Georges Kalinowski, dans « Raison, entendement et philosophie » [Kalinowski 1974, 125-127], isolait quatre fonctions d’une même faculté : l’intellect comme fonction de la connaissance intuitive, la raison (des anciens) comme fonction de la connaissance médiate, l’entendement fonction d’élaboration des sciences (au sens moderne) et la raison (des modernes) fonction d’élaboration de la philosophie ou au moins d’une partie de la philosophie. Kalinowski reconnaissait ainsi à la pensée ancienne et à la pensée moderne des contributions originales différentes. Le présent essai (...) veut être un hommage à Georges Kalinowski, dans l’esprit de ces précisions : il donne lieu aujourd’hui, avec une brève introduction sur les rapports entre la logique de Boole et de Frege et les fondements de l’informatique, à une méditation que l’on prévoit beaucoup plus vaste sur les rapports entre logique aristotélico-thomiste, logique symbolique, mathématique, théorie des ensembles et informatique. (shrink)

The paper compares the ideas developed by Bozzi and Stumpf with regard to unity, identity, and causality. Although Bozzi’s formulation is independent from the one made by Stumpf in his Erkenntnislehre, these two positions share the same innovative importance granted to perceptual experience and to the problem of the origin of categories. Thus, despite different levels of awareness and formalization, in both authors we see the features of what we can call – analogous- ly to Bozzi’s naïve physics – a (...) “naïve metaphysics”, at whose core lie the refusal of intellectualism, and the determination of the origin of categories in the concrete stream of perception. (shrink)

La raccolta di contributi analizza alcuni dei temi più significativi dell’opera dello psicologo e filosofo Paolo Bozzi.

R.I.G. Hughes presents a series of eight philosophical essays on the theoretical practices of physics. The first two essays examine these practices as they appear in physicists' treatises (e.g. Newton's Principia and Opticks ) and journal articles (by Einstein, Bohm and Pines, Aharonov and Bohm). By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following 6 essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy of physics such as laws, (...) disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics. (shrink)

R.I.G Hughes offers the first detailed and accessible analysis of the Hilbert-space models used in quantum theory and explains why they are so successful.

This book provides a collection of sources, many of them fragmentary and previously scattered and hard to access, for the development of Peripatetic philosophy in the later Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire. It also supplies the background against which the first commentator on Aristotle from whom extensive material survives, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200), developed his interpretations which continue to be influential even today. Many of the passages are here translated into English for the first time, (...) including the whole of the summary of Peripatetic ethics attributed to 'Arius Didymus'. (shrink)

Reason and Value collects 15 new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the work of Joseph Raz. Raz has made major contributions in a wide range of areas, including jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the theory of practical reason; but all of his work displays a deep engagement with central themes in moral philosophy. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. Especially significant are his (...) explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value, which constitute a sustained and penetrating treatment of a set of issues at the very center of moral philosophy as it is practiced today. The contributors to the volume acknowledge the importance of Raz's contributions by engaging critically with his positions and offering independent perspectives on the topics that he has addressed. The volume aims both to honour Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and to contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his work for the subject. (shrink)

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.

Gerolamo Saccheri, Logica dimostrativa. Edited and translated by Massimo Mugnai and Massimo Girondino. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2012. Vol. I. LVII +295 pp. Vol. II. II + 168 pp. € 40.00. ISBN...

The depths of the sea, their obscure inhabitants and their mysteries have always been a rich source of myths and metaphors for authors and philosophers. Fables about giant squids and monstrous octopuses run through the history of literature and culture. The vampire squid is only a small phylogenetic relic, but it provides a useful model for Flusser's hybrid philosophical fiction Vampyroteuthis Infernalis. Flusser slips metaphorically into the creature’s gelatinous skin in order to speculate on the paradigms of postmodern life, measuring (...) the abyss from the inside and producing a very peculiar, experimental form of thinking and writing. In the present era of virtual reality and computer simulations, we experience fiction as the only reality. According to Vaihinger's definition, fiction is a useful construct that is precisely not real, but enables human beings to create and manipulate their environments. His philosophy of “as if” is perhaps the fullest expression of fictionalism and shows its ambivalent potential. (shrink)

In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and ...

This graduate-level_text by a master in the field builds a function theory of the rational field that combines aspects of classical and intuitionist analysis. Topics include recursive convergence, recursive and relative continuity, recursive and relative differentiability, the relative integral, elementary functions, and transfinite ordinals. 1961 edition.

This book is not a study of Plato's philosophy, but a contribution to the literary interpretation of the dialogues, through analysis of their formal structure, ...

The author demonstrates that certain forms of irrationality - incontinent action and self-deception - which many philosophers have rejected as being logically or psychologically impossible, are indeed possible.

Many philosophers believe that there is a causal condition on perception, and that this condition is a conceptual truth about perception. A highly influential argument for this claim is based on intuitive responses to Gricean style thought experiments. Do the folk share the intuitions of philosophers? Roberts et al. (2016) presented participants with two kinds of cases: Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a mirror and a pillar) and Non-Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a clock and brain (...) stimulation). They found that a substantial minority agreed that seeing occurs in the Non-Blocker cases, and that in the Blocker cases significantly less agreed that seeing occurs. They thus hypothesized that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition than with a causal condition. This paper continues this line of enquiry with two new experiments. The paper investigates the generality and robustness of Roberts et al.’s findings by expanding the sense modalities tested from only vision to audition and olfaction as well. The paper also uses Gricean style thought experiments as a case study for investigating the “reflection defense” against the negative project in experimental philosophy. Our results replicate and extend Roberts et al.’s study and support their hypothesis that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition. They also provide an empirical reason to doubt the reflection defense. (shrink)

In this, the first of two ground-breaking volumes on the nature of language in the light of the way it evolved, James Hurford looks at how the world first came ...

The Hellenistic philosophers and schools of philosophy are emerging from the shadow of Plato and Aristotle and are increasingly studied for their intrinsic philosophical value. They are not only interesting in their own right, but also form the intellectual background of the late Roman Republic. This study gives a comprehensive and readable account of the principal doctrines of the Stoics, Epicureans and various sceptical traditions from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to around 200 A.D. Discussions are (...) arranged topically in order to address underlying issues and to make clear what the different schools have in common and how they differ. At the same time the coherence of each system as a whole is emphasized. (shrink)

While it might seem prima facie plausible that divine foreknowledge is all that is needed for prophecy, this seems incorrect. To issue a prophecy, God hasto know not just how someone will act, but how someone would act were the prophecy issued. This makes some think that Middle Knowledge is required.I argue that Thomas Flint’s two Middle Knowledge based accounts of prophecy are unsatisfactory, but one of them can be repaired. However the resources needed for repair also yield a sketch (...) of a foreknowledge-only account of prophecy. (shrink)

Determining what has gone wrong in a malfunctioning body and proposing an effective treatment requires expertise. Since antiquity, philosophers and doctors have wondered what sort of knowledge this expertise involves, and whether and how it can warrant its conclusions. Few people were as qualified to deal with these questions as Galen of Pergamum. A practising doctor with a keen interest in logic and natural science, he devoted much of his enormous literary output to the task of putting medicine on firm (...) methodological grounds. At the same time he reflected on philosophical issues entailed by this project, such as the nature of experience, its relation to reason, the criteria of truth, and the methods of justification. This volume explores Galen's contributions to epistemology, as they arise in the specific inquiries and polemics of his works, as well as their legacy in the Islamic world. (shrink)