In mainstream economic theory money functions as an instrument for the circulation of commodities or for keeping a stock of liquid wealth. In neither case is it considered fundamental to the production of goods or the distribution of income. AugustoGraziani challenges traditional theories of monetary production, arguing that a modern economy based on credit cannot be understood without a focus on the administration of credit flows. He argues that market asset configuration depends not upon consumer preferences and (...) available technologies but on how money and credit are managed. A strong exponent of the circulation theory of monetary production, Graziani presents an original and perhaps controversial argument that will stimulate debate on the topic. (shrink)
This thought-provoking book discusses the concept of progress in economics and investigates whether any advance has been made in its different spheres of research. The authors look back at the history, successes and failures of their respective fields and thoroughly examine the notion of progress from an epistemological and methodological perspective. The idea of progress is particularly significant as the authors regard it as an essentially contested concept which can be defined in many ways – theoretically or empirically; locally or (...) globally; or as encouraging or impeding the existence of other research traditions. The authors discuss the idea that for progress to make any sense there must be an accumulation of knowledge built up over time rather than the replacement of ideas by each successive generation. Accordingly, they are not concerned with estimating the price of progress, reminiscing in the past, or assessing what has been lost. Instead they apply the complex mechanisms and machinery of the discipline to sub-fields such as normative economics, monetary economics, trade and location theory, Austrian economics and classical economics to critically assess whether progress has been made in these areas of research. -/- Bringing together authoritative and wide-ranging contributions by leading scholars, this book will challenge and engage those interested in philosophy, economic methodology and the history of economic thought. It will also appeal to economists in general who are interested in the advancement of their profession. (shrink)
Seekers know that they will search all their lives not only for what they have lost, but above all for what they do not yet know and that they are not even sure exists. Augusto Cavadi, to whom this book is dedicated on his 70th birthday, is an indomitable seeker. For this reason a group of friends and colleagues wrote these collected testimonies, reflections, ideas and suggestions inspired by his writings and his life as an anti-academic philosopher without a (...) tie--Translated from back cover. (shrink)
Temporal ontology is concerned with the ontological status of the past, the present and the future, with presentism and eternalism as main contenders since the second half of the last century. In recent years several philosophers have argued that the presentism/eternalism dispute is not substantial. They have embraced, one may say, deflationism. Denying or downplaying the meaningfulness of tenseless language and wielding the so-called triviality objection have been their main argumentative tools. Other philosophers have opposed this trend, thereby holding fast (...) to what could be named substantialism. Their leading defensive strategy has consisted in bringing to the fore tenselessness or unrestricted quantification in an attempt to resist the triviality objection. Despite this reaction, the past few years have hosted a new wave of deflationism, wherein the triviality objection and qualms about the legitimacy of tenselessness and unrestricted quantification still loom large. This paper counters this trend, by providing a new clarification of tenseless predication, unrestricted quantifiers and their role in rescuing substantialism from the triviality objection. A crucial ingredient is this: the appeal to unrestricted quantifiers and to tenseless predication are not alternative strategies, but rather two sides of the same coin, since substantialism requires quantifiers that are both tenseless and unrestricted. (shrink)
The imperativist strand of positivism derives law from an actual person or set of persons wielding a monopoly of force. The rule-based positivism of H.L.A. Hart has more sublty identified a matter-of-fact rule of recognition in place of such a sovereign one or many. But sovereignty is not a matter-of-fact of any kind; rather it is partly the product of what I call qua arguments. I reconstruct the reasoning, in the extradition case of Augusto Pinochet in the British House (...) of Lords, providing a focus for an account of the limits of legal positivism in the application of the principle par in parem non habet imperium. Sovereign power is interpreted through reasoning that is at its margin more moral than technically legal. (shrink)
One question in moral psychology concerns the role of emotions to motivate moral action. This question has recently become more urgent, because it is now clearer that cognitive developmental theories cannot offer a complete explanation of moral functioning. This paper suggests that emotion, as is typically understood in psychology, cannot be seen as the basis for an acceptable explanation of moral behaviour and motivation. However, it is argued that it is possible to understand emotions as embedded in agentic processes, and (...) regulated by conscious concerns. So understood, emotions acquire an important role in the person's moral life. These conclusions are reached through an extensive review of psychological and philosophical conceptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)
1968 has been considered by Augusto Del Noce as “the richest year in implicit philosophy since 1945”. Indeed, the student protests of the time, far from being a circumstantial movement, constituted a rebellion against the “technocratic society”, that is, a protest against the model of society that the West built after the Second World War to oppose communism. However, this rebellion was frustrated because it assumed a large part of the criteria that had led the left to change the (...) struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, fruit of their concern for the weak, for the banners of sexual emancipation. Del Noce warns that, lacking an adequate philosophical foundation, the May 68 movement ended up being unable to resist the instrumental rationality of the society it sought to combat. (shrink)
Whereas Western moral philosophy has mainly accounted for recurrent failed or irrational actions through the concept of weakness of will, many early Chinese texts on self-cultivation, notably the Zhuangzi, stand for a philosophical position that explains our frustrations and failures as an "excess of the will." Leaving aside external factors such as accidents or mistakes, this essay explores the sources of thwarted plans and frustrated expectations that are due to factors internal to the individual—more precisely, to the nature of intentional (...) conscience. Such a view was generally inadmissible in Western moral philosophy, which revolves around the paradigm of a causal agent endowed with a 'muscular ethics' for which all that is desired, and indeed all that is achieved, may only be a direct effect of the will. In striking contrast to this orientation, the Zhuangzi presents a variety of situations in which things do not happen as planned because we were too aware of the plan that guided us. Here, I will use Jon Elster's concept of by-product states in order to explore this contrast between two contending models of action that, far from being culturally rooted, express an inner criticism in both traditions, European and Chinese. (shrink)
In Color Harmonies, Augusto Garau systematically investigates the role of both color and form in visual perception and presents an original theory of the aesthetic relations among colors.
RESUMO A partir do exame da tradição heraclitiana e platônica sobre a transitoriedade e a imortalidade - conceitos compreendidos como universais - este artigo defende a seguinte antinomia como tese: para haver temporalidade é preciso haver eternidade. Essa tese é demonstrada por meio do estudo e atualização das noções de alma, espírito, ideia e memória, as quais estão conectadas invariavelmente ao tempo passado como princípio ontológico do fenômeno histórico. Para além do ponto de vista filosófico, portanto, da perspectiva específica do (...) conhecimento histórico, este estudo expõe algumas implicações teóricas acerca das condições de possibilidade da história, que são discutidas, finalmente, em diálogo com Friedrich Nietzsche e Jacob Burckhardt. ABSTRACT From the analysis of the Heraclitian and Platonic tradition on transience and immortality - understood as universal concepts - this essay defends the following antinomy as its thesis: if there is temporality there must be eternity. This thesis is demonstrated through the study and updating of the notions of soul, spirit, idea and memory, which are invariably connected to the past as the ontological principle of the historical phenomenon. Beyond the philosophical point of view, therefore, from the specific perspective of historical knowledge, this study exposes some theoretical implications about the conditions of possibility of history, which are finally discussed in dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacob Burckhardt. (shrink)
According to the mythical-religious literature time is determined by the eternal nature of divinity or origin of all things. From this adagio, theological literature is provoked and studies on the eternal nature of divinity suggest that if the universe was created the image of its creator the first must also be eternal. Therefore the question arises: how to shape that which by nature is formless, infinite, namely eternity? To answer this question the following paper develops a brief history about the (...) Judeo-Christian tradition on the problem of time and its relationship with eternity and also tries to prepare at the end one logical answer to the question about the form of eternity. (shrink)
In the logical context, ignorance is traditionally defined recurring to epistemic logic $S_4$ \cite{Hintikka1962}. In particular, an agent ignores a formula $\varphi$ when s/he does not know neither $\varphi$ nor its negation $\neg\varphi$: $\neg\K\varphi\land\neg\K\neg\varphi$. In other words, ignorance is essentially interpreted as ``lack of knowledge''. \textcolor{red}{This received view has - as we point out - some problems, in particular we will highlight how it does not allow to express a type of content-theoretic ignorance, i.e. an ignorance of $\varphi$ that stems (...) from an unfamiliarity with its meaning.} Contrarily to this trend, in this paper, we introduce and investigate a modal logic having a primitive epistemic operator $\I$, modeling ignorance. Our modal logic is essentially constructed on the modal logics based on weak Kleene three-valued logic introduced by Krister Segerberg \cite{Segerberg67}. Such non-classical propositional basis allows to define a Kripke-style semantics with the following, very intuitive, interpretation: a formula $\varphi$ is ignored by an agent if $\varphi$ is neither true nor false in every world accessible to the agent. As a consequence of this choice, we obtain \textcolor{red}{a type of content-theoretic} notion of ignorance, which is essentially different from the traditional approach based on $S_4$. \textcolor{red}{We dub it \emph{severe ignorance}.} We axiomatize, prove completeness and decidability for the logic of reflexive Kripke frames, which we find the most suitable candidate for our novel proposal and, finally, compare our approach with the most traditional one. (shrink)
The Zhuangzi is one of China's greatest literary and philosophical masterpieces, yet its complexities make it a challenging read. This English translation leads you confidently through the comic scenes and virtuoso writing style, introducing all the little stories Zhuangzi invented and unpicking its philosophy through close commentaries and helpful asides. In Graziani's translation, the co-founder of Daoism emerges as a remarkable thinker. It is a must-read for anyone coming to Chinese philosophy or the Zhuangzi for the first time, and (...) one that reminds us of the importance of thinking beyond our limited, everyday perspectives. (shrink)
This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies (...) to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed. (shrink)
Essai général sur le philosophe et prosateur chinois Tchouang-Tseu dont l'oeuvre se situe à l'origine du taoïsme philosophique et religieux. Ses leçons métaphysiques, son ironie contre toute forme d'autorité s'épanouissent sous forme de dialogues, fables et historiettes que l'auteur interprète et commente pour en dégager les enjeux.
Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I discuss (...) ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)
O presente artigo pretende demonstrar os elementos que compõem a realidade paraguaia que delira, segundo o autor Augusto Roa Bastos, e como incorpora tais elementos ao seu gesto escritural resultando em uma escritura caleidoscópica.
Les premières mythographies de l’Europe néo-latine, depuis la Genealogia deorum de Boccace, considèrent l’histoire des dieux sur le modèle des généalogies humaines, en cherchant à recomposer « la lignée de Saturne ». Les premiers historiens de la Grèce, comme les poètes, inventèrent des généalogies mythiques pour inscrire l’origine des hommes dans l’histoire de leur relation aux dieux. Que fondent les généalogies divines ? Non seulement des structures religieuses, non seulement la raison même des sociétés humaines, mais encore la préhistoire de (...) l’humanité. Mais si les engendrements divins donnent sens aux relations entre les hommes et les dieux, c’est l’histoire des commencements du monde que les mythographes cherchent à comprendre en interrogeant l’articulation des généalogies divines et humaines. Depuis que, dans le Timée, Platon a associé mythologia et genealogia comme deux modes de discours « archéologiques », les mythographes ont ouvertement revendiqué un savoir sur le monde qui se définit comme une synthèse des « sciences de la nature ».Mythologia, Genealogia, Archaiologia:A Paleontological Scope for Mythography. The first European mythographical treatises in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, since Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum, were determined by a genealogical method, looking at the history of the gods with human patterns and seeking the reconstruction of “Saturn’s lineage”. The early Greek mythographers, like the poets, imagined various genealogies for seeking out the origins of humanity through their relationships with gods. What is founded on divine genealogies? Not only religious structures, nor only the true ratio of human sociability, but a human paleontology too. By interpreting filiations as a system of connexions between gods and humans, the mythographers aimed at understanding the protohistory of the universe. Since Plato’s Timaeus associated mythologia and genealogia as two modes of “archaeological” discourse, mythographers have wanted to assert their own “physical science” as a whole synthetic perception of the natural world. (shrink)
La mia collaborazione con Massimo Campanini si è sviluppata su comuni interessi per i classici del pensiero islamico ma con competenze assai diverse, essendo io più orientato a studiare gli effetti e gli sviluppi che essi produssero sul pensiero occidentale medievale e moderno attraverso una pratica di traduzioni spesso creative per imprecisione – l’inverso dell’operazione che essi stessi avevano fatto rispetto a Platone e Aristotele. Averroè-Ibn Rushd è già un bell’esempio di deformazione del nome, ma proprio la formazione della sua (...) opera e i modi in cui è stata trasmessa al mondo ebraico e cristiano sono singolari testimonianze degli esiti ambigui del processo traduttivo. Cerchiamo infatti di mostrare come la lettura del _De substantia orbis_ abbia stimolato sia nel Medioevo che nel Rinascimento non solo il rifiuto del creazionismo ma anche posizioni panteistiche, mentre la famosa tesi dell’intelletto materiale unico contenuta nel _Commentarium Magnum_ al _De anima_ aristotelico ha stimolato molteplici varianti del monopsichismo, da Spinoza a Marx e alla più recente letteratura post-strutturalista. My collaboration with Massimo Campanini developed around our common interests in the classics of Islamic thought, but with very different approaches, since I am more oriented towards studying the effects and developments they produced on medieval and modern Western thought through a practice of translation that was often creative in terms of inaccuracy – so the opposite of what had been done with respect to Plato and Aristotle. The same Averroes-Ibn Rushd is a fine example of name distortion, and the very formation of his work and the ways in which it was transmitted to the Jewish and Christian world are singular testimonies to the ambiguous outcomes of this translation process. I try to show how the reading of _De substantia orbis_ in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance stimulated not only the rejection of creationism but also pantheistic beliefs, while the famous thesis on the material intellect exposed in the _Commentarium Magnum_ to Aristotle’s _De anima_ stimulated many variants of monopsychism, from Spinoza to Marx and the more recent post-structuralist literature. (shrink)
