Logic; Islamic philosophy; Islam--doctrines.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527-Criticism and interpretation ; Political science-Translating.

Byzantine Empire; economic and social conditions; history.

In this paper we examine C. I. Lewis's view on the roleof coherence – what he calls ''congruence'' – in thejustification of beliefs based on memory ortestimony. Lewis has two main theses on the subject. His negativethesis states that coherence of independent items ofevidence has no impact on the probability of a conclusionunless each item has some credibility of its own. Thepositive thesis says, roughly speaking, that coherenceof independently obtained items of evidence – such asconverging memories or testimonies – raises (...) the probabilityof a conclusion to the extent sufficient for epistemicjustification, or, to use Lewis's expression, ''rationaland practical reliance''.It turns out that, while thenegative thesis is essentially correct, astrong positive connection between congruence andprobability – a connection of the kind Lewis ultimatelyneeds in his validation of memory – is contingent on thePrinciple of Indifference. In the final section we assess therepercussions of the latter fact for Lewis's theory in particularand for coherence justification in general. (shrink)

Peirce earned his keep making measurements, mainly of gravity but also astronomical, and he made several contributions to the science of measurement. It has been said that his experience measuring had philosophical consequences: his adoption of fallibilism, his argument against necessitarianism, and his conception of inquiry as converging on the truth have all been mentioned. But not much attention has been paid to the curious episode of his making “the study of great men” part of a course in logic: students (...) were asked to rank a long list of men by order of greatness. That was at Johns Hopkins in 1883. I shall argue that that study, together with his reflections on pre-instrumental estimates of stars’ brightness, bears directly on the method of phaneroscopy formulated nearly two decades later. In each case, the problem is to show how objectivity is possible under conditions in which it must seem that objectivity is impossible. (shrink)

ch. 1. Istorii︠a︡ sot︠s︡iologicheskikh ucheniĭ -- ch. 2. Nauchnai︠a︡ teorii︠a︡ obshchestva.

This book is remarkable for what it does not do. It purports to be about Peirce's opposition to nominalism, but it never states clearly what nominalism is and says little about Peirce's realist alternative. It contains no historical discussion of nominalism and thus does not explain the relation of Peirce's idiosyncratic use of that term to its original meaning. It ignores the secondary literature on that topic and does not even list Rosa Mayorga's highly relevant 2007 book, From Realism to (...) Realicism [sic], in its Bibliography. Nor, despite nominalism's alleged 'threat,' does it make reference to such important recent nominalists as Nelson Goodman or W.V.O. Quine. Indeed, after page one, there is hardly any.. (shrink)