The aim of this paper is to provide some acquaintance with the exegetical history of ἐξαίφνης inside the Platonic Tradition, from Plato to Marsilio Ficino, by way of Middle Platonism and Greek Neoplatonism. (Since this is only a draft, several modifications should be made later, notably in order to improve the English.) Some part has been presented in Los Angeles: “Damascius’ Theodicy: Psychic Input of Disorder and Evil into the World”, 16th Annual ISNS (International Society for Neoplatonic Studies) Conference, Loyola (...) Marymount University, 14th June 2018. (shrink)

Though scholarship has explored Karin Costelloe-Stephen’s contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, as well as her relations to the Bloomsbury Group, her philosophical work has been almost completely ignored. This paper will examine her debate with Bertrand Russell over his criticism of Bergson. Costelloe-Stephen had employed the terminology of early analytic philosophy in presenting a number of arguments in defence of Bergson’s views. Costelloe-Stephen would object, among other things, to Russell’s use of an experiment which, as she points out, was (...) first conducted by Carl Stumpf. Russell appeals to Stumpf's experiment in his attempt to prove that sense data are terms in logical relations, a thesis presupposed by the project of logical analysis outlined in Our Knowledge of the External World. A reformulated version of Costelloe-Stephen's argument put forth by this paper shows that Russell's argument fails to provide adequate proof for his thesis. Further modifications of the argument can also address a reconstruction (based on contemporary reports) of Russell's reply to Costelloe-Stephen. In his reply, Russell would use, already in 1914, the term ‘analytic philosophy’ in contrasting his and Moore’s approach to a continental one, exemplified by Bergson and Costelloe-Stephen. (shrink)

In 1907 Borel published a remarkable essay on the paradox of the Heap (“Un paradoxe économique: le sophisme du tas de blé et les vérités statistiques”), in which Borel proposes what is likely the first statistical account of vagueness ever written, and where he discusses the practical implications of the sorites paradox, including in economics. Borel’s paper was integrated in his book Le Hasard, published 1914, but has gone mostly unnoticed since its publication. One of the originalities of Borel’s essay (...) is that it puts forward a model of vagueness as imprecision, making particular use of the Gaussian law of measurement errors to model categorization. The aim of our paper is to give a presentation of the historical context of Borel’s essay, to spell out the mathematical details of his model, and to provide a critical assessment of his theory. Three aspects of Borel’s account are particularly discussed: the first concerns the comparison between Borel’s statistical account and posterior degree-theoretic accounts of vagueness. The second concerns the anti-epistemicist flavor of Borel’s approach, whereby the idea of statistical fluctuation is used to undermine the notion of sharp boundary for vague predicates. The third concerns the problematic link between Borel’s model of vagueness as imprecision and the notion of semantic indeterminacy. An English translation of Borel’s original essay is appended to this paper (Erkenntnis, this issue). (shrink)

Hasard et probabilité sont des concepts importants dans l’épistémologie de Poincaré, malgré les difficultés qu’ils introduisent. La notion de hasard est conçue dans un scénario conceptuel où le déterminisme règne encore; la probabilité, à son tour, est toujours basée sur un ensemble de conventions et d’hypothèses qui cherchent à surmonter l’incertitude qui menace la connaissance scientifique. L’article consiste en une approche philosophique qui vise à clarifier ces notions à partir du point de vue de l’épistémologie de Poincaré et de montrer (...) que le hasard trouve sa place dans les constructions théoriques lorsqu’il est instancié par les ressources du calcul des probabilités. (shrink)

In 1887 Helmholtz discussed the foundations of measurement in science as a last contribution to his philosophy of knowledge. This essay borrowed from earlier debates on the foundations of mathematics, on the possibility of quantitative psychology, and on the meaning of temperature measurement. Late nineteenth-century scrutinisers of the foundations of mathematics made little of Helmholtz’s essay. Yet it inspired two mathematicians with an eye on physics, and a few philosopher-physicists. The aim of the present paper is to situate Helmholtz’s contribution (...) in this complex array of nineteenth-century philosophies of number, quantity, and measurement.Author Keywords: Helmholtz; Measurement; Arithmetic; P. Du Bois-Reymond; H. and R. Grassmann; J. von Kries. (shrink)