v. 1. 1819-1826. (It 68-Jan)--v. 2. 1827-1855. (It 68-Mar).

Assessing the scientific status of theories of consciousness is often a difficult task. In this paper, I explore the dialectic between the Integrated Information Theory, e1003588, 2014; Tononi et al. Nat Rev Neurosci, 17, 450-61, 2016) and a recently proposed criticism of that theory: the ‘unfolding argument’. I show that the phenomenology-first approach in consciousness research can lead to valid scientific theories of consciousness. I do this by highlighting the two reasons why the unfolding argument fails: first, phenomenology-first theories are (...) grounded, not circular. Second, falsificationism does not provide an adequate demarcation criterion in philosophy of science. I conclude that this specific debate has significance for how, in general, consciousness researchers test and criticize theories of consciousness, and how dismissing the phenomenology-first methodology in favour of a third person-based methodology means endorsing a position in philosophy of mind that has already been challenged. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1814 Edition.

With a scene-setting historical introduction, this newly translated and illustrated edition of a classic work is an essential addition to any home library. Written in 1512, The Prince is the masterpiece by Florentine political philosopher, poet, and playwright Niccolò Machiavelli. Although Machiavelli’s book has been frequently misunderstood as a manual for unprincipled manipulators and tyrants, careful reading reveals that it actually identifies freedom as an essential characteristic of a good society. In fact, much of Machiavelli’s republican thought can be (...) identified in the American constitution, and many of his ideas — such as the belief that life is subject to change and that the winners will be those flexible enough to adapt—remain as applicable today as they were half a millennium ago. (shrink)

"This is an excellent, readable and vigorous translation of _The Prince_, but it is much more than simply a translation. The map, notes and guide to further reading are crisp, to-the-point and yet nicely comprehensive. The inclusion of the letter to Vettori is most welcome. But, above all, the Introduction is so gripping and lively that it has convinced me to include _The Prince_ in my syllabus for History of Western Civilization the next time that I teach it.... Great price, (...) too! And lovely printing and layout." --Rachel Fulton, _University of Chicago_. (shrink)

The received view says that possibility is the dual of necessity: a proposition is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc.) possible iff it is not the case that its negation is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc., respectively) necessary. This reading is usually taken for granted by modal logicians and indeed seems plausible when dealing with logical or metaphysical possibility. But what about epistemic possibility? We argue that the dual definition of epistemic possibility in terms of epistemic necessity generates tension when reasoning about non-idealized (...) agents and is a problem of concern for most hyperintensional epistemic logics that alleviate the problem of logical omniscience. The tension is particularly evident when knowledge is taken as a primitive to define other epistemic concepts, such as justification and belief, as done in the knowledge-first tradition. We propose a non-dual interpretation of epistemic possibility, employing a hyperintensionality filter similar to the one that makes the corresponding epistemic necessity operator hyperintensional. We employ the proposed semantics to model Stalnaker's belief as epistemic possibility of knowledge and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for a hyperintensional version of his bimodal logic of knowledge and belief. (shrink)

We present here the original translation of an article published in 1989 by Henri Lefebvre on Le Monde Diplomatique. A short but extremely dense piece, where Lefebvre's vision finds a synthesis and the premises for its overcoming at the same time. The introduction to the article historically frames Lefebvre's work, showing the genesis of this article and discussing some of its main topics. Furthermore, the introduction critically analizes the contemporary Lefebvre's reinassance and proposes some interpretations for a contemporary translation of (...) the most important topics addressed by Quand la ville se perd dans la métamorphose planétaire. (shrink)

Key to precision medicine is the development of expert database projects that gather data, integrate them in the pre-existing database, and publish the product of their processing for others to make use of. Increasingly, it is required that data infrastructure managers and curators pursue and lead research projects on the data so as to learn about new ways data could be used or information that could be potentially generated from them. I call these efforts “data curation-research” and use the case (...) study of COSMIC, the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer, to analyze the contextual factors shaping the science of data curation-research. I build on March’s organizational learning categories of exploitation and exploration to place these factors within a theory of organizational change and innovation, and contribute to a richer picture of the social drivers of cancer genomics. (shrink)

Rosenkranz (2021) devised two bimodal epistemic logics: an idealized one and a realistic one. The former is shown to be sound with respect to a class of neighborhood frames called i-frames. Rosenkranz designed a specific i-frame able to invalidate a series of undesired formulas, proving that these are not theorems of the idealized logic. Nonetheless, an unwanted formula and an unwanted rule of inference are not invalidated. Invalidating the former guarantees the distinction between the two modal operators characteristic of the (...) logic, while invalidating the latter is crucial in order to deal with the problem of logical omniscience. In this paper, I present an i-frame able to invalidate all the undesired formulas already invalidated by Rosenkranz, together with the missing formula and rule of inference. (shrink)

Merker et al. argue that integrated information theory is not a theory of consciousness because the IIT formalism does not match phenomenology. I argue that the authors ultimately fail to articulate the problem of the inference of the postulates from the axioms. I suggest a different version of this problem, and argue that this can help rethink IIT's potential for consciousness science.

The first edition of Newton’s Principia opens with a “Praefatio ad Lectorem.” The first lines of this Preface have received scant attention from historians, even though they contain the very first words addressed to the reader of one of the greatest classics of science. Instead, it is the second half of the Preface that historians have often referred to in connection with their treatments of Newton’s scientific methodology. Roughly in the middle of the Preface, Newton defines the purpose of philosophy (...) as a twofold task: to investigate the forces of the phenomena of nature and, once having established the forces, to demonstrate the remaining phenomena. Newton then introduces a distinction between the first two books, which deal with general propositions, and the third, where the propositions are applied to particular instances of celestial phenomena. From these phenomena, Newton claims, the force of gravity, thanks to which bodies tend toward the Sun, is derived. By assuming this force in mathematical propositions, other motions are deduced: the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. Newton then declares his hope that phenomena relative to small particles will also be explained, as per the celestial ones, thanks to the understanding of attractive forces hitherto unknown to philosophers. The Preface ends with a well-deserved laudatio of Edmond Halley and an apologetic passage concerning certain imperfections in the presentation of advanced subjects, such as the motions of the moon. It is these lines to which historians have given most attention in their various studies. (shrink)

Newton composed several mathematical tracts which remained in manuscript form for decades. He chose to print some of his mathematical tracts in their entirety only after 1704. In this paper I will give information on the dissemination of Newton’s mathematical manuscripts before the eighteenth-century printing stage. I will not consider another important vehicle of dissemination of Newton’s mathematical discoveries, namely his correspondence with other mathematicians or with intermediaries such as Collins and Oldenburg.In a first stage, Newton’s mathematical manuscripts were rendered (...) available to a group of acolytes, who copied and transmitted them, sometimes in mutilated form. The practice of scribal publication helped Newton to establish his mathematical reputation and to form around himself a group of followers.One can divide Newton’s mathematical activity into two periods: an early analytical and modernist period in which he developed a Cartesian and Wallisian ‘new analysis’, followed by a mature synthetic period, beginning in the 1670s, in which he distanced himself from analysis in favour of geometry, from infinitesimals in favour of limits, from the analysis of the moderns in favour of the geometry of the ancients. Newton came to the conclusion that the ‘new analysis’ was not a mathematical language fit for publication.Newton, however, could not restrict himself to scribal publication of his mathematical manuscripts for too long. The priority dispute with Leibniz, the new status of Newton as undisputed master of British mathematicians and the changing canons of mathematical publication introduced by the funding of scientific academies favoured Newton’s option for the printing of his mathematical manuscripts. However, when Newton decided to print his early analytical mathematical work, he tried to modify and present it to bring it in line with the values that characterise the methodological shift of the 1670s, values that he wished to promote among his followers.Author Keywords: Isaac Newton; Manuscripts; Scribal publication; Analysis; Synthesis. (shrink)

Riassunto I Germanikeia sono tra le più importanti feste efebiche ateniesi; tuttavia, l’anno della loro fondazione rimane incerto. Paul Graindor ipotizzò che la festa fosse stata istituita nel 18 d.C., in onore di Germanico, e officiata per lui fino alla metà del III secolo d.C. Questa ipotesi, sebbene universalmente accettata, non è basata su elementi probanti e deve essere pertanto rivalutata. Su questi presupposti, la ricerca prende in considerazione la documentazione, le caratteristiche dei Germanikeia ed i legami tra la celebrazione (...) e gli esponenti della famiglia imperiale. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Breaking the Revolutionary Deadlock?Volney's Leçons and the Debate on the Value of HistoryNiccolò ValmoriThis article explores the crucial contribution of Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf, better known by his pen name, Volney, to the eighteenth-century debate on the nature of history as a discipline.1 My claim is that Volney's Leçons d'histoire is the result of a complex dynamic between two forces: on the one hand, a century-long debate on how history (...) should be both written and taught; on the other, the revolutionary calls for a thoroughgoing revision of the past amid concurrent references to the virtuous moral examples of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Volney had a very narrow gap to "save" history from deadlock between these opposite perspectives. His history course at the École normale supérieure showed how the eventful years of the French Revolution had changed his own understanding of the discipline of history.I argue that Volney's supposed distrust toward the importance of the study of history was not an attempt to devalue history itself.2 On the contrary, the French author approached history as a discipline based on the principle [End Page 773] of investigative doubt and on dialogue with other scientific domains such as geography, geology, and meteorology. As Jean Gaulmier puts it: "The true heirs of Volney's dream of a total history were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch."3 However, if Volney's proposal for a new historiography is set within the eighteenth-century debate on how to write and teach history, it appears neither original nor new. Nonetheless, I argue, Volney attempted a synthesis between divergent positions on the role of history, as they emerged and were debated during the eighteenth century in the light of the first years of the French Revolution. The context of the French Revolution left Volney with more doubts than certainty on the value of the discipline, given the manifold and controversial uses of historical examples proposed in those years. As Minchul Kim has pointed out, Volney's Leçons are a "work in history rather than a work on history."4 While Kim is right to point out the importance of the revolutionary context for understanding Volney's skepticism toward the value of history, I argue that while Volney's personal understanding of how history should be written matured through the revolutionary experience, it was also the fruit of a dialogue with Enlightenment historiography.In the first part of the article, I present the main features of the eighteenth-century debate on the limits and meaning of writing history, with a particular focus on its relationship with ancient history and on the stature of history among the other disciplines. In the second part, I analyze how Volney dealt with this debate in some of his works that preceded his appointment to the chair of history at the École normale. Three of Volney's pre-1795 works are considered here: Voyages en Syrie et en Égypte (1787), Considérations sur la guerre actuelle des Turcs (1788), and Les Ruines (which was published during the Revolution). In the last section of the article I delve into the Leçons to highlight how this work represented Volney's provisional resolution of the long debate over the role of history as a scientific endeavor as well as a subject that could be taught. [End Page 774]ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE TEACHING OF HISTORY: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY QUESTIn this section I review the main contributors to the Enlightenment historiographical debate on the status of history as a discipline and on its relationship with antiquity. I do not claim to cover all aspects of Enlightenment historiography; rather I aim to set Volney's contribution to these two aspects of the debate in a broader context. His open skepticism toward the heuristic value of history cannot be reduced simply to a reaction to the political uses and misuses of history during the French Revolution. Volney's Leçons addressed a larger audience than the select group of French teachers attending his class. The philosopher-traveler, as his contemporaries called him, joined a conversation about history that had started at... (shrink)

The paper addresses the main meta-metaphysical question, i.e., whether it is possible to do metaphysics and, in the case of an affirmative answer, how should we do it? With such an aim in mind, we sketch the broad context in which these meta-metaphysical questions arose in the philosophical literature (§ 1); then, we present what we take to be the three most widespread conceptions of metaphysics that are available in the analytic tradition: the neo-Quinean (§ 2), metaphysics as the science (...) of possibilities (§ 3) and metaphysics as the study of the fundamental structures of reality (§ 4). We criticise these positions throughout these paragraphs before cashing out our proposal (§ 5). Our interpretation aligns with the recently proposed approach known as ‘naturalised metaphysics’ but with crucial differences. In our view, metaphysics is not only constrained by physics; rather, it grows out from all empirical sciences. More precisely, it can be achieved using formal language and the analysis of the results of scientific theories. (shrink)

Enjoy two classics of tactical and strategic thinking together in one volume! Despite being separated by 2000 years and half a world, these famous works of Niccol Machiavelli and Sun Tzu have much in common. Both books were produced during times of great unrest and both have altered the course of political and military thought and practice for generations. This book contains the acclaimed English translations of W.K. Marriott for The Prince and Lionel Giles for The Art of War.

Antonio Genovesi is known as the thinker who raised a whole generation of Southern Italian intellectuals, among them Francesco Pagano and Gaetano Filangieri. One of the most influential of his works was the notoriously difficult Diceosina, o sia della filosofia del giusto e dell’onesto , a textbook destined for use in the universities. The Diceosina was a powerful, if controversial, attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand, and the specific problems encountered by eighteenth-century commercial (...) society on the other. In fact, it contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical, and economic thought; a synthetic guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social development. This essay explores the work's context, rich intellectual origins, and ultimate significance through its long and complicated reception. The cultural and political connotations of Genovesi's Diceosina become particularly evident through an engagement with the works of Ermenegildo Personè, one of the book's most arduous critics. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how the invention of imaginary logic by Nikolaj A. Vasil’ev, forerunner of various logical and metaphysical theories appeared in the 20th century, is grounded on a revaluation of Aristotelian ontology. I shall introduce the reason why Aristotle believes that the study of the principle of contradiction is part of ontology (§ 2); I shall explain why Vasil’ev considers the law of contradiction an empirical law, and not a logical one (§ 3.1). I (...) will show his conception of contradiction (§ 3.2) and I will discuss how he believes that it’s possible to renounce this law; (§ 3.3). I shall then explain the fundamental features of imaginary logic (§ 4.1 and § 4.2); and, finally I shall claim how, in spite of a convergence from the logical point of view (§ 5.1), the incompatibility of the two authors takes place on an ontological level (§ 5.2). In order to do so, I shall implement the analysis of the Aristotelian syllogistic conducted by the Polish logician and philosopher Jan Łukasiewicz, together with a crucial distinction between two concepts: the one of ‘law’ and the one of ‘principle’. -/- . (shrink)

It is natural to assume that knowledge, like belief, creates a hyperintensional context, that is, that knowledge ascriptions do not allow for substitution of necessarily equivalent prejacents salva veritate. There exist a variety of different proposals for modelling the phenomenon. In the last years, the topic-sensitive approach to the hyperintensionality of knowledge has gained considerable traction. It promises to provide a natural account of why knowledge fails to be closed under necessary equivalence in terms of differences in subject matter. Here, (...) we argue that the topic-sensitive approach, as recently put forward by Franz Berto, Peter Hawke, Aybüke Özgün, and others, faces formidable problems. The root of these problems lies in the approach’s prediction that a mere grasp of subject matter may help to provide insights into necessary implications that it would seem to require more substantive epistemic work to gain. (shrink)

SummaryThis contribution examines the circumstances of composition of the annotated edition of Newton's Principia that was printed in Geneva in 1739–1742, which ran to several editions and was still in print in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. This edition was the work of the Genevan Professor of Mathematics, Jean Louis Calandrini, and of two Minim friars based in Rome, Thomas Le Seur and François Jacquier. The study of the context in which this edition was conceived sheds light on the early (...) reception of Newtonianism in Geneva and Rome. By taking into consideration the careers of Calandrini, Le Seur and Jacquier, as authors, lecturers and leading characters of Genevan and Roman cultural life, I will show that their involvement in the enterprise of annotating Newton's Principia answered specific needs of Genevan and Roman culture. The publication and reception of the Genevan annotated edition has also a broader European dimension. Both Calandrini and Jacquier were in touch with the French république des lettres, most notably with Clairaut and Du Châtelet, and with the Bernoulli family in Basel. Therefore, this study is also relevant for the understanding of the dissemination of Newton's ideas in Europe. (shrink)

Discursos de Machiaueli (Medina del Campo, 1552 & 1555) is Juan Lorenzo Ottevanti's Spanish translation of Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. This is the first critical edition of this text, whose aim is to reproduce not Machiavelli's but the translator's intention, thereby allowing scholars to examine the modes in which Machiavelli's political and military thought was made intelligible to Spaniards in the early modern period. In his Introduction, Howard demonstrates that its original publication engaged in fascinating ways the ongoing (...) Spanish imperial project in both the European and American contexts. (shrink)

Within the entering in the global era, the city is come back again as a strategic architrave of the world's infrastructure – while the State, the historical figure through which Modernity was organized, has been declared in crisis long time ago. Despite the broad spectrum of urban reflections, there still is a deep lack of political theory of the city. The globalization of the city – within the pathway of the planetary urbanization – is the object of the article, that (...) elaborates on a twofold level: on one hand, a genealogical trace of that process is proposed – articulating it by distilling urban political thought from different authors and historical episodes; on the other hand, the article suggests a theoretical and methodological horizon through which to grasp the contemporary global transitions, labelled as “seeing like a city”. (shrink)

SummaryWhen analysing François Véron de Forbonnais's translation of Gerónimo de Uztáriz's Theórica y Práctica de comercio and Louis-Joseph Plumard de Dangeul's translation of Bernardo de Ulloa's Restablecimiento de las fábricas, the first important point to consider is that the two cousins, who had decided to bring the works to a French public at the suggestion of Vincent de Gournay, were working with a language and within a political and cultural environment which they had already experienced in person. A second important (...) consideration concerns the linguistic challenge inherent in the fact that the Spanish did not yet have an economic lexicon equal to that developed by French thinkers. The choices of terminology made by Forbonnais and Plumard bear witness to this different development and reveal the peculiarities of economic epistemology in the two countries. This essay will shed light on the translation strategies adopted by the French writers, focusing on a number of key concepts of the new science of commerce, such as consumption, exportation, importation, population, commerce, trade, money, and work. (shrink)