According to the standard interpretation, Italian pragmatism is split into two groups. On the one hand is the mathematician Giovanni Vailati, Peano’s former collaborator, and his disciple, the economist Mario Calderoni. On the other hand, there are the two “brats,” Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini, naïve philosophers with eccentric ideas. While Vailati and Calderoni followed Peirce’s mathematical and logical pragmatism, the other two articulated a “magical” pragmatism, a kind of relativist, post-modern version of the original American movement. The (...) paper shows that this narrative is incomplete. During the years 1905-6, while Vailati was living in Florence, Italian pragmatists listed three kinds of pragmatism among themselves. Relying on the third stripe, attributed to Vailati, they found a more Unitarian, theoretical project that united the will to belief and the precision of reasoning. The unity did not last very long because Vailati moved from Florence in 1906. However, the common project from 1905-6 remains the highest peak of their awareness of pragmatism and, possibly, an original way to interpret it. (shrink)

L’influenza dell’ideologia risorgimentale si indirizza a rendere centrale, nell’Italia di fine Ottocento, le tematiche della costruzione dello stato e dell’educazione dei cittadini, e stimola lo stesso Giovanni Vailati, seguito dall’allievo Mario Calderoni, a imbastire un discorso sulla valenza educativa del fare cultura e ad attribuire all’uomo di cultura ufficio di sommo educatore. Il dibattito vailatiano sull’«educazione liberale» verte su tre aree di discussione: a] «unità del sapere» come ideale educativo; b] definizione di filosofia; c] definizione di storia delle scienze.

The correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke was probably the most famous and influential philosophical exchange of the eighteenth century. It focused on the clash between the Newtonian and Leibnizian world systems, involving disputes in physics, theology, and metaphysics. Vailati's book provides a comprehensive overview and commentary on this important body of letters. He not only identifies and evaluates the various arguments, but situates the views advanced by the correspondence in the context of their principal writings.

Answering some of the main questions from [L. Motto Ros, The descriptive set-theoretical complexity of the embeddability relation on models of large size, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic164(12) (2013) 1454–1492], we show that whenever κ is a cardinal satisfying κ<κ=κ>ω, then the embeddability relation between κ-sized structures is strongly invariantly universal, and hence complete for (κ-)analytic quasi-orders. We also prove that in the above result we can further restrict our attention to various natural classes of structures, including (generalized) trees, graphs, or (...) groups. This fully generalizes to the uncountable case the main results of [A. Louveau and C. Rosendal, Complete analytic equivalence relations, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc.357(12) (2005) 4839–4866; S.-D. Friedman and L. Motto Ros, Analytic equivalence relations and bi-embeddability, J. Symbolic Logic76(1) (2011) 243–266; J. Williams, Universal countable Borel quasi-orders, J. Symbolic Logic79(3) (2014) 928–954; F. Calderoni and L. Motto Ros, Universality of group embeddability, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc.146 (2018) 1765–1780]. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz sucht die Berechtigung der Leibnizschen Unterscheidung zwischen notwendigen und kontingenten Aussagen nachzuweisen. Das entscheidende Problem ist für den Autor die Frage nach der Verbindung zwischen dem Subjektbegriff und seinen Teilbegriffen, Teilbegriffe, ohne die der Subjektbegriff nicht gedacht werden kann, kommen ihm wesentlich und notwendig zu. Teilbegriffe, deren Zukommen jedoch nur bei Hinzunahme externer Bedingungen -letzlich des göttlichen Willens und seiner Wahl der besten Welt -begründet werden kann, kommen in kontingenter Weise zu. Notwendige Sätze können durch eine Analyse der (...) Begriffe in endlich vielen Schritten bewiesen werden, kontingente Sätze erfordern eine unendliche Analyse und sind deshalb nicht beweisbar. Leibniz' Annahme kontingenter Aussagen beruht daher nach der Überzeugung des Autors nicht auf der Unterscheidung zwischen Möglichkeit und Existenz, wie z. B. Russell geglaubt hat, sondern auf der Unterscheidung von Wesensbegriffen und Individualbegriffen. Mit Hilfe dieser Unterscheidung ist die Annahme kontingenter Aussagen nach der Meinung des Autors zu rechtfertigen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Leibniz and Clarke on Miracles EZIO VAILATI IN ONE OF THE MOST tense moments of the exchange with Clarke, answering the accusation of removing God from the world, Leibniz curtly told his interlocutor he had explained the continual dependence of creation on God better than any other: But, says the author, this is all that I contended for. To this I answer: your humble servant for that, sir. Our (...) dispute consists in many other things. The question is, whether God does not act in the most regular and most perfect manner? Whether his machine is liable to disorders, which he is obliged to mend by extraordinary means? Whether the will of God can act without reason? Whether space is an absolute being? Also concerning the nature of miracles; and many such things, which make a wide difference between us.' ' Leibniz to Clarke, third letter, section 16, in A. Robinet, ed., Correspondance Leibniz-Clarke (Paris, 1957), 56-57. In the rest of the essay, the following abbreviations are used. S. Clarke, The Works (New York, 1978) = W, followed by volume and page. C. I. Gerhard, ed., Die Philosophische Schriften yon G. W. Leibniz (Hildesheim, 1961) = GP, followed by volume and page. C. I. Gerhard, ed., Die Mathematische Schriften yon G. W. Leibniz (Hildesheim, 1963) = GM, followed by volume and page. L. Loemker, ed., G. W. Leibniz. Philosophical Papers and Letters (Dordrecht, 1976) = L, followed by page. P. Remnant and J. Bennett, trans. & eds., G. W. Leibniz. New Essays on Human Understanding = NE, followed by book, chapter, and section. A. Robinet, ed., CorrtsporldangtLeibniz-Clarke (Paris, 1957) = CI, followed by letter number and section for Clarke's letters to Leibniz; Lz, followed by letter number and section for Leibniz's letters to Clarke; R, followed by page number, for other material. Since I refer to Clarke's and Leibniz's letters by letter number and paragraph, the reader can consult any edition of the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. The most common edition of the correspondence in English is H. G. Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clarke Corresporu~gnge(Manchester, 1956). In addition to the correspondence it contains a helpful introduction, Clarke's appendix to the correspondence, relevant extracts from Newton's works and from Leibniz's letters relating to the correspondence, all translated into English. Robinet's edition is in effect a critical edition, containing the correspondence, various drafts by Leibniz, and relevant letters by Leibniz and his correspondents. However, it does not contain Clarke's appendix to his edition of the correspondence. Alexander's and Robinet's editions complement each other. However, neither contains Clarke's own marginal additions to the Boyle Lectures, in which he explicitly refers to Leibniz or to the correspondence. [563] 564 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER i99 5 At first sight, the reference to miracles as one of the main issues of the correspondence may seem odd. When thinking about miracles and the seventeenth century, one is likely to think about Spinoza's impassioned attempt to prove that they are impossible.' Indeed, one may even think of miracles as belonging to an odd and antiquated frame of thought in fundamental antithesis with the new world-view brought about by modern science and soon to be swept away. However, this view would be wrong. Many of the philosopherscientists who directly brought about the scientific revolution, or like Clarke were closely associated with it, did believe in miracles and engaged in debates concerning their possibility and their evidential role in support of Christianity.3 Furthermore, in both Leibniz and Clarke the topic of miracles was connected with significant metaphysical issues of the power of creatures and the nature of natural laws. On these Clarke and Leibniz disagreed deeply, and consequently to a large extent the issue of miracles became a rallying cry for a deeper confrontation. In this essay, we shall look first at Clarke's and Leibniz's views on miracles in works preceding their exchange, and then at the correspondence itself. 1. CLARKE Since Clarke was a divine, it is not surprising that the motivations behind his interest in miracles were mainly apologetic. However, it would be a mistake to attribute that interest merely to his... (shrink)

The central focus of my dissertation is the study of the naturality in Leibniz's philosophy. Leibniz makes a number of statements concerning natural predication, including: the soul is naturally immortal; personal identity naturally presupposes the identity of the soul; reflective apperception cannot naturally deceive; matter cannot naturally think or act at a distance. These claims are not only central to Leibniz's philosophy of mind, but to his system as a whole; moreover, some of them constitute the basis of his criticism (...) of Locke in the New Essays. Nevertheless, these claims have never received the attention they deserve, nor have they been studied as a whole. ;In the course of my thesis, I argue that Leibniz's statements concerning naturality are best understood as involving a type of necessity which is weaker than logical, or metaphysical, necessity. I develop the position that a subject S is naturally P if and only if: It is logically or metaphysically possible for S not to be P , and It is logically or metaphysically impossible for S to be not-P except through miraculous divine intervention. Simply put, I argue that these two conditions follow from Leibniz's views on inherence in combination with the logical version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which he thinks entails that every event has a cause. ;The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first studies the general concepts, such as inherence and contingent predication, which are necessary to understand the notion of natural necessity and to show that it plays a legitimate role in Leibniz's system. The second part examines in detail some particular cases of natural necessity, such as the natural veridicality of reflection and the natural immortality of the soul, as well as the natural inability of matter to think. (shrink)