In a recent paper, Jie Gao (Synthese 194:1901–17, 2017) has argued that there are acceptance-based counterexamples to the knowledge norm for practical reasoning (KPR). KPR tells us that we may only rely on known propositions in practical reasoning, yet there are cases of practical reasoning in which we seem to permissibly rely on merely accepted propositions, which fail to constitute knowledge. In this paper, I will argue that such cases pose no threat to a more broadly conceived knowledge-based view of (...) practical reasoning. I will first motivate the view that rational acceptance depends on a knowledge-based condition being met. I will then show how KPR can be amended—yielding what I call KPR+—to include this condition. I will argue that KPR+ not only avoids Gao’s counterexample, but harbours additional explanatory power by providing an account of the normative role of acceptance in practical reasoning. Finally, I will defend KPR+ against objections by employing theoretical tools that are readily available to those sympathetic to knowledge-based views. (shrink)

Gases reach equilibrium when left to themselves. Why do they behave in this way? The canonical answer to this question, originally proffered by Boltzmann, is that the systems have to be ergodic. This answer has been criticised on different grounds and is now widely regarded as flawed. In this paper we argue that some of the main arguments against Boltzmann's answer, in particular, arguments based on the KAM-theorem and the Markus-Meyer theorem, are beside the point. We then argue that something (...) close to Boltzmann's original proposal is true for gases: gases behave thermodynamic-like if they are epsilon-ergodic, i.e., ergodic on the entire accessible phase space except for a small region of measure epsilon. This answer is promising because there are good reasons to believe that relevant systems in statistical mechanics are epsilon-ergodic. (shrink)

L’ontologie générale constitue un fondement théorique important pour l’analyse, la conception et le développement dans les technologies de l’information. L’ontologie est une branche de la philosophie qui étudie ce qui existe dans la réalité. Une ontologie largement utilisée dans les systèmes d’information, en particulier pour la modélisation conceptuelle, est l’ontologie BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber), fondée sur les idées du philosophe et physicien Mario Bunge, telles que synthétisées par Wand et Weber. Cette ontologie a été élaborée à partir d’une ancienne version de la (...) philosophie de Bunge ; cependant, de nombreuses idées de Bunge ont évolué depuis lors. Une question importante est donc la suivante : les idées les plus récentes exprimées par Bunge appellent-elles une nouvelle ontologie ? Dans cet article, nous analyserons des travaux récents et antérieurs de Bunge afin de répondre à cette question. Nous présentons une nouvelle ontologie basée sur les travaux plus récents de Bunge que nous nommons ontologie systémiste bungéenne (Bunge’s Systemist Ontolgy ; BSO). Nous comparons ensuite BSO aux constructions de BWW. La comparaison révèle à la fois un chevauchement considérable entre BSO et BWW, ainsi que des différences substantielles. À partir de cette comparaison et de l’exposition initiale de BSO, nous proposons des suggestions pour diverses études ontologiques et identifions des questions qui pourraient alimenter un programme de recherche tant en modélisation conceptuelle qu’en technologie de l’information en général. (shrink)

Artikel zur Kriegsphilosophie des Militärtheoretikers Carl von Clausewitz.

Williams’s famous argument against immortality rests on the idea that immortality cannot be desirable, at least for human beings, and his contention has spawned a cottage industry of responses. As I will intend to show, the arguments over his view rest on both a difference of temperament and a difference in the sense of desire being used. The former concerns a difference in whether one takes a forward-looking or a backward-looking perspective on personal identity; the latter a distinction between our (...) normal desire to continue living and the kind of desire implied in desiring immortality. Showing that there is some sense of identity and desire that support Williams’s conclusion goes some way toward providing support for his argument, if not a full-fledged defense of it. (shrink)

Heidegger, like Kierkegaard, has recently been claimed as a narrativist about selves. From this Heideggerian perspective, we can see how narrative expands upon the psychological view, adding a vital teleological dimension to the understanding of selfhood while denying the reductionism implicit in the psychological approach. Yet the narrative approach also inherits the neo-Lockean emphasis on the past as determining identity, whereas the self is fundamentally about the future. Death is crucial on this picture, not as allowing for the possibility of (...) a final meaning to our lives, but as determining Dasein as ‘pure unactualizable possibility.’ Ultimately, therefore, narrative is not what constitutes selfhood – but this does not mean that narrative is not relevant to personal identity, because narrative allows identity to be expressed in action. (shrink)

By the end of his life Plato had rearranged the theory of ideas into his teaching about ideal numbers, but no written records have been left. The Ideal mathematics of Plato is present in all his dialogues. It can be clearly grasped in relation to the effective use of mathematical modelling. Many problems of mathematical modelling were laid in the foundation of the method by cutting the three-level idealism of Plato to the single-level “ideism” of Aristotle. For a long time, (...) the real, ideal numbers of Plato’s Ideal mathematics eliminates many mathematical problems, extends the capabilities of modelling, and improves mathematics. (shrink)

According to J=K, only beliefs that qualify as knowledge are epistemically justified. Traditionalists about justification have objected to this view that it predicts that radically deceived subjects do not have justified beliefs, which they take to be counter-intuitive. In response, proponents of J=K have argued that traditionalists mistake being justified with being excused in the relevant cases. To make this response work, Timothy Williamson has offered a dispositional account of excuse which has recently been challenged by Jessica Brown. She has (...) presented cases in which Williamson’s account excuses subjects believing things in an epistemically reckless fashion. To steer clear of Brown’s counterexamples, I argue for a modification of Williamson’s account that employs a more fine-grained notion of the dispositions involved. (shrink)

Deliberation issues in decision, and so might be taken as a paradigmatic volitional activity. Character, on the other hand, may appear pre-volitional: the dispositions that constitute it provide the background against which decisions are made. Bernard Williams offers an intriguing picture of how the two may be connected via the concept of practical necessities, which are at once constitutive of character and deliverances of deliberation. Necessities are thus the glue binding character and the will, allowing us to take responsibility for (...) our characters. Intriguing though the picture may be, it did not receive a thorough elaboration in Williams’s work. My aim here is to work out and defend what I take to be the most valuable aspect of Williams’s view of agency: its model of the way character and the will can jointly determine agency through mutual constitution. However, I argue that Williams’s attempt to use this model to ground his attack on Kantian morality does not succeed, because the primacy Williams accords to character over the will cannot yield the appropriate kind of normative authority, even from the perspective of the agent. I urge that we retain Williams’s model of the interaction between character and the will, modified to allow the will an authority that is not derived from the necessity of character. (shrink)

Narrative views of agency and identity arise in opposition to reductionism in both domains. While reductionists understand both identity and agency in terms of their components, narrativists respond that life and action are both constituted by narratives, and since the components of a narrative gain their meaning from the whole, life and action not only incorporate their constituent parts but also shape them. I first lay out the difficulties with treating narrative as constitutive of metaphysical identity and turn to its (...) function in practical identity. I then explore the ways narrative shapes our agency—by tapping into our motivational structures, providing an understanding of the social background within which our agency operates, guiding our agency through an understanding of our histories and aspirations, providing the links that structure actions internally, and allowing us to change the meaning of our pasts. I suggest that putting these functions of narrative together may allow us to genuinely shape our past motivational structures through our actions. Finally, if life has the form of a narrative, it may seem as if mortality is necessary for our lives and their contents to be meaningful: a narrative, it might seem, relies on the ending for its meaning. If so, an immortal life would be meaningless. I examine the possibility that even an immortal life may draw meaning from local narratives that constitute projects within such a life, while arguing that, to the contrary, narrative may be a tool exclusively adapted to mortal lives. (shrink)

Samuel Scheffler defends “The Afterlife Conjecture”: the view that the continued existence of humanity after our deaths—“the afterlife”—lies in the background of our valuing; were we to lose confidence in it, many of the projects we engage in would lose their meaning. The Afterlife Conjecture, in his view, also brings out the limits of our egoism, showing that we care more about yet unborn strangers than about personal survival. But why does the afterlife itself matter to us? Examination of Scheffler’s (...) second argument helps answer this question, thereby undermining his argument. Our concern for the afterlife involves bootstrapping: we care more about the afterlife than about personal survival precisely because the latter has such salient limits that our lives are structured by adaptation to mortality, and it is only because the afterlife does provide a measure of personal survival that it can give meaning to our projects. (shrink)

We find meaning and value in our lives by engaging in everyday projects. But, according to a recent argument by Samuel Scheffler, this value doesn’t depend merely on what the projects are about. In many cases, it depends also on the future generations that will replace us. By imagining the imminent extinction of humanity soon after our own deaths, we can recognize both that much of our current valuing depends on a background confidence in the ongoing survival of humanity and (...) that the survival and flourishing of those future generations matters to us. After presenting Scheffler’s argument, I will explore two twentieth century precursors—Hans Morgenthau and Simone de Beauvoir—before returning to Scheffler to see that his argument can not only show us why future generations matter, but it can also give us hope for immortality and a blueprint for embracing a changing future. (shrink)

General ontology is a prominent theoretical foundation for information technology analysis, design, and development. Ontology is a branch of philosophy which studies what exists in reality. A widely used ontology in information systems, especially for conceptual modeling, is the BWW (Bunge–Wand–Weber), which is based on ideas of the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, as synthesized by Wand and Weber. The ontology was founded on an early subset of Bunge’s philosophy; however, many of Bunge’s ideas have evolved since then. (...) An important question, therefore, is: do the more recent ideas expressed by Bunge call for a new ontology? In this paper, we conduct an analysis of Bunge’s earlier and more recent works to address this question. We present a new ontology based on Bunge’s later and broader works, which we refer to as Bunge’s Systemist Ontology (BSO). We then compare BSO to the constructs of BWW. The comparison reveals both considerable overlap between BSO and BWW, as well as substantial differences. From this comparison and the initial exposition of BSO, we provide suggestions for further ontology studies and identify research questions that could provide a fruitful agenda for future scholarship in conceptual modeling and other areas of information technology. (shrink)

Character and the will are rarely discussed together. At most, philosophers working on the one mention the other in an eliminativist vein—if character is represented as something chosen, for example, it can be chalked up to the work of the will; if the will consists merely of a certain arrangement of mental states, it can be seen as little more than a manifestation of character. This mutual neglect appears perfectly justified. If both character and will are determinants of action, to (...) treat them separately would be to overdetermine agency at best, and at worst to fragment it. While defending this reasoning, I argue that things are not so simple, because character and will serve distinct explanatory and normative functions, respectively. The difference in function, however, does not prove that character and will must be ontologically distinct sources of agency; only that our discourse about them must keep them apart. (shrink)

Comment penser la possibilité pour une conscience de faire le mal, de commettre une faute qu’elle sait répréhensible ? Reconnaissant à la fois la longue tradition qui avant lui s’est intéressée à ce problème éternel pour la philosophie et la théologie, Ricœur ressent le besoin de revenir sur cette question en même temps qu’il juge nécessaire de donner à sa démarche phénoménologique un tournant herméneutique. Afin de comprendre ce choix, nous proposons ici une synthèse critique de La symbolique du Mal, (...) second tome du cycle de la Philosophie de la volonté de Ricœur ; y seront exposées les principales composantes de sa démarche ainsi que les grands moments de ses conclusions. Nous espérons par notre travail montrer pourquoi le problème du mal, plus particulièrement l’expérience de la faute, empêche de penser une subjectivité pleine, maîtrisée et transparente à elle-même. Pour cette raison, l’herméneutique semble s’imposer comme démarche pour appréhender le sujet brisé par la faute, et pour comprendre la juste valeur des symboles par lesquels cette expérience a été exprimée. (shrink)

This article looks at the role of Hellenistic thought in the historical narratives of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. To a certain extent, both see—with G. W. F. Hegel, J. G. Droysen, and Eduard Zeller—Hellenistic and Roman philosophy as a “modernity in antiquity,” but with important differences. Heidegger is generally dismissive of Hellenistic thought and comes to see it as a decisive historical turning point at which a protomodern element of subjective willing and domination is injected into the (...) classical heritage of Plato and Aristotle. Arendt, likewise, credits Stoic philosophy with the discovery of the will as an active faculty constituting a realm of subjective freedom and autonomy. While she considers Hellenistic philosophy as essentially apolitical and world-alienated—in contrast to the inherently political and practical Roman culture—it nonetheless holds for her an important but unexploited ethical and political potential. (shrink)

Original title: 「諸鳥会合シテ法世ヲ論ズ」『安藤昌益全集6巻』 [Opera completă a lui Andō Shōeki, vol. 6], Tōkyō: Nōsangyoson Bunka Kyōkai, 1997, 34–87).

Stanisław Lem is mostly known as a sci-fi writer and not widely perceived as a visionary of the cyber age, despite the fact that he foresaw the future of information technology better than most scientific experts. Indeed, his visions of future information-based societies have proved to be remarkably accurate. Lem’s stories fuse together elements of fantasy, philosophy, and science, but what we can really learn from them is the nature of humanity, technology, and philosophy, as well as the (...) values of technological prophecies. Moreover, Lem gave birth to, without naming it as such, the concept of philosophy in technology, which is a perspective on technology and philosophy that explores the deep implicit philosophical foundations of technology and humanity. (shrink)

Boltzmannian statistical mechanics partitions the phase space of a sys- tem into macro-regions, and the largest of these is identified with equilibrium. What justifies this identification? Common answers focus on Boltzmann’s combinatorial argument, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and maxi- mum entropy considerations. We argue that they fail and present a new answer. We characterise equilibrium as the macrostate in which a system spends most of its time and prove a new theorem establishing that equilib- rium thus defined corresponds to the largest (...) macro-region. Our derivation is completely general in that it does not rely on assumptions about a system’s dynamics or internal interactions. (shrink)

Climate change adaptation is largely a local matter, and adaptation planning can benefit from local climate change projections. Such projections are typically generated by accepting climate model outputs in a relatively uncritical way. We argue, based on the IPCC’s treatment of model outputs from the CMIP5 ensemble, that this approach is unwarranted and that subjective expert judgment should play a central role in the provision of local climate change projections intended to support decision-making.

A. A. Long, one of the world's leading writers on ancient philosophy, presents eighteen essays on the philosophers and schools of the Hellenistic and Roman periods--Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics. The discussion ranges over four centuries of innovative and challenging thought in ethics and politics, psychology, epistemology, and cosmology.

The study aims at determining the role and significance of such moral emotions as nobility, gratitude, admiration for the socially significant behavior of a person in society. That involves identifying a close relationship between those emotions and personality’s social behavior and that they can be one of the main incentives for socially significant behavior – theoretical basis. The importance of ethical emotions with positive valence when making decisions with their implementation in society determines the research’s theoretical and methodological basis. Those (...) are studied in the cognitive dimension of human social activity, considering their subjective experience and objectification. The authors determined that ethical emotions with positive valence, pleasant emotions stimulate a person to experience them again and behave socially desirable as such behavior allows reliving those emotions and self-actualizing. Emotions with a positive valence are most desirable for a person and are the essential behavior incentives in society. A person can act actively to achieve them, to experience them repeatedly, which is the basis of motivation for socially desirable and meaningful behavior. From exclusively subjective experiences, those emotions move into objectification, i.e., those motivated to act in conditions of a definite or indefinite social continuum. In due time, these socially crucial actions acquire normative content, sometimes even a form, since they serve as a model for others. Moral emotions with positive valence, empathy, rule-making, high culture, and responsibility to oneself and others form a good way of a person’s self-realization through positive social behavior. Furthermore, moral emotions with positive valence are the most important incentive for such behavior. (shrink)

Whether nature is valuable on its own (intrinsic values) or because of the benefits it provides to humans (instrumental values) has been a long-standing debate. The concept of relational values has been proposed as a solution to this supposed dichotomy, but the empirical validation of its intuitiveness remains limited. We experimentally assessed whether intrinsic/relational values of sentient beings/non-sentient beings/ecosystems better explain people’s sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation for the future. Participants from a representative sample of the population (...) of Singapore (n = 1508) were randomly allocated to two “the last human” scenarios. We found that the best predictor of such a sense of moral duty for future nature conservation is the recognition of the intrinsic values of sentient beings. Our results suggest that the concern for animal welfare may enhance rather than compete with the sense of moral duty towards nature conservation. (shrink)

The debate around the notions of a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge has proven crucial for the development of many fields in philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, metametaphysics etc. We advocate that the recent debate on the two notions is also fruitful for man-made distributed computing systems and for the epistemic analysis thereof. Following a recently proposed modal and fallibilistic account of a priori knowledge, we elaborate the corresponding concept of a priori belief: We propose a rich taxonomy (...) of types of a priori beliefs and their role for the different agents that participate in the system engineering process, which match the existing view exceedingly well and are particularly promising for explaining and dealing with unexpected behaviors in fault-tolerant distributed systems. Developing such a philosophical foundation will provide a sound basis for eventually implementing our ideas in a suitable epistemic reasoning and analysis framework and, hence, constitutes a mandatory first step for developing methods and tools to cope with the various challenges that emerge in such systems. (shrink)

Translated by Bernard Linsky This is the first English translation of Roman Ingarden’s paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Philosophy held in Prague in 1934: “Der Logistische Versuch einer Neugestaltung der Philosophie: Eine Kritische Bemerkung”, translated here as “The Logical Attempt at a New Formulation of Philosophy: A Critical Remark”. Also translated here are brief discussions by Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. These essays were published in the original German in the Proceedings of the Congress (...) in 1936. This statement of Ingarden’s criticisms of the doctrines of the Vienna Circle has been mentioned in print, but his views have not been discussed, or indeed accurately reported to date. (shrink)

This text is a kind of sketch and presents some simple ideas. The aim of this article is to carry out a critical and reflexive analysis of Roman Ingarden's philosophy of responsibility. Being a member of the phenomenological current, Ingarden mainly studied the ontological bases or conditions of responsibility by identifying different situations of responsibility. In this paper situations of responsibility have been analysed in the semantic contexts in which the word "responsibility" appears. Legally, the prescriptive contexts of (...) using the word "responsibility" are particularly important since they are usually either ignored or inadequately separated from descriptive contexts. Roman Ingarden's views were supplemented by Alf Ross's aspects of responsibility. As a result, the elementary ways of understanding responsibility have been reconstructed; they are the basis for reflections on moral responsibility as well as legal responsibility. (shrink)

The existence of a daco-roman Christianity in the carpato-danubiano-pontic areal is confirmed not only by the historians, but also by the Romanian theologians and philosophers. Inspired by the Scripture’s letter and by the teachings of the Holy Fathers, most of them developed this link in the purpose of argumentation of a “Romanian dimension of the existence”. From Nae Ionescu, Crainic, to Vulcănescu, Cioran, Ţuţea, and then Ioan Gh. Savin, Dumitru Stăniloae, I.G. Coman or Nestor Vornicescu, the entire Romanian cultural (...) elite makes a very important confession about the Christian foundation of the Romanian existence. With the help of a theological and spiritual heritage, therefore enforced by daco-roman specific, the work of these illuminated people of our nation determinates “the eternal Romanian icon of understanding the world”, finishing in the end with the confessing of “a Romanian dimension of existence”. In their kind of thinking, these “prophets of Romanian nation” “the skyline of Romanian world lays down from ordinary as far as legend, from here to beyond, from presence to absence, from then till now, from now as far as eternity, with an entire variety of Romanian modulation of nature, like Constantin Noica named them in his Romanian Feeling of Essence. And among these worlds, the passing through comes senseless, in an organic way; through a custom, but custom like place of passing through, not like a forbiddance, personally integrated in the existence like a step, not like threshold. All these words: beyond, absence, eternity are for the Romanian people qualities of his own nature”. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to formulate an Ingardenian conception of the literary work’s aesthetic value. Following Mitscherling’s lead, I attempt to place Ingarden’s aesthetics within his overall phenomenological-ontological project. That is, I argue that Ingarden’s aesthetics can only be properly fathomed in the context of his ontological deliberations, since, as he himself often enunciated, all his philosophical investigations constitute a realist rejoinder to Husserl’s turn toward transcendental idealism. To this end, I bring together insights from his aesthetics and ontology (...) to establish a coherent account of values, where artistic and aesthetic values are analyzed as they manifest themselves in the literary work of art. By attending to the ontology of its aesthetic (and artistic) values, I argue, the literary work’s stratified formation becomes more explicit. Keywords: Roman Ingarden, aesthetic value, artistic value, the literary work of art, ontology, aesthetics. (shrink)

A review of Donald Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. St. Martin's Press, 2019.

This article presents Roman Ingarden’s theory of causation, as developed in volume III of The Controversy about the Existence of the World, and defends analternative which uses some important insights of Ingarden. It rejects Ingarden’s claim that a cause is simultaneous with its effect and that a cause necessitates its effect. It uses Ingarden’s notion of ‘inclinations’ and accepts Ingarden’s claim that an event cannot necessitate a later event.

This is a big book. Literally. Each of its almost 800 pages is 6.75” x 9.75” (rather than the somewhat more usual 5.75” x 8.75” sized page of an academic hardcover book), with words in a small font and short margins all-around. It would appear that the publisher used a number of production tricks to squeeze in as many words as possible. Which is understandable because Politics & Philosophy at Rome contains the collected papers (mostly published, but several unpublished) (...) of Miriam T. Griffin, one of the biggest and most important Anglophone scholars of Roman philosophy, who passed away shortly before the book was completed in 2018. Students of Cicero, Tacitus, and Seneca are especially in debt to her for the rigorous and richly contextualized studies she has produced of their ethical, historical, and political works. And all students of ancient Rome are in debt for the republication of fifty of her papers, which range over three areas (and are organized into three subsections in the book). The first part of the book includes ten papers on Roman history (in both the republican and imperial periods). The second part of the book includes seven published papers, five unpublished lectures, and three “occasional pieces” on Roman historiography (especially in the case of Tacitus). A third and final section of the book includes 25 papers on Roman politics and philosophy (which includes almost 400 pages of material). (shrink)

Many of the philosophical treatises which Cicero wrote in the last years of his life quote, discuss, and debate the various doctrines and philosophical systems of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Although Cicero sometimes represents himself as only translating or reproducing Greek ideas for a Latin or Roman audience, his actual philosophical practice is much more subtle and varies from treatise to treatise. In some treatises, such as On the Nature of the Gods or Tusculan Disputations, Cicero incorporates (...) the views of the Hellenistic schools into a philosophical presentation oriented by the methodology of the New Academy, which sought to call into question the dogmas of those schools. In other treatises, such as On Duty, Cicero philosophizes in light of Hellenistic views, but he does so critically and discriminately, arriving at a novel philosophical position which is responsive to the intellectual predicaments occasioned by the collapse of the Roman Republic. (shrink)

This is a study of Roman adaptations of Stoic doctrine that seeks to portray a model of the self functioning as a mediator between philosophical and traditional values (1). The author’s aim is ‘to let the Roman Stoics’ self arise out of a comprehensive analysis of their extant philosophical work and to conduct that analysis from the vantage point of the specific question of social embeddedness. Such an approach yields a Stoic self that is constituted by the encounter (...) between challenges and normative expectations’ (2). Overall, this aim is met. The Roman Stoics referred to are Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and to a lesser extent Hierocles, who ‘all had to come to terms with the sociopolitical challenges of imperial Rome’ (3). The tame thesis advanced is that the doctrine of these Roman Stoics ‘shows a distinctive pattern of emphasizing social responsibility’ (3). This social responsibility includes commitments to the political community, marriage, and parenthood. (shrink)

The article deals with the question of the “globalization” project of the Roman civilization. Author asserts that the Romans had a specific “globalization” project. The construct “Iovem imperium” can explain the phenomenon of the Roman self-government and “sacred claim” of Roman community to domination in other lands. Pax Romana was conceived as an expression of Roman power (imperium), the boundaries of the Roman Republic were perceived as the border of the civilized world. Augustus was a (...) brilliant manager, who could implement the Roman idea (an essential element of which was “Iovem imperium”) in the best way and create an almost perfect model of “globalization” in the ancient world. Forms of government were subordinated to the general concept of the Roman idea, and when to implement it in the new historical conditions required concentration of the supreme power in the same hands, the Romans willingly agreed to this, seeing in a World Empire highest embodiment of the republic as a “common cause” of its citizens. (shrink)

Cicero’s "Academica" offers a particularly rich demonstration of how the unhappy dialectic between stoicism and skepticism engages Roman historical self-consciousness. The Hegelian thesis of philosophy as mediated through historical development is given a clear articulation in the “derivative” Romans, precisely through their reception of a tradition, their experience of philosophy as inseparable from the self-consciousness of historical relation. The dispute happening in the "Academica" between a dogmatic stoicism and academic skepticism thus directly echoes the problems of contemporary (...) 21st century philosophy insofar as the structures of the unhappy consciousness endure in the “academic” give and take between the authority of received doctrine (say, of mainstream post-classical analytic philosophy) and their subversion in skeptical critique. (shrink)

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. This new scientific understanding of the nature of our universe largely comports with Catholic doctrine. The new philosophy (...) of superdeterminism supports Catholic doctrines, such as original sin, the Trinity, the divine attributes of God, the incarnation, the resurrection of Jesus, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, the existence of an afterlife in Heaven, Hell or Purgatory, miracles and spiritual experiences. The philosophy of superdeterminism supports Catholicism albeit under a new scientific way of thinking about our universe as a predetermined static block reality without cause and effect in physics. (shrink)

In ancient philosophy, there is no discipline called “logic” in the contemporary sense of “the study of formally valid arguments.” Rather, once a subfield of philosophy comes to be called “logic,” namely in Hellenistic philosophy, the field includes (among other things) epistemology, normative epistemology, philosophy of language, the theory of truth, and what we call logic today. This entry aims to examine ancient theorizing that makes contact with the contemporary conception. Thus, we will here emphasize the (...) theories of the “syllogism” in the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions. However, because the context in which these theories were developed and discussed were deeply epistemological in nature, we will also include references to the areas of epistemological theorizing that bear directly on theories of the syllogism, particularly concerning “demonstration.” Similarly, we will include literature that discusses the principles governing logic and the components that make up arguments, which are topics that might now fall under the headings of philosophy of logic or non-classical logic. This includes discussions of problems and paradoxes that connect to contemporary logic and which historically spurred developments of logical method. For example, there is great interest among ancient philosophers in the question of whether all statements have truth-values. Relevant themes here include future contingents, paradoxes of vagueness, and semantic paradoxes like the liar. We also include discussion of the paradoxes of the infinite for similar reasons, since solutions have introduced sophisticated tools of logical analysis and there are a range of related, modern philosophical concerns about the application of some logical principles in infinite domains. Our criterion excludes, however, many of the themes that Hellenistic philosophers consider part of logic, in particular, it excludes epistemology and metaphysical questions about truth. Ancient philosophers do not write treatises “On Logic,” where the topic would be what today counts as logic. Instead, arguments and theories that count as “logic” by our criterion are found in a wide range of texts. For the most part, our entry follows chronology, tracing ancient logic from its beginnings to Late Antiquity. However, some themes are discussed in several eras of ancient logic; ancient logicians engage closely with each other’s views. Accordingly, relevant publications address several authors and periods in conjunction. These contributions are listed in three thematic sections at the end of our entry. (shrink)

Review of Dowek, Gilles, Computation, Proof, Machine, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015. Translation of Les Métamorphoses du calcul, Le Pommier, Paris, 2007. Translation from the French by Pierre Guillot and Marion Roman.

L’étude proposée ici se déroulera en trois moments. Il s’agit, dans un premier temps, de revenir sur la manière dont la question du rapport entre vérité et fiction est posée dans le Traité des sensations de Condillac. Il faut rappeler la justification du recours à la fiction d’une statue gagnant un sens à la fois dans le cadre d’une analyse portant sur l’origine des idées, c’est-à-dire du recours à l’imagination dans le contexte d’une enquête métaphysique ressortissant à la raison. Dans (...) un second temps, il faut se pencher sur ce qu’on peut appeler la fonction du romanesque dans le dispositif global de la fiction condillacienne, c’est-à-dire, non pas seulement ce qui revient au fictionnel, mais en propre à un art narratif visant des séquences événementielles singulières. Enfin, on terminera par quelques remarques sur ce qui est très souvent négligé dans les études portant sur ce texte – du moins en philosophie, et qui ne manque pourtant pas d’être curieux, à savoir, justement, son inscription dans le registre des Mémoires ou des pseudo-Mémoires. (shrink)

The Roman years of Tommaso Campanella were made possible by the protection and patronage of the pope Urbano VIII Barberini. Campanella composed from 1627 to 1631 three series of lengthy Commentaria on the Poemata, the book of Barberini’s Latin poems. What are the Commentaria? This complex, full-length bunch of manuscripts is often dismissed as pure flattery or as another strange, slightly delirious fruit of the exalted mind of the prophet-monk. We think instead that the Commentaria were seen by Campanella (...) as a new start for his philosophical system, furthermore shedding on it a new light: the light of a system, and the reassuring clarity of a pedagogy. Moreover, with the “Collegio Barberino” project, strongly tied to the Commentaria, Campanella tries to lay the foundations of a new educational system fitted for the new Rome and the cultural needs of the 17th-century élite. (shrink)

A polemical account of Australian philosophy up to 2003, emphasising its unique aspects (such as commitment to realism) and the connections between philosophers' views and their lives. Topics include early idealism, the dominance of John Anderson in Sydney, the Orr case, Catholic scholasticism, Melbourne Wittgensteinianism, philosophy of science, the Sydney disturbances of the 1970s, Francofeminism, environmental philosophy, the philosophy of law and Mabo, ethics and Peter Singer. Realist theories especially praised are David Armstrong's on universals, David (...) Stove's on logical probability and the ethical realism of Rai Gaita and Catholic philosophers. In addition to strict philosophy, the book treats non-religious moral traditions to train virtue, such as Freemasonry, civics education and the Greek and Roman classics. (shrink)

2013 sees the centenary of Jaspers' foundation of psychopathology as a science in its own right. The general sense of the General Psychopathology and its specific contribution are discussed. In particular, the lecture focuses on three major contributions: the methodological import (Jaspers perspectivism), the importance to study subjective experiences scientifically (Jaspers' phenomenology), and the concept of understanding. Three psychiatrists with partly different theoretical background discuss with the members of the Roman Circle of Psychopathology questions like: the specific historical and (...) theoretical features of early Twentieth Century culture, science and psychiatry in Germany; Jaspers' relationship with other great thinkers of his time (Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Kretschmer); the reception of the General Psychopathology in different countries; and the importance and limitations of Jaspers' approach for nowadays psychopathology. (shrink)

Historical evidence shows that mental symptoms were constructed in a particular historical and cultural context (19th Century alienism). According to the Cambridge model of symptom-formation, mental symptoms are mental acts whereby sufferers configure, by means of cultural templates, information invading their awareness. This information, which can be of biological or semantic origin, is pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic and to be understood and communicated requires formatting and linguistic collocation. Mental symptoms are hybrid objects, that is, blends of inchoate biological or symbolic signals (...) and cultural configurators. "Culture" plays a very deep role in symptom-formation because templates can attenuate or abolish the specificity of the biological signals involved. This means that signals from different brain sites can be configured as the same symptom and signals from the same site as different symptoms. Although always present, the neurobiological substratum is not fundamental in the understanding and management of mental symptoms. These can only be comprehended in relation to the manner of their construction and the cognitive and emotional biographies of each patient. Direct interference with the brain sites involved may dull mental symptoms but is unlikely to offer long-term cure. If the configuratory style and needs of the patient are not understood and dealt with, he is likely to keep re-constituting or replicating his symptoms in relation to other biological signals. In summary, mental symptoms are not passive happenings but genuine mental acts. Hence, the manner and motivation of their construction may be more important than the signal of brain distress that might have provoked them in the first place. (shrink)

Abstract The paper reconstructs the reception of Descartes's work by the Scottish Enlighteners, from Colin MacLaurin to Dugald Stewart. The Scots' image of Descartes was a byproduct of a scientific controversy; philosophical arguments were brought into the picture more as asides than as a primary focus of interest. As soon as the Cartesian physics withered away as a real alternative to Newtonian physics, only the philosophical arguments were left, with no memory of the context out of which they originated, and (...) the focus of the discussion shifts from physics to the philosophy of mind and the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper explores the characteristics of debilitating versus beneficial intersubjective engagements, by discussing the role of sin in the relational constitution of the self in Paul’s letter to the romans. Paul narrates ”sin’ as both a destructive holding environment and an interpersonal agent in a lethal embrace with human beings. The system of self-in-relation-to-sin is transactional, competitive, unidirectional, and domineering, operating implicitly within an economy of lack. Conversely, Paul’s account in romans of the divine action that moves persons into a (...) new identity of self-in-relationship demonstrates genuinely second-personal qualities: it is loving, non-transactional, non- competitive, mutual, and constitutive of personal agency. (shrink)

Text offered to the general public to initiate a broad discussion on the topic of death during the second session of the 1st Cycle of Meetings "2B2P — Beiras Brewing Philosophy in the pub" (2023/08/06 - 2023/08/20), organized by the União das Freguesias de Covas e Vila Nova de Oliveirinha, the restaurant Cork & Fork, and the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and Rabdoud University's Foundation for Studies in (...) World Christianity and Interreligious Relations. Universidade de Coimbra Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, Portugal. (shrink)