This collection of essays reexamines the origins of logical empiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science.

This work is for scholars, researchers and students in history and philosophy of science focusing on Logical Empiricism and analytic philosophy (of science). It provides historical and systematic research and deals with the influence and impact of the Vienna Circle/Logical Empiricism on today's philosophy of science. It also explores the intellectual context of this scientific philosophy and focuses on main figures and peripheral adherents.

In this paper Boghossian better specifies his conception and defends it against some objections moved to previous formulations. In particular, he tries to reply to the objection that ‘there can be no epistemically analytic sentences that are not also metaphysically analytic, and that the notion of implicit definition cannot explain a priori entitlement’ . He thus introduces the distinction between an inferential and a constitutive way in which ‘facts about meaning might generate facts about entitlement’ and concludes his paper by (...) outlining a theory of the constitutive way that modifies some of his preceding ideas. (shrink)

1. Filosofia in età antica -- 2. Filosofia in età medievale e rinascimentale -- 3. Filosofia in età moderna -- 4. Filosofia in età contemporanea.

In dialogue with Kenneth R. Westphal’s position on realism and skepticism I defend an empirical realism which in a positive perspective rejects the transcendental components of Kant’s empirical realism. The central ideas of the empirical realism I support are the characterizations of reality and truth as regulative ideals and of knowledge as unifying activity. I justify my conception by a conceptual and pragmatic analysis of the main relevant epistemological notions.

For a long time–--maybe starting from the well known 1929 meeting in Davos–--the philosophy of exact and natural sciences deriving from Neo-positivism and hermeneutics followed separate ways. Post-positivistic philosophy of science and epistemology, though, saw the emerging of theses showing the existence of some affinities between the empirical method and the hermeneutical method. The paper singles these affinities out and discusses their consequences from the point of view of the problems of objectivity and truth. In particular, it supports the ideas (...) of objectivity as achievement and of truth as empty regulative ideal. (shrink)

In the inter-war period Italian philosophical culture was dominated by idealistic, spiritualistic and religious brands of philosophies, among which Benedetto Croce’s and Giovanni Gentile’s kinds of idealism were the prevailing ones. These idealistic philosophies were characterized by a strong aversion for positivistic, pragmatist and scientific philosophies which, in the first decades of our century, were represented in Italy above all by Giovanni Vailati, Mario Calderoni , Giuseppe Peano and Federigo Enriques. Italian ‘scientific philosophy’ lost in the battle with Croce’s and (...) Gentile’s idealistic philosophies. On the political level, the hegemony of Croce and Gentile coincided with the years of Fascist dictatorship . On the cultural level, this hegemony caused the suppression of scientific culture and philosophy in comparison with humanistic culture, and the subsequent philosophical isolation of Italy from the majority of the movements of scientific philosophy working in those years in the other European countries and in the United States of America. (shrink)

L’article esquisse les traits principaux d’un courant philosophique qui a rencontré en Italie bien des difficultés, malgré l’importance reconnue de ses représentants. Le texte illustre les idées qui sont à la base du pragmatisme logique et méthodologique de Giovanni Vailati et Mario Calderoni, idées qui auraient refait surface dans le débat international à propos du principe de vérification et du concept d’analyticité. Sont également abordés les liens entre ces idées et le développement de la conception subjective des probabilités chez Bruno (...) de Finetti. (shrink)

Today’s critical state of philosophy is examined by considering two of its aspects: the way in which philosophy presently is ever more typically practised and the new challenges it has to face to keep up with the changed scientific, and more generally cultural and social context. The essay outlines some prospects of progress in the light of those which still now can be considered the proper tasks of philosophical inquiry. Such tasks are singled out through an historical survey of the (...) original characters of philosophy and an appraisal of its theoretical motivations. The importance of the history of philosophy and the necessity of achieving a virtuous relation among the various philosophical disciplines are stressed to contrast the dangers of excess specialisation and professionalism. (shrink)