Among Dunn’s many important contributions to relevance logic was his work on the system RM (R-mingle). Although RM is an interesting system in its own right, it is widely considered to be too strong. In this chapter, I revisit a closely related system, RM0 (sometimes known as ‘constructive mingle’), which includes the mingle axiom while not degenerating in the way that RM itself does. My main interest will be in examining this logic from two related semantical perspectives. (...) First, I give a purely operational bisemilattice semantics for it by adapting previous work of Humberstone. Second, I examine a more conventional algebraic semantics for it and discuss how this relates to the operational semantics. A novel operational semantics for J (intuitionistic logic) as well as its conventional Heyting algebraic semantics emerge as special cases of the corresponding semantics for RM0. The results of this chapter suggest that RM0 is a more interesting logic than has been appreciated and that Humberstone’s operational semantic framework similarly deserves more attention than it has received. (shrink)

In A Confession, a memoir of his philosophical midlife crisis, Tolstoy recounts falling into despair after coming to believe that his life, and for that matter all human life, is meaningless and absurd. Although Tolstoy's account of the origin and phenomenology of his crisis is widely regarded as illuminating, his response to the crisis, namely, embracing a religious tradition that he had previously dismissed as “irrational,” “incomprehensible,” and “mingled with falsehood” seems unpromising, at best. Nevertheless, I argue, Tolstoy's account of (...) his response makes a valuable contribution to contemporary thought about the meaning and absurdity of life. I begin by drawing on classic discussions in the philosophical literature, and on Tolstoy's memoir, in order to characterize the problem of meaning and the problem of the absurd, and to clarify the relation between these problems. I then draw on Tolstoy's account of his response to his crisis in order to characterize a form of faith in our deepest values. I argue that such faith supplies one important part of the story concerning how we might respond to the problem of the absurd — a part that has been overlooked by more recent discussions of these issues. (shrink)

Fine (2017a) sets out a theory of content based on truthmaker semantics which distinguishes two kinds of consequence between contents. There is entailment, corresponding to the relationship between disjunct and disjunction, and there is containment, corresponding to the relationship between conjunctions and their conjuncts. Fine associates these with two notions of parthood: disjunctive and conjunctive. Conjunctive parthood is a very useful notion, allowing us to analyse partial content and partial truth. In this chapter, I extend the notion of disjunctive parthood (...) in terms of a structural relation of refinement, which stands to disjunctive parthood much as mereological parthood stands to conjunctive parthood. Philosophically, this relation may be modelled on the determinable- determinate relation, or on a fact-to-fact notion of grounding. I discuss its connection to two other Finean notions: vagueness (understood via precisification) and arbitrary objects. I then investigate what a logic of truthmaking with refinement might look like. I argue that (i) parthood naturally gives rise to a relevant conditional; (ii) refinement underlies a relevant notion of disjunction; and so (iii) truthmaker semantics with refinement is a natural home for relevant logic. The resulting formal models draw on Fine’s (1974) semantics for relevant logics. Finally, I use this understanding of relevant semantics to investigate the status of the mingle axiom. (shrink)

The system R, or more precisely the pure implicational fragment R›, is considered by the relevance logicians as the most important. The another central system of relevance logic has been the logic E of entailment that was supposed to capture strict relevant implication. The next system of relevance logic is RM or R-mingle. The question is whether adding mingle axiom to R› yields the pure implicational fragment RM› of the system? As concerns the weak systems there are at (...) least two approaches to the problem. First of all, it is possible to restrict a validity of some theorems. In another approach we can investigate even weaker logics which have no theorems and are characterized only by rules of deducibility. (shrink)

‘Eruv’ is a Hebrew word meaning literally ‘mixture’ or ‘mingling’. An eruv is an urban region demarcated within a larger urban region by means of a boundary made up of telephone wires or similar markers. Through the creation of the eruv, the smaller region is turned symbolically (halachically = according to Jewish law) into a private domain. So long as they remain within the boundaries of the eruv, Orthodox Jews may engage in activities that would otherwise be prohibited on the (...) Sabbath, such as pushing prams or wheelchairs, or carrying walking sticks. There are eruvim in many towns and university campuses throughout the world. There are five eruvim in Chicago, five in Brooklyn, twenty three in Queens and Long Island, and at least three in Manhattan. The US Supreme Court is (like most other major US Federal Government buildings) located within the eruv of Washington DC. In many cases, not all of those living within or near the area of an actual or proposed eruv will themselves be Orthodox Jews, and this has sometimes led to protests against eruv creation. It is such protests which triggered the writing of this essay. (shrink)

We emerge into everythingness. The senses mingle incestuously. Nothing is distinct or differentiated. Everything is no-thing. How is it we come to be as distinct entities? Let me personalize: In what manner did I become an "I"? Is the motive force behind this much-maligned, much-altered, much-abused body my soul? my genes? me?

Throughout Alexandre Herculano’s historical oeuvre claims of impartiality are mingled with the partiality of the beliefs, ideals, and interests that give shape to the author’s point of view. One can trace in it both the commitment to the disinterested search for truth and the pragmatic intention to remodel the relations of Portuguese society with its past and with the effects of this past on the present. This text revisits Herculano’s major historical writings with the aim of understanding how it is (...) possible for historical texts to be or claim to be at the same time true and useful, objective and engaged, impartial and partial. I intend to show that those oppositions not necessarily entail paralyzing contradictions, and that good historians such as Herculano are usually capable of drawing from them a great amount of intellectual energy. Focusing on the tension between impartiality and partiality, and supported by close readings and contextual analyses, I will try to demonstrate that such tension configures itself in at least two different modes, which in turn depend on the positive or negative significance the studied past turns out to have for the person who studies it. (shrink)

This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by Jean-Luc Marion. It compares the dynamics of time in the former with the those of wine in the latter. Emphasis is given to lngarden's insinuation of time as fluid, liquid, or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption of (...) semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time. (shrink)

Interpretations of Peirce’s development after 1898 often mix three kinds of arguments: one argument about belief, one argument about philosophy and practice, and one argument about the causal role of James’s writings on Peirce’s development. I shall focus here on the last two points: theory and practice and the alleged role of James. James’s role in Peirce’s development is somewhat overestimated and one can doubt Peirce’s worries about the dogmatic use of the scientific method and of philosophy in morals are (...) conditioned by James’s writings only. Peirce’s re-readings and refinements of his Illustrations started no later than the early 1880s, at a time when James was not as central a reference as it became after 1900 for the philosophic stage. To support that claim, I wish to focus here on one particular point: the distrust towards those who try to “mingle” philosophy and practice is by no means a new theme in the 1890s. One of the most telling examples of such a claim is the 1885 review of Royce’s The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, some thirteen years before the quarrel over pragmatism started. (shrink)

Born in 1315, Shamseddin Mohammad, known as Hafiz, grew up in the city of Shiraz where he studied the Qur’anic sciences. In his youth he learned the Quran rigorously and assumed the epithet ‘Hafiz’ which means the one who knows the Quran by heart. Also known as the ‘Tongue of the Hidden’ and the ‘Interpreter of Secrets’, Hafiz utilizes grand religious ideas and mingles them with Sufistic teachings, thereby creating a kind of poetry which baffles interpretation. The poetry of Hafiz (...) has intoxicated and continues to intoxicate many in the world. The exhilarating effect of his poetry was also known to the poet himself. In one of his poems, he says that the angels are memorizing his poems in heaven and that Venus is enraptured and that Christ rjoices in his songs: “What marvel that in heaven are sung/ The dulcet words by HAFIZ strung?/Or that, by Venus’s air entranced,/Messiah in his sphere has danced?” As Friedrich Nietzsche has said of Hafiz: “Bist aller Trunkenen Trunkenheit/ wozu, wozu dir-Wein? (the intoxication of all intoication you are/what need do you have to ask for wine?)”. (shrink)

Theology used to be the discipline that arbitrated and ‘said’ the truth. Some argued that its methodical engagement had to make it a search-driven experimentation with an inductive outlook intended at tracking truth through practice and praise, in short conversion. The empirico-formal sciences have sought canonical norms of knowledge away from any regimentation. Neopositivism had for a time entertained a fact-derived language and, as such, it banned metaphor as mingling problems by perpetuating the belief in entirely theoretical knowledge-terms. Here we (...) aim at putting together an examination of some of the reasons why a pluralistic epistemology has come to be adopted, and an attempt at finding pluralistic responses to that very idea through interdisciplinary comparison. This is the editors' (M. Fuller & A. Runehov) introduction: Philippe Gagnon asks the interesting question: Does pluralism itself need to be plural? He argues that neo-positivism has for some time now focused on using a fact-derived language, banning metaphoricity. He explores the reasons pluralistic epistemology came to be adopted, and leads us through some important philosophical problems and how they were tackled by different philosophers and in various times. Such philosophical problems or questions concern theories, truth and knowledge. If a theory is considered to be the best one, on which criteria is this judgement made? Might it be better to have several theories that are ex æquo? Gagnon argues that even though ‘pluralism’ is a better term compared to ‘the many’, it does not entirely escape relativism. Hence, he proposes to use ‘plurality’ instead, which does not threaten the unity of truth. After this philosophical exploration, he turns to theology, specifically Trinitarian theology, to implement his findings there. (shrink)

The polis, as a gathering of various citizens, may be threatened by discord and finally may collapse because of the stasis, the internal conflict between different groups of people with diverging interests. This scheme is tackled by Plato in Gorgias, and more thoroughly in the Republic. Both dialogues were a source of inspiration for the pseudo-Pythagorean writings which flourished between the second half of the 4th century B.C. and the Hellenistic period. Among them, the treaties attributed to Kleinias, Metopus, Theages, (...) Lysis and Hippodamus frequently use the concept of stasis and pleonexia to describe how a city may be governed and what kind of danger may appear if the citizens’ behavior is not controlled. In general, these treaties adapt the vision of Plato concerning conflict to some Pythagorean images and teachings. By mingling both influences, they blur the frontier between Platonism and Pythagoreanism and create a genre of intertwined literature which may be qualified as bricolage, according to Lévi-Strauss’s concept. These philosophical texts use a range of material mostly traced back to the Hellenistic period, but also some fragments related to the conception of conflicts and violence in early Pythagoreanism. (shrink)

Bios Philosophos. Philosophy in Ancient Greek Biography (Brepols, 2016), organized by Mauro Bonazzi and Stefan Schorn, delivers deep and wide tours through the philosophical aspects of Greek biographical production. On the one hand, it does not concentrate only on the later periods of Greek philosophy, when biographical production abounded; instead, it goes all the way back to the fourth century BCE, when biographical texts were fragmentary and mingled with other styles. On the other, it tries to unveil the philosophical motives (...) in authors' works who tend to be disregarded as historians, biographers, hagiographers, or even as mere fans of the most prominent figures of their own schools. -/- In our review, we will attempt to give a brief account of the ten articles that make up this volume, which, in turn, will hopefully provide an overview of the different connections between the biographies and biographers and their philosophical motives. (shrink)