This paper is a reaction to the following remark by grzegorczyk: "the compound sentences are not a product of experiment. they arise from reasoning. this concerns also negations; we see that the lemon is yellow, we do not see that it is not blue." generally, in science the truth is ascertained as indirectly as falsehood. an example: a litmus-paper is used to verify the sentence "the solution is acid." this approach gives rise to a (very intuitionistic indeed) conservative extension of (...) the heyting logic satisfying natural duality laws. (shrink)

I am an historian in a country in which it is not only impossible to say what the future will be, but in which the past itself—as someone put it—is susceptible to change. This country is currently going through an unprecedented crisis that has turned both its material and political as well as spiritual life upside-down. The crisis, the roots of which stretch back over decades, has made life virtually unbearable for many of its citizens. Yet for the historian, and (...) for the philosopher and sociologist, this crisis affords an unusual opportunity. As a result of the earthquakes that have shaken the former Soviet Union, formerly hidden layers of history—and the forces that underpin them—have been revealed. Such cases do not often arise. To a scholar endeavoring to discover the secret springs of unfolding events, Russia represents a gigantic and unique “laboratory.” Although it is easier to judge the extent of a cataclysm, to comprehend its deeper import, after the event, this does not relieve the contemporary—who participates in historical events—of the duty of trying to understand, to the extent possible, the nature of the changes taking place. (shrink)

We illustrate the glorious history of logical foundations and discuss the uncertain future.

Duhem's great contribution to the study of the history of medieval science is indisputable. His book remains an excellent source of information concerning the ideas of the epoch's thinkers about the foundations of the universe. Ariew's painstaking translation of a considerable portion of Duhem's ten-volume work deserves the deep gratitude of all those interested in medieval science. Le Systéme du monde regains its actuality. Nevertheless, to write now about a book produced by this great scholar at the beginning of the (...) century is not an easy undertaking, and involves some risk. Too many changes have taken place in the principles of studying the history of science during the seventy-odd years since the book was written, and some notions that seemed then to be perfectly clear are not so simple and indisputable now. With profound respect for this feat of scholarship, I should like to make some observations in connection with the recent English publication of Duhem's book. (shrink)

I felt happy but a little apprehensive when I received the suggestion from the editors of Science in Context to write a comment on my book Categories of Medieval Culture quite a few years after its first publication and translation. It is always difficult to comment on one's own work, for in such a case there is seldom the necessary degree of “distance” between the author and the commentator. I offer this paper rather as a short account of the direction (...) of my thoughts. (shrink)

This edition focuses on Aron's lifelong attempt to bridge the gap between knowledge and action and to understand the dialectical relationship between history ...

The phenomenon of base-rate neglect has elicited much debate. One arena of debate concerns how people make judgments under conditions of uncertainty. Another more controversial arena concerns human rationality. In this target article, we attempt to unpack the perspectives in the literature on both kinds of issues and evaluate their ability to explain existing data and their conceptual coherence. From this evaluation we conclude that the best account of the data should be framed in terms of a dual-process model of (...) judgment, which attributes base-rate neglect to associative judgment strategies that fail to adequately represent the set structure of the problem. Base-rate neglect is reduced when problems are presented in a format that affords accurate representation in terms of nested sets of individuals. (shrink)

Entitled merely “On the Object of Thought,” Chapter 8 of Gurwitsch’s Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966) has the following note attached to its title: “Paper read at the meeting of the Phenomenological Society, April 27, 1946, at Hunter College, New York City. It was not possible to include here all the discussion. The original version was published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research VII (1947).” What seems the integral script read at the International Phenomenological Society (...) meeting has, however, survived in the Nachlass. It is 596 lines long and 291 lines of it, i.e. practically half, correspond closely to the published version. The following, however, was added to the previously published version: and I must also forsake surveying the elaboration of concepts analogous to that of the “object of thought” in several contemporary psychological sciences. I have in view the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis in Gestalt theory, the studies of the late Gelb and Prof. Goldstein on the psychical effects of brain injuries, the late Levy-Bruhl’s account of mental functions in primitive societies, the views of the phonological school in linguistics, Max Weber’s verstehende Soziologie and especially his distinction between objektiver and subjektiver Sinn. (shrink)

Examines eighteenth-century French and English landscape gardens as representations of nationalist expression.

The paper presents and defends a Bayesian theory of trust in social networks. In the first part of the paper, we provide justifications for the basic assumptions behind the model, and we give reasons for thinking that the model has plausible consequences for certain kinds of communication. In the second part of the paper we investigate the phenomenon of overconfidence. Many psychological studies have found that people think they are more reliable than they actually are. Using a simulation environment that (...) has been developed in order to make our model computationally tractable we show that in our model inquirers are indeed sometimes better off from an epistemic perspective overestimating the reliability of their own inquiries. We also show, by contrast, that people are rarely better off overestimating the reliability of others. On the basis of these observations we formulate a novel hypothesis about the value of overconfidence. (shrink)

A travers les Dimensions de la conscience historique, Raymond Aron s'impose comme l'un des penseurs majeurs de l'histoire au XXe siecle. Apres les bouleversements issus du second conflit mondial, Raymond Aron pense le monde a l'aune de l'installation durable du communisme a l'Est de l'Europe, de la fin de la colonisation, des mutations que signale une phase de progres technique encore inconnue dans les societes developpees. Il prend acte du changement radical que marque pour la condition humaine l'avenement (...) de l'ere nucleaire. Face a ces mutations, le philosophe a plus que jamais le devoir de penser l'histoire et la liberte de l'homme face a l'evenement. Dialoguant avec Thucydide, combattant l'idee d'une fin de l'histoire avancee par Spengler et Toynbee et plus encore par la teleologie marxiste, il poursuit la reflexion sur les limites de l'objectivite historique engagee au cours des annees 1930.Les Dimensions de la conscience historique n'ont cesse de nourrir les debats sur l'histoire. Il demeure aujourd'hui un ouvrage indispensable pour reflechir a notre condition historique. (shrink)

Книга предназначена для студентов, преподавателей и научных сотрудников высших учебных заведений, занимающихся вопросами современных философско-антропологических концепций.

l / Some Aspects and Developments of Gestalt Psychology1 [I] The Development and Status of the Problem At the basis of the constitution of the physical ...

What is the sense of saying “now”? We are used to the established temporal relations by their points of reference (like “yesterday”), distinguished one from the other by measurement and the counting of time (which uses yardsticks, like “day”). So, is the now only another one of these points? Husserl tells us that is not only looking at the constituted time and already shared in common by the world that we will comprehend what is the sense of the now. In (...) this article, I try to follow Husserl’s theory of time with the intent to defend how the phenomenological perspective can clarify the relevant distinctions between “point” and “now”, especially when we comprehend “now” as an origin that closes in itself problems categorically distinct from those referred to the measurement in objective time. (shrink)