[A dialogue between Kant and Bolzano on mathematical knowledge.].

This paper surveys Bolzano's Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (Contributions to a better-grounded presentation of mathematics) on the 200th anniversary of its publication. The first and only published issue presents a definition of mathematics, a classification of its subdisciplines, and an essay on mathematical method, or logic. Though underdeveloped in some areas (including,somewhat surprisingly, in logic), it is nonetheless a radically innovative work, where Bolzano presents a remarkably modern account of axiomatics and the epistemology of the formal sciences. (...) We also discuss the second, unfinished and unpublished issue, where Bolzano develops his views on universal mathematics. Here we find the beginnings of his theory of collections, for him the most fundamental of the mathematical disciplines. Though not exactly the same as the later Cantorian set theory, Bolzano's theory of collections was used in very similar ways in mathematics, notably in analysis. In retrospect, Bolzano's debut in philosophy was a remarkably successful one, though its fruits would only become generally known much later. (shrink)

Ce dialogue confronte deux conceptions qui dominent jusqu’à nos jours la philosophie des mathématiques : d’un côté la conception kantienne qui souligne l’irréductible apport de l’intuition dans la formulation des axiomes, ainsi que l’effectivité des procédés de construction ; de l’autre côté la conception bolzanienne qui s’efforce d’éliminer toute intervention de l’intuition au profit des démonstrations et des procédés purement conceptuels.In this dialogue, two opposed conceptions, which dominate the philosophy of mathematics till today, are confronted. Kant’s account of mathematics is (...) based upon the activity of constructing mathematical objects in pure intuition . In yielding objects for mathematics, our intuition contributes in an essential way to the formulation of mathematical truths. Against Kant, Bolzano argues that intuition has place neither in arithmetic nor in geometry and that mathematical existence consists in the possibility of the defined objects. i.e. in non-contradiction. For Bolzano, the central idea of mathematics is that of rigorous proof. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano was born in Prague in 1781 and died in 1848 in the same city1. His major work Wissenschaftslehre was published in 1837 in Sulzbach, Germany.Since the publication of Jan Berg’s Bolza...

Jean-Paul Coujou a traduit – première en langue française –, commenté et annoté des ouvrages choisis dans l’œuvre monumentale de Francisco Suarez. Avant les trois présents volumes, il avait publié les trois premières Disputes et la XXXIe . Depuis trois..

Analytical philosophy begins with the first mathematical and philosophical works of Bolzano published between 1804 and 1817. There, Bolzano set out a project for the global reform of mathematics by means of the axiomatic method. Having completed the Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano wrote a summary of his logic for the Größenlehre, which he sent to Exner in 1833. The correspondence between Bolzano and Exner covered some of the main subjects treated by analytical philosophy: the status of abstract objects (propositions and objective ideas), (...) intuitions, objectless ideas, the concept of object and many others. While Bolzano argued in favor of abstract entities independent of mind and of language, Exner considered them as abstractions obtained from the subjective judgments and representations. During the XlXth century, Bolzano's philosophy spread over Bohemia and Austria through manuscripts and through the first edition of Zimmermann's textbook of philosophy. The most important Brentanians, Kerry, Twardowski, Meinong and Husserl, discussed his doctrines which may also have influenced Wittgenstein and the Polish school. (shrink)

Analytical philosophy begins with the first mathematical and philosophical works of Bolzano published between 1804 and 1817. There, Bolzano set out a project for the global reform of mathematics by means of the axiomatic method. Having completed the Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano wrote a summary of his logic for the Größenlehre, which he sent to Exner in 1833. The correspondence between Bolzano and Exner covered some of the main subjects treated by analytical philosophy: the status of abstract objects (propositions and objective ideas), (...) intuitions, objectless ideas, the concept of object and many others. While Bolzano argued in favor of abstract entities independent of mind and of language, Exner considered them as abstractions obtained from the subjective judgments and representations. During the XlXth century, Bolzano's philosophy spread over Bohemia and Austria through manuscripts and through the first edition of Zimmermann's textbook of philosophy. The most important Brentanians, Kerry, Twardowski, Meinong and Husserl, discussed his doctrines which may also have influenced Wittgenstein and the Polish school. (shrink)

« Pour la première fois peut-être la science n’est plus considérée comme simple intermédiaire entre l’esprit humain et l’être en soi, dépendant autant de l’un que de l’autre et n’ayant pas de réalité propre, mais comme un objet sui generis, original dans son essence, autonome dans son mouvement ». En écoutant les différentes contributions à ce colloque, je me suis retrouvé sur un terrain familier. Presque tous les noms des auteurs des xviie et xviiie siècles m’étaient bien connus : ceux (...) de La... (shrink)

Review of S. Lapointe: Bolzano’s Theoretical Philosophy, An Introduction.

Bernard Bolzano is increasingly recognized as one of the greatest nineteenth-century philosophers. A philosopher and mathematician of rare talent, he made ground-breaking contributions to logic, the foundations and philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. Many of the larger features of later analytic philosophy first appear in his work: for example, the separation of logic from psychology, his sophisticated understanding of mathematical proof, his definition of logical consequence, his work on the semantics of natural kind terms, or his (...) anticipations of Cantor's set theory, to name but a few. To his contemporaries, however, he was best known as an intelligent and determined advocate for reform of Church and State. Based in large part on a carefully argued utilitarian practical philosophy, he developed a program for the non-violent reform of the authoritarian institutions of the Hapsburg Empire, a program which he himself helped to set in motion through his teaching and other activities. Rarely has a philosopher had such a great impact on the political culture of his homeland. Persecuted in his lifetime by secular and ecclesiastical authorities, long ignored or misunderstood by philosophers, Bolzano's reputation has nevertheless steadily increased over the past century and a half. Much discussed and respected in Central Europe for over a century, he is finally beginning to receive the recognition he deserves in the English-speaking world. This book provides a comprehensive and detailed critical introduction to Bolzano, covering both his life and works. (shrink)

Les origines grecques de la conception d'harmonie (H. Dufourt) - Du monde au matériau : le devenir-musical du timbre (A. Soulez) - La musique est-elle un langage? (R. Casati et J. Dokic) - Le devenir du matériau musical au XXe siècle (M. Solomos) - Hauteur, timbre, harmonie, synthèse (J.C. Risset) et d'autres articles...

Representing the thinking of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, coaches, and sports writers, these essays bring together a wide range of approaches to ...

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

In recent years, biologists and philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary theory should incorporate more seriously the idea of ‘reciprocal causation.’ This notion refers to feedback loops whereby organisms change their experiences of the environment or alter the physical properties of their surroundings. In these loops, in particular niche constructing activities are central, since they may alter selection pressures acting on organisms, and thus affect their evolutionary trajectories. This paper discusses long-standing problems that emerge when studying such reciprocal causal (...) processes between organisms and environments. By comparing past approaches to reciprocal causation from the early twentieth century with contemporary ones in niche construction theory, we identify two central reoccurring problems: All of these approaches have not been able to provide a conceptual framework that allows maintaining meaningful boundaries between organisms and environments, instead of merging the two, and integrating experiential and physical kinds of reciprocal causation. By building on case studies of niche construction research, we provide a model that is able to solve these two problems. It allows distinguishing between mutually interacting organisms and environments in complex scenarios, as well as integrating various forms of experiential and physical niche construction. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, as applied both to properties and to relations. In contrast to other accounts, the approach taken here locates the source of a property’s intrinsicality or extrinsicality in the manner in which that property is ‘logically constituted’, and thus – plausibly – in its nature or essence, rather than in e.g. its modal profile. Another respect in which the present proposal differs from many extant analyses lies in the fact that it does (...) not seek to analyse the ‘global’ distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties on the basis of the ‘local’ distinction between having a property intrinsically and having it extrinsically. Instead, the latter distinction is explicated on the basis of the former. (shrink)

Insight problem solving is thought to underpin creative thought as it incorporates both divergent (generating multiple ideas and solutions) and convergent (arriving at the optimal solution) thinking approaches. The current literature on schizotypy and creativity is mixed and requires clarification. An alternate approach was employed by designing an exploratory web-based study using only correlates of schizotypal traits (paranoia, dissociation, cognitive failures, fantasy proneness, and unusual sleep experiences) and examining which (if any) predicted optimal performance on an insight problem-solving task. One (...) hundred and twenty-one participants were recruited online from the general population and completed the number reduction task. The discovery of the hidden rule (HR) was used as a measure of insight. Multivariate logistic regression analyses highlighted persecutory ideation to best predict the discovery of the HR (OR = 1.05; 95% CI 1.01–1.10, p = 0.017), with a one-point increase in persecutory ideas corresponding to the participant being 5% more likely to discover the HR. This result suggests that persecutory ideation, above other schizotypy correlates, may be involved in insight problem solving. (shrink)

International institutions such as UNESCO are deliberating on a new standard setting instrument for neurotechnologies. This will likely lead to the adoption of a soft law document which will be the first global document specifically tailored to neurotechnologies, setting the tone for further international or domestic regulations. While some stakeholders have been consulted, these developments have so far evaded the broader attention of the neuroscience, neurotech, and neuroethics communities. To initiate a broader debate, this target article puts to discussion twenty-five (...) considerations and desiderata for recognition by a future instrument. They are formulated at different levels of abstraction, from the big picture to technical details, seek to widen the perspective of preparatory reports and transcend the narrow debate about “neurorights” which overshadows many richer and more relevant aspects. These desiderata are not an exhaustive enumeration but a starting point for discussions about what deserves and what requires protection by an international instrument. (shrink)

There is concern that the use of neuroenhancements to alter character traits undermines consumer's authenticity. But the meaning, scope and value of authenticity remain vague. However, the majority of contemporary autonomy accounts ground individual autonomy on a notion of authenticity. So if neuroenhancements diminish an agent's authenticity, they may undermine his autonomy. This paper clarifies the relation between autonomy, authenticity and possible threats by neuroenhancements. We present six neuroenhancement scenarios and analyse how autonomy accounts evaluate them. Some cases are considered (...) differently by criminal courts; we demonstrate where academic autonomy theories and legal reasoning diverge and ascertain whether courts should reconsider their concept of autonomy. We argue that authenticity is not an appropriate condition for autonomy and that new enhancement technologies pose no unique threats to personal autonomy. (shrink)

This paper is my commentary on Raymond Tallis’ book Freedom: An Impossible Reality (2021). Tallis argues that the laws described by science are dependent on human agency which extracts them from nature. Consequently, human agency cannot be explained as an effect of natural laws. I agree with Tallis’ main argument and I appreciate that he helps us understand the systematic importance of a human-scale breadth of view regarding any theoretical investigation. In the main part of the paper, I critically comment (...) on Tallis’ interpretation of several more loosely associated topics from a phenomenological perspective. Firstly, I reconsider Tallis’ account of intentionality as a factor that opens a distance between the cognizer and the world. Whereas Tallis emphasizes that agency requisitions aspects of the world to achieve its goals, I point out that agency does not determine the meaning of things unidirectionally and independently of all context. A self-controlled agency is provisionally reached through a process of ‘deindexicalization’ of our passive intentional capacities, that is, by creating and maintaining new, different worldly contexts. Subsequently, I analyze Tallis’ description of our intentional relation to spatiotemporally distant possibilities. In my view, Tallis underestimates the extent to which our intentional relation to possibilities is pre-reflexive and pre-predicative and hence independent of propositional attitudes. Finally, I consider Tallis’ interpretation of nature and show that it is deeply influenced by the sciences of nature. In contrast, I argue that agency can be properly described only if we understand it as an intervention in a lifeworld already imbued with sense, not merely a physical or material nature. (shrink)

This paper investigates the basis arguments of so-called legal logic and their relation to logic in its standard meaning. There is no doubt that legal arguments belong to logic in the wide sense (sensu largo), but their reduction to schemes of formal logic (logica sensu stricto) is a controversial issue. It can be demonstrated that only some legal arguments fall under explicit rules of formal logic, that is, having a deductive character. Most such reasoning is fallible, and its correctness depends (...) on appealing to extra-logical principles taken from legal norms. For instance, if we say, “If it is permitted more, then it is permitted less” (argumentum a maiori ad minus), we assume that the concepts expressed by the words “more” and “less” are already defined. (shrink)