The study of a pragmatic dimension of semiotics appears only late in the history of this discipline. “Pragmatics” seems the last one called into the dispute of signs. The following study focusses on semiotics and the theory of action, stressing the distinction between “pragmatism” and “practical” matters within this philosophical discipline. The theory of “speech acts” is investigated and related to the new perspectives opened in the semiotics in order to highlight furtheravenues for research.

This paper brings in discussion some key moments in semiotic field in the process of modern reconstruction of logic and of philosophy of language. We arefollowing the construction of logical semiotic (from Frege to Carnap and 'semantic of the possible worlds') and the central position of the concept 'possible worlds' in the interpretation process, which creates a meta-semantic. This concept is essential to understand 'the worlds from the poetic space'.

The paper presents the role of the experience of historical transformation in the modifications of the historical conscience: the fragmentation, the marginality and the removal from the rational foundation of values. It associates the postmodern world with different forms of losing the sense of values, the lack of measure and nuance in appreciation, the weak preoccupation for identity, authenticity, conscience of values in human behavior. In order to discuss the theory of values the paper introduces Rickertʼs theory of the autonomy (...) of value, Andreiʼs and Vianuʼs conceptions on the system of values, Schelerʼs hierarchy of values, and Hartmannʼs concept of knowledge of value. (shrink)

The “Pragmatic Turn” in Actual Thinking. The study of a pragmatic dimension to semiotics appears only late in the history of the discipline. „Pragmatic” seems the last one called into the dispute of signs. The study capitalizes on semiotics and the theory of action, with the distinction operated between „pragmatism” and„practical” matters within this philosophical discipline. The theory of the speech acts is investigated and related to the perspectives opened in the semiotics in order to highlight further avenues for research.

v. 1. De la Renaștere la epoca "Luminilor".

We construct logical languages which allow one to represent a variety of possible types of changes affecting the information states of agents in a multi-agent setting. We formalize these changes by defining a notion of epistemic program. The languages are two-sorted sets that contain not only sentences but also actions or programs. This is as in dynamic logic, and indeed our languages are not significantly more complicated than dynamic logics. But the semantics is more complicated. In general, the semantics of (...) an epistemic program is what we call aprogram model. This is a Kripke model of ‘actions’,representing the agents' uncertainty about the current action in a similar way that Kripke models of ‘states’ are commonly used in epistemic logic to represent the agents' uncertainty about the current state of the system. Program models induce changes affecting agents' information, which we represent as changes of the state model, called epistemic updates. Formally, an update consists of two operations: the first is called the update map, and it takes every state model to another state model, called the updated model; the second gives, for each input state model, a transition relation between the states of that model and the states of the updated model. Each variety of epistemic actions, such as public announcements or completely private announcements to groups, gives what we call an action signature, and then each family of action signatures gives a logical language. The construction of these languages is the main topic of this paper. We also mention the systems that capture the valid sentences of our logics. But we defer to a separate paper the completeness proof. (shrink)

We address the old question whether a logical understanding of Quantum Mechanics requires abandoning some of the principles of classical logic. Against Putnam and others (Among whom we may count or not E. W. Beth, depending on how we interpret some of his statements), our answer is a clear "no". Philosophically, our argument is based on combining a formal semantic approach, in the spirit of E. W. Beth's proposal of applying Tarski's semantical methods to the analysis of physical theories, with (...) an empirical-experimental approach to Logic, as advocated by both Beth and Putnam, but understood by us in the view of the operationalrealistic tradition of Jauch and Piron, i. e. as an investigation of "the logic of yes-no experiments" (or "questions"). Technically, we use the recently-developed setting of Quantum Dynamic Logic (Baltag and Smets 2005, 2008) to make explicit the operational meaning of quantum-mechanical concepts in our formal semantics. Based on our recent results (Baltag and Smets 2005), we show that the correct interpretation of quantum-logical connectives is dynamical, rather than purely propositional. We conclude that there is no contradiction between classical logic and (our dynamic reinterpretation of) quantum logic. Moreover, we argue that the Dynamic-Logical perspective leads to a better and deeper understanding of the "non-classicality" of quantum behavior than any perspective based on static Propositional Logic. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This article aims to examine the phenomenon of social services in post-1989 Romania, underscoring the role of the religious factor in the establishment and operation of nongovernmental organisations active in the area of family and child protection/child welfare. The results are based on empirical data collected from interviews with representatives (...) of NGO-s in Iaşi that correspond to the profile of faith-based organisations and which have been included in the list of accredited providers of social services. We used an assessment grid that allowed us to highlight a number of specific characteristics to the Romanian space, found among faith-based organisations involved in the development of social and medical services. One direction that Romanian organisation took was to dilute in time the religious message and to secularise their practices under the influence of the Orthodox majority, as well as following the requirements imposed by secular donors and especially by public ones. The channelling of private resources donated to religious cults predominantly towards building and restoring establishments (churches, monasteries) rather than towards the development of social faith-based programmes aimed at vulnerable populations has caused in faith-based organisations a high level of dependency on secular donors. The process in which the practices and the discourse are secularised is accompanied by a trend towards the fragmentation of the Christian-based civil society. (shrink)

We present a logical calculus for reasoning about information flow in quantum programs. In particular we introduce a dynamic logic that is capable of dealing with quantum measurements, unitary evolutions and entanglements in compound quantum systems. We give a syntax and a relational semantics in which we abstract away from phases and probabilities. We present a sound proof system for this logic, and we show how to characterize by logical means various forms of entanglement (e.g. the Bell states) and various (...) linear operators. As an example we sketch an analysis of the teleportation protocol. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘Solidarity’ is a key concept in political movements and usually bears on matters of labour, health and social justice. As such, it is essential in the reproduction and transformation of communities that support their members and protect their interests. It is sometimes overlooked that interspecies solidarity already pertains with a number of domesticated animals, and that people are willing to carry substantial emotional, financial and social burdens to benefit them. There has been even more reluctance to acknowledge wild animals as (...) fellow members of our political communities with whom we might stand in solidarity. The purpose of this paper is to propose that solidaristic relations with certain wild animals are not only possible, but also already exist in some contexts. It explores three different understandings of solidarity, and in probing to what extent they can be applied to wild animals, it identifies some important different roles they can play in ‘animal politics’, and shows how they can help us reconceive our communities in less anthropocentric terms. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to examine a novel view on distributive justice, i.e. limitarianism, which claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich. Our main goal is to assess the two arguments provided by Ingrid Robeyns in favour of limitarianism, namely the democratic argument and the argument from unmet urgent needs and the two distinct limitarian views which these arguments give rise to. We claim that strong limitarianism, which is supported by the democratic argument, should be rejected as (...) it fails to fully instantiate the value of political equality, while having some other unattractive implications as well. By contrast, we argue that weak limitarianism, which is supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs, should be endorsed, albeit in a qualified version which also takes responsibility constraints into consideration. (shrink)

We investigate the discrete (finite) case of the Popper–Renyi theory of conditional probability, introducing discrete conditional probabilistic models for knowledge and conditional belief, and comparing them with the more standard plausibility models. We also consider a related notion, that of safe belief, which is a weak (non-negatively introspective) type of “knowledge”. We develop a probabilistic version of this concept (“degree of safety”) and we analyze its role in games. We completely axiomatize the logic of conditional belief, knowledge and safe belief (...) over conditional probabilistic models. We develop a theory of probabilistic dynamic belief revision, introducing probabilistic “action models” and proposing a notion of probabilistic update product, that comes together with appropriate reduction laws. (shrink)

Ancien élève de Heidegger, Alexandru Dragomir (1916-2002) est une figure atypique de la philosophie. Abandonnant l'idée d'une carrière universitaire après la Seconde guerre mondiale, il navigua d'un métier à un autre, refusant catégoriquement d'être publié de son vivant. Il laisse aujourd'hui à nos curiosités ses Banalités métaphysiques, extraites des cahiers dans lesquels il griffonait des notes à sa propre intention. Banalités métaphysiques est la première publication de ce philosophe hors norme, tiré malgré lui de son retrait volontaire.

We present a complete, decidable logic for reasoning about a notion of completely trustworthy evidence and its relations to justifiable belief and knowledge, as well as to their explicit justifications. This logic makes use of a number of evidence-related notions such as availability, admissibility, and “goodness” of a piece of evidence, and is based on an innovative modification of the Fitting semantics for Artemovʼs Justification Logic designed to preempt Gettier-type counterexamples. We combine this with ideas from belief revision and awareness (...) logics to provide an account for explicitly justified knowledge based on conclusive evidence that addresses the problem of omniscience. (shrink)

This article approaches social projectionism as an orientation within the new post-modern epistemologies, starting from its principles. At the same time, the author presents some phenomena generated by the post-modern perspectives opened by the new ideologies that produce new ethical orientations in social practice. These visions have made profound changes in the way the social services user is seen, the contextualisation of social practice, the volatility of social programmes and the development of the public-private partnership from the point of view (...) of social constructionism. The marketisation of social services has conditioned the development of equality relations between the public service providers and the private providers, the adaptation of programmes to the local needs and resources and a permanent change, giving up the illusion of progress, recognising and using to their full potential the multilinear evolutions of the existing situations. (shrink)

People can be outraged over, say, mismanagement or fraud and motivated to address such problems; they can, however, also be angry and lash out against the innocent. In addition to such unpredictability, angry people can seem literally out of their mind. My aim is to render anger intelligible and productive from a social epistemological perspective: epistemological because I assume that anger involves value recognition and arouses reflection; social because I assume that the related values and inquiries involve questions of justice (...) and/or morality. I believe that value disagreements are set up at cross purposes if we disqualify the emotional reactions of those whom we judge too unpleasant to understand. However, I also believe that we should not take anger at face value. My proposal is pragmatic for two reasons. First, and in line with classical pragmatist tenets about the role of doubt and other emotions in reasoning, it is pragmatic because I think that anger results from moral and political uncertainty and leads to a failure to understand one another and, hence, to a failure to act together. Second, my proposal is more concerned with what could be made of anger rather than focussing on what anger essentially is. In sum, I suggest that communities can regulate and use the variety of angry experiences in situations of uncertainty and conflict about moral and political values; that would be “passionate disagreement.” I explain four pragmatic considerations that go along with it and address three problems one might raise in response. (shrink)

In this article, the principles of appreciative inquiry are used in order to mediate multicultural relations. Using the constructionism theory, I describe and analyze the theoretical articulations adopted to make sense of co-constructing the relationships between different people. I find that, instead of being applied as the sole theoretical foundation, constructionism principles have been incorporated in the appreciative inquiry principles, the effects of which should be the co-constructing of social reality by the interactions of different people. The paper draws on (...) the process that appreciative inquiry perspective works for rebuilding the social relationships. Its main contribution is to show how theoretical complementarities using constructionism theory are promising avenues of research in the field of multiculturalism. (shrink)