Requiring only a background in elementary calculus and elementary mechanics, this book starts with the basics, introduces the most important developments in classical statistical mechanics over the last thirty years, and guides readers to ...

A 'self-refutation argument' is any argument which aims at showing that a certain thesis is self-refuting. This study was the first book-length treatment of ancient self-refutation and provides a unified account of what is distinctive in the ancient approach to the self-refutation argument, on the basis of close philological, logical and historical analysis of a variety of sources. It examines the logic, force and prospects of this original style of argumentation within the context of ancient philosophical debates, dispelling various misconceptions (...) concerning its nature and purpose and elucidating some important differences which exist both within the ancient approach to self-refutation and between that approach, as a whole, and some modern counterparts of it. In providing a comprehensive account of ancient self-refutation, the book advances our understanding of influential and debated texts and arguments from philosophers like Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Academic sceptics, the Pyrrhonists and Augustine. (shrink)

Timothy Smiley’s wonderful paper ‘Rejection’ (1996) is still perhaps not as well known or well understood as it should be. This note first gives a quick presentation of themes from that paper, though done in our own way, and then considers a putative line of objection – recently advanced by Julien Murzi and Ole Hjortland (2009) – to one of Smiley’s key claims. Along the way, we consider the prospects for an intuitionistic approach to some of the issues discussed in (...) Smiley’s paper. (shrink)

A growing movement in contemporary philosophy of mind is looking back on Indian thought to gain new insights into the problem of consciousness. This paper weighs the prospects of thinking about mentality through the lenses of Śaṅkaran Advaita Vedānta. To start, I outline micropsychist and cosmopsychist accounts of consciousness, introduce Śaṅkaran monism, and describe a potential reason of attraction of the framework over micropsychist and cosmopsychist alternatives. I then show that the eliminativist commitments of the view threaten to yield a (...) self-defeating account of ordinary experience, and that Advaitins took the accommodation of the issue to be beyond the reach of rational inquiry. Finally, I discuss how the analytical debate over Śaṅkaran monism might proceed based on these premises. (shrink)

The inquiry will attempt to answer several questions about: a) the cognitive status of philosophy according to Kant; b) the possibility of distinguishing philosophy from other forms of knowledge, with particular reference to specifically named scientific cognitions; c) the consequences connected with the necessity of thinking of philosophy in its relation to an ulterior dimension with respect to that of science, which is, according to Kant, the dimension of wisdom. Philosophy, according to Kant, is a rational cognition, yet different from (...) mathematics. Philosophy is a rational cognition from concepts, and therefore makes a discursive use of reason in accordance with concepts. Mathematics is instead a rational cognition from the construction of concepts, and therefore makes intuitive use of reason through the construction of concepts. The construction of a concept implies necessarily the capacity and the possibility of exposing in the intuition the corresponding object and to express it through a representation which is universally valid “for all possible intuitions that belong under the same concept”. It is precisely the fact that it is a cognition that proceeds along the construction of concepts which makes mathematics a stable and certain discipline, accompanied by evident proofs founded upon definitions, axioms and demonstrations that no rational cognition that proceeds with mere concepts can possess. It is for this reason that philosophy, in contrast with mathematics and whatever else is in some manner reducible to mathematics, may not be learned; for the fact that philosophy, understood as a scientific discipline in the same way in which all scientific disciplines are to be understood, really doesn’t exist. Philosophy is not a discipline in the sense in which all the other scientific disciplines are, because philosophy, for Kant, “is a mere idea of apossible science that precisely as an idea of a possible science is nowhere given in concreto”. If one may effectively speak about philosophy as a science, this does not constitute the moment in which philosophy finally reaches completion in itself. What Kant underscores is that at this level philosophy is only a science, that is, knowledge which, as much as it is fundamentally stable and certain, does not succeed in any case in obtaining that which constitutes instead, the most important and irreducible element of philosophy: “the relation of all cognition to the essential ends of human reason”. The philosopher is not for Kant simply a technician of reason, in that his aim is not solely that of ability, the completeness of knowledge and its systematic organisation. Rather, he aspires to something which goes beyond the merely cognitive dimension, and that Kant calls “wisdom”. Even knowing that science is the only available path, philosophy knows also that science cannot satisfy itself. In this sense philosophy presents itself as a science of limits and finds precisely in this determination the difference of all particular scientific disciplines, and, at one and the same time, of all pseudocognitive attitudes which are programmatically presented as independent from and alternative to science. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether there are genuinely *diachronic* constraints of practical rationality, that is, pressures on combinations of practical attitudes over time, which are not reducible to mere synchronic rational pressures. Michael Bratman has recently argued that there is at least one such diachronic rational constraint that governs the stability of intentions over time. *Pace* Bratman, I argue that there are no genuinely diachronic constraints on intentions that meet the stringent desiderata set by him. But I show that (...) there are at least two synchronic rational constraints with distinctive and important, although only indirect, diachronic dimensions. Neither of them, however, supports the practical conservatism in the face of normative underdetermination that, according to Bratman, is part and parcel of the diachronic rationality of intention stability. (shrink)

In this paper we show how Dummett-Prawitz-style proof-theoretic semantics has to be modified in order to cope with paradoxical phenomena. It will turn out that one of its basic tenets has to be given up, namely the definition of the correctness of an inference as validity preservation. As a result, the notions of an argument being valid and of an argument being constituted by correct inference rules will no more coincide. The gap between the two notions is accounted for by (...) introducing the distinction between sense and denotation in the proof-theoretic-semantic setting. (shrink)

Transmission of justification across inference is a valuable and indeed ubiquitous epistemic phenomenon in everyday life and science. It is thanks to the phenomenon of epistemic transmission that inferential reasoning is a means for substantiating predictions of future events and, more generally, for expanding the sphere of our justified beliefs or reinforcing the justification of beliefs that we already entertain. However, transmission of justification is not without exceptions. As a few epistemologists have come to realise, more or less trivial forms (...) of circularity can prevent justification from transmitting from p to q even if one has justification for p and one is aware of the inferential link from p to q. In interesting cases this happens because one can acquire justification for p only if one has independent justification for q. In this case the justification for q cannot depend on the justification for p and the inferential link from p to q, as genuine transmission would require. The phenomenon of transmission failure seems to shed light on philosophical puzzles, such as Moore's proof of a material world and McKinsey's paradox, and it plays a central role in various philosophical debates. For this reason it is being granted continued and increasing attention. (shrink)

Constitutivism argues that the source of the categorical force of the norms of rationality and morality lies in the constitutive features of agency. A systematic failure to be guided by these norms would amount to a loss or lack of agency. Since we cannot but be agents, we cannot but be unconditionally guided by these norms. The constitutivist strategy has been challenged by David Enoch. He argues that our participation in agency is optional and thus cannot be a source of (...) categorical demands. In this paper, I defend the viability of constitutivism by showing that agency is indeed a special ‘inescapable’ enterprise. Agency has the largest jurisdiction, and it is closed under rational assessment. This inescapability does not exempt constitutivism from raising the question whether agents have reason to be agents, but this question has to be taken up within agency. If this question is answered affirmatively, then—I argue—the criteria of practical correctness are self-ratifying in a non-circular way. This is sufficient to show the viability of the constitutivist strategy. Whether agents have conclusive reasons to be agents, however, is a matter to be addressed in the terms of particular versions of constitutivism. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz's pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz's theory and discussing the evidence in its favor, we show that it is beset by serious problems—i.e., it gets the neural correlates (...) of emotion wrong, it isn't able to distinguish emotions from bodily perceptions that aren't emotions, it cannot account for emotions being directed towards particular objects, and it mischaracterizes emotion phenomenology. We argue that our theory accounts for the empirical evidence considered by Prinz and solves the problems faced by his theory. In particular, we maintain that our theory gives a unified and principled account of the relation between emotions and bodily perceptions, the intentionality of emotions, and emotion phenomenology. (shrink)

Luca Del Baldo's Visionary Academy of Ocular Mentality is an extraordinary testament in the recent history of visual studies. It brings together a group of outstanding scholars who have devoted their lives to art history, philosophy, history, ethnology, focussing predominantly on questions of human perception and imagination. Working from photographs provided by the scholars, Luca del Baldo painted his series of 96 portraits reproduced in this book. The portraits are accompanied by texts written by the persons portrayed, in (...) response to their portrayal, and as an exchange: the artist gifted the original painting to the portrayed person, and the portrayed gifted her or his response. "The result is a unique and profound conversation between image and text focussed on the enigma of the human face in all its mediations.". (shrink)

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn’t rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects our rational credences. (...) If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don’t get off the ground because they assume that our experiences and our introspective beliefs that we have experiences have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also consider the question whether dogmatism has an antisceptical bite. I suggest that the answer turns on whether or not the Bayesian can determine the priors of hypotheses and conjectures on the grounds of their extra-empirical virtues. If the Bayesian can do so, the thesis that dogmatism has an antisceptical bite is probably false. (shrink)

We will know that we are free when the pornography no longer exists.Je voudrais dans ce texte aborder les raisons d’une éventuelle politique législative relative aux effets de la pornographie – laquelle j’appellerai plutôt pollution pornographique, voulant suggérer par là qu’il s’agit d’effets touchant une partie importante de la société. Une politique..

When the language-dominant hemisphere is damaged by a focal lesion, the brain may reorganize the language network through functional and structural changes known as adaptive plasticity. Adaptive plasticity is documented for triggers including ischemic, tumoral, and epileptic focal lesions, with effects in clinical practice. Many questions remain regarding language plasticity. Different lesions may induce different patterns of reorganization depending on pathologic features, location in the brain, and timing of onset. Neuroimaging provides insights into language plasticity due to its non-invasiveness, ability (...) to image the whole brain, and large-scale implementation. This review provides an overview of language plasticity on MRI with insights for patient care. First, we describe the structural and functional language network as depicted by neuroimaging. Second, we explore language reorganization triggered by stroke, brain tumors, and epileptic lesions and analyze applications in clinical diagnosis and treatment planning. By comparing different focal lesions, we investigate determinants of language plasticity including lesion location and timing of onset, longitudinal evolution of reorganization, and the relationship between structural and functional changes. (shrink)

It is often argued that future-directed decisions are effective at shaping our future conduct because they give rise, at the time of action, to a decisive reason to act as originally decided. In this paper, I argue that standard accounts of decision-based reasons are unsatisfactory. For they focus either on tie-breaking scenarios or cases of self-directed distal manipulation. I argue that future-directed decisions are better understood as tools for the non-manipulative, intrapersonal division of deliberative labor over time. A future-directed decision (...) to ϕ gives rise to a defeasible exclusionary reason to ϕ. This reason is grounded on the default authority that is normally granted to one’s prior self as an “expert” deliberator. I argue that this kind of exclusionary reason is the only one that can account for the effectiveness of future-directed decisions at shaping our diachronic agency without violating our autonomy over time. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of (...) warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. (shrink)

A citizen of Early Renaissance Florence that stepped out into the streets and entered the spaces of his civic world joined a concert of creative formal behaviors in which he was at once an actor and a spectator. His problem here was to interpret the complex web of overlapping, conflicting and simultaneous meanings he would have read in the actions and images by which the community directed him and represented itself, and find his own place and set his standing. On (...) most occasions he would probably have elected for a state of suspension, a floating of multiple possibilities he was loath to precipitate in too stable a form: in ambiguity the citizen of Florence developed a richness of signification, and found a refuge. (shrink)

Aristotle's explanation of what is said ‘of every’ and ‘of none’ has been interpreted either as involving individuals, or as regarding exclusively universal terms. I claim that Alexander of Aphrodisias endorsed this latter interpretation of the dictum de omni et de nullo. This interpretation affects our understanding of Alexander's syllogistic: as a matter of fact, Alexander maintained that the dictum de omni et de nullo is one of the core principles of syllogistic.

Danto’s philosophy of history of art has undergone several transformations. It is possible to distinguish three “phases”: in the first, history is considered an a posteriori construction (see Analytical Philosophy of History). In the second phase, history becomes an internal development within art itself. In this case, with the end of history, art dissolves into its own philosophy (see The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art). In the third phase, history is still an internal development, but now, with the end of history, (...) art and philosophy become independent of each other (see After the End of Art). This essay focuses on two issues: first, on the difficulties of an art history after the end of the history of art; secondly, for what reasons Danto claims that the history of art is ended. Danto has explained the “political” reasons for this choice, namely the attempt to free art from the repressive and disenfranchising moves of philosophy. This essay aims to outline the epistemic reasons: the history of art “must” end, because only on this condition is an essentialist definition of art really possible. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Michael Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism—the internalist view according to which our beliefs are prima facie justified if based on how things seems or appears to us to be—doesn’t fall afoul of Michael Bergmann’s dilemma for epistemological internalism. We start by showing that the thought experiment that Bergmann adduces to conclude that is vulnerable to his dilemma misses its target. After that, we distinguish between two ways in which a mental state can contribute to the justification (...) of a belief: the direct way and the indirect way. We identify a straightforward reason for claiming that the justification contributed indirectly is subject to Bergmann’s dilemma. Then we show that the same reason doesn’t extend to the claim that the justification contributed directly is subject to Bergmann’s dilemma. As is the view that seemings or appearances contribute justification directly, we infer that Bergmann’s contention that his dilemma applies to is unmotivated. In the final part, we suggest that our line of response to Bergmann can be used to shield other types of internalist justification from Bergmann’s objection. We also propose that seeming-grounded justification can be combined with justification of one of these types to form the basis of a promising version of internalist foundationalism. (shrink)

Effective and specifically targeted social and therapeutic responses for antisocial personality disorders and psychopathy are scarce. Some authors maintain that this scarcity should be overcome by revising current syndrome - based classifications of these conditions and devising better biocognitive classifications of antisocial individuals. The inspiration for the latter classifications has been embedded in the Research domain criteria approach (RDoC). RDoC - type approaches to psychiatric research aim at transforming diagnosis, provide valid measures of disorders, aid clinical practice, and improve health (...) outcomes by integrating the data on the genetic, neural, cognitive, and affective systems underlying psychiatric conditions. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the benefits of such approaches in comparison to the dominant syndrome-based ones and review recent attempts at building biocognitive classifications of antisocial individuals. Other researchers, how ever, have objected that biocognitive approaches in psychiatry are committed to an untenable form of explanatory. (shrink)

John Hardwig has championed the thesis (NE) that evidence that an expert EXP has evidence for a proposition P, constituted by EXP’s testimony that P, is not evidence for P itself, where evidence for P is generally characterized as anything that counts towards establishing the truth of P. In this paper, I first show that (NE) yields tensions within Hardwig’s overall view of epistemic reliance on experts and makes it imply unpalatable consequences. Then, I use Shogenji-Roche’s theorem of transitivity of (...) incremental confirmation to show that (NE) is false if a natural Bayesian formalization of the above notion of evidence is implemented. I concede that Hardwig could resist my Bayesian objection if he re-interpreted (NE) as a more precise thesis that only applies to community-focused evidence. I argue, however, that this precisification, while diminishing the philosophical relevance of (NE), wouldn’t settle the tensions internal to Hardwig’s views. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify what kind of normativity characterizes a convention. First, we argue that conventions have normative consequences because they always involve a form of trust and reliance. We contend that it is by reference to a moral principle impinging on these aspects (i.e. the principle of Reliability) that interpersonal obligations and rights originate from conventional regularities. Second, we argue that the system of mutual expectations presupposed by conventions is a source of agreements. Agreements stemming (...) from conventions are “tacit” in the sense that they are implicated by what agents do (or forbear from doing) and without that any communication between them is necessary. To justify this conclusion, we assume that: (1) there is a salient interpretation, in some contexts, of everyone’s silence as confirmatory of the others’ expectations (an epistemic assumption), and (2) the participating agents share a value of not being motivated by hostile attitudes (a motivational assumption). By clarifying the relation between conventions and agreements, the peculiar normativity of conventions is analyzed. (shrink)

According to the iterative conception of set, sets can be arranged in a cumulative hierarchy divided into levels. But why should we think this to be the case? The standard answer in the philosophical literature is that sets are somehow constituted by their members. In the first part of the paper, I present a number of problems for this answer, paying special attention to the view that sets are metaphysically dependent upon their members. In the second part of the paper, (...) I outline a different approach, which circumvents these problems by dispensing with the priority or dependence relation altogether. Along the way, I show how this approach enables the mathematical structuralist to defuse an objection recently raised against her view. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings , which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all the different (...) conceptual systems that can be used to describe the world will be equally successful: the world offers resistance to some attempts to describe it. We show that, in spite of the later Feyerabend’s notorious antirealist leanings, the pliability thesis is fully compatible with a robustly realist view of science, and we suggest that, surprisingly, Feyerabend’s insights concerning the limited pliability of the world turn out to be those of a potential ally of sophisticated versions of scientific realism. (shrink)

When in classical formal logic the notions of deduction, valid inference and logical consequence are defined, causal language plays no role. The founder of western logic, Aristotle, identified ‘non-cause’, or ‘positing as cause what is not a cause’, as a logical fallacy. I argue that a systematic re-examination of Aristotle's analysis of NCF, and the related language of logical causality, in the Sophistical Refutations, Topics, Analytics and Rhetoric, helps us to understand his conception of. It reveals that Aristotle's syllogismhood is (...) non-monotonic, and thus narrower than classical validity as consisting in, or coextensive with, necessary truth-preservation. It also supports the conclusion that a syllogism is a form of relevant consequence: the premisses must be causes of the conclusion in the sense that they are not only sufficient but also necessary for the conclusion to follow. Close analysis of NCF also suggests that syllogistic relevance is not a semantic matter, but a syntactic.. (shrink)

According to the received view, formalism – interpreted as the thesis that mathematical truth does not outrun the consequences of our maximal mathematical theory – has been refuted by Goedel's theorem. In support of this claim, proponents of the received view usually invoke an informal argument for the truth of the Goedel sentence, an argument which is supposed to reconstruct our reasoning in seeing its truth. Against this, Field has argued in a series of papers that the principles involved in (...) this argument – when applied to our maximal mathematical theory – are unsound. This paper defends the received view by showing that there is a way of seeing the truth of the Goedel sentence which is immune to Field's strategy. (shrink)

In “Some Remarks on Extending and Interpreting Theories with a Partial Truth Predicate”, Reinhardt [21] famously proposed an instrumentalist interpretation of the truth theory Kripke–Feferman ( $\mathrm {KF}$ ) in analogy to Hilbert’s program. Reinhardt suggested to view $\mathrm {KF}$ as a tool for generating “the significant part of $\mathrm {KF}$ ”, that is, as a tool for deriving sentences of the form $\mathrm{Tr}\ulcorner {\varphi }\urcorner $. The constitutive question of Reinhardt’s program was whether it was possible “to justify the (...) use of nonsignificant sentences entirely within the framework of significant sentences”. This question was answered negatively by Halbach & Horsten [10] but we argue that under a more careful interpretation the question may receive a positive answer. To this end, we propose to shift attention from $\mathrm {KF}$ -provably true sentences to $\mathrm {KF}$ -provably true inferences, that is, we shall identify the significant part of $\mathrm {KF}$ with the set of pairs $\langle {\Gamma, \Delta }\rangle $, such that $\mathrm {KF}$ proves that if all members of $\Gamma $ are true, at least one member of $\Delta $ is true. In way of addressing Reinhardt’s question we show that the provably true inferences of suitable $\mathrm {KF}$ -like theories coincide with the provable sequents of matching versions of the theory Partial Kripke–Feferman ( $\mathrm {PKF}$ ). (shrink)

In the first chapter, we discuss Dummett’s idea that the notion of truth arises from the one of the correctness of an assertion. We argue that, in a first-order language, the need of defining truth in terms of the notion of satisfaction, which is yielded by the presence of quantifiers, is structurally analogous to the need of a notion of truth as distinct from the one of correctness of an assertion. In the light of the analogy between predicates in Frege (...) and open formulas in Tarksi, we concentrate on the semantic status of predicates. We register a dual attitude of Dummett towards Frege’s ascription of reference to predicates. On the one it is needed to endow quantifiers with their appropriate meaning. On the other hand, the introduction of concepts, as semantic correlate of predicates, smuggles a realist flavor in the overall semantic picture. In concluding the excursus (and with it the chapter), we stress Dummett’s will of developing a semantic picture free from this realist trait. In the second chapter, we present the idea of a proof-theoretic semantics. As for Frege true sentences denotes the truth-value True, so here closed' (i.e. categorical) valid argumentations denotes proofs. If a language contains implication-like operators, in order to characterize the condition of validity of a closed argumentation one has to introduce a notion of validity applying to ‘open’ (i.e. hypothetical) argumentations. We argue that this problem is analogous to the one posed by quantifiers in Frege-Tarksi’s style semantics. That is, implication forces one to introduce notion of validity for argumentations, which is more substantial than the correctness of the assertion of their conclusions. As we saw, the corresponding claim in the truth-based approach—that quantifiers require one to introduce a notion of truth, which is more substantial than the one of an assertion being correct—was the source of realism. Hence, Dummett proposes to reduce the semantic contribution of open argumentations to the one of their ‘closed instances’. In the truth-based perspective, this would correspond to the denial of the need of introducing concepts as the semantic correlates of predicates. We argue that Dummett’s fear, that an irreducible notion of function (represented by the need of ascribing validity to open argumentations) would lead to realism, turns out to be ill-founded. In the third chapter, we discuss the role played by the notion of truth in the anti-realist account. The notion of truth is what the anti-realist needs to cope with the so-called paradox of deduction. The analysis of the paradox yields to distinguishing between the truth of a sentence and the truth of a sentence being recognized. In terms of these conceptual couple, we reconsider the relationship between truth and assertion in an anti-realist perspective. Grounds are provided for a thesis (which was already advanced in chapter two), according to which the notion of the assertion of a sentence being correct is primarily connected only with the canonical means of establishing a sentence. The possibility of establishing a sentence by indirect means is conceptually dependent on the practice of establishing logical relationship of dependence among sentences. That is, the notion of a closed valid non-canonical argumentation is of any theoretical relevance only in presence of a notion of validity applying to open argumentations. In the fourth chapter, we discuss the possibility of characterizing in the proof-theoretic-semantics a notion of refutation. We develop an original characterization of refutations starting from an informal inductive specification of the condition of refutations of logically complex sentences. A sub-structural logic, called dual-intuitionistic logic, stands to this notion in the same relationship in which intuitionistic logic stands to the notion of proof so far consdered. All notions developed in chapter 2 have their corresponding (dual) ones in the framework developed. In particular, the distinctions canonical/non-canonical and closed/open argumentations. In the refutation based perspective, elimination rules have priority over introductions and the (only) assumption over the (many) conclusions. In the conclusions, we indicate the ingredients that an anti-realist approach to meaning should incorporate, in order to avoid the difficulties we registered. The core of an alternative view is a different conception of the relationship between categorical and hypothetical notions, in which the validity of open argumentations is not reduced to that of their instances, but rather it is directly defined. As a limit case, one would get a notion of validity applying to closed argumentations. (shrink)

Answering one of the main questions of [S.-D. Friedman, T. Hyttinen and V. Kulikov, Generalized descriptive set theory and classification theory, Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 230 80, Chap. 7], we show that there is a tight connection between the depth of a classifiable shallow theory [Formula: see text] and the Borel rank of the isomorphism relation [Formula: see text] on its models of size [Formula: see text], for [Formula: see text] any cardinal satisfying [Formula: see text]. This is achieved by (...) establishing a link between said rank and the [Formula: see text]-Scott height of the [Formula: see text]-sized models of [Formula: see text], and yields to the following descriptive set-theoretical analog of Shelah’s Main Gap Theorem: Given a countable complete first-order theory [Formula: see text], either [Formula: see text] is Borel with a countable Borel rank, or it is not Borel at all. The dividing line between the two situations is the same as in Shelah’s theorem, namely that of classifiable shallow theories. We also provide a Borel reducibility version of the above theorem, discuss some limitations to the possible complexities of [Formula: see text], and provide a characterization of categoricity of [Formula: see text] in terms of the descriptive set-theoretical complexity of [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

Contemporary views of truth-directedness endorse what I shall call the Common-Element Argument. According to this argument, there is something in common between judgment and other attitudes like assumption and imagination: they all regard their contents as true. Since this regarding-as-true feature is not distinctive of judgment - the argument goes - it can’t explain its truth-directedness. On this ground, theorists have been motivated to endorse an inflationary view that tries to capture truth-directedness by appealing to some further feature: intentions, second-order (...) representations, sub-personal mechanisms, or subjugation to norms are the most discussed candidates for fulfilling this role. In this paper I will argue that the Common-Element Argument is unsound. It rests on a false premise, namely that there is some common element such as a regarding-as-true component between judgment and other cognitive attitudes. I shall reject Velleman’s and Railton’s defenses of the Common-Element-Argument. Then I will discuss three influential inflationary accounts of truth-directedness: Railton’s account, Velleman’s teleological account, and Shah and Velleman’s conceptualist account. I shall argue that they all face a phenomenological and an explanatory challenge. Finally, I shall sketch a deflationary view of truth-directedness that evades these challenges. (shrink)

Maddy gave a semi-formal account of restrictiveness by defining a formal notion based on a class of interpretations and explaining how to handle false positives and false negatives. Recently, Hamkins pointed out some structural issues with Maddy's definition. We look at Maddy's formal definitions from the point of view of an abstract interpretation relation. We consider various candidates for this interpretation relation, including one that is close to Maddy's original notion, but fixes the issues raised by Hamkins. Our work brings (...) to light additional structural issues that we also discuss. (shrink)

In his book Documentality, Ferraris imagines a wedding scenario where all participants have Alzheimer. The ceremony proceeds as normal, and by its end, a new husband and wife exist. However, the next morning, the spouses forget everything. This scenario underscores the importance of writing in Ferraris’ theory. A recorded document, such as a marriage certificate, could confirm their marriage. Ferraris’ approach to documentality and social ontology illustrates that if the discovery of this document occurred after the death of the spouses, (...) it would confirm a real marriage in which the spouses were unaware they had been married (§§ 1-2). The central question addressed in this paper is: Can documentation replace the deontic and constitutive functions of language? Searle’s philosophy of society, through his philosophy of language and mind, will be examined to discuss how language creates social objects via collective intentionality (§§ 3-6). It is precisely language, with its inherent deontology, that enables the existence of real marriages even without recorded evidence (§ 7-9). (shrink)