Translation of Lev Shestov's What is Philosophy?

The article reviews the book L' esperienza tragica come iniziazione: Lev Šestov [Tragic Experience as Initiation: Lev Shestov], by Aleksander Posacki.

Lev Isakovic Sestov e annoverato fra gli eccezionali filosofi del XX secolo. Questo pensatore di origine giudea, e un continuatore della corrente esistenziale del pensiero religioso di Pascal e Kierkegaard. Viene, pero annoverato pure - del resto insieme ai filosofi menzionati - alla corrente del pensiero tragico. Questo non e contradditorio perche ambedue le trame sono presenti alla riflessione di Sestov, anzi esse sono Ii, cosi inseparabilmente intrecciate, che fino ad oggi la riflessione del pensatore russo essenzialmente sfugge da ogni (...) interpretazione univoca. Nel frammento seguente del teste sto dimostrando che per Sestov l'esperienza tragica non e soltanto un inizio deU'esperienza religiosa, ma anche la sua condizione indispensabile, come un'IIniziazione. Sestov cerca l'esemplificazione di questa coincidenza particolare - l'esperienza tragica come un'iniziazione religiosa - sugli esempi dei vari pensatori di cui ha scrutato non soltanto le opere ma anche le biografie, partendo dalla premessa che esse sono delle realta collegate inseparabilmente. Sestov cerca l'affermazione di questa verita studiando la vita e le opere dei pensatori non soltanto tragici come Shakespeare, Ibsen, Nietzsche o Dostoevskij, ma sopratutto dei pensatori religiosi come Pascal o Lutero e Kierkegaard. In questi ultimi quel collegamento del tragico e della reiigiosita si e fatto evidente, mentre negli altri esso era soltanto parziale e embrionale. (shrink)

Plotinus represent a constant reference in all of Šestov's philosophy. For the Russian philosopher Plotinus is, on the one hand, the one who thought up thesynthesis of Greek philosophy, on the other, the one who first broke with that same tradition precisely when it was at its peak. However, Šestov does lift from the Enneadi certain passages which he marries - as if in a sort of contrapuntal rewriting exercise - to others in which Plotinus seems to contradict himself. What (...) interests Šestov are precisely those discontinuities in the thought of the last great philosopher of old in an anti-Greek function. That of Šestov is once again a marked criticism of Rationalism as creator of an autonomous set of ethics that he judges according to an intellect which everything is subject to. Autonomousethics, affirms Šestov, is a fruit of Greek schools of thought to the extent that it shows distrust for what is mutable, unforeseen and arbitrary, of everything which, in short, is irrational, as it is not inserted in the One/All necessitating, justifying, regulating. In the alternative between Athens and Jerusalem, between the Rationalism and the Bible, Šestov opts to assume a stance, in no uncertain terms, on the side Jerusalem, taking with him the Plotinus of the awakening andheading towards a greater reality capable of overturning the throne occupied for too long by reason. That Plotinus who at a certain point was obliged to say thatin this other dimension "the intellect before God represents a reckless, ungodly apostate" (VI.9.5). That Plotinus, who ultimately, in one of those most particularmoments, realized that he was predestined for something loftier with respect to the world of evil and death. (shrink)

We introduce the logics GLP Λ, a generalization of Japaridze’s polymodal provability logic GLP ω where Λ is any linearly ordered set representing a hierarchy of provability operators of increasing strength. We shall provide a reduction of these logics to GLP ω yielding among other things a finitary proof of the normal form theorem for the variable-free fragment of GLP Λ and the decidability of GLP Λ for recursive orderings Λ. Further, we give a restricted axiomatization of the variable-free fragment (...) of GLP Λ. (shrink)

Historically, appearance of the quantum theory led to a prevailing view that Nature is indeterministic. The arguments for the indeterminism and proposals for indeterministic and deterministic approaches are reviewed. These include collapse theories, Bohmian Mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation. It is argued that ontic interpretations of the quantum wave function provide simpler and clearer physical explanation and that the many-worlds interpretation is the most attractive since it provides a deterministic and local theory for our physical Universe explaining the illusion of (...) randomness and nonlocality in the world we experience. (shrink)

Cover -- Contents -- Introduction to the Second Edition -- Prefatory Note -- Introduction -- Foreword -- I Parmenides in Chains -- II In the Bull of Phalaris -- III On the Philosophy of the Middle Ages -- IV On the Second Dimension of Thought -- Lev Shestov-Biographical Timeline -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

Śiḥot maran ha-Mashgiaḥ Mohari Leṿinshṭain, zatsal -- Ḥidushe torato ʻa. Mas. B.ḳ. ṿe-liḳuṭim -- Leḳeṭ mi-maʼamraṿ mi-moreshet Daṿid Heber ṿe-ʻinyene ha-shaʻah.

This is a philosophical paper in favor of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. The necessity of introducing many worlds is explained by analyzing a neutron interference experiment. The concept of the “measure of existence of a world” is introduced and some difficulties with the issue of probability in the framework of the MWI are resolved.

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

An attempt to solve the collapse problem in the framework of a time-symmetric quantum formalism is reviewed. Although the proposal does not look very attractive, its concept - a world defined by two quantum states, one evolving forwards and one evolving backwards in time - is found to be useful in modifying the many-worlds picture of Everett’s theory.

By a result of Paris and Friedman, the collection axiom schema for $\Sigma_{n+1}$ formulas, $B\Sigma_{n+1}$ , is $\Pi_{n+2}$ conservative over $I\Sigma_n$ . We give a new proof-theoretic proof of this theorem, which is based on a reduction of $B\Sigma_n$ to a version of collection rule and a subsequent analysis of this rule via Herbrand's theorem. A generalization of this method allows us to improve known results on reflection principles for $B\Sigma_n$ and to answer some technical questions left open by Sieg (...) [23] and Hájek [9]. We also give a new proof of independence of $B\Sigma_{n+1}$ over $I\Sigma_n$ by a direct recursion-theoretic argument and answer an open problem formulated by Gaifman and Dimitracopoulos [8]. (shrink)

Le messianisme fait à la fois partie des principaux articles de foi du Judaïsme et appelle en même temps son renversement lorsqu’il se réalise de manière effective. Le messianisme s’exprime alors à travers une critique de la loi comme impératif catégorique, étatique et particulariste exercée par une instance transcendante. Saint-Paul incarne très certainement le fer de lance de cette révolution messianique au fondement de l’universalisme. Cette inauguration d’une loi immanente au sujet destinée à supplanter la loi transcendante du Judaïsme se (...) prolonge à travers un certain nombre de figures de la modernité, notamment celles de Spinoza et Freud. Le messianisme n’est pas à entendre ici comme pure et simple trahison de la loi juive mais au contraire comme révélation d’une fracture qui lui appartient originellement. (shrink)

A recent claim by Meehan that quantum mechanics has a new “control problem” that puts limits on our ability to prepare quantum states and revises our understanding of the no-cloning theorem is examined. We identify flaws in Meehan’s analysis and argue that such a problem does not exist.

A brief review of the attempts to define “elements of reality” in the framework of quantum theory is presented. It is noted that most definitions of elements of reality have in common the feature to be a definite outcome of some measurement. Elements of reality are extended to pre- and post- selected systems and to measurements which fulfill certain criteria of weakness of the coupling. Some features of the newly introduced concepts are discussed.

We deal with the fragment of modal logic consisting of implications of formulas built up from the variables and the constant ‘true’ by conjunction and diamonds only. The weaker language allows one to interpret the diamonds as the uniform reflection schemata in arithmetic, possibly of unrestricted logical complexity. We formulate an arithmetically complete calculus with modalities labeled by natural numbers and ω, where ω corresponds to the full uniform reflection schema, whereas n<ω corresponds to its restriction to arithmetical Πn+1-formulas. This (...) calculus is shown to be complete w.r.t. a suitable class of finite Kripke models and to be decidable in polynomial time. (shrink)

Svensson argued that the concept of the weak value of an observable of a pre- and post-selected quantum system cannot be applied when the expectation value of the observable in the initial state vanishes. Svensson’s argument is analyzed and shown to be inconsistent using several examples.

It is argued that Lewis's approach to Elga's Sleeping Beaty problem is untenable and, therefore, the universality of the betting approach to probability has not been breached.

An attempt to solve the collapse problem in the framework of a time-symmetric quantum formalism is reviewed. Although the proposal does not look very attractive, its concept - a world defined by two quantum states, one evolving forwards and one evolving backwards in time - is found to be useful in modifying the many-worlds picture of Everett’s theory.

The main focus of the book is the presentation of the 'inertial' view of population growth. This view provides a rather simple model for complex population dynamics, and is achieved at the level of the single species without invoking species interactions. An important part of this account is the maternal effect. Investment of mothers in the quality of their daughters makes the rate of reproduction of the current generation depend not only on the current environment, but also on the environment (...) experienced by the previous generation. (shrink)

Progressions of iterated reflection principles can be used as a tool for the ordinal analysis of formal systems. We discuss various notions of proof-theoretic ordinals and compare the information obtained by means of the reflection principles with the results obtained by the more usual proof-theoretic techniques. In some cases we obtain sharper results, e.g., we define proof-theoretic ordinals relevant to logical complexity Π1 0 and, similarly, for any class Π n 0 . We provide a more general version of the (...) fine structure relationships for iterated reflection principles (due to U. Schmerl [25]). This allows us, in a uniform manner, to analyze main fragments of arithmetic axiomatized by restricted forms of induction, including IΣ n , IΣ n − , IΠ n − and their combinations. We also obtain new conservation results relating the hierarchies of uniform and local reflection principles. In particular, we show that (for a sufficiently broad class of theories T) the uniform Σ1-reflection principle for T is Σ2-conservative over the corresponding local reflection principle. This bears some corollaries on the hierarchies of restricted induction schemata in arithmetic and provides a key tool for our generalization of Schmerl's theorem. (shrink)

The paper deals with the conception of logical empiricism developed by Eino Kaila. Eino Kaila, being a thinker close to the Vienna Circle, departs from some of the central ideas of logical positivism. He identifies a limited number of problems in metaphysics that are meaningful and need to be solved, but he declares the rest of metaphysics to be a logical fallacy. For Eino Kaila, it is not the principle of verification (as a criterion of meaning) but the principle of (...) testability that plays the most important role. In addition, he revises the principle of translatability, insisting that it is impossible to translate a single sentence into the language of experience, but it is possible to translate the whole theory to which the sentence belongs. This is related to his structuralist position in the philosophy of science and his understanding of scientific theories as ‘rationalisations’ as opposed to simple inductive generalisations. The paper compares Eino Kaila’s views expressed during the period of his active interaction with the Vienna Circle be regarded as a predecessor of later critics of logical positivism (in particular, W.V.O. Quine). (shrink)

What is the most important reason for using Computer Vision methods in humanities research? In this article, I argue that the use of numerical representation and data analysis methods offers a new language for describing cultural artifacts, experiences and dynamics. The human languages such as English or Russian that developed rather recently in human evolution are not good at capturing analog properties of human sensorial and cultural experiences. These limitations become particularly worrying if we want to compare thousands, millions or (...) billions of artifacts—i.e. to study contemporary media and cultures at their new twenty-first century scale. When we instead use numerical measurements of image properties standard in Computer Vision, we can better capture details of a single artifact as well as visual differences between a number of artifacts–even if they are very small. The examples of visual dimensions that numbers can capture better then languages include color, shape, texture, contours, composition, and visual characteristics of represented faces, bodies and objects. The methods of finding structures and relationships in large numerical datasets developed in statistics and machine learning allow us to extend this analysis to very big datasets of cultural objects. Equally importantly, numerical image features used in Computer Vision also give us a new language to represent gradual and continuous temporal changes—something which natural languages are also bad at. This applies to both single artworks such as a film or a dance piece and also to changes in visual characteristics in millions of artifacts over decades or centuries. (shrink)

Three arguments based on the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) proof of the nonexistence of local hidden variables are presented. The first is a description of a simple game which a team that uses the GHZ method will always win. The second uses counterfactuals in an attempt to show that quantum theory is nonlocal in a stronger sense than is implied by the nonexistence of local hidden variables and the third describes peculiar features of time-symmetrized counterfactuals in quantum theory.

A well-known polymodal provability logic inlMMLBox due to Japaridze is complete w.r.t. the arithmetical semantics where modalities correspond to reflection principles of restricted logical complexity in arithmetic. This system plays an important role in some recent applications of provability algebras in proof theory. However, an obstacle in the study of inlMMLBox is that it is incomplete w.r.t. any class of Kripke frames. In this paper we provide a complete Kripke semantics for inlMMLBox . First, we isolate a certain subsystem inlMMLBox (...) of inlMMLBox that is sound and complete w.r.t. a nice class of finite frames. Second, appropriate models for inlMMLBox are defined as the limits of chains of finite expansions of models for inlMMLBox . The techniques involves unions of n -elementary chains and inverse limits of Kripke models. All the results are obtained by purely modal-logical methods formalizable in elementary arithmetic. (shrink)

“All Things Are Possible” is a 1920 English translation of the 1905 work by the Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher Shestov. It draws on the aphoristic style of Nietzsche and deals with as diverse issues as science, rationalism and religion. This edition also includes an interesting foreword by D. H. Lawrence. Highly recommended for those with an interest in philosophy, and particularly existentialism. Contents include: “Lev Shestov”, “Note”, “Foreword”, “Zu Fragmentarish Ist Welt Und Leben”, and “Nur Für Schwindelfreie”. Many vintage books such (...) as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author. (shrink)

This paper is an answer to the preceding paper by Kastner, in which she continued the criticism of the counterfactual usage of the Aharonov-Bergman-Lebowitz rule in the framework of the time-symmetrized quantum theory, in particular, by analyzing the three-box “paradox.” It is argued that the criticism is not sound. Paradoxical features of the three-box example are discussed. It is explained that the elements of reality in the framework of time-symmetrized quantum theory are counterfactual statements, and therefore, even conflicting elements of (...) reality can be associated with a single system. It is shown how such “counterfactual” elements of reality can be useful in the analysis of a physical experiment (the three-box example). The validity of Kastner's application of the consistent histories approach to the time-symmetrized counterfactuals is questioned. (shrink)

Two recently proposed quantum experiments are analyzed. The first allows to find an object without "touching" it. The second allows to teleport quantum states, transmitting a very small amount of information. It is shown that in the standard approach these experiments are in conflict with the intuitive notions of causality and locality. It is argued that the situation is less paradoxical in the framework of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory.

Traditionally, biomedical research has been devoted to improvement in the understanding and treatment or prevention of disease. Building on the knowledge generated by the long history of disease-oriented research, the next few decades will witness an explosion of biomedical enhancements to make people faster, stronger, smarter, less forgetful, happier, prettier, and live longer (Turner et al. 2003; Vastag 2004; Rose 2002). As with other biomedical interventions, research to assess the safety and efficacy of these enhancements in humans should be conducted (...) before their introduction into clinical practice.1 However, various concerns regarding the ethics of enhancement research could be raised. Those who .. (shrink)

At IAPS Ljubljana conference (September 2007) Dag Vidar Hanstad and Sigmund Loland presented a paper on elite-level athletes' duty to provide information on their whereabouts, to decide between two opposing positions: is this WADA demand justifiable anti-doping work or an indefensible surveillance regime? They concluded that on moral grounds this regime is conditionally acceptable, the condition being the acceptability of a general framework and objectives embodied in anti-doping global legislative foundations (the World Anti-Doping Code). But, as they said, principled objections (...) against the system have more universal relevance, which has to be taken seriously . To take this ambiguous and intriguing conclusion a step further, I propose a legal rather than ethical approach, from the aspect of constitutional and international human rights law, and the possible clash of two legally acknowledged values - the concept of elite sport without doping, and the concept of individual human rights. This conflict between ideological or moral values and the legality of individual rights is not a novelty. This paper presents three instances of this conflict: Bernard de Mandeville's differentiation between public and private values; Eug ne Sue's parallel legal and civil morals; and the contemporary moralisation of law which conflates legality into morality. The subordination of legality to morality has potentially dangerous consequences: here, Agamben's 'state of exception' comes to mind, with his analysis of potestas and auctoritas. However, in the case of sport and the war against doping, the origin of power is not in the nation state; it originates in civil society's non-governmental national and international bodies recognised as autonomous sources of legal order. (shrink)

The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is an approach to quantum mechanics according to which, in addition to the world we are aware of directly, there are many other similar worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics.