In this paper we develop a theory of Bosbach and Riečan states on non-trivial Hilbert algebras.

Research on interdisciplinarity has been concentrated on the methodological and educational aspects of this complex phenomenon and less on its theoretical nature. Within a theoretical framework specific to the philosophy of science, I propose a structural scheme of how interdisciplinary processes go, focusing on the concepts of availability of the methods, concept linking, and theoretical modeling. In this model, the challenges interdisciplinarity is claimed to pose to its practitioners are of the same nature as the challenges scientists encounter within the (...) evolution of their own disciplines. (shrink)

Research on epistemic circularity has focused more on the problem of whether circular arguments are able to justify their conclusions rather than on the nature of circularity itself, and has kept a sharp delimitation from other types of circularities (logical, linguistic, and of definition). In this paper, I aim to move the focus toward the general concept of circularity, which I relate to the concept of ‘epistemic worry’. Through a brief overview on the known types of circularities, I show that (...) circularity has multiple natures (not only that associated with its type), and the linguistic aspect is essential in qualifying a construct as circular, which in turn raises the problem of genuineness of a circularity. Within an extensional approach, I suggest generalizing the meaning of the key epistemological terms referred to in the classical definition of epistemic circularity to also cover additional associated concepts specific to other theoretical disciplines beyond epistemology. The proposed concepts and ideas are reflected in a structural unificatory account of circularity in terms of epistemic determination, which raises a challenge to the relational accounts of determination in regard to the transitivity of the determination relation. (shrink)

In archaic societies myths were believed to tell true stories - stories about the ultimate origin of reality. For us, on the contrary, the term 'myth' denotes a false belief. Between the archaic notion of myth and ours stands Plato's. This volume is a collection of ten studies by eminent scholars that focus on the ways in which some of Plato's most famous myths are interwoven with his philosophy. The myths discussed include the eschatological myths of the Gorgias, the Phaedo, (...) the Republic and Laws 10, the central myths of the Phaedrus and the Statesman, and the so-called myth of the Noble Lie from the Republic. The mythical character of the Timaeus cosmology is also amply discussed. The volume also contains seventeen rare Renaissance illustrations of Platonic myths. The contributors argue that in Plato myth and philosophy are tightly bound together, despite Plato's occasional claim that they are opposed modes of discourse. (shrink)

Attempts at solving what has been labeled as Eugene Wigner’s puzzle of applicability of mathematics are still far from arriving at an acceptable solution. The accounts developed to explain the “miracle” of applied mathematics vary in nature, foundation, and solution, from denying the existence of a genuine problem to designing structural theories based on mathematical formalism. Despite this variation, all investigations treated the problem in a unitary way with respect to the target, pointing to one or two ‘why’ or ‘how’ (...) questions to be answered. In this paper, I argue that two analyses, a semantic analysis ab initio and a metatheoretical analysis starting from the types of unreasonableness involved in this problem, will establish the interdisciplinary character of the problem and reveal many more targets, which may be addressed with different methodologies. In order to address objectively the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics, a foundational revision of the problem is needed. (shrink)

Attempts at solving what has been labeled as Eugene Wigner’s puzzle of applicability of mathematics are still far from arriving at an acceptable solution. The accounts developed to explain the “miracle” of applied mathematics vary in nature, foundation, and solution, from denying the existence of a genuine problem to designing structural theories based on mathematical formalism. Despite this variation, all investigations treated the problem in a unitary way with respect to the target, pointing to one or two ‘why’ or ‘how’ (...) questions to be answered. In this paper, I argue that two analyses, a semantic analysis ab initio and a metatheoretical analysis starting from the types of unreasonableness involved in this problem, will establish the interdisciplinary character of the problem and reveal many more targets, which may be addressed with different methodologies. In order to address objectively the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics, a foundational revision of the problem is needed. (shrink)

Attempts at solving what has been labeled as Eugene Wigner’s puzzle of applicability of mathematics are still far from arriving at an acceptable solution. The accounts developed to explain the “miracle” of applied mathematics vary in nature, foundation, and solution, from denying the existence of a genuine problem to designing structural theories based on mathematical formalism. Despite this variation, all investigations treated the problem in a unitary way with respect to the target, pointing to one or two ‘why’ or ‘how’ (...) questions to be answered. In this paper, I argue that two analyses, a semantic analysis ab initio and a metatheoretical analysis starting from the types of unreasonableness involved in this problem, will establish the interdisciplinary character of the problem and reveal many more targets, which may be addressed with different methodologies. In order to address objectively the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics, a foundational revision of the problem is needed. (shrink)

The author proposes in this practical guide for both problem and non-problem gamblers a new pragmatic, conceptual approach of gambling mathematics. The primary aim of this guide is the adequate understanding of the essence and complexity of gambling through its mathematical dimension. The author starts from the premise that formal gambling mathematics, which is hardly even digestible for the non-math-inclined gamblers, is ineffective alone in correcting the specific cognitive distortions associated with gambling. By applying the latest research results in this (...) field, the author blends the gambling-mathematics concepts with the epistemology of applied mathematics and cognitive psychology for providing gamblers the knowledge required for rational and safe gambling. (shrink)

At the beginning of Book 9 of the Politeia (571cd), Platon suggests that all people bear in themselves unlawful desires like the desire to have sex with their own mother or with any other human, god, or beast, the desire to murder anyone, or the desire to eat anything. Modern scholars take it for granted that by the desire to eat anything, Platon means cannibalism. This view is based on the fact that Platon discusses unlawful desires in connection with the (...) tyrannical man and that the tyrant is, elsewhere in the Politeia, twice connected with anthropophagy (at 8.565d–566a and 10.619c). This paper challenges this communis opinio and argues that we have no reason to assume that at Politeia 9.571d Platon claims that every one of us has the hidden desire to consume human flesh. Also, the alleged cannibalism of the Platonic tyrant is questioned. A close reading of the passages 8.565d–566a and 10.619c reveals that in the depiction of the tyrant Platon makes use of mythological motifs and literary topoi but never literally claims that the tyrant has cannibalistic desires. (shrink)

The article starts off with some meditations on the question of the much-debated “non-translatibility of German philosophy”, which, in the particular case of Martin Heidegger, proves to be even more acute. Nevertheless, the conclusion of these thoughts is that, on the contrary, a translation of a philosophical text is meant finally not only to mediate between two languages, but also to be for itself a necessary step in a more profound understanding of an original text. Following this logic, the article (...) presents in details the decisions taken by the Romanian translators in rendering the concept most difficult to translate from Being and Time: Bewandtnis. (shrink)

For Martin Heidegger the "fall" of philosophy into metaphysics begins with Plato. Thus, the relationship between the two philosophers is crucial to an understanding of Heidegger--and, perhaps, even to the whole plausibility of postmodern critiques of metaphysics. It is also, as the essays in this volume attest, highly complex, and possibly founded on a questionable understanding of Plato. As editors Catalin Partenie and Tom Rockmore remark, a simple way to describe Heidegger's reading of Plato might be to say that what (...) began as an attempt to appropriate Plato (and through him a large portion of Western philosophy) finally ended in an estrangement from both Plato and Western philosophy. The authors of this volume consider Heidegger's thought in relation to Plato before and after the " Kehre " or turn. In doing so, they take up various central issues in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) and thereafter, and the questions of hermeneutics, truth, and language. The result is a subtle and multifaceted reinterpretation of Heidegger's position in the tradition of philosophy, and of Plato's role in determining that position. (shrink)

The article starts off with some meditations on the question of the much-debated “non-translatibility of German philosophy”, which, in the particular case of Martin Heidegger, proves to be even more acute. Nevertheless, the conclusion of these thoughts is that, on the contrary, a translation of a philosophical text is meant finally not only to mediate between two languages, but also to be for itself a necessary step in a more profound understanding of an original text. Following this logic, the article (...) presents in details the decisions taken by the Romanian translators in rendering the concept most difficult to translate from Being and Time: Bewandtnis. (shrink)

Games of chance are developed in their physical consumer-ready form on the basis of mathematical models, which stand as the premises of their existence and represent their physical processes. There is a prevalence of statistical and probabilistic models in the interest of all parties involved in the study of gambling – researchers, game producers and operators, and players – while functional models are of interest more to math-inclined players than problem-gambling researchers. In this paper I present a structural analysis of (...) the knowledge attached to mathematical models of games of chance and the act of modeling, arguing that such knowledge holds potential in the prevention and cognitive treatment of excessive gambling, and I propose further research in this direction. (shrink)

The article addresses the necessity of increasing the role of mathematics in the psychological intervention in problem gambling, including cognitive therapies. It also calls for interdisciplinary research with the direct contribution of mathematics. The current contributions and limitations of the role of mathematics are analysed with an eye toward the professional profiles of the researchers. An enhanced collaboration between these two disciplines is suggested and predicted.

Dragomir was not interested in writing philosophy, although his archive amounts to almost 100 notebooks, containing fragments, notes, essays and studies. This essay addresses Dragomir’s disregard for written philosophy and argues that his main message will lose its force in his posthumously published archive. His message, as it emerges from the way he lived his life, is, I argue, this: if we are to restore the lost harmony of our lives, philosophy, as essential as it may be, isn’t everything.

Annotation Based on the research he undertook in rare book collections housed in Scotland, the United States, Finland, Iceland, Holland, Germany and Austria, the author presents a systematic history of cannabalism as reflected in the mirror of philosophy.

Book Reviews Catalin Partenie, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, FirstView Article.

In light of the observations and research design presented in the previous reports, the current technical report is focused on the relationship between the quality and specificity of the content of the gambling sites and the site’s SEO and marketing policy. This relationship is dependent upon the category of the gambling site and the difference in content quality, and the degree to which the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in this content is explained by this dependence.

Slot machines gained a high popularity despite a specific element that could limit their appeal: non-transparency with respect to mathematical parameters. The PAR sheets, exposing the parameters of the design of slot machines and probabilities associated with the winning combinations are kept secret by game producers, and the lack of data regarding the configuration of a machine prevents people from computing probabilities and other mathematical indicators. In this article, I argue that there is no rational justification for this secrecy by (...) giving two reasons, one psychological and the other mathematical. For the latter, I show that mathematics provides us with some statistical methods of retrieving the missing data, which are essential for the numerical probability computations in slots. The slots case raises the problem of the exposure of the parametric configuration and mathematical facts of any game of chance as an ethical obligation. (shrink)

The current technical report presents the partial results of the quantitative analysis of the research project, after the review of 247 gambling websites. It is focused on and discusses the usage of the math terms specific to gambling in the reviewed sample. In particular, the fifth technical report discusses the usage of math terms associated with the game of slots, as found in the reviewed sample.

Dragomir was not interested in writing philosophy, although his archive amounts to almost 100 notebooks, containing fragments, notes, essays and studies. This essay addresses Dragomir’s disregard for written philosophy and argues that his main message will lose its force in his posthumously published archive. His message, as it emerges from the way he lived his life, is, I argue, this: if we are to restore the lost harmony of our lives, philosophy, as essential as it may be, isn’t everything.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato and the PoetsCatalin ParteniePierre Destrée and Fritz-Gregor Herrmann, editors. Plato and the Poets. Mnemosyne Supplements: Monographs on Greek and Latin Language and Literature, 328. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. xxii + 434. Cloth, $217.00.This beautifully produced volume is a collection of nineteen essays, half of them being initially presented as papers given at a 2006 conference in Louvain. Seven chapters focus on the Republic and address a variety (...) of issues: the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry (Glenn W. Most); Plato’s criticism of poetry and his negative attitude toward women (Penelope Murray); mimêsis as appearance-making (Gabriel Richardson); the meaning of mimêsis (Jera Marušič); Plato’s criticism and appreciation of poetry (Stephen Halliwell); thumos and the criticism of poetry (Pierre Destrée); painting, poetry, and the cognitive division of the soul (Rachel Singpurwalla). One chapter deals with myth, invented story, and true account in the Timaeus (Gretchen Reydams-Schils). Two are devoted to the Laws—mimetic correctness and choric poetry (Antony Hatzistavrou), and tragedy and philosophy (Susan Sauvé Meyer). The remaining nine chapters deal with other dialogues, although they are often discussed in connection with the Republic; the topics they discuss include: theia moira, enthousiasmos, and mimêsis in Gorgias (Fritz-Gregor Herrmann); divine possession, inspiration, and mimêsis in Ion and Republic (with references to Plato’s entire corpus, Catherine Collobert); the poet and the rhapsode as hermêneus in Ion (Carlotta Capuccino); the poet, the mad lover, and the mad philosopher as the true interpreter in Ion and Phaedrus (Francisco Gonzalez); inspiration and Plato’s psychology in Ion, Phaedrus, Politicus, Philebus, Timaeus (Stefan Büttner); theia moira in Ion and Meno, and the poets’ incomplete ascension in Symposium (Dominic Scott); Plato’s use of poetry and poets in Symposium (Elizabeth Bel-fiore); poetry and image-making in Republic and Sophist (Noburu Notomi); and poetry, the tripartition of the soul and the Form of Beauty in Phaedrus (Elizabeth Pender).As Stephen Halliwell put it in his essay, there is the seemingly Platonic attitude “which criticizes, censors and even ‘banishes’ poets, and which speaks in terms of unmasking the false pretensions and the damaging influence of poetry. But there is also the Platonic stance which never ceases to allow the voices of poetry to be heard in Plato’s own writing, which presupposes not only extensive knowledge but also ‘love’ of poetry on the part of Plato’s readers, and which at certain key junctures claims for itself nothing less than the status of a new kind of philosophical poetry and art: the status, indeed, of ‘the greatest music’ [Phaedo 61a; cf. Phaedrus 248d, 259b] and even of ‘the finest and best tragedy’ [Laws 817b]” (241). All the contributors address, in one way or another, the puzzling contrast between these two views on poetry. Halliwell, for instance, claims that Book X of the Republic “offers not a simple repudiation of the best poets but a complicated counterpoint in which resistance and attraction to their work are intertwined, a counterpoint which (among other things) explores the problem of whether, and in what sense, it might be possible to be a ‘philosophical lover’ of poetry” (244). While Most argues that “there is little or no evidence for any consciousness” of a generic opposition between philosophy and poetry tout court before Plato, “this opposition may even be in the process of being constructed” in his Republic (19) (Notomi, too, discusses this topic, and refers to the view according to which the “ancient quarrel” was Plato’s invention). [End Page 291]In reading the nineteen essays of this volume, one realizes that in Plato there is not just one poetics, or two contrasting views on poetry, but—as the editors put it—“several models of what poetry is and what the poets do” (xxii). One would have liked that these several models be explicitly discussed in a concluding chapter. The editors, however, acknowledge that neither they nor their authors aimed at achieving a unified vision of the subject: “While certain recurring themes crystallize themselves with increasing complexity in the course of the various discussions, there remain both contradictions and incompatibilities between results... (shrink)

The current study evaluates qualitatively how the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in the content of gambling websites. A number of gambling websites have been reviewed for their content in that respect. A statistical analysis recorded the presence of the mathematical dimension of gambling and its forms in the content of the participating websites, and a qualitative research study analyzed and assessed the quality of the content with respect to that dimension. The technical reports associated with this study describe (...) the methods used in the processes of review and content analysis, details of the processes, and the specific challenges and difficulties that they posed. (shrink)

Après des études de droit et de philosophie à l'Université de Bucarest, Alexandru Dragomir part à Fribourg-en-Brisgau comme doctorant de Martin Heidegger. Il y reste deux ans; en 1943 il est rappelé en Roumanie et envoyé au front. Après la guerre, sous le nouveau régime, il ne peut pas poursuivre une carrière universitaire. Il meurt en 2002 à Bucarest sans avoir rien publié. Ce n'est qu'après sa mort que ses cahiers sont découverts et publiés. L'œuvre de Dragomir comprend cinq volumes, (...) parus à Bucarest, aux Éditions Humanitas. Deux sont parus en traduction française chez Vrin : Banalités métaphysiques et Cahiers du temps. Cet article présente sa personnalité et son œuvre, notamment les Cahiers du temps, qui renferment la recherche de toute sa vie. Dragomir y développe sa propre théorie sur la nature du temps, tout en faisant des commentaires des textes classiques de la philosophie qui portent sur ce sujet. Des traductions en allemand et en anglais des Cahiers du temps paraîtront bientôt. Between 1933 and 1939 Alexandru Dragomir studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest. In 1941 he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship, which allowed him to enroll as a doctoral student at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, under the supervision of Martin Heidegger. In 1943 he was drafted into the Romanian armed forces and left Freiburg without a degree. In Romania, under the communist regime, he could not pursue an academic career. He died in 2002 without publishing anything. His work has been published posthumously in five volumes by Humanitas Press. Two of the volumes have been published in French translation by Jean Vrin Press : Banalités métaphysiques [Metaphysical Banalities] and Cahiers du temps [Notebooks on Time]. This article offers an overview of Dragomir's personality and work, with an emphasis on his Notebooks on Time — his lifelong research on the nature of time. In these notebooks he develops his own views on time and comments on the classical philosophical texts that deal with the subject. (shrink)

In the Platonic exegesis, the topic of 'hypothesis and dialectic' has been covered by the works of many scholars, although, compared to some other topics, it has not been overinterpreted. To the best of my knowledge, however, there is only one book that deals extensively and systematically with it - Richard Robinson's Plato's Earlier Dialectic. This one book of Robinson has remained, according to many Plato scholars, unsurpassed as to the punctiliousness with which its author describes the formal structure of (...) Plato's hypothetical methodology; that is why most of those who have dealt with this topic tended to take Robinson's book as the ultimate authority on the matter. Yet there is an aspect of this topic that Robinson explored less: the relation between Plato's hypothetical methodology and the Platonic metaphysics. This relation is the actual subject of my research. Now my research has two main claims. Whether with disappointment or with relief, we have to recognize that Plato's dialogues unfold a philosophical search rather than a metaphysical system. My attempt to determine what Plato's hypothetical dialectic is, follows in a way the logical route of his philosophical search.. (shrink)

This volume brings together ten of the most celebrated Platonic myths, from eight of Plato's dialogues ranging from the early Protagoras and Gorgias to the late Timaeus and Critias. They include the famous myth of the cave from Republic as well as 'The Judgement of Souls' and 'The Birth of Love'. Each myth is a self-contained story, prefaced by a short explanatory note, while the introduction considers Plato's use of myth and imagery.

There are two main discussions of poetry in Plato's Republic: the first one is in Books II and III, the other in Book X. Their conclusions are not entirely coherent. In Books II and III, only some poetry is considered imitative, and certain forms of it are allowed in the ideal city. In Book X all poetry is considered imitative, and all of it is banned from the city. Jeff Mitscherling's book deals with Plato's criticism of poetry and art. It (...) (i) reviews and discusses the main interpretations of the topic, paying special attention to those of Havelock (who argues that under attack is the Athenian educational system) and Gadamer (who argues the real target are the Sophists and their influence); (ii) discusses .. (shrink)

We present a variant of ATL with incomplete information which includes the distributed knowledge operators corresponding to synchronous action and perfect recall. The cooperation modalities assume the use the distributed knowledge of coalitions and accordingly refer to perfect recall incomplete information strategies. We propose a model-checking algorithm for the logic. It is based on techniques for games with imperfect information and partially observable objectives, and involves deciding emptiness for automata on infinite trees. We also propose an axiomatic system and prove (...) its completeness for a rather expressive subset. As for the constructs left outside this completely axiomatised subset, we present axioms by which they can be defined in the subset on the class of models in which every state has finitely many successors and give a complete axiomatisation for a “flat” subset of the logic with these constructs included. (shrink)

The near-miss has been considered an important factor of reinforcement in gambling behavior, and previous research has focused more on its industry-related causes and effects and less on the gaming phenomenon itself. The near-miss has usually been associated with the games of slots and scratch cards, due to the special characteristics of these games, which include the possibility of pre-manipulation of award symbols in order to increase the frequency of these “engineered” near-misses. In this paper, we argue that starting from (...) an elementary mathematical description of the classical (by pure chance) near-miss, generalizable to any game, and focusing equally on the epistemology of its constitutive concepts and their mathematical description, we can identify more precisely the fallacious elements of the near-miss cognitive effects and the inadequate perception and representation of the observational-intentional “I was that close.” This approach further suggests a strategy of using non-standard mathematical knowledge of an epistemological type in problem-gambling prevention and cognitive therapies. (shrink)

The current technical report of the research project investigating how the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in the communication and texts associated with the gambling industry raises the problem of the adequacy of sampling and proposes a new approach in this respect. The qualitative analysis of the reviewed websites is extended to a deeper analysis of language and also to the organization and structure of websites’ content. Although not stated as a goal of the initial project, the research will (...) also try to identify relationships between the specificity of content relative to the mathematical dimension of gambling, and the management and marketing of the website. An overview of the results of the statistical analysis of the current sample is also presented. (shrink)

This second technical report shows some partial results for the variables of the proposed statistical analysis and a discussion about some changes in sampling. In what concerns the qualitative analysis of content, the report presents the general predominant tendencies that get contoured with the first two samples.

Adrian-Paul Iliescu, Anatomia Răului Politic (Anatomy of the Political Evil) Editura Fundatiei Culturale Ideea Europeana, Bucureşti.

*** Caiete de antropologie istorica. Oamenii si moartea in societatea romaneasca.