Although skeptical of the prohibitive power of no-hidden-variables theorems, John Bell was himself responsible for the two most important ones. I describe some recent versions of the lesser known of the two (familiar to experts as the "Kochen-Specker theorem") which have transparently simple proofs. One of the new versions can be converted without additional analysis into a powerful form of the very much better known "Bell's Theorem," thereby clarifying the conceptual link between these two results of Bell.

We introduce Kripke models for propositional substructural logics with strong negation, and show the completeness theorems for these logics using an extended Ishihara's canonical model construction method. The framework presented can deal with a broad range of substructural logics with strong negation, including a modified version of Nelson's logic N$^-$, Wansing's logic COSPL, and extended versions of Visser's basic propositional logic, positive relevant logics, Corsi's logics and M\'endez's logics.

In a recent article under the above title (but without the question mark) Henry Stapp has presented arguments which lead him to conclude that under suitable conditions “the truth of a statement that refers only to phenomena confined to an earlier time” must “depend on which measurement an experimenter freely chooses to perform at a later time.” I suggest that this conclusion contains an essential ambiguity as regards the meaning of the expression “statement referring only to phenomena confined to an (...) earlier time,” when such a statement talks about the outcome of an experiment that was not actually performed. As a result Stapp’s argumentation does not imply that future choices can affect present facts. But it does provide a wonderful and instructively different opportunity to reexamine a central point of Bohr’s famous reply to Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. (shrink)

The impact of Nietzsche's engagement with the Greek skeptics has never before been systematically explored in a book-length work - an inattention that belies the interpretive weight scholars otherwise attribute to his early career as a professor of classical philology and to the fascination with Greek literature and culture that persisted throughout his productive academic life. Jessica N. Berry fills this gap in the literature on Nietzsche by demonstrating how an understanding of the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition illuminates Nietzsche's own reflections (...) on truth, knowledge, and ultimately, the nature and value of philosophic inquiry. This entirely new reading of Nietzsche's epistemological and ethical views promises to make clear and render coherent his provocative but often opaque remarks on the topics of truth and knowledge and to grant us further insight into his ethics-since the Greek skeptics, like Nietzsche, take up the position they do as a means of promoting well-being and psychological health. In addition, it allows us to recover a portrait of Nietzsche as a philologist and philosophical psychologist that has been too often obscured by commentaries on his thought. "The book addresses a number of central issues in Nietzsche's philosophy, including perspectivism and his conception of truth. The idea that his views in these areas owe much to the ancient Pyrrhonists casts them in an important new light, and is well supported by the texts. A lot of people from a lot of different areas in philosophy will have good reason to take notice." - Richard Bett, Johns Hopkins University. (shrink)

Savīyahʹhā-yi maʻrifatʹāfarīn-i nafs -- Falsafah-yi Ṣadrā -- Falsafahʹī barā-yi zīstan-i safar-i ʻishq.

The sensation of red light falling on your eyes has something in common with the experience of looking at a cartoon in the New Yorker. The phenomenal quality of the sensation and the funniness of the joke are both properties of your subjective take on an external event and both arise in two steps. With sensations, your brain responds to signals from bodily sense organs with an internalized evaluative response; your mind reads this response and represents what it's like as (...) the subjective property of redness. With jokes, the cartoonist creates a clever drawing; your mind takes in the drawing and represents what it's like as the subjective property of funniness. This analogy -- deliberately deflationary -- helps elucidate the nature of phenomenal consciousness and its neural correlates, and exposes the 'hard problem' as a conceptual error. (shrink)

Introducing readers to the fascinating world of Mulla Sadra's thought, one of the most important figures of the later Islamic intellectual tradition, the book takes us through the world of Sadra, his intellectual journeys to shows his relevance for today's philosophical issues in the Islamic and Western worlds.

Por que la vida?, para que nuestra vida? A esta necesidad de interrogarnos y respondernos sobre el modo de ser para encontrarle sentido a la vida responde la parte mas antigua y esencial de la filosofia: la metafisica, que es el fundamento de nuestro comportamiento, de nuestra vida etica. Reconociendo otros aspectos filosoficos estrechamente vinculados con ella: el metodo, la teoria del conocimiento, la moral, Xirau propone entender la filosofia como una cuestion que trasciende la vida misma: convivir con el (...) pensamiento de los tiempos pasados, pues siempre los hombres se han planteado esas preguntas, tal como lo hacen cada uno de los filosofos que se explican en esta obra a traves de su presentacion historica en tres periodos: grecorromano, cristiano-medieval y renacentista-moderno. (shrink)

Islamic ethics. ; Christian ethics. ; Ethics, Comparative.