En los últimos años, la validez de aplicar parámetros específicos de la teoría de la pragmática del lenguaje a los poemas homéricos, y a las lenguas clásicas, ha sido ampliamente comprobada. También este trabajo intenta demostrar que este tipo de abordaje permite una comprensión más profunda de los discursos persuasivos de la Ilíada. En efecto, el propósito del presente estudio es observar la utilización de los sintagmas preposicionales κατὰ μοῖραν y κατ' αἶσαν como marcadores discursivos. Así, buscamos analizar por qué (...) una reprimenda logra el éxito persuasivo al margen de la verdad enunciada acerca del código de conducta tradicional. In recent years, the validity of applying specific parameters taken from the pragmatics of language theory to the Homeric poems, and classical languages, has been widely proved. This work is another attempt to demonstrate that this kind of approach allows comprehending more deeply the persuasive discourses in the Iliad. In fact, the main purpose of this study is to observe the prepositional clauses κατὰ μοῖραν and κατ' αἶσαν working as discourse markers. In doing so, we will try to better understand the reason why a rebuke is persuasively successful beyond the truthfulness of its statements about the traditional regulatory framework. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene como propósito evaluar los dos modos principales mediante los cuales se presenta en la Ilíada la posibilidad de alterar la fábula tradicional: los denominados pasajes de inversión y ciertos discursos persuasivos directos. Si bien en diferentes niveles de la narración, ambos mecanismos compositivos presentan una reflexión implícita sobre el rango de elecciones posibles para el narrador primario, como aedo, y para los personajes, mortales o dioses, como agentes narrativos. Para establecer la comparación entre ambos dispositivos, nos (...) servimos de cuatro conceptos de la teoría narratológica: focalización y nivel, tipo y función de la narración. This work aims to assess the two main ways displayed through the Iliad for possibly altering the traditional tale: the so called reversal passages and certain persuasive direct discourses. Although at different narrative levels, both composing devices display an implicit consideration about the range of choices available for the primary narrator, as a singer, as well as for the characters, mortals or gods, as narrative agents. For comparing both devices, we make use of four concepts belonging to narratological theory: focalization, narrative level, type and function. (shrink)

En los últimos años, la validez de aplicar parámetros específicos de la teoría de la pragmática del lenguaje a los poemas homéricos, y a las lenguas clásicas, ha sido ampliamente comprobada. También este trabajo intenta demostrar que este tipo de abordaje permite una comprensión más profunda de los discursos persuasivos de la Ilíada. En efecto, el propósito del presente estudio es observar la utilización de los sintagmas preposicionales κατὰ μοῖραν y κατ’ αἶσαν como marcadores discursivos. Así, buscamos analizar por qué (...) una reprimenda logra el éxito persuasivo al margen de la verdad enunciada acerca del código de conducta tradicional. (shrink)

An interrogation of the term 'theory' from the perspective of linguistic discourse Zima offers a new definition of theory from a cultural and sociological perspective, with a view to encountering heterogenerous points of view in critical dialogue.

1. Naturalism Naturalism, it has been said, is the distinctive development in philosophy over the last thirty years. There has been a naturalistic turn away from the a priori methods of traditional philosophy to a conception of philosophy as continuous with natural science. The doctrine has been extensively discussed and has won considerable following in the USA. This is, on the whole, not true of Britain and continental Europe, where the pragmatist tradition never took root, and the temptations of scientism (...) in philosophy were less alluring. Contemporary American naturalism originates in the writings of Quine, the metaphysician of twentieth-century science. With extraordinary panache, he painted a largescale picture of human nature, of language and of the web of belief. I believe that in almost every major respect, it is, like the picture painted by Descartes, the great metaphysician of seventeenth-century science, mistaken. But it evidently appeals to the spirit of the times. So it is worthy of critical examination and careful refutation. I shall argue that the naturalistic turn is a cul-de-sac – a turn that is to be passed by if we are to keep to the highroad of good sense. Naturalism, like so many of Quine’s doctrines, was propounded in response to Carnap. As Quine understood matters, Carnap had been persuaded by Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World that it is the task of philosophy to demonstrate that our knowledge of the external world is a logical construction out of, and hence can be reduced to, elementary experiences. Quine rejected the reductionism of Carnap’s Logischer Aufbau, and found the idealist basis uncongenial to his own dogmatic realist behaviourism, inspired by Watson and later reinforced by Skinner. The rejection of reductionism and ‘unregenerate realism’, Quine averred, were the sources of his naturalism (FME 72). What exactly was this? We can distinguish in Quine between three different but inter-related programmes for future philosophy: epistemological, ontological and philosophical naturalism. Naturalized epistemology is to displace traditional epistemology, transforming the investigation into ‘an enterprise within natural science’ (NNK 68) – a psychological enterprise of investigating how the ‘input’ of radiation, etc., impinging on the nerve endings of human beings can ‘ultimately’ result in an ‘output’ of our theoretical descriptions of the external world.. (shrink)

Most commonly, the scientific realism debate is seen as dividing those who do and do not think that the striking empirical and practical successes of at least our best scientific theories indicate with high probability that those theories are ‘approximately true’. But I want to suggest that this characterization of the debate has far outlived its usefulness. Not only does it obscure the central differences between two profoundly different types of contemporary scientific realist, but even more importantly it serves to (...) disguise the most substantial points of actual disagreement between these two kinds of realists and those who instead think the historical record of scientific inquiry itself reveals that such realism is untenable in either form. (shrink)

We analyse the extent of possible computations following Hogarth ([2004]) conducted in Malament–Hogarth (MH) spacetimes, and Etesi and Németi ([2002]) in the special subclass containing rotating Kerr black holes. Hogarth ([1994]) had shown that any arithmetic statement could be resolved in a suitable MH spacetime. Etesi and Németi ([2002]) had shown that some relations on natural numbers that are neither universal nor co-universal, can be decided in Kerr spacetimes, and had asked specifically as to the extent of computational limits there. (...) The purpose of this note is to address this question, and further show that MH spacetimes can compute far beyond the arithmetic: effectively Borel statements (so hyperarithmetic in second-order number theory, or the structure of analysis) can likewise be resolved: Theorem A. If H is any hyperarithmetic predicate on integers, then there is an MH spacetime in which any query ? n H ? can be computed. In one sense this is best possible, as there is an upper bound to computational ability in any spacetime, which is thus a universal constant of that spacetime. Theorem C. Assuming the (modest and standard) requirement that spacetime manifolds be paracompact and Hausdorff, for any spacetime there will be a countable ordinal upper bound, , on the complexity of questions in the Borel hierarchy computable in it. Introduction 1.1 History and preliminaries Hyperarithmetic Computations in MH Spacetimes 2.1 Generalising SADn regions 2.2 The complexity of questions decidable in Kerr spacetimes An Upper Bound on Computational Complexity for Each Spacetime CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Two different conceptions of language dominate philosophical reflection on the nature of human language and of human linguistic powers. The first is the conception of language as a calculus of meaning, and of understanding as computational interpretation. This conception is rooted in the exigencies of function-theoretic logic. The notions pivotal to this conception are truth, truth-condition, sense and force, naming and describing (representation), and theory of meaning for natural languages. The alternative conception is an anthropological one, which conceives of language (...) above all as a form of human communicative behaviour, constituted by human practices and manifest in human action. The notions pivotal to this conception are practice, language-game, use and rule of use as given by explanations of meaning, understanding and criteria of understanding. The fundamental principles that inform each of these conceptions are explained. The radical flaws of calculus conceptions of language are laid bare. (shrink)

As the United States is currently prosecuting two wars, it is important to consider whether those wars, and the resulting noncombatantcasualties, can be morally justified. Such consideration can be initiated by considering some of Alan Donagan’s work in his book The Theory of Morality. In that book Donagan sets out to develop, as a philosophical system, that part of the common morality according to the Hebrew-Christian tradition, which does not depend on any theistic beliefs. According to that tradition it is (...) sometimes morally permissible to resort to war. This poses a problem because also part of the tradition is a near absolute prohibition on harming innocent people. Since innocent people die in war, there is a tension here.Donagan claims that this problem can be solved by assigning the blame for some such deaths to the aggressor, thereby permitting (some) resorts to war. This paper shows that this solution is inadequate; and defends a more plausible (and more traditional) justification for some innocent deaths. This justification is consistent with the system Donagan develops, and thus may have application in the consideration of the justification of the two wars currently being prosecuted by the United States. (shrink)

Reply in Book Symposium on James Ladyman, Don Ross: 'Everything must go: metaphysics naturalized', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

We formalize what it means to have permission to say something. We adapt the dynamic logic of permission by van der Meyden (J Log Comput 6(3):465–479, 1996 ) to the case where atomic actions are public truthful announcements. We also add a notion of obligation. Our logic is an extension of the logic of public announcements introduced by Plaza ( 1989 ) with dynamic modal operators for permission and for obligation. We axiomatize the logic and show that it is decidable.

When a patient fails to follow the advice or prescription of a physician, she is termed to be "noncompliant" by the medical community. The medical community’s response to and understanding of patient noncompliance fails to acknowledge noncompliance as either a relational failure between physician and patient or as a patient choice. I offer an analysis of Immanuel Kant and Emmanuel Levinas that refocuses the issue of noncompliance by examining the physician role, the doctor–patient relationship, and the nature of responsibility.

An epistemic logic is built up on the basis of an analysis of two skeptical arguments. the method used is to first construct an inference relation appropriate to epistemic contexts and introduce "a knows that..." as an operator giving rise to sentences closed with respect to this new concept of inference. soundness and completeness proofs are provided using auxiliary three-valued valuations.