Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument was received within the Pittsburgh School of Philosophy as raising new and interesting difficulties for the traditional empiricist model of knowledge justification. While McDowell’s attempt to solve the difficulties in question is still debated, I claim that a different solution to the same difficulties might have been suggested by Wittgenstein himself in On Certainty.

My aim in this paper is to suggest a new outlook concerning the nature of Zeno’s paradoxes. The attention is directed towards the three famous paradoxes known as “Dichotomy,” “Achilles and the Tortoise,” and “The Arrow.” An analysis of the paradigmatic proposals for a solution shows that an adequate solution has not yet been reached. An answer is provided instead to the question “How Zeno’s paradoxes emerge in their quality of aporiae?,” that is to say in their quality of impasses, (...) of problem situations without an exit, what is the original meaning of the Greek word “aporia.” It is my claim that this is the correct rational approach for solving these conceptual puzzles. In other words, I am not proposing formal solutions by criticizing and/or altering their premises assuming the continuous or discrete nature of space and time, but I try to draw the philosophical attention to the way we possess the phenomenon of motion as a result of the perception of space-time in human experience. (shrink)

My aims here are, firstly, to suggest a minor amendment to R. I. G. Hughes’ DDI account of modeling, so that it could be viewed as a plausible epistemological “model” of how scientific models represent and secondly, to distinguish between two epistemological kinds of models that I call “descriptive” and “constitutive”. This aim is achieved by criticizing Michael Weisberg’s distinction between models and abstract direct representations and by following, at the same time, his own methodological approach for such a distinction.

How can we ever judge about the truth of a scientific theory? Ostensibly it seems to be no problems concerning such a judgement. Each scientific theory is expressed by a set of statements, formulated in a definite language; and we know, in principle, to ascertain whether a sentence is true or false, If we take any formula, say in the first order predicate calculus, no matter how complex, and if we know its interpretation, i.e. the appropriate finite domain of individuals, (...) functions, and truth values of the atoms entering the formula, then we immediately come to know whether our formula is true or false. It is admitted by analogy, that if we come to know the truth values of the basic theory statements, then we can judge if a given theory is true or false. It can be shown, however, that there exists no similar reliable prescription [1]. Let me comment on this in some more detail. (shrink)

A useful linkage can be made between recent literature on the philosophy and ethics of place and Australian work on education for place responsiveness. Place education, which holds a creative tension between deep experience and critical awareness, has a central role to play in any practical expression of an ethic of place. The way forward is suggested by Stefanovic's mediated iterative process for group work and the suspension of outcome orientation and judgement to allow the experience to speak for (...) itself prior to critical reflection for individual work. Malpas's philosophy of place and experience provides a framework for understanding the importance of narrative in structuring and being structured by place, and the significance of childhood place memories. Narrative emerges as a 'central organising principle' of place and identity, and can be viewed as both stories that connect us and stories that make us different. Place responsiveness work in Australia presents the opportunity for constructive intercultural dialogue and embedding new narratives of sustainability in place. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Building upon the "preliminary conception of Phenomenology" introduced by Heidegger in Section II of the Introduction to Sein und Zeit,1 one ...

The paper contains a conceptual proposal, its key idea being that the successful functioning of a rule embedding artifact designed to regulate a practice (not pertaining to its use) produces the same result as the successful performance of the rule-invoking non-communicative actions belonging to the practice in case.

This is an anthology. Each contributor discusses an aspect of Wittgenstein's philosophy considered still relevant in the context of current philosophy.

Aim of the article is to present our research dealing with virtual reality modeling and education activities. It involves a chain of development steps: taking pictures of objects, collecting information, creation of 3D models and panoramas, setting up the interactive virtual reality environment along with educational support and testing the user experience with students. Methodology/methods of work: the creation of 3D models and panoramas is done by taking pictures of real objects and using them as textures. The education materials are (...) created as interactive presentations and the usability testing of these presentations should be planned. Scientific goal is to measure the quality of interaction by this education support in order to derive rules testing effectiveness of support, interactive applications and presentations. Findings: 3D models and other educational support materials may be created voluntarily by teachers. The open source library for many different models should be created by whole community provided suitable interfaces of modeling tools will be arranged. Conclusions: Complex educational and interactive materials including virtual reality and panoramas are satisfactory when combined with easy 3D models that are made from taken pictures, which could be made by teachers themselves and/or open communities by existing cameras. (shrink)

In this paper we try to give some further evidence concerning the chronology of Palamas’ treatise Contra Beccum. Taking into consideration different parameters, external and internal, we incline to think that this treatise was composed – or, at least, reworked – in 1355, approximately at the same period when Palamas published the second edition of his Logoi apodeiktikoi.

This a special issue collecting papers on the philosophy of logic, written by some young Romanian philosophers, on a variety of topics like the grammar of first-order logic and the axiomatization of evolutionary biology.

Utilizes Heidegger in rethinking common environmental paradigms.

Abstract. The strong similarity between the use of ostension and that of a simple demonstrative to predicate something of an object seems to conflict with equally strong intuitions according to which, while “this” does usually refer to an object, the gesture of holding an object in your hand and showing it to an audience does not refer to the demonstrated object. This paper argues that the problem is authentic and provides a solution to it. In doing so, a more general (...) thought is given support by the approach used. Namely, the thought that our abilities to directly refer to things require some basic referential abilities exhibited in ostension and the use of demonstratives which, in their turn, rest upon our abilities to cooperate in performing non-communicative actions on our environment. Several concepts introduced in order to solve the initial problem can be used to articulate this thought in more detail. (shrink)