This paper aims to show the centrality of the Ilokano indigenous term Nakem (will) as a hermeneutical key to ontological and ethnoreligious musing. It probes the echoes of the sacred in indigenous belief systems and practices as appropriating Christian religiosity. It attempts to rediscover the inherent echoes of the transcendent Nakem (Divine Will) in day-to-day Ilokano life as its epiphany. This paper focuses on the Christian religion but is mindful of the other indigenous expressions of believing in a transcendent God. (...) It interprets the binding force that keeps the phrase “thy will be done” (matungpal koma ti nakemmo) as a fitting description of faith in Ilokano contemporary life. (shrink)

Critical Social Theory's search for a normative ground of its engagement in the critique of contemporary societies is essentially founded on a reflexive way of thinking. Arguably, this can be traced back from modernity - specifically to Kant, Hegel, and Marx. This paper will demonstrate how the Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxian practices of self-reflection inform the concept of social critique. By an adequate understanding of self-reflection, we secure the methodological foundation of critical social theory.

This paper endeavors to explore and expand the communicative potential of silence from non-Western cultural spaces, of Asian-indigenous worldviews as hermeneutical key to critical and cosmic consciousness. Specifically, it speaks of the llokano cosmic Nakem (cosmic self or cosmic sense of being). At the core of the llokano Nakem is a cosmic impulse that situates this indigenous culture's resilience within the dissipating ecological integrity. Just like in other Asian classical texts, e.g., Taoism where it speaks of a heavenly Dao which (...) is the origin and the law that sustains everything in the world, the Ilokano cosmic self lays at core of cultural belief-an ontology that is deeply founded on the tradition of silence. By seeking out a decisive break from dominant frameworks, this paper argues for the possibility of articulating alternative cultural and linguistic experiences as a political imperative towards a democratized world. (shrink)

Philosophy is not all about parroting Western ideas and categorizations. There are esoteric philosophies, normally labelled as grassroot or indigenous, that are gaining recognition within formal academic circles. The Ilokano philosophy is alive at the margin, nonetheless implicit because its philosophical underpinnings are embedded in the way of life or cultural life of the Ilokanos. But through Maiyannatup a Panagripirip, the tacit Ilokano philosophy becomes outspoken and proves itself to be a rich source of humanistic principles. Dynamically translated as “Appropriate (...) Philosophizing” or “Philosophizing Cultural Life with Prudence”, Maiyannatup A Panagripirip is a methodological paradigm that employs suitable approaches and analyses to generate the Ilokano ontology, epistemology and ethics. It is this paradigm that ushers the Ilokanos to become wisdom-bearers and creators of value rather than mere passive consumers of culture. It unwraps as well the character of the Ilokano language and the discursive potentials of Ilokano philosophy at the arena of cultural pluralism. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to explicate Jürgen Habermas’s discourse on education vis-à-vis his political project of a democratized society. Arguably, Habermas sees in the structures and processes inherent in the universities an ideal place for self-reflection and communicative action. Thus, his idea of a university is tied up with the potentials of establishing an emancipated, enlightened society. The agencies of selfreflection hinge with democratic practices and processes, and the facility of communicative action even in a differentiated and specialized learning (...) practices and processes in a bundled lifeworld in the universities boost the prospect of a democratized society. Together with other institutions that promote, enhance, and safeguard avenues of discourses free from domination, university education contributes to the realization of the democratization project. (shrink)

This paper aims to institute that the folk song Pamulinawen is essentially a work of art descriptive of Ilokano cultural self-understanding. Specifically, it wants to elucidate that Pamulinanen, per se, is capable of self-assertion; it can usher itself to engage in a dialogue with the Ilokano beholder, and through the mediation of a common pagsasao, it embodies the individual and/or Nakem, the Ilokano collective identity. More than a popular song of courtship among the Ilokanos, the song Pamulinawen then attempts to (...) increase knowledge about Ilokano kananakem so that it serves not only as a piece of Ilokano cultural entertainment but as a medium to express “Ilokano-ness". Through the qualitative methodology, this study mainly employs maiyannatup a panagripirip, a hermeneutical approach to appropriately philosophize on the Ilokano metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. This approach consists of, among others, palpaliiw and the “Agcaoilon PAR”. (shrink)

Nietzsche est mort et c'est à nous à le faire vivre. Cet usage du texte n'est pas un retour à ce que Deleuze professait superbement : pour ce dernier, faire un enfant dans le dos (de Kant, de Bergson, voire de Nietzsche, même si Deleuze affirmait qu'avec ce dernier c'était l'inverse), c'était à la fois utiliser l'auteur pour lui faire dire ce qu'il n'avait explicitement pas dit, mais qui pouvait présenter un intérêt spéculatif, et, en même temps, dissimuler cet écart. (...) De fait, Deleuze disait "nous" ou "on", amalgamant ainsi sous le même pronom le commenté et le commentateur. Danilo Bilate, au contraire, revendique l'écart et le souligne tout au long de sa démonstration, rappelant ainsi sans cesse au lecteur que, s'il veut faire un enfant à Nietzsche, et si l'on nous permet de filer scabreusement la métaphore, c'est par-devant! Du même coup, là où Deleuze méprisait ouvertement toute philologie (jusqu'à ne pas même préciser les traductions utilisées), Danilo Bilate accorde à la terminologie nietzschéenne la plus grande attention. On interroge les textes pour ce qu'ils disent – car ils disent tout de même quelque chose par eux-mêmes si on veut bien les écouter. L'enfant qu'il s'agit de faire à Nietzsche en les écoutant est une éthique. Bertrand Binoche. (shrink)

Napoleon Bonaparte is a veritable “case” for Nietzsche: he does not reduce Napoleon to a single image, but he rather builds up an ambiguous image of Napoleon for years without trying to define a final result. This ongoing construction is due to Nietzsche’s deep admiration for Napoleon that, however great it may be, does not avoid a certain distancing. Defined as the synthesis of Unmensch and Übermensch, Nietzsche regards Napoleon as an extraordinary human being because of his immorality when he (...) exercised power. It is precisely this extraordinary nature that makes Napoleon a model for understanding the concept of the Übermensch. (shrink)

Michael A. Petersa and Fazal Rizvib aBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘no...

The article aims to revisit the relationship between inequality and education, a theme that accompanies education in modern societies. Despite access to data on inequality in society and education, as well as many analyzes of the origins and trends that provoke real social apartheids one has the impression that the metaphor of the labyrinth, common in Latin American literature, applies to education. The article is divided in two parts. The first seeks to situate the theme of inequality as a problem (...) of education and for education, with a brief reference to classic works and the identification of some pedagogical places that can serve to perpetuate inequality or resist it. The second part, based on thoughts from the beginning of the second half of the last century, revolves around the question of whether we are facing yet another unfinished revolution in Latin America. Two themes are discussed: updating the notion of awareness and the pedagogical nuances of concepts such as liberation, social exclusion and coloniality. In the conclusion, Paulo Freire’s centrality is emphasized to understand the relationship between inequality and education, and to create untested feasibilities in education and through education to promote a less unequal and more just society. Keywords: Inequality. Democracy. Awareness. Liberation. coloniality. (shrink)

I propose the notion of ‘epistemic sanity’, a property of parsimony between the holding of true but not false beliefs and the consideration of our cognitive limitations. Where ‘alethic value’ is the epistemic value of holding true but not false beliefs, the ‘alethic potential’ of an agent is the amount of extra alethic value that she is expected to achieve, given her current environment, beliefs, and reasoning skills. Epistemic sanity would be related to the holding of (true or false) beliefs (...) that increase the agent's alethic potential (relevant beliefs) but not of beliefs that decrease it (this is related to cognitive parsimony). Suspension of judgment, forgetting, and clutter avoidance are the main contributors to an agent's epistemic sanity, where this paper focuses on suspension. I argue that rational suspension favors the holding of true and relevant beliefs, which is not the case for the extremes of opinionation (no suspension) and skepticism (general suspension). In the absence of evidence, opinionated agents are often forced to rely on principles such as the principle of indifference, but suspension dominates indifference in terms of alethic value in some conditions. A rational agent would only find it beneficial to adopt skepticism if she considers herself to be an anti-expert about her entire agenda, but then ‘flipping’ beliefs maximizes expected alethic value in relation to skepticism. The study of epistemic sanity results in an ‘impure’ veritism, which can deal with some limitations of veritism (e.g., explaining the existence of false but relevant beliefs). (shrink)

Fihteova teorija drzave, koja cini integralni deo njegove prakticke filozofije, izgradjena je na kljucnim postavkama njegove metafizike. Stoga, osvetljavanje ovog problema u Fihteovoj poznoj filozofiji treba da podseti s jedne strane na jedan reprezentativan metafizicki projekat drzave velike spekulativne snage, a s druge strane na jedan nacin misljenja o drzavi koji se danas smatra anahronim, nenaucnim, prevazidjenim, te stoga vrednim da bude pominjan kao "negativan primer". Iako pomenute kvalifikacije ne treba sasvim odbaciti ili ih pak, unapred dovesti u pitanje, ipak (...) vracanje Fihteovoj poznoj metafizici drzave ne moze ni u nasem vremenu biti filozofski neproduktivno. Ono danas moze biti od sustinske pomoci svakome ko jos nije pregazen pohodom scjentisticke politologije, svakome ciji je saznajni interes jos uvek dovoljno otvoren za izrazito filozofsko razmatranje drzave, svakome ko zeli da filozofski obogati ili izostri pogled na drzavu. Iako je Fihteova teorija drzave jedinstvena i koherentna, ona je, narocito u svojoj poslednjoj fazi dozivela znacajan preobrazaj. Taj preobrazaj je bio toliko vidljiv da se drzava i u terminoloskom smislu pomera u pozadinu. U Fihteovoj poznoj filozofiji kljucna rec nije vise drzava, vec "carstvo slobode". O drzavi se sada govori, takoreci, intencionalno, svagda s pogledom na to carstvo, na mogucnost i izglede njegovog uspostavljanja. Bez obzira sto je ovaj terminoloski i saznajni primat carstva slobode potisnuo drzavu u drugi plan, on joj, ipak, nije porekao svaki znacaj. Naprotiv. Na putu ka carstvu slobode drzava za Fihtea predstavlja vaznu tacku razvoja preko koje se mora proci. Bas u toj njenoj prolaznosti lezi njena nezaobilaznost. (shrink)

Bayesian epistemologists support the norms of probabilism and conditionalization using Dutch book and accuracy arguments. These arguments assume that rationality requires agents to maximize practical or epistemic value in every doxastic state, which is evaluated from a subjective point of view (e.g., the agent’s expectancy of value). The accuracy arguments also presuppose that agents are opinionated. The goal of this paper is to discuss the assumptions of these arguments, including the measure of epistemic value. I have designed AI agents based (...) on the Bayesian model and a nonmonotonic framework and tested how they achieve practical and epistemic value in conditions in which an alternative set of assumptions holds. In one of the tested conditions, the nonmonotonic agent, which is not opinionated and fulfills neither probabilism nor conditionalization, outperforms the Bayesian in the measure of epistemic value that I argue for in the paper (α-value). I discuss the consequences of these results for the epistemology of rationality. (shrink)

The phenomenological attitude allows us to grasp something that happens before the distinction between subject and object. The application to groups of human beings in a clinical and therapeutic context of the phenomenological setting allows us, in spite of its descriptive-contemplative aura, the extreme richness of potentialities, applicative and transformative, of one of the greatest intuitions of modern thought: the disappearance of the fracture between the subject, the others and the world-of-life, in the evidence of meaning that the mutual experience (...) of one's own presence or being-there opens up. The Mitsein doesn’t represent the only existential structure that makes the Dasein able to exist with others, but the relationship between the ‘originary temporality’ of the Dasein and the other as ‘you’. Dasein is that entity that is structurally “with” others. And it is in this relationship dynamic that unfolds the theme of the care. Care becomes for Heidegger the existential of the existentials, fundamental ontological structure, indicating the original opening of being. Being-with-in-loving could consist in the atmosphere, a kind of well-being which these flow-experiences, relatively rare in everyday life, are immersed in. (shrink)

This book casts new light on the process that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to a profound transformation in the study of nature with the emergence of mechanistic philosophy, the new mixed mathematics, and the establishment of the experimental approach. It is argued that modern European science originated from Hellenistic mathematics not so much because of rediscovery of the latter but rather because its “applied” components, namely mechanics, optics, harmonics, and astronomy, and their methodologies continued to be transmitted (...) throughout the Middle Ages without serious interruption. Furthermore, it is proposed that these “applied” components played a role in their entirety; thus, for example, “new” mechanics derived not only from “old” mechanics but also from harmonics, optics, and astronomy. Unlike other texts on the subject, the role of mathematicians is stressed over that of philosophers of nature and the focus is particularly on epistemological aspects. In exploring Galilean and post-Galilean epistemology, attention is paid to the contributions of Galileo’s disciples and also the impact of his enemies. The book will appeal to both historians of science and scientists. (shrink)

A teoria minimalista da verdade consiste em todas as instâncias do esquema 'φ é verdadeira sse φ' e na afirmação de que nossa aceitação (primitiva) dessas instâncias é suficiente para explicar nossas atitudes em relação a todas sentenças envolvendo ‘verdade’. Filósofos têm apontado que o minimalismo tem dificuldades em explicar nossas atitudes em relação a generalizações envolvendo ‘verdade’ bem como em lidar com instanciações contraditórias do esquema para sentenças paradoxais (ex. paradoxo do mentiroso). Proponentes do minimalismo apresentam soluções para esses (...) problemas. Nesse artigo, argumento que essas soluções entram em conflito, analiso algumas estratégias para resolver esse conflito e concluo que o minimalismo não pode evitar conflitos desse tipo mantendo seu caráter minimalista. ENGLISH: The minimalist theory of truth consists in all the instances of the schema 'φ is true iff φ' and in the claim that our primitive acceptance of these instances explains our attitudes in relation to propositions involving truth. Philosophers point that minimalism has difficulties in explaining our attitudes in relation to generalizations involving truth and with the contradictory instances of the schema for paradoxal sentences (e.g. the liar). Minimalists present solutions to these problems. In this paper, I argue that these solutions conflict with each other. I analyze some strategies to resolve this conflict. I conclude that minimalism cannot avoid the conflict maintaining it minimalist character. (shrink)

Marxist theory has always maintained that a strict continuity exists between liberalism and fascism, and has even proclaimed that there is a causal connection between the two. Therefore fascism comes to be portrayed as the ‘armed wing’ of the bourgeoisie. The Marxist thesis is weak for two reasons: first, because the connection between liberalism and fascism, though it doubtless exists, is considerably more complex, mediated and contradictory than it suggests; and second, because it axiomatically denies the revolutionary nature of fascism, (...) which despite what Marxists claim, represents a rupture with the liberal tradition and demonstrates a relative autonomy from it. In the case of Italy, this autonomy arises from the fact that Fascism was born from the turmoil surrounding the genesis, the course and the outcome of the Great War, and was fed by fragments of philosophies and political theories radically opposed to liberalism, democracy and Marxism (though not to socialism) which arose in Europe at the turn of the 19th century. A birth in such a turbulent cultural and political climate could not give rise to an internally consistent and coherent ideology. The theoretical works of philosophers such as Giovanni Gentile encouraged liberalism to fool itself into seeing in fascism an unruly brother who could be put to good use by opposing socialism. This delusion enabled the rise to power of Mussolini. The revolutionary side to Fascism could draw on Italian populism’s latent revolutionary tradition which developed in the 50 years following unification as a transfiguration of ideological currents which contributed to the Risorgimento but which had been defeated by Cavourian liberalism. These included Mazzinianism and a particular type of radical anti-monarchism. (shrink)

Background: Research suggests that humans have the tendency to increase the valence of events when these are imagined to happen in the future, but to decrease the valence when the same events are imagined to happen in the past. This line of research, however, has mostly been conducted by asking participants to value imagined, yet probable, events. Our aim was to re-examine this time-valence asymmetry using real-life data: a Reuter’s news and a Facebook status updates corpus. Method: We organized the (...) Reuter news (120,000,000 words) and the Facebook status updates data (41,056,346 words) into contexts grouped in chronological order (i.e., past, present, and future) using verbs and years as time markers. These contexts were used to estimate the valence of each article and status update, respectively, in relation to the time markers using natural language processing tools (i.e., the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm). Results: Our results using verbs, in both text corpus, showed that valence for the future was significantly higher compared to the past (future > past). Similarly, in the Reuter year condition, valence increased approximately linear from 1994 to 1999 for texts written 1996-7. In the Facebook year condition, the valence of the future was also significantly higher than past valence. Conclusion: Generally, the analyses of the Reuters data indicated that the past is devaluated relative to both the present and the future, while the analyses of the Facebook data indicated that both the past and the present are devaluated against the future. On this basis, we suggest that people strive to communicate the promotion of a bright future and the prevention of a dark future, which in turn leads to a temporal-valence asymmetrical phenomenon (valence = pastshrink)

Resumo: Este artigo busca investigar possíveis significações da palavra “imagem”, que se depreendam dos textos de Deleuze sobre as artes, através de uma pesquisa filológica que respeita a cronologia de suas obras. Essa noção de imagem, fundamental para a Estética, aparece em seus comentários sobre Proust, o cinema, Bacon e Beckett, principalmente, seja com o uso do termo “imagem”, seja com os termos “signo” e “ideia”, àquele correlatos. Assim, verifica-se um vácuo na década de 70, de modo que, se a (...) noção de signo é estudada na década anterior, ao tratar de Proust, e a de ideia, em Diferença e repetição, o tema “imagem” é retomado nas duas décadas subsequentes com toda a intensidade, ao abordar a pintura de Bacon, o universo cinematográfico e a obra teatral e televisiva de Beckett.: The present article seeks to investigate possible meanings of the word “image” that can be deduced from Deleuze’s writings on the arts, respecting the chronology of his works. The notion of image, which is fundamental to aesthetics, appears in Deleuze’s comments on Proust, the cinema, Bacon, and Beckett, whether with the use of the term “image” or with the correlated terms “sign” and “idea”. Thus, there is found in Deleuze’s writings a vacuum in the 1970’s: the notion of sign is studied in the previous decade when dealing with Proust and the notion of idea in Difference and repetition, and the theme of image is intensely taken up again in the following two decades in dealing with Bacon’s painting, the cinematographic universe, and Beckett’s theater and television work. (shrink)

ExcerptPost-Communist Trends in Italy, 1968–1989 According to Paul Berman, the events of 1989 were a consequence and, in some ways, an “achievement” of the protest movement of 1968; or they at least expressed the most deeply felt aspirations of a generation of “utopians.”1 It is not my intention here to examine and discuss Berman's thesis in detail, but rather to highlight its originality and look for any possible historical or conceptual connections between the events of 1968 and those of 1989. (...) The Italian case seems to lend itself particularly well to such a comparison. From the beginning…. (shrink)

This paper examines the contribution of Gabrio Piola to continuum mechanics.Though he was undoubtably a skilled mathematician and a good mechanician, little is commonly known about his papers within the international scientific community, principally because a large part of the Italian school of mechanics was isolated in the first half of the XIXth century.We examine and comment on Piola’s most important papers, and compare them with those of his contemporaries Cauchy, Poisson and Kirchhoff.

Backtracking counterfactuals are problem cases for the standard, similarity based, theories of counterfactuals e.g., Lewis. These theories usually need to employ extra-assumptions to deal with those cases. Hiddleston, 632–657, 2005) proposes a causal theory of counterfactuals that, supposedly, deals well with backtracking. The main advantage of the causal theory is that it provides a unified account for backtracking and non-backtracking counterfactuals. In this paper, I present a backtracking counterfactual that is a problem case for Hiddleston’s account. Then I propose an (...) informational theory of counterfactuals, which deals well with this problem case while maintaining the main advantage of Hiddleston’s account. In addition, the informational theory offers a general theory of backtracking that provides clues for the semantics and epistemology of counterfactuals. I propose that backtracking is reasonable when the state of affairs expressed in the antecedent of a counterfactual transmits less information about an event in the past than the actual state of affairs. (shrink)

God's character remains one of the big mysteries in Supernatural. We certainly see God's impact on the world, and occasionally, we're told he has miraculously interceded on behalf of the Winchesters or Castiel. Spinoza said, ”The knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge.“ But after concluding that God exists, Spinoza concludes that evil does not. Ironically, while many thought of Spinoza as the Devil, he denied the Devil's existence. As Supernatural illustrates, loving relationships don't need to be mutually beneficial; one (...) person may even risk his life to save another person he loves. Often philosophical, the ending scene may hold the key to understanding God in Supernatural. The Philosopher John Locke argued that the idea of redemption could be arrived at in principle by the same sort of reasoning that arrives at the idea of God. (shrink)

A teoria minimalista da verdade consiste em todas as instâncias do esquema ‘‘φ’ é verdadeira sse φ’ e na afirmação de que nossa aceitação (primitiva) dessas instâncias é suficiente para explicar nossas atitudes em relação a todas sentenças envolvendo ‘verdade’. Filósofos têm apontado que o minimalismo tem dificuldades em explicar nossas atitudes em relação a generalizações envolvendo ‘verdade’ e em lidar com instanciações contraditórias do esquema para sentenças paradoxais (ex. paradoxo do mentiroso). Proponentes do minimalismo apresentam soluções para esses problemas. (...) Nesse artigo, argumento que essas soluções entram em conflito, analiso algumas estratégias para resolver esse conflito e concluo que o minimalismo não pode evitar conflitos desse tipo mantendo seu caráter minimalista. Abstract:The minimalist theory of truth (minimalism) consists in all instances of the T schema (‘‘φ’ is true iff φ’) along with the claim that our (primitive) acceptance of these instances is sufficient for explaining our attitudes (e.g. acceptance) in relation to all sentences involving ‘truth’ (‘true’, etc). Philosophers argue that minimalism can neither explain our atittudes in relation to truth-generalizations (generalizations involving ‘truth’) nor deal with the fact that instantiations of T to sentences alike the liar paradox entail a contradiction. Paul Horwich proposes solutions to the two problems, but these solutions conflict with each other. In this paper, I show demonstrate this conflict and analise some strategies to solve it. I argue that Horwich’s solution to the liar problem has important limitations. I conclude that the minimalism cannot avoid conflicts of this sort maintaining its minimalistic character. (shrink)

Davies argues that the ontology of artworks as performances offers a principled way of explaining work-relativity of modality. Object oriented contextualist ontologies of art (Levinson) cannot adequately address the problem of work-relativity of modal properties because they understand looseness in what counts as the same context as a view that slight differences in the work-constitutive features of provenance are work-relative. I argue that it is more in the spirit of contextualism to understand looseness as context-dependent. This points to the general (...) problem—the context of appreciation is not robust enough to ground modal intuitions about objective entities. In general, when epistemology dictates ontology there is always a threat of anti-realism, scepticism and relativism. Davies also appeals to the modality principle—an entity’s essential properties are all and only its constitutive properties. Davies understands essentiality in a traditional way: a property P is an essential property of an object o iff o could not exist and lack P. Kit Fine has recently made a convincing case for the view that the notion of essence is not to be understood in modal terms. I explore some of the implications of this view for Davies’ modal argument for the performance theory. (shrink)

I discuss Smokrović’s work on the normativity of logic (Smokrović 2017, Smokrović 2018). I agree that the classical formal logic is not an adequate model for real-life reasoning. But I present some doubts about his notion of deductive logic and his proposal to model such reasoning in non-monotonic logic. No branch of formal logic by itself is likely to capture real-life inferential links (reasoned-inference). I use the logic of relevance as my case study and extend the pessimistic morals to modern (...) systems of non-classical logic. Finally, I propose a more lax conception of normativty: there is a connection between logical assessment in the broad sense (as sanctioned by the notion of cogency) and the evaluation and criticism of reasoning. (shrink)

Ilhan Inan’s (2012) approach to curiosity is based on the following central theses: (i) for every question asked out of curiosity there is a corresponding term (definite description) that is inostensible for the asker (its reference is unknown) and that has the function of uniquely identifying an object; (ii) the satisfaction of curiosity is always in the form of com- ing to know an object as falling under a concept. This model primarily covers curiosity as our search for empirical objectual (...) knowledge. In my critical reflections, I explore some phenomena of non-objectual curiosity which are left out or at least not sufficiently explored by Inan: curiosity as the search for explanation and understanding, and meta-curiosity— curiosity about the very representations, i.e. how to conceptualize a certain problem, and what defi nite descriptions to use in the first place. (shrink)

Putnam’s semantic argument against the BIV hypothesis and Sosa’s argument against dream skepticism based on the imagination model of dreaming share some important structural features. In both cases the skeptical option is supposed to be excluded because preconditions of its intelligibility are not fulfilled (affirmation and belief in the dream scenario, thought and reference in the BIV scenario). Putnam’s reasoning is usually interpreted differently, as a classic case of deception, but this feature is not essential. I propose to interpret BIV’s (...) utterances as cases of reference failure best captured by truth-value gaps. Both anti-skeptical strategies are then vulnerable to the same type of objections (how do we know what state we are in or how do we know what kind of language do we speak). (shrink)

What were the mechanisms through which fascism triumphed in Europe during the interwar period? According to Robert O. Paxton, this is the question one must ask in order to understand the real nature of Mussolini's and Hitler's political regimes. In fact, with “fascism,” Paxton adopts a category from political science that includes characteristics shared by both Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. Paxton aims at constructing this category on the basis of a descriptive study of the world in which the (...) Mussolinian and Hitlerian movements concretely established themselves in their respective societies. Particularly, according to Paxton, we must examine fascism…. (shrink)

The gist of modal epistemology is expressed in the idea that you fail to know if you do believe truly but it is seriously possible for you to believe falsely. According to subjunctivism, this idea is captured by certain subjunctive conditionals. One formulation invokes a safety condition—“If S had believed P, then P would have been the case,” while the other invokes a sensitivity condition—“If P had been false, S would not have believed that P.” According to simple subjunctivism, such (...) conditionals do not contrapose and Sosa derives important epistemological consequences which favor safety from this difference. However, simple subjunctivism is inadequate. I return to Goodman and his analysis of factuals and propose modal stability, which is restricted sensitivity or enhanced safety as a proper epistemic condition for the non-accidental connection between the basis for the belief and the relevant facts of the matter. The idea of modal stability combines robustness (benefi ts of safety) with responsiveness to facts (benefi ts of sensitivity) and recovers the original motivation for the relevant alternatives theory—when testing for claims of knowledge that p we ask what might be the case if not-p, but we ignore irrelevant possibilities. Epistemic modal conditions should be expressed in terms of conditionals of connection which contrapose within the limits of relevance. (shrink)

The consequence argument of van Inwagen is widely regarded as the best argument for incompatibilism. Lewis’s response is praised by van Inwagen as the best compatibilist’s strategy but Lewis himself acknowledges that his strategy resembles that of Lehrer. A comparison will show that one can speak about Lehrer-Lewis strategy, although I think that Lewis’s variation is dialectically slightly stronger. The paper provides a response to some standard objections of incompatibilists to the Lehrer-Lewis reply.

I explore some issues in the logics and dialectics of practical modalities connected with the Consequence Argument (CA) considered as the best argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. According to Lewis (1981) in one of the possible senses of (in)ability, the argument is not valid; however, understood in the other of its possible senses, the argument is not sound. This verdict is based on the assessment of the modal version of the argument, where the crucial notion is (...) power necessity (“no choice” operator), while Lewis analyses the version where the central notion is the locution “cannot render false.”Lewis accepts closure of the relevant (in)ability operator under entailment but not closure under implication. His strategy has a seemingly strange corollary: a free predetermined agent is able (in a strong, causal sense) to falsity the conjunction of history and law. I compare a Moorean position with respect to radical skepticism and knowledge closure with ability closure and propose to explain Lewis’s strategy in the framework of his Moorean stance. (shrink)

This paper starts with an analysis of the maker’s knowledge principle as one of the main characteristics of Modern epistemology. We start by showing that maker’s knowledge can be understood in two ways: 1) a negative sense, as a way of establishing limits to human knowledge: we can only know what we create; and 2) a positive sense, as legitimizing human knowledge: we effectively know what we create. We proceed then to examine the roots of the maker’s knowledge principle in (...) the context of the transition from Greek philosophy to early Christian thought, seeing Philo of Alexandria as perhaps the first to formulate an early version of the principle. We conclude that it is the Christian conception of God as creator that makes possible a redefinition of the relation between knowing and creating, opening the way to the Modern formulation of the principle. (shrink)

In the first, shorter part of the paper I point out some problems and potential misunderstandings connected with B. Berčić’s treatment of Nozick’s sensitivity condition for knowledge. In the second part of the paper I offer the condition of modal stability or limited sensitivity as a revision of Nozickian conditions for non-accidental connection between our belief and the truth of our belief. “When it is seriously possible for you to falsely believe that p,” that is a good reason for denying (...) that you know that p. Sensitivity within limits requires that we consider more possible worlds than classical sensitivity, but not the worlds outside this sphere. The idea of modal stability combines robustness with responsiveness to facts. (shrink)

This book presents a historical and scientific analysis as historical epistemology of the science of weights and mechanics in the sixteenth century, particularly as developed by Tartaglia in his Quesiti et inventioni diverse, Book VII and Book VIII (1546; 1554). -/- In the early 16th century mechanics was concerned mainly with what is now called statics and was referred to as the Scientia de ponderibus, generally pursued by two very different approaches. The first was usually referred to as Aristotelian, where (...) the equilibrium of bodies was set as a balance of opposite tendencies to motion. The second, usually referred to as Archimedean, identified statics with centrobarica, the theory of centres of gravity based on symmetry considerations. In between the two traditions the Italian scholar Niccolò Fontana, better known as Tartaglia (1500?–1557), wrote the treatise Quesiti et inventioni diverse (1546). -/- This volume consists of three main parts. In the first, a historical excursus regarding Tartaglia’s lifetime, his scientific production and the Scientia de ponderibus in the Arabic-Islamic culture, and from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, is presented. Secondly, all the propositions of Books VII and VIII, by relating them with the Problemata mechanica by the Aristotelian school and Iordani opvsculvm de ponderositate by Jordanus de Nemore are examined within the history and historical epistemology of science. The last part is relative to the original texts and critical transcriptions into Italian and Latin and an English translation. -/- This work gathers and re-evaluates the current thinking on this subject. It brings together contributions from two distinguished experts in the history and historical epistemology of science, within the fields of physics, mathematics and engineering. It also gives much-needed insight into the subject from historical and scientific points of view. The volume composition makes for absorbing reading for historians, epistemologists, philosophers and scientists. (shrink)

According to the received view, the regularity “All F’s are G” is a real law of nature only if it supports a counterfactual conditional “If x were an F (but actually it is not), it would be a G”. Popper suggested a different approach -- universal generalisations differ from accidental generalisations in the structure of their terms. Terms in accidental generalisations are closed, extensional and terms in laws of nature are open, strictly universal, intensional. But Popper failed to develop this (...) point and used a mistaken and unnatural interpretation of counterfactual assumptions in order to defend the view that both laws of nature and accidental generalisations support counterfactuals. The idea that terms in laws of nature stand for intensions was developed twenty-five years later in the so called DTA theory, which explains laws of nature as relations between properties. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that those embedded conditionals of the type "if A, then if B, then C" we do understand, we understand as equivalent to sentences without embedded conditionals. This reduction is in classical logic achieved with the use of laws of exportation and importation. V. McGee even presents counterexamples to modus ponens which are based on the classical treatment of embedded conditionals and proposes to trade the validity of modus ponens for the validity of laws of importation and (...) exportation. It is argued that for a large class of indicative conditionals the laws of exportation and importation are invalid. With the help of Stalnaker's selection function theory of conditionals and the distinction between valid and reasonable inferences it is shown that modus ponens is valid but can be unreasonable, whereas laws of importation and exportation are invalid, but still reasonable. (shrink)

Counterfactual analysis of causation between particular events, combined with standard semantics for counterfactual conditionals, cannot express the idea that the cause is sufficient for the effect. Several authors have suggested that a more complex pattern of nested counterfactual conditionals is a better candidate for expressing the idea of causal connection. The most systematic account is developed by Kadri Vihvelin. She argues that a complex pattern of causal dependence, expressed by embedded conditionals, covers all the cases of causation and still yields (...) an account of causal asymmetry. But the new account relies heavily on the use of backtracking conditionals, and no criterion is given for their evaluation. I will try to show that Vihvelin’s proposal is not superior to the standard account because it overlooks the disadvantages of a liberal theory of causal relata. (shrink)

Cogency is the central normative concept of informal logic. But it is a loose evaluative concept and I argue that a generic notion covering all of the qualities of a well-reasoned argument is the most plausible conception. It is best captured by the standard RSA criterion: in a good argument acceptable (A) and relevant (R) premises provide sufficient (S) grounds for the conclusion. Logical qualities in a broad sense are affected by the epistemic qualities of the premises and “consequence” in (...) a broad sense exhibits an interplay of form and content. There are four proposals for the premise—conclusion relation: (i) no strictly logical connection (“non-logical” consequence); (ii) one type of connection only (deductivism); (iii) a few types of connection (deduction, induction, perhaps conduction and analogical reasoning); (iv) many types of connection (argumentation schemes). Deductivism is a serious option but in its strong version, as the discussion about petitio shows, it fails to establish that arguments which are not cogent are thereby invalid. And weak deductivism, very attractive from the pedagogical point of view, has some deficiencies (implausible hidden premises; preservation of truth, not probability). I argue that the idea of a counterexample, when we regard certain components of the argument as fixed and others as variable, is the best approach to the analysis of the illative core of every-day arguments (the approach of David Hitchcock on material consequence). (shrink)

What kind of causality does the Aristotelian Prime Mover exert on the heaven? Who “loves” the Prime Mover? Renaissance peripatetic philosopher, Francesco Vimercato, a “royal” teacher of “Greek and Latin philosophy” in Paris during the forties and the fifties of the 16th century tried to resolve these traditional puzzles that resulted from the exegesis of the Metaphysics XII, 6–7. His solution appears to be innovative, if compared to the ancient and the medieval ones. It seems partially to prefigure the last (...) two decades’ interpretations of Aristotelian “theology”. (shrink)

Analyzing Apel's proposal for positive tolerance in multicultural society, the author develops critical observations concerning, first, the distinction between negative and positive tolerance, second, the ethical foundation of positive tolerance and, finally, the semantic content of the notion.

According to the article, Neurath's reflexive epistemology—expressed by the metaphor of the ship in need of reconstruction on the open sea—represents a philosophical alternative to the classical and contemporary forms of scientific realism and ethical cognitivism, including Popper's falsificationism. Against Quine's reductive interpretation of Neurath's boat argument as the basis for a 'naturalized epistemology,' the article maintains that the metaphor suggests the idea of an insuperable situation of linguistic and conceptual circularity. This prevents any attempt at self-foundation in scientific knowledge, (...) as well as in ethics and politics, and rules out any 'constructive philosophy' aiming to break circularity in pursuit of some methodological beginning. (shrink)