In this paper, I propose an assessment of the interpretation of the mathematical notion of probability that Wittgenstein presents in TLP (1963: 5.15 – 5.156). I start by presenting his definition of probability as a relation between propositions. I claim that this definition qualifies as a logical interpretation of probability, of the kind defended in the same years by J. M. Keynes. However, Wittgenstein’s interpretation seems prima facie to be safe from two standard objections moved to logical probability, i. e. (...) the mystic nature of the postulated relation and the reliance on Laplace’s principle of indifference. I then proceed to evaluate Wittgenstein’s idea against three criteria for the adequacy of an interpretation of probability: admissibility, ascertainability, and applicability. If the interpretation is admissible on Kolmogorov’s classical axiomatisation, the problem of ascertainability brings up a difficult dilemma. Finally, I test the interpretation in the application to three main contexts of use of probabilities. While the application to frequencies rests ungrounded, the application to induction requires some elaboration, and the application to rational belief depends on ascertainability. (shrink)

Lewis/Stalnaker semantics has it that all counterpossibles (i.e., counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents) are vacuously true. Non-vacuism, by contrast, says the truth-values of counterpossibles are affected by the truth-values of the consequents. Some counterpossibles are true, some false. Williamson objects to non-vacuism. He asks us to consider someone who answered ‘11’ to ‘What is 5 + 7?’ but who mistakenly believes that he answered ‘13’. For the non-vacuist, (1) is false, (2) true: (1) If 5 + 7 were 13, x (...) would have got that sum right (2) If 5 + 7 were 13, x would have got that sum wrong Williamson is not persuaded by the initial intuitiveness of such examples: ... they tend to fall apart when thought through. For example, if 5 + 7 were 13 then 5 + 6 would be 12, and so (by another eleven steps) 0 would be 1, so if the number of right answers I gave were 0, the number of right answers I gave would be 1. (2006) That’s the whole argument—much of it implicit. Alan Baker’s critique (2007) of Brogaard and Salerno (2007) prompts us to say something less abbreviated about a less abbreviated form of Wiliamson’s argument. Then we further develop our (2007) counterfactual analysis of essense. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson contends that our primary cognitive heuristic for prospectively assessing conditionals, i.e., the suppositional procedure, is provably inconsistent. Our diagnosis is that stipulations about the nature of suppositional rejection are the likely source of these results. We show that on at least one alternative, and quite natural, understanding of the suppositional attitudes, the inconsistency results are blocked. The upshot is an increase in the reliability of our suppositional heuristics across a wider range of contexts. One interesting consequence of the (...) increased reliability is a proportional decrease in the plausibility of an error-theory that Williamson employs against widespread intuitions about the truth values of counterpossible conditionals. (shrink)

Epistemic modals in consequent place of indicative conditionals give rise to apparent counterexamples to Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens. Familiar assumptions of fa- miliar truth conditional theories of modality facilitate a prima facie explanation—viz., that the target cases harbor epistemic modal equivocations. However, these explana- tions go too far. For they foster other predictions of equivocation in places where in fact there are no equivocations. It is argued here that the key to the solution is to drop the assumption that (...) modal claims are inherently relational (i.e., that they ex- press a logical relation between a prejacent and a premise-set) in favor of a view that treats them as inherently quantificational. In particular it is suggested that modals are mass noun descriptions of information. We demonstrate how this approach unlocks the equivocation problem. (shrink)

A primary challenge from the relativist to the contextualist about epistemic modals is to explain eavesdropping data—i.e., why the eavesdropper is inclined to judge the speaker as having uttered an epistemic modal falsehood (when she is so inclined), even though the speaker’s utterance is true according to reasonable contextualist truth conditions. The issue turns in large part on the strength and shape of the data, both of which are in dispute. One complaint is that an eavesdropper’s truth value judgments fluctuate (...) with variations of non- epistemic fact (even after the relevant epistemic/information states are determined). The project here is to strengthen and reframe this complaint in a debate-neutral way, and to show how a sober contextualism can uniformly accommodate it and the standard eavesdropping data. Along the way we reject John Hawthorne’s danger-theoretic explanation of these subtleties. (shrink)

Kit Fine (1994. “Essence and Modality”, Philosophical Perspectives 8: 1-16) argues that the standard modal account of essence as de re modality is ‘fundamentally misguided’ (p. 3). We agree with his critique and suggest an alternative counterfactual analysis of essence. As a corollary, our counterfactual account lends support to non-vacuism the thesis that counterpossibles (i.e., counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents) are not always vacuously true.

The implementation of online technologies to promote wellbeing is increasingly becoming a worldwide priority. This study includes secondary analyses of data and examined drop-out rates in an online guided self-help intervention for patients with anorexia nervosa. Specifically, rates of drop-out at end of treatment (i.e. six-week assessment), as well as intervention adherence (minimum of four of six online guided sessions) and differences between completers and drop-outs were examined. Motivation to change and associated patient variables were assessed as predictors of drop-out (...) using structural equation modelling. Ninety-nine patients were randomised to the intervention arm of the trial. Data were available for 82 individuals, 67 of whom completed the six-week assessment and attended a minimum of four online sessions. No significant differences were found between completers and drop-outs at baseline. At the end of the first week of participation, drop-outs from the six-week assessment or the intervention reported less satisfaction with their work with the mentor delivering online guidance. Greater confidence in own ability to change and higher controlled motivation (willingness to change due to pressure from others) predicted lower drop-out rates from the six-week assessment. Stronger alliance with the therapist at the treatment centre and lower psychological distress were associated with greater autonomous motivation (self-directed motivation) and importance and ability to change. Data demonstrate that a novel online guided self-help intervention for patients with anorexia nervosa is feasible. Early satisfaction with the program and external pressure to change have a protective role against drop-out rates. (shrink)

The review examines the bibliographical features of the first complete Italian translation of Grotius’ magnum opus, _De iure belli ac pacis_ (IBP). -/- This new Italian edition faithfully presents the entirety of Grotius’ text, based on the 1646 edition—the final version supervised by the author himself and the most comprehensive, as it includes the Annotata and all the supplementary materials from the 1642 IBP edition. Moreover, it adopts the division of paragraphs into sub-paragraphs, a structural refinement first introduced in the (...) 1667 edition edited by Grotius’ son, Pieter. The translation is presented across three volumes, each corresponding to one of the three books of the IBP. -/- In this new edition, the reader will encounter a translation that is both precise and sophisticated from a doctrinal perspective. The translators, all distinguished scholars, have meticulously avoided any anachronistic application of categories from legal-political philosophy that would be incongruous with Grotius’ theoretical and practical culture (cf. Antonio Del Vecchio and Carlo Galli, vol. I, pp. CXXVII-CXXXII). Indeed, the co-authors, editors, and translators have paid scrupulous attention to conceptual discontinuities within lexical continuity, following the exemplary methodological approach of the late Merio Scattola, to whose memory this translation is dedicated. (shrink)

Several theorists have been attracted to the idea that in order to account for counterpossibles, i.e. counterfactuals with impossible antecedents, we must appeal to impossible worlds. However, few have attempted to provide a detailed impossible worlds account of counterpossibles. Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno’s ‘Remarks on Counterpossibles’ is one of the few attempts to fill in this theoretical gap. In this article, I critically examine their account. I prove a number of unanticipated implications of their account that end up (...) implying a counterintuitive result. I then examine a suggested revision and point out a surprising implication of the revision. (shrink)

La vita e le opere di Landolfo Caracciolo O.F.M. sono state descritte in modo sistematico da Salerno.1 Rispetto a questa descrizione, che ha posto il bacellierato sentenziario di Caracciolo intorno al 1320, va assunta la ricostruzione di Schabel, che ha spiegato come Caracciolo abbia letto le Sententiae a Parigi dopo Pietro Aureolo e prima di Francesco d’Ascoli e Francesco di Meyronnes.2 Successivamente Landolfo avrebbe ricevuto la prima cattedra in teologia dello Studium fran-cescano di Napoli, inaugurandovi la tradizione scotista.3Landolfo fu (...) ministro provinciale della Terra di Lavoro e svolse parecchie missioni diplomatiche per conto della regina Giovanna I di Napoli. Nel 1327 fu designato vescovo di.. (shrink)

Este artículo se pregunta qué se conmemorará realmente en el 40° aniversario de la guerra de Malvinas (1982-2022), contrastando las modalidades de recordación pública que tendrán lugar en 2022 y las lecturas que ha aportado la academia sobre lo sucedido en aquel entonces. La reflexión elabora comparativamente estos significados y describe qué hemos hecho los investigadores argentinos en ciencias sociales con el conflicto armado anglo-argentino por las Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur, examina los fundamentos que subyacen a esos significados (...) y sostiene la tesis de que los académicos universitarios hemos ignorado el carácter bélico de la iniciativa de la tercera junta de la última dictadura militar, el autodenominado Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976-1983). Así, este artículo muestra que los protagonistas directos de la guerra y sus analistas postulan sentidos alternativos que se reelaboran como una paradoja de difícil comprensión: una causa popular originada en una cuestión de soberanía territorial pendiente fue acometida, con éxito y respaldo popular, por una ya antipopular y sangrienta dictadura militar. (shrink)

Reseñado por LAURA CESCO-FRARE University of Salerno [email protected].

Ce double numéro de _Noesis _est issu du colloque « Europe, État, fédéralisme » que Mélanie Plouviez et Pierre-Yves Quiviger ont organisé à la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société Sud-Est (MSHS-SE), à Nice, du 3 au 5 octobre 2017, dans le cadre du programme de recherche en droit, en philosophie du droit et en philosophie politique, qui associe depuis 2010 le Laboratorio Hans Kelsen (LHK) de l’Università degli studi di Salerno ; l’équipe « Normes, Sociétés, (...) Philosophies » (NoSoPhi) de l’Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne à l’Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (ISJPS) ; et, depuis 2012, le Centre de recherches en histoire des idées (CRHI) d’Université Côte d’Azur (UCA). Le choix du thème de l’Europe a été déterminé par le constat de l’accumulation des « crises européennes » depuis alors plus de dix ans : « constitutionnelle », « grecque », « des dettes souveraines », « de la zone euro », « ukrainienne », « des réfugié-e-s », « sécuritaire » ou e... (shrink)

Durante el proceso independentista rioplatense, el ejemplo de los Estados Unidos, país también independizado de un imperio mediante una revolución, estuvo presente de modo permanente en la prensa y en los discursos de la dirigencia rioplatense, en particular la de Buenos Aires. Este artículo rastrea esas apreciaciones a lo largo del cuarto de siglo que siguió a la revolución de 1810, cuando fueron abrumadoramente positivas (a pesar de que a nivel diplomático la relación estuvo cargada de tensiones). Autonomistas e independentistas, (...) republicanos, federales, proteccionistas, todos pudieron referenciarse en los Estados Unidos. Pero las miradas de admiración fueron más allá: el caso norteamericano pudo ser utilizado a su favor por grupos diferentes y para proyectos políticos muy distintos. Incluso los centralistas enemigos del federalismo encontraron en la experiencia estadounidense argumentos útiles. En 1831, un incidente en las islas Malvinas produjo un quiebre diplomático y prefiguró miradas menos favorables sobre los Estados Unidos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 273-274 [Access article in PDF] Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, and William R. Newman, editors. Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. viii + 610. Cloth, $186.00. The nineteen papers of this weighty (handsomely produced, but expensive) volume are mostly devoted to the views of one thinker or group of persons on "corpuscularism" (see 17ff.), in (...) either physics or mathematics, with few synthetic or diachronic studies. Only a quarter of the volume is devoted to the medieval period: Danielle Jacquart on minima in the Salerno school of medicine (twelfth century); the late George Molland on Roger Bacon's and Grosseteste's "corpuscular tendencies"; Charles Lohr on Ramon Lull; John Murdoch on minima naturalia in the medieval and Renaissance periods; and the greater part of William Newman's study of corpuscularian conceptions in "Aristotelian alchemy" from Geber to Sennert. The early-modern part includes studies on mostly expected figures: Francesco Patrici, Giordano Bruno, the Northumberland circle, Francis Bacon, David Gorlaeus (a little-known Dutch theology student; 1591-1612, sic), Daniel Sennert, Honoré Fabri, Galileo, Gassendi, Charleton, Boyle, Locke, and Homberg. Alan Gabbey more generally distinguishes different patterns of explanations in mechanical philosophy.As far as I can judge, the authors are knowledgeable and competent, and the studies make important contributions. But just because this is a high-quality volume produced with the ambition of making a step toward rewriting the history of a major chapter in the history of science, its two significant and principled deficiencies must be pointed out.The volume follows the intention of "show[ing] the debt of early-modern matter theory to previous traditions and thereby [explaining] its bewildering heterogeneity" (back cover). Now, the study of the corpuscular traditions in the pre-modern period is certainly an important desideratum (although this volume again attends chiefly to the early modern corpuscularians). But the motivation and perspective here announced—the medieval period [End Page 273] is to be studied because early modern science is indebted to it—are astoundingly Whiggish. Worse: the study of the entire Arabic-Islamic tradition is dismissed, on the grounds that "Islamic atomism does not seem to have been of any influence upon Christian fourteenth-century atomism" (8): this is not only Whiggism, but also frank and explicit euro- and Christian-centrism, which in the beginning of the twenty-first century is simply stunning. The method amusingly consists in affirming the consequent: presupposing that "Islamic atomism" did not influence the West and early-modern science, no scholar was asked to examine whether or not this was indeed the case, with the congenial result that the volume seemingly confirms the initial presupposition. Q.E.D. Similarly and no less regrettably, the fact that (ps.-) Geber's Summa Perfectionis is not, as Lasswitz had thought, the translation of an Arabic work is here used as grounds on which to dismiss altogether his claim concerning the importance of the Arabic input (13, but see also 293). This way, incomprehension between civilizations is reinforced instead of being reduced, and I believe we did not need September 11 to know this.The thusly dismissed Mu'tazilite school of Islamic theology had important repercussions in Judaism, so that referring to it as "Islamic atomism" is misleading (see notably Hagai Ben-Shammai, "Studies in Karaite Atomism," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 [1985]: 243-93). The volume's forty-page cumulative bibliography, for which the editors are to be congratulated, reflects the volume's parochial viewpoint: H. A. Wolfson's important The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), with some 150 pages on atomism, is not included; nor is the (English version of the) landmark study by the late S. Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997; the original 1936 German version is mentioned). Wolfson's study, incidentally, shows that the editors' presupposition (8) that the Kalâm tradition could have influenced the West only via the Latin translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is unwarranted, for Isaac... (shrink)

Pouco antes de falecer, Jorge Luís Borges determinou que sua esposa, Maria Kodama, não pu­blicasse seus livros regionalistas de juventude em suas obras completas, que assim ficariam incompletas, uma decisão tipicamente borgiana. A viúva preferiu não cumprir a determinação e as obras editadas se tornaram completas, na medida em que possam ser descobertos manuscritos ainda inéditos. Elas revelam um amplo arco, correspondendo à sua longa vida, da juventude muito argentina e profundamente bonaerense, do seu país e cidade natal Buenos Aires, (...) ao mun­do. Os seus artigos, publicados mais em revistas literárias que jornais, desde cedo revelam esta vocação universal. Jorge Luís Borges escreveu com freqüência sobre autores estrangeiros. Depois, os próprios temas dos livros vão mudando dos regionalismos e até localismos, rumo às dúvidas e ambigüidades intrinsecamente humanas de todas as partes do mundo, onde ele as imaginariamente situa. Ao fim e ao cabo, Jorge Luís Borges – traduzido e homenageado em muitos países – preferiu morrer em Genebra e lá ser sepultado, onde estudara na adolescência, quando fora muito feliz na descoberta inicial de outras culturas. Elas demoraram a nele predo­minarem, mas terminaram acontecendo. Mesmo assim, ele no íntimo nunca deixou de todo a argentinidade. Crescentemente cosmopolita, o nacionalismo jamais abandonou por completo o espírito de Jorge Luís Borges. Sua atitude pró-britânica, durante a própria Guerra das Malvinas, pode ser interpretada como protesto e advertência diante de uma derrota próxima. (shrink)

O presente texto constitui-se como resenha do livro Dispositivi della Normatività, de Antonio Tucci, professor da Università degli Studi di Salerno, Itália. Ao longo da obra, Tucci joga luzes sobre a questão da norma, da normalização e dos dispositivos de segurança, inserindo temas como o da soberania — referente às questões fronteiriças —, da identidade e da cidadania —, ao abordar questões relacionadas aos processos de subjetivação e à necessária reespacialização do espaço político, em um panorama da governamentalidade biopolítica.

According to the “paradox of knowability”, the moderate thesis that all truths are knowable – ... – implies the seemingly preposterous claim that all truths are actually known – ... –, i.e. that we are omniscient. If Fitch’s argument were successful, it would amount to a knockdown rebuttal of anti-realism by reductio. In the paper I defend the nowadays rather neglected strategy of intuitionistic revisionism. Employing only intuitionistically acceptable rules of inference, the conclusion of the argument is, firstly, not ..., (...) but .... Secondly, even if there were an intuitionistically acceptable proof of ..., i.e. an argument based on a different set of premises, the conclusion would have to be interpreted in accordance with Heyting semantics, and read in this way, the apparently preposterous conclusion would be true on conceptual grounds and acceptable even from a realist point of view. Fitch’s argument, understood as an immanent critique of verificationism, fails because in a debate dealing with the justification of deduction there can be no interpreted formal language on which realists and anti-realists could agree. Thus, the underlying problem is that a satisfactory solution to the “problem of shared content” is not available. I conclude with some remarks on the proposals by J. Salerno and N. Tennant to reconstruct certain arguments in the debate on anti-realism by establishing aporias. (shrink)

Interpretation of the classics in political theory seems to go in waves. For a while we had John Locke, the bourgeois thinker. Now we seem to be in a Locke-as-radical-democrat phase. Locke-the-bourgeois had problems of its own, but a radically democratic Locke -- not just the old Locke as liberal democrat but Locke as quasi-Leveller -- strains the interpretative imagination more than most; yet in recent years, several different kinds of argument have been advanced in support of it, both textual (...) and contextual. The most effective argument has proceeded by situating Locke in the context of radical Whig politics in the 1670s and '80s, the struggles over religious toleration and the royal succession, in particular the �Exclusion Crisis� of 1679-81. This contextual argument has been accompanied by various textual interpretations having to do with Locke's conceptions of property, consent, representation, the right of revolution and natural law. Among other things, these are supposed to show that while Locke had nothing explicit to say about the extent of the franchise, the weight of evidence suggests that he would have supported a fairly wide franchise, perhaps even something like the (almost) manhood suffrage advocated by the Levellers (at least according to some, and probably the most convincing, interpretations of their ideas). Most recently, in these pages, Martin Hughes, building on the work of James Tully and Richard Ashcraft in particular, has pushed the argument as far as it can probably go. His argument on taxation and suffrage has provided a motivation here for a wider exploration of Locke's views on representation, consent and the franchise. (shrink)

O autor do livro, Rossano Pecoraro, é formado em filosofia pela Universidade de Salerno na Itália e mestre e doutor em filosofia pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. É autor de diversas publicações, atuando como pesquisador em áreas como pensamento contemporâneo, estética, filosofia e teatro, teoria política, comunicação e cultura.