ABSTRACT The image of Plato captured in Raphael’s School of Athens as the champion of contemplative life has been celebrated for centuries. Such a description of Plato, however, would probably be surprising for most readers who are used to a very different Plato. For many current readers, Plato is a political philosopher. The contrast could not be sharper. The goal of this paper is to reconstruct the origins of the political interpretation of Plato’s thought. Prior to Popper, this interpretation was (...) first developed into a mainstream presentation by some important Hellenists in Germany in the first 30 years of the twentieth century, and it quickly became dominant outside the universitiies. One interesting example of the attempts to popularize Plato’s political thought is that of K. Hildebrandt, a member of the George Kreis, who sought to harmonize Plato and Nietzsche in order to derive a new politics of the German state. (shrink)

In this paper we provide cut-free tableau calculi for the intuitionistic modal logics IK, ID, IT, i.e. the intuitionistic analogues of the classical modal systems K, D and T. Further, we analyse the necessity of duplicating formulas to which rules are applied. In order to develop these calculi we extend to the modal case some ideas presented by Miglioli, Moscato and Ornaghi for intuitionistic logic. Specifically, we enlarge the language with the new signs Fc and CR near to the usual (...) signs T and F. In this work we establish the soundness and completeness theorems for these calculi with respect to the Kripke semantics proposed by Fischer Servi. (shrink)

This paper studies algorithmic learning theory applied to algebraic structures. In previous papers, we have defined our framework, where a learner, given a family of structures, receives larger and larger pieces of an arbitrary copy of a structure in the family and, at each stage, is required to output a conjecture about the isomorphism type of such a structure. The learning is successful if there is a learner that eventually stabilizes to a correct conjecture. Here, we analyze the number of (...) mind changes that are needed to learn a given family K. We give a descriptive set-theoretic interpretation of such mind change complexity. We also study how bounding the Turing degree of learners affects the mind change complexity of a given family of algebraic structures. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the phenomenon of a felt sense of the concrete other. Although the importance of this phenomenon is recognised in the contemporary discussion on intercorporeality, it has not been subjected to systematic phenomenological analysis. I argue that the felt sense of the other is an aspect of intercorporeal body memory in so far as it is a habituation to something like the concrete other’s expressive style. Because it is inherently a sensory phenomenon, I speak of an (...) embodied sensorium of the other. I illustrate the phenomenon through contrasting case-vignettes taken from research in early parental bereavement. Based on this, I identify five modalities that outline the fundamental contours of a sensorium and specify that in their intermodal and synesthetic concretion they account for the felt sense of the other. Finally, I argue that the existential importance of the phenomenon is rooted in the distributed nature of my sense of self and self-familiarity. To illustrate this, I draw parallels between the felt sense of the concrete other and the felt sense of home and suggest that though there are also distinct differences between the two phenomena, they are rooted in the same underlying existential need for feeling-at-home in the world. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to re-examine specialization in science. I argue that we need to acknowledge the role that conceptual changes can play in the creation of new specialties. Whereas earlier sociological accounts focus on social and instrumental changes as the cause of the creation of new specialties, I argue that conceptual changes play an important role in the creation of some scientific specialties. Specifically, I argue that conceptual developments played an important role in the creation of both (...) endocrinology and virology. (shrink)

I argue that there is a version of (quasi-Armstrongian) weak illusionism that intelligibly relates phenomenal concepts and introspective opacity, accounts for the (hard) problem intuitions Chalmers highlights (modal, epistemic, explanatory, and metaphysical), and undermines the most important arguments Chalmers deploys against type-B and type-C materialisms. If this is successful, we can satisfactorily account for the meta-problem of consciousness, mollify our hard problem intuitions, and remain genuine realists about phenomenal experience.

We examine the sub-field of philosophy of science using a new method developed in information science, Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS). RPYS allows us to identify peak years in citations in a field, which promises to help scholars identify the key contributions to a field, and revolutionary discoveries in a field. We discovered that philosophy of science, a sub-field in the humanities, differs significantly from other fields examined with this method. Books play a more important role in philosophy of science (...) than in the sciences. Further, Einstein’s famous 1905 papers created a citation peak in the philosophy of science literature. But rather than being a contribution to the philosophy of science, their importance lies in the fact that they are revolutionary contributions to physics with important implications for philosophy of science. (shrink)

"A collection of essays that addresses philosophical aspects of the films of Quentin Tarantino, focusing on topics in ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, language, and cultural identity"--Provided by publisher.

Kant's political thinking is predominantly evaluated in contractarian terms, though recent contributions have also emphasized the natural law influence on him. This paper argues that the assimilation of Kant into either tradition is problematic. An analysis of his account of political obligation cannot ignore the distinctiveness of Kant's general philosophical framework. Two recurrent Kantian themes are crucial to a reconstruction of his political argument. The first is the tension between freedom and causality, or nature. The second is the role of (...) reflective judgment in practical reasoning. The paper analyses Kant's property argument, and his related account of political obligation, from the perspective of these Kantian themes. Kant's ‘antinomy of Right’, formulated in the context of his property argument, is interpreted as a conflict between freedom and nature, and in analogy with the third antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant's obscure theorem, the lex permissiva, is central to his ‘solution’ to the antinomy. The theorem is best understood as a reflective practical judgment, through which agents are brought to acknowledge that their obligations of justice towards one another are a direct entailment of their respective claims to property. The connection between property rights and political obligations is thus intrinsic, not extrinsic; the acknowledgement of that connection an act of reflective judgment, not contractual. (shrink)

Kuhn argues that science does not aim at the truth. Alexander Bird raises concerns form Kuhn's view. I defend Kuhn's claim and argue that insofar as science has a goal it is a moving target.

Aristotle claims man is a political animal and that the polis exists by nature. Taking literally his analogy between the legislator and the craftsman, Aristotle's critics contend that he 'blunders' because the polis is artificial, devised by a legislator/founder and imposed on a people. We defend Aristotle's claims by showing, first, how Aristotle's claim that man is by nature an animal possessing logos -- speech/reason -- grounds his account of the natural development of the polis out of the earliest partnerships (...) (which the critics concede are natural); second, that the person who first brought people together in a polis may well have done so without realizing the scope of his actions; and, finally, that the developmental process is clearly one of praxis (action), not poisis (making, the imposition of a form on matter). Aristotle's claims are evidenced by the Homeric hero Philoctetes, whom one critic takes to disprove Aristotle's theses. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions offers an insightful and engaging theory of science that speaks to scholars across many disciplines. Though initially widely misunderstood, it had a profound impact on the way intellectuals and educated laypeople thought about science. K. Brad Wray traces the influences on Kuhn as he wrote Structure, including his ‘Aristotle epiphany’, his interactions, and his studies of the history of chemistry. Wray then considers the impact of Structure on the social sciences, on the history (...) of science, and on the philosophy of science, where the problem of theory change has set the terms of contemporary realism/anti-realism debates. He examines Kuhn’s frustrations with the Strong Programme sociologists’ appropriations of his views, and debunks several popular claims about what influenced Kuhn as he wrote Structure. His book is a rich and comprehensive assessment of one of the most influential works in the modern sciences. (shrink)