De acuerdo con los principales enfoques al respecto la lógica de los estoicos es principalmente un sistema deductivo, lo que, en términos actuales, ha sido visto como un sistema de lógica proposicional. La obra de Crísipo acerca de los cinco argumentos indemostrables constituye la principal base de dicho sistema. En este artículo se examina la naturaleza de dichos cinco indemostrables así como el llamando teorema de Antipatro y los esquemas básicos de inferencia, o zemas. Por otra parte y en particular, (...) sostengo que dichos argumentos indemostrables tienen otro importante rol para la filosofía y la historia de la lógica, cual es el de constituirse en una justificación de la deducción, un problema central en el presente. Se analiza, primero, la justificación por los indemostrables y por el principio de condicionalización y, segundo, la justificación cognitiva de la lógica implícita en un sistema estoico. (shrink)

According to Renan, the day of Marcus Aurelius’ death could be considered as the decisive moment in the downfall of the ancient civilization. He, thus, wonders: “If Marcus Aurelius, the unique emperor-philosopher, did not succeed in saving the world, who else, then, could have saved it?” He notes that the emperor’s death was followed by the succession to the throne of his corrupted son, Commodus, and his friends, who all were all ignorant. Renan observes that the emperor’s kindness could not (...) have prevented the unfortunate fate that befell the Roman Empire after his death. What we have here is the perennial problem, already established in Plato, regarding the role of the philosopher-king in establishing a good state and educating good citizens. However, the case of Marcus Aurelius, as demonstrated by Renan in his book, shows the inability of philosophy to serve the real needs, which ultimately leads to disastrous and irreparable consequences. The present paper attempts to reconstruct the reasons for the unsuccessful application of philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Hellenistic era, to the administrative system of the Roman Empire. It is argued that the failure is mainly due to political, religious and cultural problems. (shrink)

The surviving sources on the Stoic theory of division reveal that the Stoics, particularly Chrysippus, believed that bodies, places and times were such that all of their parts themselves had proper parts. That is, bodies, places and times were composed of gunk. This realisation helps solve some long-standing puzzles about the Stoic theory of mixture and the Stoic attitude to the present.

Entender la dimensión moral de la dietética en la antigüedad exige investigar los avances de las investigaciones médicas gracias a las cuales se establecen las bases de la psicología moral. Por esta razón en este artículo se exploran algunos pasajes de Sobre las opiniones de Hipócrates y Platón, escrito por el médico alejandrino Galeno de Pérgamo (I-II d. C). Según los hallazgos de su investigación sobre la naturaleza del alma, aun cuando ésta tuviera una sustancia propia, ajena a las mezclas (...) humorales del cuerpo, es preciso admitir que sus facultades, incluida la racional, pueden ser ayudadas o impedidas por el equilibrio o por el desequilibrio de los humores del cuerpo. Esta es la tesis que defenderá en su escrito de madurez titulado Las facultades del alma siguen los temperamentos del cuerpo. Para Galeno, como antes para Platón y Aristóteles, la forma de vida, que incluye la nutrición, incide en la salud y en la enfermedad del alma. En la tradición que le antecede ya se aceptaba la dimensión moral de la dietética, pero nuestra tesis es que en las investigaciones de Galeno sobre la fisiología de las facultades del cuerpo, encontramos el fundamento empírico para la afirmación según la cual el cuidado del cuerpo influye en la salud del alma. (shrink)

Heraclitus is generally recognised as the first of the Greek thinkers to develop a psychology, but the understanding of his psychology is held back by the assumptions that his soul is a life-principle and is ‘comprehensive’ of the various faculties we regard as psychological. The fragment that best displays the revolutionary character of Heraclitus’ soul doctrine, from a properly psychological viewpoint, is B 85. I offer an extended analysis of this fragment in order to bear out the claims, firstly, that (...) psyche or ‘soul’ for Heraclitus is the intelligence alone, divine in origin, and secondly that thumos (primarily as the seat of desire) is a better candidate for his biological life-principle, whose exigencies are at odds with those of soul. I also offer some reflections on why, despite Heraclitus’ multifaceted influence on fifth-century thought, and despite the coherence of his psychology, this ‘revolution’ never quite took hold. (shrink)

The theory of mental models is a current cognitive approach trying to describe the way people make inferences. According to this theory, people reason from possibilities or models linked to sentences. Sometimes, such possibilities or models are transformed by the action of a semantic modulation. The point this paper is intended to make is that Stoic logic also has the machinery to explain semantic processes such as that of modulation. This is shown by means of the criterion Chrysippus of Soli (...) provided for conditional sentences and the theory of sign related to that criterion. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza el debate sobre la forma adecuada de entender el condicional producido en el siglo IV a. C. El análisis se lleva a cabo mediante el método proporcionado por Rudolf Carnap para estudiar el significado de las expresiones, es decir, mediante el método de extensión e intensión. Los resultados de ese análisis parecen mostrar que, aunque, según Sexto Empirico, el debate fue sobre cuatro criterios diferentes para comprender el condicional, en realidad tres de esos criterios parecen (...) ser iguales y tienen una forma lógica común muy clara en el marco de Carnap. (shrink)

According to the ancient Greek Stoics, the cosmos regularly transitions between periods of conflagration, during which only fire exists, and periods of cosmic order, during which the four elements exist. This paper examines the cosmogonic process by which conflagrations are extinguished and cosmic orders are restored, and it defends three main conclusions. First, I argue that not all the conflagration’s fire is extinguished during the cosmogony, against recent arguments by Ricardo Salles. Second, at least with respect to the cosmogony, it (...) is not necessary to posit the existence of proto-elements. Third, while scholars such as Salles and David Hahm have argued that Cleanthes held a distinct theory of cosmogony from Zeno and Chrysippus, I argue that each of these Stoics endorse the same cosmogonic theory. (shrink)

In Stoic physics, blending (κρᾶσις) is the relation between active pneuma and passive matter; natural bodies from rocks and logs to plants, animals and the cosmos itself are blends of pneuma and matter. Blending structures the Stoic cosmos. I develop a new interpretation of the Stoic theory of blending, based on passages from Hierocles. The theory of blending, I argue, has been misunderstood. Hierocles allows us to see in detail how the theory is supposed to work and how it fits (...) into Stoic physics. (shrink)

I argue that Beall and Restall's logical pluralism fails. Beall–Restall pluralism is the claim that there are different, equally correct logical consequence relations in a single language. Their position fails for two, related, reasons: first, it relies on an unmotivated conception of the ‘settled core’ of consequence: they believe that truth-preservation, necessity, formality and normativity are ‘settled’ features of logical consequence and that any relation satisfying these criteria is a logical consequence relation. I consider historical evidence and argue that their (...) position relies on an unmotivated conception of the settled features of logical consequence. There are many features that are just as settled but which are inconsistent with pluralism. Second, I argue that Beall–Restall pluralism fails to hold in a single language with a single selection of logical constants, which they require for the position to be distinct from Carnap's. I consider various ways in which Beall and Restall can resist this meaning variance, particularly for negation, but argue that the strongest way relies on an unmotivated conception of the settled features of the logical constants. (shrink)

Quantum technologies can be presented to the public with or without introducing a strange trait of quantum theory responsible for their non-classical efficiency. Traditionally the message was centered on the superposition principle, while entanglement and properties such as contextuality have been gaining ground recently. A less theoretical approach is focused on simple protocols that enable technological applications. It results in a pragmatic narrative built with the help of the resource paradigm and principle-based reconstructions. I discuss the advantages and weaknesses of (...) these methods. To illustrate the importance of new metaphors beyond the Schrödinger cat, I briefly describe a non-mathematical narrative about entanglement that conveys an idea of some of its unusual properties. If quantum technologists are to succeed in building trust in their work, they ought to provoke an aesthetic perception in the public commensurable with the mathematical beauty of quantum theory experienced by the physicist. The power of the narrative method lies in its capacity to do so. (shrink)

The pantheon of seventeenth-century European philosophy includes some remarkably heterodox deities, perhaps most famously Spinoza’s deus-sive-natura. As in ethics and natural philosophy, early modern philosophical theology drew inspiration from classical sources outside the mainstream of Christianized Aristotelianism, such as the highly immanentist, naturalistic theology of Greek and Roman Stoicism. While the Stoic background to Spinoza’s pantheist God has been more thoroughly explored, I maintain that Hobbes’s corporeal God is the true modern heir to the Stoic theology. The Stoic and Hobbesian (...) gods are necessitarian, entirely corporeal, and thoroughly intermixed with ordinary bodies, while also supremely intelligent, providential, and good. And both gods serve as the ultimate source of diversity and change in a material world divested of Aristotelian forms and causes. Unfortunately, scholars on both sides of the long debate about the sincerity of Hobbes’s theism have not taken very seriously his late articulation of a corporeal theology. One probable reason for this dismissive attitude is a lack of thorough investigation of the historical precedents for such an unusual godhead available to Hobbes. The first part of this article attempts to establish a close congruence between the Stoic and Hobbesian gods. The second part traces the likely sources for Hobbes’s Stoic theology in his intellectual context. (shrink)

Además de los indemostrables, la lógica estoica incluye varias reglas de reducción. En este trabajo, analizo la primera de ellas con el fin de comprobar si fue derivada formalmente a partir de los indemostrables o los estoicos pudieron plantearla a partir del uso de sus capacidades naturales de razonamiento. De esta manera, trato de mostrar que tenemos razones para apoyar ambas posibilidades y, basándome en un enfoque semántico como el de la teoría de los modelos mentales, de ofrecer argumentos al (...) respecto. (shrink)

Šiuo straipsniu mėginama parodyti, jog Indijos ir stoikų logika yra panašesnės viena į kitą nei į standartinę logiką. Šiuo tikslu analizuojama ištrauka iš Kathāvatthu, kurioje pateikiamas sąlyginio teiginio apibrėžimas dažnai interpretuojamas kaip atitinkantis modernioje teiginių logikoje vartojamą materialiosios implikacijos sampratą. Teigiama, jog tokia interpretacija nėra visiškai pagrįsta. Todėl daroma išvada, jog tai, kas iš tiesų sakoma aptariamoje ištraukoje, nuosekliai susiję su Chrisipo Soliečio pasiūlytu sąlyginio teiginio teisingumo kriterijumi.

In his book, A New Stoicism, Lawrence A. Becker sides with Posidonius, and against Chrysippus and others, on the issue of whether the sage will experience passions. The Posidonian position is that the sage will experience conflicting passions but will, nevertheless, overcome those passions through his or her perfected agency. In opposition, Chrysippus and others assert that the sage will have extirpated all his or her passions as a necessary precondition for achieving sagehood. I will argue that a body of (...) neuroscientific evidence chiefly concerned with the effects of lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex supports Becker’s assertion that Chrysippus’ call for the extirpation of the passions is neither plausible nor desirable. Recent empirical discoveries support Posidonius’ view of the role of the passions in the virtuous life. (shrink)

According to standard propositional logic, the inferences in which the conditional introduction rule is used are absolutely correct. However, people do not always accept inferences of that kind. Orenes and Johnson-Laird carried out interesting experiments in this way and, based on the general framework of the mental models theory, explained clearly in which cases and under which circumstances such inferences are accepted and rejected. The goals of this paper are both to better understand some aspects of Stoic logic and to (...) check whether or not that very logic can also offer an account on this issue. My conclusions are that, indeed, this later logic can do that, and that the results obtained by Orenes and Johnson-Laird can be explained based on the information that the sources provide on Stoic logic. (shrink)

This paper discusses the reports in Diogenes Laertius and in Sextus Empiricus concerning the classification of propositions. It is argued that the material in Sextus uses a source going back to the Dialectical school whose most prominent members were Diodorus Cronus and Philo of Megara. The material preserved in Diogenes Laertius, on the other hand, goes back to Chrysippus.