A total of 152 students were asked to respond to a series of causal conditional (“If P then Q”) inferences with major premises for which there was variable access to information contradicting the premises. Half the students were given 12.5 s for each inference, the other half were given 8.5 s. The percentage of accepted inferences was significantly lower when the time was shorter for the MP and MT inferences, but no effect was observed for the AC and DA inferences. (...) Results are interpreted as supporting the idea that inhibition of retrieved information contradicting the premise is necessary to explain reasoning with the MP and MT inferences under logical instructions (Markovits & Barrouillet, 2002). (shrink)

Reviews the history of teaching in the United States over three hundred years, and describes aspects of recruitment, organization, and logic particular to the profession.

The ἐπιβολή is one of the main concepts of Hellenistic and Neoplatonic epistemology. Already related to the activity of thought (διάνοια) by Epicurus and Alexander of Aphrodisias, this notion allows Plotinus to conceive the transition from intuition, which grasps its whole object by a single act, to discursive thought, which sets out its many attributes successively. It can be defined as the sighting of an innate form by the διάνοια, an intuitive act expressed in propositional form by the λόγος. By (...) analogy with the intuition of the human thought, the Plotinian ἐπιβολή also refers to the knowledge that the Intellect has of itself and of its principle, the One-Good. (shrink)

This evenhanded treatment addresses the decades-old dispute among probability theorists, asserting that both statistical and inductive probabilities may be treated as sentence-theoretic measurements, and that the latter qualify as estimates of the former. Beginning with a survey of the essentials of sentence theory and of set theory, the author examines statistical probabilities, showing that statistical probabilities may be passed on to sentences, and thereby qualify as truth-values. An exploration of inductive probabilities follows, demonstrating their reinterpretation as estimates of truth-values. Each (...) chapter is preceded by a summary of its contents. Illustrations and footnotes elucidate definitions, theorems, and technicalities. 1962 ed. (shrink)

La formule de Hobbes est bien connue, selon laquelle l'Etat est un Dieu mortel.

The Iberic conquest both created and destroyed at the same tima the possibility of a Latin american dream based on an homogeneous culture. The utopie of this idea was revealed by the Independence. Nowadays we are under a period of reflexion closer to the several ethnic and cultural dimensions of the Latin american societies.

L'histoire des sciences suffit à réfuter la thèse de la mathématisation impossible, selon laquelle la mathématisation procéderait d'un formalisme abstrait manquant les choses mêmes ou la spécificité d'un domaine d'objets. Cette histoire montre en effet qu'on n'a pas cessé de mathématiser des choses dont il avait été longtemps dit qu'elles devaient, étant donné leur nature, éternellement résister à la mathématisation. À la thèse de la mathématisation impossible, il est dès lors tentant d'opposer la thèse de la mathématisation inéluctable, selon laquelle (...) une science bien formulée est une science mathématiquement constituée. Cette dernière thèse est cependant souvent associée à l'idée que l'introduction des mathématiques dans une discipline constituerait un processus qui ne présenterait aucune difficulté et qui ne serait suivie d'aucune perte. Contre cette idée, les articles rassemblés dans ce volume ont voulu, comme le titre de ce dernier l'indique, restituer à la mathématisation son caractère problématique. La méthode adoptée dans ce volume est résolument empirique : il s'appuie non pas sur des réflexions a priori sur ce que seraient les objets mathématiques, mais sur des études de cas empruntées à différentes périodes de l'histoire et à différentes sciences. Le pari a été fait que ces différentes rubriques pourraient être articulées les uns aux autres dans trois parties qui ont respectivement pour titres "Les exigences de la mesure : la quantification", "La formalisation : la puissance des formes symboliques", et "La modélisation, une nouvelle forme de mathématisation?" Assurément, une tendance historiographique générale de ces trente dernières années a consisté à privilégier les études de cas locales et singulières, ce qui nous a permis de prendre congé du style épique, qui néglige les détails de l'histoire. Cependant, l'espèce de nominalisme qui en résulte tourne rapidement court, si l'on en reste à ces études de cas singulières. Ce volume repose donc sur un pari : essayer d'articuler différentes études de cas de manière à dégager certaines formes de la mathématisation. Que ce pari ait été gagné ou perdu, ce sera au lecteur d'en juger. (shrink)

Penser sans obéir aux ressorts constitutifs de la pensée française contemporaine : voilà l'exigence qu'indique Maurice Blanchot. Deux enjeux déterminent en conséquence cet ouvrage. Il s'agit d'abord de montrer combien l'oeuvre théorique et narrative de Blanchot, en faisant valoir des thèmes aussi singuliers que ceux du calme ou de l'enfance, se soustrait à l'épreuve contemporaine de l'événement. Point d'autant plus étonnant que Blanchot ne cesse - aussi - de requérir cette épreuve et de s'entretenir avec ceux-là même qui, tels Levinas, (...) Deleuze, Derrida ou Foucault, ont déployé la logique contemporaine. Il s'agit ensuite de forger les catégories positives de la recherche ainsi indiquée. L'analyse minutieuse ici proposée de la dimension élémentale (nuit, mer, ciel) propre au neutre blanchotien et de l'écriture fragmentaire déployée à la fin de l'oeuvre, conduit ainsi à dégager une question qui, dépourvue de la force d'appeler encore réponse, se pose dans le milieu calme du silence. Loin de reconduire la pensée au nihilisme ou à un silence impensable-indicible typiquement contemporain, cette problématisation, avec Blanchot, de la pensée française contemporaine introduit à une recherche qui, ni déconstructrice ni non-philosophique, engage l'enfance de la philosophie. (shrink)

An art of the everyday? Parting from Georges Perec and Vilhelm Hammershøi Contemporary continental philosophy seems to be deeply connected to art, whether it is poetry and literature, painting or music. This connection is built upon the primacy of a trial of the invisible, which is very often a trial of the event. The aim of this article is to establish an art of the everyday freed from this contemporary "eventism". We thus examine how the researches of Georges Perec in (...) literature and of Vilhelm Hammershøi in painting meditate on the strangeness of the everyday – its flatness, its silence – which are irreducible to this aesthetic trial as it can be conceptualized by the philosophy of the life of Deleuze-Guattari and by the humanism of Levinas. This research thus beckons towards an art of the common contesting the contemporary primacy of the vital and the human. (shrink)

A constructive dialogue between Henry’s phenomenology and Rorty’s pragmatism does not seem very likely: each would probably consider that the other has not been faithful to his claim of breaking with philosophical tradition and thus ultimately reproduces its limits. Nevertheless, one can also note that Henry and Rorty are not at the same level of analysis: while Henry focuses on giving coherent grounds for any philosophical critique of representation, Rorty is occupied with the consequences of such critique on philosophy itself. (...) If one considers this difference, there emerge new results: Henry’s phenomenology is fundamental for the recognition of what Rorty calls the “human being’s sense of self-identity”, while it falls to Rorty’s pragmatism to ensure that, as hoped by Henry, there is “a mode of philosophy that does not harm essence”.  . (shrink)

The more traditional approaches to the history and philosophy of science and technology continue as well, and probably will continue as long as there are skillful practitioners such as Carl Hempel, Ernest Nagel, and th~ir students. Finally, there are still other approaches that address some of the technical problems arising when we try to provide an account of belief and of rational choice. - These include efforts to provide logical frameworks within which we can make sense of these notions. This (...) series will attempt to bring together work from all of these approaches to the history and philosophy of science and technology in the belief that each has something to add to our understanding. The volumes of this series have emerged either from lectures given by authors while they served as honorary visiting professors at the City College of New York or from conferences sponsored by that institution. The City College Program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology oversees and directs these lectures and conferences with the financial aid of the Association for Philosophy of Science, Psychotheraphy, and Ethics. MARTIN TAMNY RAPHAEL STERN PREFACE The papers in this collection stem largely from the conference 'Foun dations: Logic, Language, and Mathematics' held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on 14-15 November 1980. (shrink)