representation and nor can it be a representative gaze. This gaze does not look at any object; the very act of seeing can be seen through it. (shrink)

Il presente numero di “Rivista di estetica” raccoglie diversi contributi che intendono riflettere oggi sui limiti e sulle possibilità di un approccio estetico-filosofico alle nuove istanze (sia tecniche che narrative) che ci giungono da questo oggetto sempre da identificare chiamato film. Come si sa, il cinema, fin dalle sue origini, ha generato un complesso insieme di discorsi intorno a sé. Il cinema è stato cioè continuamente trattato, discusso, analizzato, fatto oggetto di studio, dalla st...