Using quantitative methods, we investigate the role of logic in analytic philosophy from 1941 to 2010. In particular, a corpus of five journals publishing analytic philosophy is assessed and evaluated against three main criteria: the presence of logic, its role and level of technical sophistication. The analysis reveals that logic is not present at all in nearly three-quarters of the corpus, the instrumental role of logic prevails over the non-instrumental ones, and the level of technical sophistication increases in time, although (...) it remains relatively low. These results are used to challenge the view, widespread among analytic philosophers and labeled here “prevailing view”, that logic is a widely used and highly sophisticated method to analyze philosophical problems. (shrink)

There is a rather widespread consensus, among historians of philosophy, concerning the decline of Wittgenstein amid recent analytic philosophy. However, the exact import of such a decline,...

The article investigates what happens when philosophy meets and begins to establish connections with two formal research methods such as game theory and network science. We use citation analysis to identify, among the articles published in Synthese and Philosophy of Science between 1985 and 2021, those that cite the specialistic literature in game theory and network science. Then, we investigate the structure of the two corpora thus identified by bibliographic coupling and divide them into clusters of related papers by automatic (...) community detection. Lastly, we construct by the same bibliometric techniques a reference map of philosophy, on which we overlay our corpora to map the diffusion of game theory and network science in the various sub-areas of recent philosophy. Three main results derive from this study. Philosophers are interested not only in using and investigating game theory as a formal method belonging to applied mathematics and sharing many relevant features with social choice theory, but also in considering its applications in more empirically oriented disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive science, or biology. Philosophers focus on networks in two research contexts and in two different ways: in the debate on causality and scientific explanation, they consider the results of network science; in social epistemology, they employ network science as a formal tool. In the reference map, logic—whose use in philosophy dates back to a much earlier period—is distributed in a more uniform way than recently encountered disciplines such as game theory and network science. We conclude by discussing some methodological limitations of our bibliometric approach, especially with reference to the problem of field delineation. (shrink)

The book aims at a comprehensive account of the relationship between Wittgenstein s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Russell s philosophy as it developed between 1903 and 1918. The focus is on the central nucleus of the Tractatus, i.e., on its ontology and the picture theory of language. On Russell s side, the multiple-relation theory of judgment has been chosen as the leading theme around which the presentation of several other issues is organized. Whereas the similarity between Russell s and Wittgenstein s (...) problems is pointed out, the deep difference between their solutions is acknowledged, in particular with reference to the opposition between objects and names on the one hand, and facts and propositions on the other.". (shrink)

Different interpretations of Bradley’s regress argument are considered. On the basis of textual evidences, it is argued that the most persuasive is the one that sees the argument as primarily addressing the general issue of unity or connectedness.

The essays collected in this volume explore the fundamental issues of philosophical realism, including metaphysical realism. Do things exist and have properties independently of being objects of thought or perception? epistemological realism: Is it possible to know any part of reality in and of itself? and ontological realism: Are there universals?

Résumé L’étude de la figure et de l’œuvre du dominicain méridional Armand de Belvézer permet de dégager quelques-unes des caractéristiques du thomisme tel qu’il se pratiquait en France dans la première moitié du xiv e siècle. Ce thomisme accorde une importance déterminante à l’autorité doctrinale de saint Thomas, qui lui semble être confirmée par la canonisation de 1323. Au plan doctrinal, le thomisme d’Armand peut être assez diffus comme dans le Tractatus de declaratione, qui transmet une doctrine commune plus qu’un (...) thomisme spécifique. Mais il est plus littéral dans le Scriptum sur le De ente et essentia où Armand, non sans une certaine originalité dans sa compréhension des rapports de l’être et de l’essence, développe les thèses d’une philosophie spécifiquement thomiste. (shrink)

Gustav Bergmann was, arguably, one of the greatestontologists of the twentieth century. In 2006 and 2007, after aperiod of relative neglect, international conferences devoted solelyto Bergmanns work were held at the University of Iowa in the USA,Universit de Provence in France, and Universit degli Studi diRoma Tre in Italy. The fifteen papers collected in this volume werepresented at the third of these conferences, in Rome, and are here dividedinto three sections: "Categories of a realistic ontology," "World,mind, and relations," and "Metaphysics (...) of space and time". (shrink)

1. Premesse Questo articolo richiede alcune premesse. Innanzitutto sono opportuni due chiarimenti, o precisazioni, che riguardano il titolo, Il nominalismo di Quine: un argomento circolare. Il primo chiarimento riguarda l’attribuzione a Willard Van Orman Quine di una posizione nominalistica, attribuzione contestabile sotto diversi rispetti. È vero che Quine è comunemente considerato uno dei maggiori esponenti del nominalismo contemporaneo. Tuttavia il termine “nominalismo” può essere inteso i...