The relations of power between healthcare-related institutions and the professionals that interact with them are changing. Generally, the institutions are gaining the upper hand. Consequently, the intellectual abilities necessary for professionals to pursue the internal goods of healthcare are changing as well. A concrete case is the struggle over sickness benefits in Sweden, in which theSwedish Social Insurance Agency(SSIA) and physicians are important stakeholders. The SSIA has recently consolidated its power over the sickness certificates that doctors issue for their patients. (...) The result has been a stricter gatekeeping of sickness benefits. In order to combat the inroads made by state institutions into sickness certification, and into the sphere of medical practice, some doctors have developed cunning “techniques” to maximize the chance to have their sickness certificates accepted by the SSIA. This article attempts to demonstrate that cunning intelligence—the ability of the weak to “outsmart” a stronger adversary—plays an important role in the practice of medicine. Cunning intelligence is not merely a defective form of prudence (phronesis), nor is it simply an instance of instrumental reason (techne), but rather an ability that occupies a distinct place among the intellectual abilities generally ascribed to professionals. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of various alternative formulations for Analysis, the theory of Integral and Differential Calculus, and its diverging conceptions of the topological structure of the continuum. We pay particularly attention to Smooth Analysis, a proposal created by William Lawvere and Anders Kock based on Grothendieck’s work on a categorical algebraic geometry. The role of Heyting’s logic, common to all these alternatives is emphasized.

The article deals with Aristotle’s conception of ‘place’, which is of cruсial importance for his theory of motion. It is shown that in the physics of Aristotle there is no concept of spасe; instead, there is the notion of ‘place’ of a body. Aristotle considered ‘place’ as the first boundary of a body embracing the body in question. The author shows the incommensurability between the spatial ideas of the Stagirite and the similar ideas of Newtonian physics. The article states that (...) in order to give an adequate reconstruction of Aristotle’s concept of ‘place’ we need to take into account two different levels of consideration: local and global. Places locally separable cannot be separated on the global level. In Newtonian physics, bodies are separable from places on both levels. The nature of parallelism of ideas between Aristotle’s conception of ‘place’ and the notions of space in present-day physics is analysed. (shrink)

In the Organon Aristotle describes some deductive schemata in which inconsistencies do not entail the trivialization of the logical theory involved. This thesis is corroborated by three different theoretical topics by him discussed, which are presented in this paper. We analyse inference schema used by Aristotle in the Protrepticus and the method of indirect demonstration for categorical syllogisms. Both methods exemplify as Aristotle employs classical reductio ad absurdum strategies. Following, we discuss valid syllogisms from opposite premises (contrary and contradictory) studied (...) by the Stagerian in the Analytica Priora (B15). According to him, the following syllogisms are valid from opposite premises, in which small Latin letters stand for terms such as subject and predicate, and capital Latin letters stand for the categorical propositions such as in the traditional notation: (i) in the second figure, Eba,Aba ` Eaa (Cesare), Aba, Eba ` Eaa (Camestres), Eba, I ba ` Oaa (Festino), and Aba,Oba ` Oaa (Baroco); (ii) in the third one, Eab,Aab ` Oaa (Felapton), Oab,Aab ` Oaa (Bocardo) and Eab, Iab ` Oaa (Ferison). Finally, we discuss the passage from the Analytica Posteriora (A11) in which Aristotle states that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is not generally presupposed in all demonstrations (scientific syllogisms), but only in those in which the conclusion must be proved from the Principle; the Stagerian states that if a syllogism of the first figure has the major term consistent, the other terms of the demonstration can be each one separately inconsistent. These results allow us to propose an interpretation of his deductive theory as a broad sense paraconsistent theory. Firstly, we proceed to a hermeneutical analysis, evaluating its logical significance and the interplay of the results with some other points of Aristotle’s philosophy. Secondly, we point to a logical interpretation of the Aristotelian syllogisms from opposite premises in the antilogisms method proposed by Christine Ladd-Franklin in 1883, and we also present a logical treatment of the Aristotelian demonstration with inconsistent material in the paraconsistent logics Cn, 1 _ n _!, introduced by da Costa in 1963. These two issues seem having not yet been analysed in detail in the literature. (shrink)

The presence of premises expressing comparison is a problem for the Aristotelian theory of the dialectical method, first because there is no general theory of comparison in the Organon and secondly because along with propositions on the opposition and inflexion of the terms, comparative statements seem to fall outside the explicit description which Aristotle gives of possible premises. The purpose of this paper is to offer a synthetic theory of comparisons according to Aristotle’s Topics , in an attempt both to (...) supply the aforementioned absence and to highlight the importance of the second problem. There are three main types of premises on the more, the less and the similar : some comparing the degree of possession of a predicate, others comparing the plausibility of a predication and finally, others expressing an analogy. Once expounded the very marked differences that occur between these three classes of propositions, the paper analyses the various kinds of argumentation based on comparative premises and offers a formalization of its logical laws. The complexity of this theory and the volume of topoi involved in the comparisons show the magnitude of a problem that has not been sufficiently studied. (shrink)