Bold and pioneering, this book makes a detailed historical and systematic case that Descartes's theory of knowledge is an elegant and powerful combination of a priori, naturalistic, and dialectical elements meriting serious consideration by both contemporary analytic philosophers and postmodern thinkers. In the course of making this case Thomas Vinci develops a broad reinterpretation of Cartesian thought that unlocks novel solutions to many of the most vexed questions in Cartesian scholarship.

This paper introduces a natural deduction calculus for intuitionistic logic of belief \ which is easily turned into a modal \-calculus giving a computational semantics for deductions in \. By using that interpretation, it is also proved that \ has good proof-theoretic properties. The correspondence between deductions and typed terms is then extended to a categorical semantics for identity of proofs in \ showing the general structure of such a modality for belief in an intuitionistic framework.

The correlation between dialogue and religion, both as conceptual apparatuses and as current practices, has had a long history. The purpose of this essay is to isolate one such instance – the “critical dialogue” taking place amongst scholars of religions – which involves also the dialogue scholars establish with their field of study and/or a given religious tradition. Following a brief clarification of terminology used, I will proceed to discuss concrete examples of critical dialogue within the Study of Religions and (...) how this might be enhanced. Finally, I will draw some partial conclusions which might pave the way for this critical dialogue to improve and continue. (shrink)

We assess Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes in relation to current research on the development of organisms. Our goals are four-fold: first, to present and critically challenge what has become an orthodox interpretation of Aristotle among biologists; second, to present and defend a more adequate account of organismal development; third, to elaborate and justify a novel account of Aristotle's natural teleology, one at odds with the orthodox interpretation; and fourth, to illustrate how our reading of Aristotle, if right, permits (...) a more fruitful encounter between Aristotle and modern biology than that imagined by Aristotle's latter-day biological interpreters. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This introductory chapter sets out the rationale for the ensuing chapters and their division into different parts. It also provide an overall and comprehensive prologue to the Gramsci-Ambedkar encounter. Indeed, "parallels are strong and very striking for two thinkers who are otherwise so different - in political experience, philosophical background and ideas of effective strategy" (Jon Soske, personal communication). Nevertheless, the moral fabric of their political commitment to Dalits/subalterns bring them very close, particularly in the upholding of Gramsci's 'intellectual and (...) moral reform' and Ambedkar's 'social and moral consciousness of society'. (shrink)

The central theme of this study is that Descartes is a teacher who develops his arguments for the different philosophical orientations of his students. Indeed, according to Cunning, so respectful is Descartes of their orientations that he actually misrepresents his own view in the Meditations on central doctrinal matters like the basis for dualism. The exegetical argument for this is the central argument of the book, though many other aspects of the Meditations are discussed in novel and interesting ways. Descartes (...) describes himself as establishing the duality of mental and physical substances in two stages in the Meditations. It is in Meditation II, he says in the Fourth Replies, where he shows that a .. (shrink)

It seems generally agreed that a theory of sensory episodes that mentions sensory objects and a sensing relation — the ‘act-object’ theory — is unacceptable and should be replaced by some other account. A chief competitor is the Adverbial Theory, and one of its chief advocates is Wilfrid Sellars. While it is clear that there are serious difficulties for the act-object theory not facing the adverbial theory, I will argue that the latter has difficulties of its own.