This book offers a comprehensive account of logic that addresses fundamental issues concerning the nature and foundations of the discipline. The authors claim that these foundations can not only be established without the need for strong metaphysical assumptions, but also without hypostasizing logical forms as specific entities. They present a systematic argument that the primary subject matter of logic is our linguistic interaction rather than our private reasoning and it is thus misleading to see logic as revealing "the laws of (...) thought". In this sense, fundamental logical laws are implicit to our "language games" and are thus more similar to social norms than to the laws of nature. Peregrin and Svoboda also show that logical theories, despite the fact that they rely on rules implicit to our actual linguistic practice, firm up these rules and make them explicit. By carefully scrutinizing the project of logical analysis, the authors demonstrate that logical rules can be best seen as products of the so called reflective equilibrium. They suggest that we can profit from viewing languages as "inferential landscapes" and logicians as "geographers" who map them and try to pave safe routes through them. This book is an essential resource for scholars and researchers engaged with the foundations of logical theories and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Logic is usually presented as a tool of rational inquiry; however, many logicians in fact treat logic so that it does not serve us, but rather governs us – as rational beings we are subordinated to the logical laws we aspire to disclose. We denote the view that logic primarily serves us as logica serviens, while denoting the thesis that it primarily governs our reasoning as logica dominans. We argue that treating logic as logica dominans is misguided, for it leads (...) to the idea of a “genuine” logic within a “genuine” language. Instead of this, we offer a naturalistic picture, according to which the only languages that exist are the natural languages and the artificial languages logicians have built. There is, we argue, no language beyond these, especially none that would be a wholesome vehicle of reasoning like the natural languages and yet be transparently rigorous like the artificial ones. Logic is a matter of using the artificial languages as idealized models of the natural ones, whereby we pinpoint the laws of logic by means of zooming in on a reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

The recent proposition to eliminate eponyms from physical publications is discussed. The role of eponyms in research and education is analyzed. We show that eponyms constitute an integral part of physical texts and ensure the continuity of scientific research. Their proposed elimination is dangerous for science and the entire human culture and must be rejected.

The paper explores the role of the media in influencing public opinion from an inferential-pragmatic perspective. It presents preliminary results of the study focused on representation of Russia in Western newspapers. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1995,2001; van Dijk 2009) and media linguistics (Fowler 1991, Richardson 2007, among others) the study centres around the linguistic means of construing ambiguity/uncertainty, viewed as a strategy of persuasion. We mostly focus on the semantics of certain groups of words and other textual features (...) such as indefinite pronouns, epistemic modality, passive voice, present perfect tense, interrogative headlines and some other tools used in media texts to construe ambiguity which, in its turn, arguably aims at influencing public opinion. We also look at presupposition, information structure, evaluation and transitivity. Though we have limited our study to the English language sources (The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, news websites of the BBC, Reuters, Express, Politico and Fox News, among others), we are not suggesting that linguistic ambiguity is a feature of Western, rather than Russian, or other languages' media. (shrink)

This article deals with voice and bodily deixis as manifestations of performativity in written texts. A speech act of origin presents as both vocal and performative events. Ritual matrixes of culture contain performative complexes, as suggested by Austin. Such performative nuclei are neither true nor false, that is, their negation cannot be logically inferred from true premises. The term deixis describes the performative moment of the utterance, its active and transformative force. The first embodied deictic utterance in Western history would (...) be the biblical phrase “And the word made flesh.” It is the first mythopoetical performative denoting the bodily incarnation of logos. In the article, the term bodily deixis is considered against the background of experimental poetry of E.E. Cummings. (shrink)

Se hace un esfuerzo por interpretar el supuesto fenómeno de los raptos de individuos por naves extraterrestres desde conceptos teóricos žižekianos como _afanisis_, “destitución subjetiva”, “Cosa” de la libido, trauma y “mediador evanescente”.

En este artículo elaboramos una reflexión sobre el arte como actividad productiva, partiendo de las contribuciones filosóficas de Deleuze y Guattari, realizando un análisis de su concepción ontológica caracterizada como un pensamiento de la diferencia, para así señalar los vínculos que se entablan entre filosofía y arte. Iniciamos con una breve introducción en donde enmarcamos la propuesta de Deleuze y Guattari, haciendo hincapié en la “reversión del platonismo” que será de especial importancia en lo que respecta a la nueva concepción (...) del arte que plantearán los autores. Después, analizamos qué significa filosofar a la luz de dicho proyecto. A continuación abordamos la cuestión del arte, analizando dicho ámbito como una actividad que implica pensar y producir la diferencia. Finalizamos con unas algunas conclusiones en las que apuntamos que el arte, al igual que la filosofía, crea nuevos territorios y abre nuevas posibilidades de vida. (shrink)

This book is an edited collection on one of Plato’s most dramatic as well as most complex dialogues, where a defence of the philosopher’s way of life is carried out against the background of interconnected rhetorical and political stances of the time.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present implications of the seller's ability to bid in the four classical auction forms, with independent private values: English, Dutch, first‐ and second‐price auctions.Design/methodology/approachUnder each auction form, the identity of the winning bidder and the expected winning bid are compared between the case when the seller may bid and when he cannot, using equilibrium bidder strategies. The seller's incentive to bid is evaluated.FindingsThe strategies and the welfare results differ with auction type and underlying (...) information assumptions – bidders are either aware or unaware of the seller's ability to bid. In the Dutch and the first‐price auctions, seller‐bidding does not affect any classical results. In the English and the second‐price auctions, it leads to no lower expected prices than without it and higher prices with positive probability. In the English and the second‐price auctions, the seller bids above his reservation value and may unintentionally win the auction. These auctions result in inefficiency with positive probability.Practical implicationsThe English and the second‐price auctions are the most common real‐world auctions. In these auctions, the seller's ability to bid – secretly or publicly – redistributes welfare among participants and introduces a possibility of inefficiency. Making this ability publicly known does not solve the latter problem. Auctioneers must prevent the seller from bidding, or must select a different auction form when seller‐bidding is anticipated.Originality/valueThe paper clarifies to regulators, auction designers, bidders, and other readers which auction forms are susceptible to subversion by seller‐bidding and what the potential damages are. (shrink)

Od grčkog pojma sophia do Potterovih pojmova mudrosti i biološkog znanja, autor analizira različite filozofske i znanstvene koncepte znanja. Autor se slaže s Jaspersom u stavu da ono što je »iz filozofije prevodivo u zajedničko mišljenje, to na koncu odlučuje o njezinoj vrijednosti «. Autor zaključuje da novoj epohi i bioetičkoj perspektivi odgovara zahtjev za orijentacijskim znanjem, te ga nastoji definirati ne samo iz povijesti filozofije, nego i u suprotnosti s tradicionalnim stajalištima , te iz zahtjeva nove epohe.From the Greek (...) term sophia to the Potter’s terms wisdom and biological knowledge, author analyses different philosophical and scientific concepts of knowledge. The author agrees with Jaspers on the notion that what is “transferable from philosophy into the common reasoning is what at the end decides on its worthiness”. The author concludes that the demand for an orientational knowledge corresponds with the new epoch and bioethical perspective, and is trying to define this demand not only from the history of philosophy, but in its contrast to the traditional views represented by Descartes and Bacon, and also from the demands of the new epoch itself. (shrink)

A la différence du concept chrétien de la justice en tant que vertu morale, tel que l’avait énoncé Thomas d’Aquin en la définissant comme une attitude par la force de laquelle quelqu’un dont la volonté est forte reconnaît à autrui son droit, Nietzsche trouve l’origine de la justice dans la négociation de forces dont la puissance est approximativement égale ou bien dans la contrainte des moins forts à un accord. Pour présenter un tel point de vue fondé sur l’assertion que (...) pour la vie-même l’appropriation est essentielle, en d’autres mots que la volonté de puissance est en fait le vouloir vivre, Nietzsche s’est servi de la description des Athéniens et des Méliens par Thucydide. Cependant, l’auteur aboutit à la conclusion que Nietzsche n’est pas seulement un penseur de la puissance mais qu’il cherche aussi un nouvel entendement de la justice qu’il veut expliquer par la totalité de sa pensée. (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Vladimir Jankélévitch mêle intimement philosophie et musique, régime de correspondance auquel le philosophe-musicien a toujours aimé se tenir. " La musique, rappelle-t-il, est un art temporel non point secondairement, comme la poésie, le roman ou le théâtre, mais essentiellement. " Son domaine est la " temporalité enchantée ", le mystère de l'instant, le charme de la nostalgie, du nocturne et des parfums de la nuit, du lointain, du silence surtout, puisque la musique, née du silence, y retourne. Ce (...) livre réunit des textes peu connus, inédits ou depuis longtemps inaccessibles. Comptes rendus de concerts et de festivals, évocations poétiques des musiciens chers à son coeur : les musiciens français, particulièrement Debussy, Ravel, Fauré ; les musiciens de l'Europe centrale, Chopin et Liszt, le rhapsode et baladin du monde européen, image même de notre modernité ; les génies de la musique russe, notamment Moussorgski et Rimski-Korsakov. Pour Vladimir Jankélévitch " on ne pense pas la musique ", mais on peut penser en musique, ou musicalement. Le lecteur retrouvera dans ces textes le bonheur de la mystérieuse connivence d'une pensée sur la musique qui donne à entendre musicalement. (shrink)

We describe a case of indeterminacy in general relativity for homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies for a class of dark energy fluids. The cosmologies are parametrized by an equation of state variable, with one instance giving the same solution as Norton’s mechanical dome. Our example goes beyond previously studied cases in that indeterminacy lies in the evolution of spacetime itself: the onset of the Big Bang is indeterminate. We show further that the indeterminacy is resolved if the dynamics is viewed relationally.