"Vi amo e vi sorrido da dove io sia": ricordo di Jacques Derida -- La cenere ci aspetta -- Il tono e la firma, l'eredità di Jacques Derida.

This paper argues that we should solve paradoxes for propositions (such as the Russell–Myhill paradox) in essentially the same way that we solve Russellian paradoxes for sets. That is, the standard, iterative approach to sets is extended to include properties, and then the resulting hierarchy of sets and properties is used to construct propositions. Propositions on this account are structured in the sense of mirroring the sentences that express them, and they would seem to serve the needs of philosophers of (...) language and metaphysicians who rely on such propositions. The resulting account has limitations, comparable to those faced by the iterative approach to sets, but it is argued to be in important ways preferable to others that have been proposed. (shrink)

L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante.--La dottrina d'Alberto Magno sull'Inchoatio formae.--Alberto Magno e san Tommaso.--La posizione di Alberto Magno di fronte all'averroismo.--L'anima umana secondo Sigieri.--Anima e corpo nel pensiero di san Tommaso.--L'aristotelismo della scolastica e i francescani.--Individualità e immortalità nell'averroismo e nel tomismo.

Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are explained (...) by logically simpler ones. For example, disjunctions are explained by their (true) disjuncts, while generalizations are explained by their (true) instances. This would seem as plausible in the case of mathematics as elsewhere. Also, it would seem to be something that the anti-realist approaches at issue would want to preserve. It will be argued, however, that these approaches cannot do this: they lead not merely to violations of the familiar principles relating logical and explanatory structure, but even to reversals of these. That is, there are cases where generalizations explain their instances, or disjunctions their disjuncts. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to argue that all—or almost all—logical rules have exceptions. In particular, it is argued that this is a moral that we should draw from the semantic paradoxes. The idea that we should respond to the paradoxes by revising logic in some way is familiar. But previous proposals advocate the replacement of classical logic with some alternative logic. That is, some alternative system of rules, where it is taken for granted that these hold without exception. (...) The present proposal is quite different. According to this, there is no such alternative logic. Rather, classical logic retains the status of the ‘one true logic’, but this status must be reconceived so as to be compatible with (almost) all of its rules admitting of exceptions. This would seem to have significant repercussions for a range of widely held views about logic: e.g. that it is a priori, or that it is necessary. Indeed, if the arguments of the paper succeed, then such views must be given up. (shrink)

In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context..

... Le figure del terzo legislatore e del terzo giudice costituiscono la garanzia che la tutela dei deboli non renda debole né il dovere né il diritto, ma ne fortifichi la consapevolezza responsabile in ognuno di noi, mostrando il significato giuridico del ‘dono di senso’, nucleo, nella mia interpretazione dell’intenso magistero di Bruno Romano. (Dalla Presentazione di L. Avitabile).

Cet ouvrage se propose de décrire les tendances, considérées à travers certaines des manifestations les plus caractéristiques de la vie juridique, d'une société gagnée à la modernité et saisie par le doute. Les notions de droit et de modernité, en effet, s'éclairent l'une l'autre ; d'un côté, l'approche juridique fournit une grille d'analyse essentielle de la modernité, tant la référence au droit lui paraît intimement liée et imprègne la société moderne dans ses aspirations comme dans sa quotidienneté ; réciproquement, seule (...) la modernité rend intelligible un corps de règles disparates, contingentes, voire contradictoires, qu'une analyse purement technique ne permet plus de pénétrer dans sa globalité ni dans ses ressorts profonds. La modernité exprime une vision du monde : à ce titre, elle emporte à l'égard du droit des conséquences qu'on ne saurait réduire à la seule incidence des facteurs politiques, moral et économique, selon la fresque qu'en avait autrefois brossé le doyen Ripert dans des ouvrages mémorables ; on ne saurait davantage l'ignorer en s'enfermant dans une conception purement formaliste et normativiste du droit. Ces pages s'inscrivent dans une réflexion sur le sens de l'évolution d'un système juridique dont les lignes de force n'apparaissent pas toujours très nettement, en écho aux incertitudes de la modernité. Cet ouvrage s'efforce de mettre en lumière ces tendances multiples et d'en esquisser une explication. (shrink)

The pseudo-genetic analysis of given names shows that, in the Scilly Isles, coefficients of relationship of first names are similar on St Mary's, the Outer Isles, and in the total sample of 5666 individuals married there in two and a half centuries. Comparable coefficients of relationship of a sample of 1658 given names in marriages in England and Wales in 1975 are considerably smaller, but similar within and between districts. The coefficients of relationship of given names on the Scilly Isles (...) decreased during the 19th and especially the 20th centuries in parallel with decreases in random relationship from surnames. The genetic versus cultural–linguistic factors cannot be distinguished in the temporal variation in names, but the geographic differentiation virtually always reported in surnames is not present in these examples of given names and the geographic pattern in the surnames thus seems to result from the hereditary aspect of surnames. This result supports the validity of use of surnames in models of human genetic geography. (shrink)

Premessa - Capitolo primo. Questioni di filosofia del diritto - Capitolo secondo. Filosofia, scienza, diritto - Capitolo terzo. Relazione, pretesa, diritto - Capitolo quarto. Determinazione e diritto - Capitolo quinto. Gioco, amore, diritto - Capitolo sesto. Terzietà nella relazione. Aspettative cognitive e normative - Capitolo settimo. Qualificazioni della terzietà - Capitolo ottavo. Differenza di senso e differenza nomologica - Capitolo nono. Genesi e uso del diritto - Capitolo decimo. Ortonomia delle leggi istituite. Natura, linguaggio, tecnica - Capitolo undicesimo. Linguaggio dei (...) sistemi sociali. Diritto, mercato, globalizzazione - Indice analitico e dei nomi. (shrink)

Several countries maintain universal health coverage, which implies responsibility to organize delivery formats of healthcare services and products for citizens. In Brazil, the health system has a principle of universal access for more than 30 years, but many deficiencies remain and the country observes a day practice for those seeking judicial decisions to determine provision of healthcare.

Bruno Latour was once asked : "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question.

questão do bom governante pode ser analisada a partir da perspectiva conservadora,que pretende retomar os ensinamentos da filosofia política antiga, bem como deum ponto de vista em defesa do projeto moderno. Leo Strauss e Alexandre Kojève propuseram-se, cada qual à sua maneira, o desafio de encontrar no diálogo Hierão de Xenofonte osaspectos “tirânicos” que, por um lado, aprimoram e, por outro, rebaixam a possível realizaçãode uma vida política perfeita. Nosso objetivo aqui é percorrer a polêmica dessedebate entre amigos que sustentam (...) posições distintas, porém, complementares. (shrink)

Humans should come down from their destructive arrogance stool to take the best cognizance of the fact that nature is a sculptural work of God. Their failure to realise this fact has been responsible for their formulation of the secular environmental theories which include; anthropocentrism, zoocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism, and the hybrid eco-feminism. Romanced with these theories the Holy Scriptures are also implicated by reading them in the light of one of these theories and considered anthropocentric. As a matter of fact, (...) the best of these secular theories should never be taken to be representing theocentric view of the environment. (shrink)

General-elimination harmony articulates Gentzen’s idea that the elimination-rules are justified if they infer from an assertion no more than can already be inferred from the grounds for making it. Dummett described the rules as not only harmonious but stable if the E-rules allow one to infer no more and no less than the I-rules justify. Pfenning and Davies call the rules locally complete if the E-rules are strong enough to allow one to infer the original judgement. A method is given (...) of generating harmonious general-elimination rules from a collection of I-rules. We show that the general-elimination rules satisfy Pfenning and Davies’ test for local completeness, but question whether that is enough to show that they are stable. Alternative conditions for stability are considered, including equivalence between the introduction- and elimination-meanings of a connective, and recovery of the grounds for assertion, finally generalizing the notion of local completeness to capture Dummett’s notion of stability satisfactorily. We show that the general-elimination rules meet the last of these conditions, and so are indeed not only harmonious but also stable. (shrink)

German classicist's monumental study of the origins of European thought in Greek literature and philosophy. Brilliant, widely influential. Includes "Homer's View of Man," "The Olympian Gods," "The Rise of the Individual in the Early Greek Lyric," "Pindar's Hymn to Zeus," "Myth and Reality in Greek Tragedy," and "Aristophanes and Aesthetic Criticism.".

In Bangladesh due to improved quality of life the number of people over 60 years is increasing rapidly. This should be seen as an emerging challenge as the elderly will have special needs and require different care-giving services. Since Bangladesh does not have a social welfare system there will be competition for inadequate resources specially health and medical services. It is envisaged that due to more elderly population the demographic structure will undergo a slow change from the present pyramid structure. (...) The growing trend towards nuclear family or where children live abroad will put the elderly parents in a dilemma-the financial and social support that is essential for them has not yet emerged. The nutrition and health status of elderly people depend on adequate food safe water, proper sanitation facilities and maintaining hygienic standards. To provide special medical care for the elderly there is a need to establish WHO recommended Age-Friendly Primary Health Care centers and separate wards /units are to be set up in the hospitals. To reduce vulnerability of older women there is a need to distribute assets and properties according to the law.. Our new generations have to be responsive, informed and attentive about their duties and responsibilities towards the elderly people. Taking proper care of the elderly is our ethical duty and responsibility. (shrink)

In a series of papers, 137–158; 1994, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23, 61–74, 1999) Fine develops his hylomorphic theory of embodiments. In this article, we supply a formal semantics for this theory that is adequate to the principles laid down for it in. In Section 1, we lay out the theory of embodiments as Fine presents it. In Section 2, we argue on Cantorian grounds that the theory needs to be stabilized, and sketch some ways forward, discussing various choice points (...) in modeling the view. In Section 3, we develop a formal semantics for the theory of embodiments by constructing embodiments in stages and restricting the domain of the second-order quantifiers. In Section 4 we give a few illustrative examples to show how the models deliver Finean hylomorphic consequences. In Section 5, we prove that Fine’s principles are sound with respect to this semantics. In Section 6 we present some inexpressibility results concerning Fine’s various notions of parthood and show that in our formal semantics these notions are all expressible using a single mereological primitive. In Section 7, we prove several mereological results stemming from the model theory, showing that the mereology is surprisingly robust. In Section 8, we draw some philosophical lessons from the formal semantics, and in particular respond to Koslicki’s main objection to Fine’s theory. In the appendix we present proofs of the inexpressibility results of Section 6. (shrink)

European thought begins with the Greeks. Scientific and philosophic thinking--the pursuit of truth and the grasping of unchanging principles of life--is a historical development, an achievement; and, as Bruno Snell writes in The Discovery of the Mind, nothing less than a revolution. The Greeks did not take mental resources already at their disposal and merely map out new subjects for discussion and investigation. In poetry, drama, and philosophy they in fact discovered the human mind. The stages in man's gradual (...) understanding of himself are revealed in the course of ancient literature from Homer to Virgil. A rational view of the nature of man slowly established itself in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, tragedy and literary criticism, pre-Socratic thought, and early Greek ethics all the way to the discovery of humanitas and the spiritual landscape of Virgil's Arcadia. The Discovery of the Mind is a landmark work in tracing this evolution of consciousness--one of the distinguishing characteristics of the history of man. (shrink)

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of Nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of Nature have been continuously developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, (...) since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of Nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at Nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name "Gaia" for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on "natural religion", Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of Nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime. (shrink)

Serious actualism is the prima facie plausible thesis that things couldn’t have been related while being nothing. The thesis plays an important role in a number of arguments in metaphysics, e.g., in Plantinga’s argument for the claim that propositions do not ontologically depend on the things that they are about and in Williamson’s argument for the claim that he, Williamson, is necessarily something. Salmon has put forward that which is, arguably, the most pressing challenge to serious actualists. Salmon’s objection is (...) based on a scenario intended to elicit the judgment that merely possible entities may nonetheless be actually referred to, and so may actually have properties. It is shown that predicativism, the thesis that names are true of their bearers, provides the resources for replying to Salmon’s objection. In addition, an argument for serious actualism based on Stephanou, 219–250 2007) is offered. Finally, it is shown that once serious actualism is conjoined with some minimal assumptions, it implies property necessitism, the thesis that necessarily all properties are necessarily something, as well as a strong comprehension principle for higher-order modal logic according to which for every condition there necessarily is the property of being a thing satisfying that condition. (shrink)

Are there ‘self-referential’ propositions? That is, propositions that say of themselves that they have a certain property, such as that of being false. There can seem reason to doubt that there are. At the same time, there are a number of reasons why it matters. For suppose that there are indeed no such propositions. One might then hope that while paradoxes such as the Liar show that many plausible principles about sentences must be given up, no such fate will befall (...) principles about propositions. But the existence of self-referential propositions would dash such hopes. Further, the existence of such propositions would also seem to challenge the widespread claim that Liar sentences fail to express propositions. The aim of this paper is thus to settle the question–at least given an assumption. In particular, I argue that if propositions are structured, then self-referential propositions exist. (shrink)

This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind, of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Mölder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism, the ascription theory, which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability, and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly (...) directed against interpretivism, the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness -- perception and the awareness of one’s own mental states -- in the interpretivist framework. (shrink)