How happy it is to recall Imre Lakatos. Now, fifteen years after his death, his intelligence, wit, generosity are vivid. In the Preface to the book of Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, the editors wrote:... Lakatos was a man in search of rationality in all of its forms. He thought he had found it in the historical development of scientific knowledge, yet he also saw rationality endangered everywhere. To honor Lakatos is to honor his sharp and aggressive criticism as (...) well as his humane warmth and his quick wit. He was a person to love and to struggle with. The book before us carries old and new friends of that Lakatosian spirit further into the issues which he wanted to investigate. That the new friends include a dozen scientific, historical and philosophical scholars from Greece would have pleased Lakatos very much, and with an essay from China, he would have smiled all the more. But the key lies in the quality of these papers, and in the imaginative organization of the conference at Thessaloniki in summer 1986 which worked so well. (shrink)

Suppose COVID-19 is the runaway tram in the famous moral thought experiment, known as the “Bystander at the Switch.” Consider the two differentiated responses of governments around the world to this new threat, namely the option of quarantine/lockdown and herd immunity. Can we contrast the hypothetical with the real scenario? What do the institutional decisions and strategies for dealing with the virus, in the beginning of 2020, signify in a normative moral framework? This paper investigates these possibilities in order to (...) highlight the similarities and, more importantly, the differences that exist between utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Analysis shows that the hypothetical scenario can never be fully compared to the complex multifactorial nature of the real world. But if a comparison is attempted, the most obvious difference between the two governmental strategies is the concept of duty within the Kantian perspective. Ultimately, it is a matter of comparing freedom and life. Attributing a moral “priority ticket” to one or the other can be analysed through interpersonal aggregation. (shrink)

Background: Individuals with psychopathic traits demonstrate an attenuated emotional response to aversive stimuli. However, recent evidence suggests heterogeneity in emotional reactivity among individuals with psychopathic or callous-unemotional (CU) traits, the emotional detachment dimension of psychopathy. We hypothesize that primary variants of psychopathy will respond with blunted affect to negatively valenced stimuli, whereas individuals marked with histories of childhood trauma/maltreatment exposure, known as secondary variants, will display heightened emotional reactivity. To test this hypothesis, the present study examined fear-potentiated startle between psychopathy (...) variants while viewing aversive, pleasant, and neutral scenes. Method: 238 incarcerated adolescent (M age = 16.8, SD = 1.11 years) boys completed a picture-startle paradigm and self-report questionnaires assessing CU traits, antisocial-aggressive behavior, and maltreatment. Results: Latent profile analyses identified four classes; primary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, low maltreatment; n = 46), secondary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, high maltreatment; n = 42), and two nonpsychopathic groups differentiated on maltreatment experience (n = 148). Findings from an ANOVA comparing identified groups on startle amplitude difference scores (i.e., aversive-neutral) suggested a main effect for group, F(3,196)=8.91, p<.001, η2 = .12. Primary variants of juvenile psychopathy displayed reduced startle potentiation to aversive images (threat and victim scenes), whereas secondary variants distinguished by high levels of childhood maltreatment did not. Conclusions: Findings add to a rapidly growing body of literature supporting the possibility of multiple developmental pathways to psychopathy (i.e., equifinality), and extend it by finding support for divergent potential biomarkers between primary and secondary psychopathy variants. (shrink)

John Bintliff et alii Le Tanagra Project : recherches dans une cité antique de Béotie et son territoire (2000-2002) p.541-606 Cet article présente les résultats préliminaires du Leiden-Ljubljana Field Project dans la cité antique de Tanagra, en Béotie orientale, et dans ses environs immédiats. Les travaux ont débuté en 1999, avec une vaste équipe de chercheurs et d'étudiants des Pays-Bas, de Belgique, de Slovénie et de Grèce, sous la direction de John Bintliff et Bozidar Slapsak et la sous-direction de Kostas (...) Sbonias. Les différents spécialistes présentent ici leur travail en détail, développant les rapports des deux premières campagnes publiés dans Pharos, le périodique annuel de l'Institut néerlandais d'Athènes. (shrink)

Lefebvre, H. Au delà du savoir.--Fougeyrollas, P. Au delà du nihilisme.

Kosta Došen argued in his papers Inferential Semantics (in Wansing, H. (ed.) Dag Prawitz on Proofs and Meaning, pp. 147–162. Springer, Berlin 2015) and On the Paths of Categories (in Piecha, T., Schroeder-Heister, P. (eds.) Advances in Proof-Theoretic Semantics, pp. 65–77. Springer, Cham 2016) that the propositions-as-types paradigm is less suited for general proof theory because—unlike proof theory based on category theory—it emphasizes categorical proofs over hypothetical inferences. One specific instance of this, Došen points out, is that the Curry–Howard isomorphism (...) makes the associativity of deduction composition invisible. We will show that this is not necessarily the case. (shrink)

We consider various concepts associated with the revision theory of truth of Gupta and Belnap. We categorize the notions definable using their theory of circular definitions as those notions universally definable over the next stable set. We give a simplified account of varied revision sequences-as a generalised algorithmic theory of truth. This enables something of a unification with the Kripkean theory of truth using supervaluation schemes.

We look at various notions of a class of definability operations that generalise inductive operations, and are characterised as “revision operations”. More particularly we: (i) characterise the revision theoretically definable subsets of a countable acceptable structure; (ii) show that the categorical truth set of Belnap and Gupta’s theory of truth over arithmetic using \emph{fully varied revision} sequences yields a complete \Pi13 set of integers; (iii) the set of \emph{stably categorical} sentences using their revision operator ψ is similarly \Pi13 and which (...) is complete in Gödel’s universe of constructible sets L; (iv) give an alternative account of a theory of truth—realistic variance that simplifies full variance, whilst at the same time arriving at Kripkean fixed points. (shrink)

We characterise explicitly the decidable predicates on integers of Infinite Time Turing machines, in terms of admissibility theory and the constructible hierarchy. We do this by pinning down ζ, the least ordinal not the length of any eventual output of an Infinite Time Turing machine (halting or otherwise); using this the Infinite Time Turing Degrees are considered, and it is shown how the jump operator coincides with the production of mastercodes for the constructible hierarchy; further that the natural ordinals associated (...) with the jump operator satisfy a Spector criterion, and correspond to the L ζ -stables. It also implies that the machines devised are "Σ 2 Complete" amongst all such other possible machines. It is shown that least upper bounds of an "eventual jump" hierarchy exist on an initial segment. (shrink)

P S Wilson; Perspectives on Punishment—Reply to Pamela Moore, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 103–134, https://doi.org.

P D Walsh; Value Education in a Pluralist Society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 24–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1.

P S Wilson; Child-Centred Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 3, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 105–126, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1969.

P S Wilson; Interests and Educational Values, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 181–199, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

P S Wilson; Interests, Values and Educational Language, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 147–166, https://doi.org/10.1.

If the agent responsible for an action is to be given praise or blame by the moral community for that action, then accurate responsibility ascriptions must be made. Since the moral community may have to evaluate the actions of corporate agents, care must be taken to insure that the assumption of Methodological Individualism (MI) does not infect that process. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that accurate responsibility ascriptions will be made in cases connected with corporate action as long as corporate (...) scapegoating may occur. Because corporate scapegoating is a behavior pattern that attempts to falsify correct responsibility ascriptions it will be of interest to the moral theorist. Once I have considered three objections to the idea of corporate scapegoating I shall offer a fictional description of it found in Ayn Rand''s work,Atlas Shrugged. Finally, I shall raise a question about its present day use by corporations in our society. (shrink)

We follow [8] in asking when a set of ordinals $X \subseteq \alpha$ is a countable union of sets in K, the core model. We show that, analogously to L, and X closed under the canonical Σ 1 Skolem function for K α can be so decomposed provided K is such that no ω-closed filters are put on its measure sequence, but not otherwise. This proviso holds if there is no inner model of a weak Erdős-type property.

Conditions are stated under which the "argument by analogy" is consistent with the principle of inverse probability. It is contended that the argument by analogy, in conjunction with a crucial test, has a legitimate place in scientific logic. As an example the astrophysical problem of solar granulation is discussed in detail and other examples are mentioned more briefly.

MY PAPER EXAMINES THE ’VIOLATION’ CONCEPT OF THE MIRACULOUS, INVOLVING THE OCCURRENCE OF AN EVENT RULED OUT BY A LAW OF NATURE. ANY BELIEF IN THE OCCURRENCE OF SUCH AN EVENT IS IRRATIONAL, IN THE SENSE IN WHICH IT WOULD BE IRRATIONAL FOR YOU TO BELIEVE AT THIS MOMENT THAT YOU WERE NOT READING THIS ABSTRACT BUT WERE HALLUCINATING. TO SHOW THAT IT IS NOT ALWAYS IRRATIONAL TO BELIEVE IN MIRACLES, ONE MUST ASSERT THAT TO KNOW WITH CERTAINTY THAT AN (...) EVENT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, IS NOT TO KNOW WITH CERTAINTY THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, ON GROUNDS THAT ITS OCCURRENCE DOES NOT INVOLVE A SELF-CONTRADICTION. BUT SUCH A PREMISE LEADS TO A FORM OF GENERAL SKEPTICISM WHICH WOULD MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE EVER TO ESTABLISH THAT ANY EVENT HAD OCCURRED. (shrink)

L'Exil est la patrie de la pensée regroupe un ensemble de textes inédits ou introuvables de Kostas Axelos. Prolongeant ses derniers livres (Réponses énigmatiques, Minuit, 2005 ; En quête de l'impensé, Encre marine, 2012, posthume), il questionne la philosophie du XXe siècle et relit sous le signe de l'exil la vie et l'oeuvre du philosophe, éclairant d'un jour nouveau une pensée singulière. On trouvera également dans ce recueil des contributions philosophiques majeures sur Axelos (P. Fougeyrollas, F. Dastur, S. Jollivet, L. (...) Couloubaritsis), ainsi que de nombreux témoignages, dessins et photographies. (shrink)

The organization of the complex mixed-mode oscillations generated, in a three-dimensional variable space, by an autocatalytic process formalized as a cubic monomial is analyzed. The generation of the temporal patterns is elucidated by complementary approaches dealing with the three-variable differential continuous system itself and with successive discrete applications modelling its first return map. The extent to which the underlying bifurcation structures could constitute a fingerprint of autocatalytic processes is discussed in connection with the modelling of biological systems.