il grand tour di grice: impiegato 21/27

 

preve: important Italian philosopher. He is the tutor of Fusaro, of Torino. “Il comunitarismo è la via maestra che conduce all'universalismo, inteso come campo di confronto fra comunità unite dai caratteri del genere umano, della socialità e della razionalità,” da Elogio del Comunitarismo. Costanzo Preve (Valenza, filosofo. Di ispirazione marxiana ed hegeliana, ha scritto numerosi volumi e saggi di argomento filosofico, pubblicati in Italia e all'estero. Il padre, che al momento della nascita di Costanzo è mobilitato, lavora come funzionario delle Ferrovie dello Stato mentre la madre, casalinga, proviene da una famiglia ortodossa di origine armena. Viene cresciuto dalla nonna materna in lingua francese, e attraverso di lei inizia a conoscere la cultura e la lingua greca; come vedremo, entrambe queste circostanze avranno un grande rilievo nella vita di Preve. Personalmente non è credente, pur riconoscendo l'importanza del fenomeno religioso. Studia a Torino, dove conseguirà la maturità classica. Durante i mesi estivi lavora in campagna nel Regno Unito. Dietro pressioni del padre si iscrive alla facoltà di giurisprudenza a Torino. Verificando il suo totale disinteresse per gli studi giuridici, decide di passare alla facoltà di Scienze politiche, che però non frequenterà mai; ne conseguirà ugualmente la laurea, discutendo con iGarrone una tesi sui "Temi delle elezioni politiche italiane del 18 aprile 1948".  Vince per concorso una borsa di studio a Parigi, dove si reca con il proposito di condurre studi filosofici; qui seguirà i corsi su Hegel tenuti da Hyppolite, frequenterà i seminari di Althusser e Sartre, e sotto la guida di Garaudy e Mury, si avvicinerà a Marx. A Parigi segue soprattutto corsi di filosofia greca classica e di germanistica, e grazie ad una borsa di studio si reca per un semestre invernale alla Freie Universität di Berlino. Passa dal dipartimento di germanistica a quello di neo-ellenistica, e vince una borsa di studio per recarsi ad Atene; all'Atene studia greco classico con Lekatsas e storia contemporanea con Psyroukhis, che esercitano su di lui un grande ascendente. Qui prepara una tesi di laurea sul tema: "L'illuminismo greco e le sue tendenze radicali e rivoluzionarie: enogenesi della nazione greca fra Settecento e Ottocento. Il problema della discontinuità con la grecità classica e con la grecità bizantina”. Poliglotta dagli anni dell'università, e fermo sostenitore della lettura dei testi filosofici nella lingua originale, egli apprenderà inglese, portoghese, francese, tedesco, spagnolo, russo, greco antico e moderno, arabo, ebraico, e latino. Rtorna a Torino e si sposa. Consegue per concorso l'abilitazione all'insegnamento liceale di lingua e letteratura francese e di storia della filosofia mentre vince il concorso nazionale di ordinariato per l'insegnamento della filosofia e della storia nei licei. Insegnante fino alla pensione, per due anni insegna francese e inglese, mentre per trentatré anni  è docente di storia e filosofia al liceo Scientifico di Torino (oggi Liceo Alessandro Volta). Trascorre gli anni  in un'intensa attività politica, aderendo al PCI per poi militare in vari gruppi della sinistra extraparlamentare; in questi anni, l'attività filosofica di Preve è incentrata nel tentativo di conciliare esistenzialmente il comunismo, il marxismo e la filosofia.  Grassa, Turchetto ed Illuminati lo invitano a varie collaborazioni; con essi fonderà il Centro Studi di Materialismo Storico di Milano, del quale redigerà inoltre il manifesto programmatico. In questo contesto, e per finanziamento di questo centro, esce il suo primo volume indipendente (cfr. La filosofia imperfetta, Franco Angeli, Milano). Questo testo testimonia la sua adesione di massima alla proposta filosofica dell'Ontologia dell'essere sociale dell'ultimo Lukács, ed anche, indirettamente, il suo distacco definitivo dalla scuola di Althusser. Insieme con Volpi, Turchetto, Illuminati,  Cioffi, Vigorelli, ed altri fonda a Milano la rivista  “Metamorfosi”, che pubblicherà sedici numeri di tipo monografico. In quasi tutti i fascicoli vi sono suoi contributi, che spaziano da un esame dell'operaismo italiano da Panzieri a Tronti e Negri, all'analisi del marxismo dissidente nei paesi socialisti, alla discussione sulla filosofia di Lukács, alla critica delle ideologie del progresso storico, all'indagine sullo statuto filosofico della critica marxiana dell'economia politica. Nel 1983 contribuisce ad organizzare, insieme con Emilio Agazzi, un congresso internazionale dedicato al centenario della morte di Marx (Milano, dicembre 1983), e vi svolge una relazione sulle categorie modali di necessità e di possibilità in Marx. Da quest'esperienza nasce una rivista chiamata “Marx 101”, che uscirà nei due decenni successivi in due serie di numeri monografici e di cui Preve sarà membro del comitato di redazione. Per tutti gli anni ottanta collabora al mensile teorico “Democrazia Proletaria”, organo dell'omonimo partito (1976-1991), che poi diverrà insieme con i fuoriusciti dal PCI la seconda componente politica e militante del PRC (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista).  Sarà iscritto a DP soltanto per un breve period, facendo parte della direzione nazionale; nella battaglia politica fra i sostenitori di una scelta ecologista (Mario Capanna) e neocomunista, Preve sostiene la seconda con una serie di articoli. Nel 1991, quando le componenti di Democrazia Proletaria e dell'Associazione Culturale Marxista confluiscono nel Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, Preve abbandona la militanza politica diretta. Con la pubblicazione di otto volumi consecutivi usciti presso l'editore Vangelista di Milano, affronta il suo “ultimo tentativo personale di coerentizzazione di un paradigma filosofico marxista globale”. Si verifica infatti una discontinuità nella sua produzione. Preve opta per l'abbandono di ogni “ismo” di riferimento, uscendo del tutto “dalla cosiddetta Sinistra” e dalle sue procedure di “accoglimento e cooptazione”.  Ritenendo che la globalizzazione nata dall'implosione dell'Unione Sovietica non si lasci più “interrogare” attraverso le categorie di Destra e di Sinistra, ma richieda altre categorie interpretative, Preve diviene inoltre un convinto sostenitore della necessità di superare la dicotomia sinistra-destra. Questa posizione, condivisa da alcuni intellettuali e movimenti internazionali, è stata criticata da molti, tra cui lo scrittore Valerio Evangelisti, che ne ha sottolineato l'ambiguità ideologica.  Autore e saggista molto prolifico, ha dedicato le sue ultime riflessioni a temi come il comunitarismo, la geopolitica, l'universalismo, la questione nazionale, oltre ovviamente ad un'ininterrotta attenzione al rapporto marxismo-filosofia. Muore a Torino il 23 novembre  per un male incurabile; il Consiglio Comunale di Torino lo ha omaggiato sottolineando il ruolo di Preve e l'importante stimolo al dibattito culturale e politico da lui sviluppato, rilevante per la crescita politica collettiva in Italia. Pensiero La sua riflessione può essere distinta in due periodi successivi. Ha cercato di opporsi alla deriva post-moderna seguita dalla stragrande maggioranza della sinistra italiana (in particolare dagli intellettuali legati al PCI) con un recupero dei punti alti della tradizione marxista indipendente, del tutto estranea alle incorporazioni burocratiche del marxismo come ideologia di legittimazione di partiti e di stati (soprattutto l'ultimo Lukács, l'ultimo Althusser, Bloch, Adorno). In un secondo periodo, dopo la fine del socialismo reale (che Preve chiama comunismo storico novecentesco 1917-1991), ed in dissenso con tutti i tentativi di sua continuazione/rifondazione puramente politico-organizzativa, ha invece lavorato su di una generale rifondazione antropologica del comunismo, marcando sempre più la discontinuità teorica e politica con i conglomerati identitari della sinistra italiana (Rifondazione Comunista in primis, ma anche la scuola operaista e Toni Negri in particolar modo).  Durante gli anni novanta i suoi interventi sono apparsi sia su riviste legate alla sinistra alternativa (L'Ernesto, Bandiera Rossa) che su riviste come Indipendenza e Koiné, dove Preve ha sostenuto l'esplicito superamento del dualismo Destra/Sinistra, approdando a posizioni antitetiche a quelle del filosofo Norberto Bobbio (con cui ebbe uno stretto rapporto per più di vent'anni). Nei primi anni del nuovo millennio ha collaborato con la rivista Comunitarismo, prima, e Comunità e Resistenza, poi. È stato fino alla morte redattore del quadrimestrale Comunismo e Comunità. Al di là delle prese di posizione sulla congiuntura politica, tre cardini del pensiero di Costanzo Preve sono l'interpretazione della storia della filosofia, l'analisi filosofica del capitalismo e la proposta politica per un comunismo comunitario universalistico.  Interpretazione della storia della filosofia Rileggendo l'intera storia della filosofia soprattutto occidentale, Preve utilizza una deduzione sociale delle categorie del pensiero non riduzionistica, che gli permette di discernere la genesi particolare delle idee dalla loro validità universale. Infatti quello di Preve è un orizzonte aperto universalisticamente alla verità, intesa hegelianamente come processo di autocoscienza storica e sintesi di ontologia e assiologia, dell'esperienza umana nella storia. Nella sua proposta di ontologia dell'essere sociale riconosce razionalmente la natura solidale e comunitaria dell'anima umana e l'autonomia conoscitiva della filosofia, contrastando ogni forma di riduzionismo nichilistico, relativistico o partigianamente ideologico. Preve viene definito «strenuo difensore dello statuto veritativo della filosofia da una parte, e [...] deciso oppositore di ogni fraintendimento relativistico dall’altra». Preve intende il capitalismo come totalità economica, politica e culturale da indagare in tutte le sue dimensioni. Propone di suddividerlo filosoficamente e idealisticamente in tre fasi: astratta (XVII-XVIII secolo); dialettica (dal 1789 al 1991) con una protoborghesia illuministica o romantica, una medioborghesia dal 1848 positivistica e poi dal 1914 esistenzialistica, e una tardoborghesia dal 1968 al 1990 sempre più individualistica e libertaria; speculativa (post-borghese e post-proletaria, dal 1991 in poi) in cui il capitale si concretizza come assoluto, espandendosi al di là delle dicotomie precedenti a destra economicamente, al centro politicamente e a sinistra culturalmente.  Politicamente corretto Nell'analisi filosofica del capitalismo, più volte insiste sulla critica al politicamente corretto, dove riprende alcuni dei suoi temi già trattati; il concetto consterebbe dei seguenti punti nella concezione previana (dove è considerato un'arma del capitalismo per attrarre fasce deboli a sé, nonché un'ideologia di fondo dell'occidente imperialista):  americanismo come collocazione presupposta, anche sotto forma di benevola critica al governo statunitense; "religione olocaustica": Preve non aderisce al negazionismo dell'Olocausto e condanna i genocidi, ma considera la shoah un fatto non "unico", utilizzato dal sionismo per legittimare le azioni di Israele tramite il senso di colpa dell'Europa: «Auschwitz non può e non deve essere dimenticato, perché la memoria dei morti innocenti deve essere riscattata, e questo mondo nella sua interezza appartiene a tre tipi di esseri umani: coloro che sono già vissuti, coloro che sono tuttora in vita, e coloro che devono ancora nascere. Ma Auschwitz non deve diventare un simbolo di legittimazione del sionismo, che agita l'accusa di antisemitismo in tutti coloro che non lo accettano radicalmente, e che non sono disposti a derubricare a semplici errori i suoi veri e propri crimini»  "teologia dei diritti umani", che Preve considera (come altri filosofi marxisti come Žižek o Losurdo, o comunitaristi come ABenoist) solo un grimaldello e un paravento del capitalismo per imporsi ed eliminare, in realtà, i diritti dei popoli e dei lavoratori, attuando il liberismo e l'imperialismo globali; antifascismo in assenza completa di fascismo: l'antifascismo, positivo un tempo, è considerato un fenomeno dannoso e a favore del sistema capitalistico, visto che il fascismo (da lui deprecato soprattutto per la colonizzazione imperialistica dell'Africa e la "mascalzonaggine imperdonabile" dell'invasione della Grecia) è stato ormai sconfitto, volto a creare tensioni tra le diverse forze anti-sistema, e a fungere da nuova ideologia della sinistra postcomunista e post-stalinista (dopo il graduale abbandono del marxismo-leninismo avvenuto secondo Preve a partire dal 1956 per gli effetti della destalinizzazione), che diviene così inutile; falsa dicotomia Sinistra/Destra come "protesi di manipolazione politologica": derivata dal precedente, questa teoria punterebbe a indebolire le critiche anticapitalistiche, impedendo l'unione tra comunisti, comunitaristi e socialisti nazionalitari contro il capitale. Al contempo, anche per le nette e costanti affermazioni contro i tribalismi, i razzismi e i nazionalismi soprattutto coloniali, è da ritenersi estranea al cosiddetto "rossobrunismo" (un termine coniato all'inizio per descrivere i cosiddetti nazionalboscevichi) di cui fu tacciato dal citato Valerio Evangelisti, che a suo dire si configurerebbe come una folle somma dei difetti degli estremismi opposti: «L'unione di sostenitori rasati del razzismo biologico con sostenitori barbuti della dittatura del proletariato sarebbe certamente un buon copione di pornografia hard, ma non potrebbe uscire dal piccolo circuito a luci rosse del sottobosco politico.» nismo comunitario La proposta politica di Costanzo Preve va nella direzione di un comunismo comunitario universalistico, da intendersi come correzione democratica e umanistica del comunismo, dal momento che quello storico novecentesco sarebbe stato reo di non aver messo in comune innanzitutto la verità. Quello tratteggiato da Preve è un sistema sociale che costituisce una sintesi di individui liberati e comunità solidali. Non è inteso come inevitabile sbocco storicistico o positivistico di una storia che si svilupperebbe linearmente, né tuttavia in modo aleatorio in senso althusseriano, bensì aristotelicamente in potenza, a partire dalla resistenza alla dissoluzione comunitaria innescata dall'accumulazione individuale di merci. Qui il problema dell'auspicabile democrazia viene impostato su basi antropologiche, scommettendo sulle potenzialità ontologiche della bontà dell'anima umana, potenzialmente politico-comunitaria (zόon politikόn); razionale e valutativa della giusta misura sociale (zόon lόgon échon) e generica, in senso marxiano (Gattungswesen), cioè in grado di costruire diversi modelli di convivenza sociale, compreso quello in cui l'uomo, affermando la priorità etica e comunitaria per contenere i processi economici altrimenti dispiegantisi in modo illimitato e disumano, può realizzare le sue potenzialità ontologiche immanenti, attualmente alienate. La liberazione dell'individuo avverrebbe quindi a partire dal suo radicamento comunitario in cui agisce collettivamente, pur rimanendo l'individuo stesso l'unità minima di resistenza al potere.  Attività politica In gioventù aderì al PCI, 5, ma presto si allontanò (essendo ostile al compromesso storico tra PCI e DC, promosso da Berlinguer e Moro), entrando poi a far parte della Commissione culturale di Lotta Continua. In seguito si iscrisse a Democrazia Proletaria durante la sua ultima fase. Dopo lo scioglimento di DP, e in seguito alla confluenza di quest'ultima in Rifondazione Comunista, si è sempre più allontanato dall'attività politica in senso stretto. In seguito manifestò critiche verso l'operaismo e il trotskismo che animavano talvolta queste esperienze della post-sinistra extraparlamentare.  Se dal punto di vista teorico si era già distanziato dalla sinistra italiana a seguito della dissoluzione dell'Unione Sovietica e della svolta della Bolognina, il distacco emotivo definitivo dalla "sinistra" avvenne con il bombardamento NATO in Jugoslavia del marzo 1999 durante la guerra del Kosovo, che ricevette il beneplacito del governo italiano guidato da Massimo D'Alema; Preve ha considerato questo fatto come la fine della legalità costituzionale italiana riferendosi alla violazione dell'articolo 11 e un atto di tradimento verso i valori fondanti della Repubblica Italiana. Sul tema scrisse Il bombardamento etico. Saggio sull'interventismo umanitario, l'embargo terapeutico e la menzogna evidente. Molto clamore ha suscitato (anche tra le file della sinistra alternativa) la sua adesione ad alcune tesi del Campo Antimperialista per l'esplicito sostegno da questi fornito alla resistenza irachena. È stato uno dei filosofi di riferimento del comunismo comunitario, nonché animatore della rivista Comunismo e Comunità.  Opere La classe operaia non va in paradiso: dal marxismo occidentale all'operaismo italiano, in Alla ricerca della produzione perduta, Bari, Dedalo, Cosa possiamo chiedere al marxismo. Sull'identità filosofica del materialismo storico, in Marxismo in mare aperto. Rilevazioni, ipotesi, prospettive, Milano, Angeli, La filosofia imperfetta. Una proposta di ricostruzione del marxismo contemporaneo, Milano, Angeli, La teoria in pezzi. La dissoluzione del paradigma teorico operaista in Italia,  Bari, Dedalo, La ricostruzione del marxismo fra filosofia e scienza, in La cognizione della crisi. Saggi sul marxismo di Althusser, Milano, Angeli. Vers une nouvelle alliance. Actualité et possibilités de développement de l'effort ontologique de Bloch et de Lukàcs, in Ernst Bloch et György Lukács. Un siècle après). 1986, Actes Sud [tradotto in tedesco con il titolo Verdinglichung und Utopie. Sendler]. La rivoluzione teorica di Louis Althusser, in Il marxismo di Louis Althusser, Pisa, Vallerini, Viewing Lukàcs from the 1980s. The University of Chicago Press,  La passione durevole, Milano, Vangelista, La musa di Clio vestita di rosso, in Trasformazione e persistenza. Saggi sulla storicità del capitalismo, Milano, Angeli, Il filo di Arianna. Quindici lezioni di filosofia marxista, Milano, Vangelista, 1990. Il marxismo ed il problema teorico dell'eguaglianza oggi, in Egalitè-inegalitè. Atti del Convegno organizzato dall'Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici e dalla Biblioteca comunale di Cattolica. Cattolica, Urbino, Quattro venti, Il convitato di pietra. Saggio su marxismo e nichilismo, Milano, Vangelista, L'assalto al cielo. Saggio su marxismo e individualismo, Milano, Vangelista, 1992. Il pianeta rosso. Saggio su marxismo e universalismo, Milano, Vangelista, 1992. Ideologia Italiana. Saggio sulla storia delle idee marxiste in Italia, Milano, Vangelista, The dream and the reality. The spiritual crisis of western Marxism, in Marxism and spirituality. An international anthology. Bengin and Gavey,Il tempo della ricerca. Saggio sul moderno, il postmoderno e la fine della storia, Milano, Vangelista, Althusser. La lutte contre le sens commun dans le mouvement communiste "historique" au XX siècle, in Politique et philosophie dans l'œuvre de Louis Althusser). 1993, Presses Universitaires de France. L'eguale libertà. Saggio sulla natura umana, Milano, Vangelista, Oltre la gabbia d'acciaio. Saggio su capitalismo e filosofia, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, Vangelista, 1994. Il teatro dell'assurdo (cronaca e storia dei recenti avvenimenti italiani). Una critica alla cultura dominante della sinistra nell'attuale scontro tra berlusconismo e progressismo, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, Punto Rosso, Una teoria nuova per una diversa strategia politica. Premesse teoriche alla critica della cultura dominante della sinistra esposta nel Teatro dell'assurdo, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, Punto Rosso,Il marxismo vissuto del Che, in Adys Cupull e Froìlan Gonzales, Càlida presencia. Lettere di Che Guevara a Tita Infante, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1996. Un elogio della filosofia, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1996. Quale comunismo?, in Uomini usciti di pianto in ragione. Saggi su Franco Fortini, Roma, Manifestolibri, La fine di una teoria. Il collasso del marxismo storico del Novecento, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, UNICOPLI,  Il comunismo storico novecentesco. Un bilancio storico e teorico, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1997. Nichilismo Verità Storia. Un manifesto filosofico della fine del XX secolo, con Massimo Bontempelli, Pistoia, CRT, 1Gesù. Uomo nella storia, Dio nel pensiero, con Massimo Bontempelli, Pistoia, Il crepuscolo della profezia comunista. A 150 anni dal “Manifesto”, il futuro oltre la scienza e l'utopia, Pistoia, CRT,1. L'alba del Sessantotto. Una interpretazione filosofica, Pistoia, CRT, Marxismo, Filosofia, Verità, Pistoia, CRT,  Destra e sinistra. La natura inservibile di due categorie tradizionali, Pistoia, CRT, La questione nazionale alle soglie del XXI secolo. Note introduttive ad un problema delicato e pieno di pregiudizi, Pistoia, CRT, Le stagioni del nichilismo. Un'analisi filosofica ed una prognosi storica, Pistoia, CRT, Individui liberati, comunità solidali. Sulla questione della società degli individui, Pistoia, CRT, Contro il capitalismo, oltre il comunismo. Riflessioni su di una eredità storica e su un futuro possibile, Pistoia, CRT,  La fine dell'Urss. Dalla transizione mancata alla dissoluzione reale, Pistoia, CRT, Il ritorno del clero. La questione degli intellettuali oggi, Pistoia, CRT, Le avventure dell'ateismo. Religione e materialismo oggi, Pistoia, CRT,  Un nuovo manifesto filosofico. Prospettive inedite e orizzonti convincenti per il pensiero, con Andrea Cavazzini, Pistoia, CRT, Hegel Marx Heidegger. Un percorso nella filosofia contemporanea, Pistoia, CRT, Scienza, politica, filosofia. Un'interpretazione filosofica del Novecento, Pistoia, CRT,  I secoli difficili. Introduzione al pensiero filosofico dell'Ottocento e del Novecento, Pistoia, CRT, L'educazione filosofica. Memoria del passato, compito del presente, sfida del futuro, Pistoia, CRT, Il bombardamento etico. Saggio sull'interventismo umanitario, l'embargo terapeutico e la menzogna evidente, Pistoia, CRT,  Marxismo e filosofia. Note, riflessioni e alcune novità, Pistoia, CRT, Un secolo di marxismo. Idee e ideologie, Pistoia, CRT, Un filosofo controvoglia. Introduzione a Günther Anders, L'uomo è antiquato, Bollati Boringhieri. Le contraddizioni di Norberto Bobbio. Per una critica del bobbianesimo cerimoniale, Pistoia, CRT, Marx inattuale. Eredità e prospettiva, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, Verità filosofica e critica sociale. Religione, filosofia, marxismo, Pistoia, CRT, Dove va la sinistra?, Stefano Boninsegni, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2004. Comunitarismo filosofia politica, Molfetta, Noctua, La filosofia classica tedesca, prefazione a Renato Pallavidini, Dialettica e prassi critica. Dall'idealismo al marxismo, Molfetta, Noctua, L'ideocrazia imperiale americana, Roma, Settimo Sigillo,Filosofia del presente. Un mondo alla rovescia da interpretare, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, Filosofia e geopolitica, Parma, All'insegna del Veltro, 2005. Del buon uso dell'universalismo. Elementi di filosofia politica per il XXI secolo, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, Dialoghi sul presente. Alienazione, globalizzazione destra/sinistra, atei devoti. Per un pensiero ribelle, con Alain de Benoist e Giuseppe Giaccio, Napoli, Controcorrente, Prefazione a Renato Pallavidini, La comunità ritrovata. Rousseau critico della modernità illuminista, Torino, Libreria Stampatori, Marx e gli antichi greci, con Luca Grecchi, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Il popolo al potere. Il problema della democrazia nei suoi aspetti storici e filosofici, Casalecchio, Arianna Editrice, Verità e relativismo. Religione, scienza, filosofia e politica nell'epoca della globalizzazione, Torino, Alpina, Elogio del comunitarismo Napoli, Controcorrente, Il paradosso De Benoist. Un confronto politico e filosofico, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, Storia della dialettica, Pistoia, Petite plaisance,  La democrazia in Grecia. Storia di un'idea, forza di un valore, in Presidiare la democrazia realizzare la Costituzione. Atti del seminario itinerante sulla difesa della Costituzione, Bardonecchia, Susa, Bussoleno, Condove, Borgone Susa, Edizioni Melli-Quaderni Sarà Dura!, Storia critica del marxismo. Dalla nascita di Karl Marx alla dissoluzione del comunismo storico novecentesco, Napoli, La città del sole,  Postfazione a Luca Grecchi, Il presente della filosofia italiana, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Storia dell'etica, Pistoia, Petite plaisance,  Hegel antiutilitarista, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, Storia del materialismo, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Una approssimazione al pensiero di Karl Marx. Tra materialismo e idealismo, Saonara, Il Prato, Ripensare Marx. Filosofia, Idealismo, Materialismo, Potenza, Ermes, Un trotzkismo capitalistico? Ipotesi sociologico-religiosa dei Neocons americani e dei loro seguaci europei, in Neocons. L'ideologia neoconservatrice e le sfide della storia, Rimini, Il Cerchio, Alla ricerca della speranza perduta. Un intellettuale di sinistra e un intellettuale di destra "non omologati" dialogano su ideologie e globalizzazione, con Luigi Tedeschi, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, La quarta guerra mondiale, Parma, All'insegna del Veltro, L'enigma dialettico del Sessantotto quarant'anni dopo, in La rivoluzione dietro di noi. Filosofia e politica prima e dopo il '68, Roma, Manifestolibri, Il marxismo e la tradizione culturale europea, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Nuovi signori e nuovi sudditi. Ipotesi sulla struttura di classe del capitalismo contemporaneo, con Eugenio Orso, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Logica della storia e comunismo novecentesco. L'effetto di sdoppiamento, con Sidoli, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, .Elementi di Politicamente Corretto. Studio preliminare su di un fenomeno ideologico destinato a diventare in futuro sempre più invasivo e importante, Petite Plaisance,  Filosofia della verità e della giustizia. Il pensiero di Kosík, con Cesana, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Lettera sull'Umanesimo, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Una nuova storia alternativa della filosofia. Il cammino ontologico-sociale della filosofia, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, Lineamenti per una nuova filosofia della storia. La passione dell'anticapitalismo, con Luigi Tedeschi, Saonara, Il Prato, .Dialoghi sull'Europa e sul nuovo ordine mondiale, con Luigi Tedeschi, Saonara, Il Prato, Collisioni. Dialogo su scienza, religione e filosofia, con Andrea Bulgarelli, Pistoia, Petite plaisance,  Karl Marx: un'interpretazione, NovaEuropa Edizioni.  Preve preferiva non definirsi marxista ma appartenente alla "scuola di Marx", e «allievo indipendente di Marx» (C. Preve, Elogio del comunitarismo, Controcorrente, Napoli,  «Personalmente, non sono credente né praticante. Non credo in nessun Dio personale, considero ogni personalizzazione del divino una indebita e superstiziosa antropomorfizzazione, e sono pertanto in linea di massima d’accordo con Spinoza. Ma ritengo anche la religione, così come la scienza, l’arte e la filosofia, dati permanenti dell’antropologia umana in quanto tali desti durare tutto il tempo in cui durerà il genere umano.» (C. Preve, Elementi di politicamente corretto, )  Convegno György Lukács e la cultura europea (II intervento)  Relazione VIII Congresso Nazionale di DP (terzultimo intervento)  Destra e Sinistra: confronto tra C.Preve e D.Losurdo  Carmilla: I rosso-bruni: vesti nuove per una vecchia storia  Democrazia comunitaria o democrazia proprietaria? (L.Tedeschi-C.Preve). Considerazioni sulla geopolitica (di C.Preve) Ain ..  Intervista di Luigi Tedeschi a Il bombardamento etico dieci anni dopo (recensione di G. Di Martino), Fonte: A. Monchietto, Lucio CollettiCostanzo Preve. Marxismo, Filosofia, Scienza.  Morto Costanzo Preve, l'“ultimo” filosofo marxista su la RepubblicaTorino  Addio al filosofo Costanzo Preve  In memoria di Costanzo Preve di Diego Fusaro  Un lutto veramente grande per noi di Gianfranco La Grassa  In morte di Costanzo Preve  La Sala Rossa ricorda la figura di Costanzo Preve e raccogliendosi in un minuto di silenzio  C.Preve, Con Marx e oltre il marxismo (overleft.it) Archiviato il 9 febbraio  in .  Copia archiviata , su files.splinder.Comunismo e Comunità » Laboratorio per una teoria anticapitalistica  Alessandro Volpe e Piotr Zygulski, Verità e filosofia, in Alessandro Monchietto e Giacomo Pezzano , Invito allo Straniamento. I. Costanzo Preve filosofo, Pistoia, Petite Plaisance,  C. Preve, Elementi di politicamente corretto; ad es. «22. E qui concludiamo con una serie di previsioni artigianali. Ricordo al lettore che questo non è ancora un Trattato di Politicamente Corretto, che ho peraltro intenzione di scrivere, in cui i cinque punti principali indicati (americanismo come collocazione presupposta, religione olocaustica, teologia dei diritti umani, antifascismo in assenza completa di fascismo, dicotomia Sinistra/Destra come protesi di manipolazione politologica) verranno discussi in modo più analitico e preciso».  Da Intellettuali e cultura politica nell'Italia di fine secolo, Rivista Indipendenza, Da Gli Usa, l’Occidente, la Destra, la Sinistra, il fascismo ed il comunismo. Problemi del profilo culturale di un movimento di resistenza all’Impero americano, Noctua Edizioni, 2003.  C.Preve: audio congressi DP (RadioRadicale.it)  Intervista politico-filosofica (G. RepaciC. Preve)  «La costituzione italiana è stata distrutta per semprre con i bombardamenti sulla Jugoslavia, e da allora l’Italia è senza costituzione, e lo resterà finché i responsabili politici di allora non saranno condan morte per alto tradimento (parlo letteralmente pesando le parole), con eventuale benevola commutazione della condanna a morte a lavori forzati a vita. Eppure, questi crimini passano sotto silenzio, perché si continuano ad interpretare gli eventi di oggi in base ad una distinzione completamente finita nel 1945». (C. Preve, Elementi di politicamente corretto) //aginform.org/preve.html.  Étienne Balibar, La filosofia di Marx, Manifestolibri, Bobbio, Né con Marx né contro Marx, Editori Riuniti, Roma, André Tosel, Devenir du marxisme: de la fin du marxisme-léninisme aux mille marxismes, France-Italie  in Dictionnaire Marx contemporain, Jacques Bidet-Eustache Kouvélakis , PUF, Parigi Cristina Corradi, Storia dei marxismi in Italia, Manifestolibri, Roma, Alessandro Monchietto, Marxismo e filosofia in Costanzo Preve, Editrice Petite Plaisance, Pistoia, Piotr Zygulski, Costanzo Preve: la passione durevole della filosofia, presentazione di Giacomo Pezzano, Pistoia, Editrice Petite Plaisance, Monchietto e Pezzano , Invito allo Straniamento. I. Costanzo Preve filosofo, Pistoia, Petite Plaisance, Zygulski, Costanzo Preve e l'educazione filosofica , in Educazione Democratica,  Foggia, Edizioni del Rosone, gennaio ,  Alessandro Monchietto , Invito allo Straniamento. II. Costanzo Preve marxiano, Pistoia, Petite Plaisance, Massimo BontempelliFabio Bentivoglio, Il senso dell'essere nelle culture occidentali, Milano, Trevisini, Carlo Formenti, Il socialismo è morto. Viva il socialismo!, Meltemi, Milano Comunitarismo Domenico Losurdo Massimo Bontempelli (storico) Nazionalismo di sinistra Altri progetti Collabora a Wikiquote Citazionio su Costanzo Preve  Registrazioni di Costanzo Preve, su RadioRadicale.it, Radio Radicale.  Breve sintesi del pensiero di C.Preve (filosofico.net), su filosofico.net. Raccolta di e-book scaricabili gratuitamente offerti dalla casa editrice Petite Plaisance, su petiteplaisance.it). Antologia di testi di C.Preve, Raccolta di articoli (AriannaEditrice.it), su ariannaeditrice.it. Filosofia  Il testo è disponibile solo in e-book, e lo si può scaricare gratuitamente al seguente link://petiteplaisance.it/ebooks/sin_ebl_1032.html. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Preve," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

 

Prichardian interest – Grice: “Interest is a fascinsting word, literally, inter-esse, in-between being. Prichard knew this when he wondered if duty can be ‘reduced’ or cash out in interest – Urmson brought my attention tot his!” --  h. a.H. P. Grice called himself a neo-Prichardian, but then “I used to be a neo-Stoutian before that!”London-born Welshman and philosopher and founder of the Oxford school of intuitionism. An Oxford fellow and professor, he published Kant’s Theory of Knowledge 9 and numerous essays, collected in Moral Obligation 9, 8 and in Knowledge and Perception 0. Prichard was a realist in his theory of knowledge, following Cook Wilson. He held that through direct perception in concrete cases we obtain knowledge of universals and of necessary connections between them, and he elaborated a theory about our knowledge of material objects. In “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” 2 he argued powerfully that it is wrong to think that a general theory of obligation is possible. No single principle captures the various reasons why obligatory acts are obligatory. Only by direct perception in particular cases can we see what we ought to do. With this essay Prichard founded the Oxford school of intuitionism, carried on by, among others, Ross.

 

Priestley, J.: British philosopher. In 1774 he prepared oxygen by heating mercuric oxide. Although he continued to favor the phlogiston hypothesis, his work did much to discredit that idea. He discovered many gases, including ammonia, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrochloric acid. While studying the layer of carbon dioxide over a brewing vat, he conceived the idea of dissolving it under pressure. The resulting “soda water” was famous throughout Europe. His Essay on Government 1768 influenced Jefferson’s ideas in the  Declaration of Independence. The essay also contributed to the utilitarianism of Bentham, supplying the phrase “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Priestley modified the associationism of Locke, Hume, and Hartley, holding that a sharp distinction must be drawn between the results of association in forming natural propensities and its effects on the development of moral ideas. On the basis of this distinction, he argued, against Hume, that differences in individual moral sentiments are results of education, through the association of ideas, a view anticipated by Helvétius. Priestley served as minister to anti-Establishment congregations. His unpopular stress on individual freedom resulted in his move to Pennsylvania, where he spent his last years.

 

Primum -- Primum -- prime mover, the original source and cause of motion change in the universe  an idea that was developed by Aristotle and became important in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic thought about God. According to Aristotle, something that is in motion a process of change is moving from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality. For example, water that is being heated is potentially hot and in the process of becoming actually hot. If a cause of change must itself actually be in the state that it is bringing about, then nothing can produce motion in itself; whatever is in motion is being moved by another. For otherwise something would be both potentially and actually in the same state. Thus, the water that is potentially hot can become hot only by being changed by something else the fire that is actually hot. The prime mover, the original cause of motion, must itself, therefore, not be in motion; it is an unmoved mover. Aquinas and other theologians viewed God as the prime mover, the ultimate cause of all motion. Indeed, for these theologians the argument to establish the existence of a first mover, itself unmoved, was a principal argument used in their efforts to prove the existence of God on the basis of reason. Many modern thinkers question the argument for a first mover on the ground that it does not seem to be logically impossible that the motion of one thing be caused by a second thing whose motion in turn is caused by a third thing, and so on without end. Defenders of the argument claim that it presupposes a distinction between two different causal series, one temporal and one simultaneous, and argue that the objection succeeds only against a temporal causal series.  PRIMA PHILOSOPHIA -- first philosophy, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the study of being qua being, including the study of theology as understood by him, since the divine is being par excellence. Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy was concerned chiefly with the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of matter and of the mind.

 

Prince Maurice’s parrot: The ascription of ‘that’-clause in the report of a communicatum by a pirot of stage n-1 may be a problem by a priot in stage n. Do we want to say that the parrot communicates that he finds Prince Maurice an idiot? While some may not be correct that Griciean principles can be explained on practical, utilitarian grounds, Grice’s main motivation is indeed to capture the ‘rational’ capacity. Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a man; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are: "I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and asked, and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature: so that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never from that time endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it. He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a great deal false of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first. He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it: that it was a very great and a very old one; and when it came first into the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, What a company of white men are here! They asked it, what it thought that man was, pointing to the prince. It answered, Some General or other. When they brought it close to him, he asked it, D'ou venez-vous? It answered, De Marinnan. The Prince, A qui estes-vous? The Parrot, A un Portugais. The Prince, Que fais-tu la? Parrot, Je garde les poulles. The Prince laughed, and said, Vous gardez les poulles? The Parrot answered, Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in what language the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian. I asked whether he understood Brazilian; he said No, but he had taken care to have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say this Prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man: I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it; however, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no." I have taken care that the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a Prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous. The Prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot: and I ask any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this parrot, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did,- whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational animals; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be men, and not parrots? For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people's sense: but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea of a man, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man.

 

prin-cipio – Grice: “I don’t see in the etymology superficially anything to do with first or primus”). Grice: “But of course, that’s superficially. Principio is cognate with prince, and it is indeed a combo of primus and capere, take first, literally – there is also a pun with incipere, which is to commence. Obvioiusly, Cicero was being very witty when he thought of this as translating Aristotle’s ‘arche’.  Grice: “See my principle of conversational helpfulness.” Principle: a philosopher loves a principle. principium. Grice. Principle of conversational helpfulness. “I call it ‘principle,’ echoing Boethius.”Mention should also he made of Boethius’ conception, that there are certain principles, sentences which have no demonstration — probatio — which he calls principales propositiones or probationis principia. Here is the fragment from his Commentary on Topics treating of principles; El iliac quidem (propositiones) quarum nulla probatio est, maximae ac principales vocantur, quod his illas necesse est approbari, quae ut demonstrari valeant, non recusant/ est auteni maxima proposiiio ut liaec « si de aequalibus aequalia demas, quae derelinquitur aequalia sunt », ita enim hoc per se notion est, ut aliud notius quo approbari valeat esse non possit; quae proposi- tiones cum (idem sui natura propria gerant, non solum alieno ad (idem non egent argumento, oerum ceteris quoque probationis sclent esse principium; igitur per se notae propositiones, quibus nihil est notius, indemonstrabiles ac maxime et principales vocantur (“Indeed those sentences that have no demonstration are called maximum or principal [sentences], because they are not rejected since they are necessary to those that have to be demonstrated and which are valid for making a demonstration ; but a maximum sentence such as « if from equal [quantifies], equal [quantities] are taken, what is left are equal [quantities]*, is self- evident, and there is nothing which can be better known self-evidently valid, and self- demonstrating, therefore they are sentences containing their certitude in their very nature and not only do they need no additional argument to demonstrate their certitude, but are also the principles of demonstration of the other [sentences]; so they are, self-evident sen- tences, nothing being better known than they are, and are called undemonstrable or maxi- mum and principal”). Boethius’ idea coincides with Aristotle’s; deduction must start from somewhere, we must begin with something unproved. The Stagirite, how- ever, gave an explanation of the existence of principles and the possibility of their being grasjied by the active intellect, whereas with Boethius princi- ples appear as severed from the sentences demonstrated in a more formal manner: there are two kinds of sentences: some which are demonstrable and others which need no demonstration There’s the principle of economy of rational effort: (principium oeconomiae effortis rationalis). Cf. his metaphor of the hamburger. Grice knew that ‘economy’ is vague. It relates to the ‘open house.’ But is a crucial concept. It is not the principle of parsimony of rational effort. It is not the principle of ‘minimisaation’ of rational effort. It is the principle of the ‘economy’ of rational effort. ‘Economy’ is already a value-oriented word, since it is a branch of politics and meta-ethics. oecŏnŏmĭcus , a, um, adj., = οἰκονομικός. I. Of or relating to domestic economy; subst.: oecŏnŏmĭcus , i, m., a work of Xenophon on domestic economy. in eo libro, qui Oeconomicus inscribitur, Cic. Off. 2, 24, 87; Gell. 15, 5, 8.— II. Of or belonging to a proper (oratorical) division or arrangement; orderly, methodical: “oeconomica totius causae dispositio,” Quint. 7, 10, 11. οἰκονομ-ικός , ή, όν, A.practised in the management of a household or family, o πολιτικός, Pl.Alc.1.133e, Phdr.248d, X.Oec.1.3, Arist.Pol.1252a8, etc. : Sup., [κτημάτων] τὸ βέλτιστον καὶ-ώτατον, of man, Phld.Oec.p.30 J. : hence, thrifty, frugal, economical, X.Mem.4.2.39, Phylarch.65 J. (Comp.) : ὁ οἰ. title of treatise on the duties of domestic life, by Xenophon ; and τὰ οἰ. title of treatise on public finance, ascribed to Aristotle, cf. X.Cyr.8.1.14 : ἡ -κή (sc. τέχνη) domestic economy, husbandry, Pl.Plt.259c, X.Mem. 3.4.11, etc. ; οἰ. ἀρχή defined as ἡ τέκνων ἀρχὴ καὶ γυναικὸς καὶ τῆς οἰκίας πάσης, Arist.Pol.1278b38 ; applied to patriarchal rule, ib.1285b32. Adv.“-κῶς” Ph.2.426, Plu.2.1126a ; also in literary sense, in a well ordered manner, Sch.Th.1.63. Grice’s conversational maximin. Blackburn draws a skull to communicate that there is danger. The skull complete with the rest of the body will not do. So abiding by this principle has nothing to do with an arbitrary convention. Vide principle of least conversational effort. Principle of conversational least effort. No undue effort (candour), no unnecessary trouble (self-love) if doing A involves too much conversational effort, never worry: you will be DEEMED to have made the effort. Invoked by Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice.” When Grice qualifies this as ‘rational’ effort, what other efforts are there? Note that the lexeme ‘effort’ does NOT feature in the formulation of the principle itself. Grice confesses to be strongly inclined to assent to the principle of economy of rational conversational effort or the principle of economy of conversational effort, or the principle of economy of conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational expenditure, or the principle of minimization of conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational cost, or the conversational maximin. The principle of least cost. The principle of economy of rational expenditure states that, where there is a ratiocinative procedure for arriving rationally at certain outcome, a procedure which, because it is ratiocinative, involves an expenditure of time and energy, if there is a NON-ratiocinative, and so more economical procedure which is likely, for the most part, to reach the same outcome as the ratiocinative procedure, provided the stakes are not too high, it is rational to employ the cheaper though somewhat less reliable non-ratiocinative procedure as a substitute for ratiocination. Grice thinks this principle would meet with genitorial approval, in which case the genitor would install it for use should opportunity arise. This applies to the charge of overcomplexity and ‘psychological irreality’ of the reasoning involved in the production and design of the maximally efficient conversational move and the reasoning involved in the recognition of the implicaturum by the addressee. In “Epilogue” he goes by yet another motto, Do not multiply rationalities beyond necessity: The principle of conversational rationality, as he calls it in the Epilogue, is a sub-principle of a principle of rationality simpiciter, not applying to a pursuit related to ‘communication,’ as he puts it. Then there’s the principium individuationis, the cause or basis of individuality in individuals; what makes something individual as opposed to universal, e.g., what makes the cat Minina individual and thus different from the universal, cat. Questions regarding the principle of individuation were first raised explicitly in the early Middle Ages. Classical authors largely ignored individuation; their ontological focus was on the problem of universals. The key texts that originated the discussion of the principle of individuation are found in Boethius. Between Boethius and 1150, individuation was always discussed in the context of more pressing issues, particularly the problem of universals. After 1150, individuation slowly emerged as a focus of attention, so that by the end of the thirteenth century it had become an independent subject of discussion, especially in Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Most early modern philosophers conceived the problem of individuation epistemically rather than metaphysically; they focused on the discernibility of individuals rather than the cause of individuation, as in Descartes. With few exceptions, such as Karl Popper, the twentieth century has followed this epistemic approach e. g. P. F. Strawson.  principle of bivalence, the principle that any significant statement is either true or false. It is often confused with the principle of excluded middle. Letting ‘Tp’ stand for ‘p is true’ and ‘Tp’ for ‘p is false’ and otherwise using standard logical notation, bivalence is ‘Tp 7 T-p’ and excluded middle is ‘T p 7 -p’. That they are different principles is shown by the fact that in probability theory, where ‘Tp’ can be expressed as ‘Prp % 1’, bivalence ‘Pr p % 1 7 Pr ~p % 1’ is not true for all values of p  e.g. it is not true where ‘p’ stands for ‘given a fair toss of a fair die, the result will be a six’ a statement with a probability of 1 /6, where -p has a probability of 5 /6  but excluded middle ‘Prp 7 -p % 1’ is true for all definite values of p, including the probability case just given. If we allow that some significant statements have no truth-value or probability and distinguish external negation ‘Tp’ from internal negation ‘T-p’, we can distinguish bivalence and excluded middle from the principle of non-contradiction, namely, ‘-Tp • T-p’, which is equivalent to ‘-Tp 7 -T-p’. Standard truth-functional logic sees no difference between ‘p’ and ‘Tp’, or ‘-Tp’ and ‘T-p’, and thus is unable to distinguish the three principles. Some philosophers of logic deny there is such a difference. principle of contradiction, also called principle of non-contradiction, the principle that a statement and its negation cannot both be true. It can be distinguished from the principle of bivalence, and given certain controversial assumptions, from the principle of excluded middle; but in truth-functional logic all three are regarded as equivalent. Outside of formal logic the principle of non-contradiction is best expressed as Aristotle expresses it: “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.”  principle of double effect, the view that there is a morally relevant difference between those consequences of our actions we intend and those we do not intend but do still foresee. According to the principle, if increased literacy means a higher suicide rate, those who work for education are not guilty of driving people to kill themselves. A physician may give a patient painkillers foreseeing that they will shorten his life, even though the use of outright poisons is forbidden and the physician does not intend to shorten the patient’s life. An army attacking a legitimate military target may accept as inevitable, without intending to bring about, the deaths of a number of civilians. Traditional moral theologians affirmed the existence of exceptionless prohibitions such as that against taking an innocent human life, while using the principle of double effect to resolve hard cases and avoid moral blind alleys. They held that one may produce a forbidden effect, provided 1 one’s action also had a good effect, 2 one did not seek the bad effect as an end or as a means, 3 one did not produce the good effect through the bad effect, and 4 the good effect was important enough to outweigh the bad one. Some contemporary philosophers and Roman Catholic theologians hold that a modified version of the principle of double effect is the sole justification of deadly deeds, even when the person killed is not innocent. They drop any restriction on the causal sequence, so that e.g. it is legitimate to cut off the head of an unborn child to save the mother’s life. But they oppose capital punishment on the ground that those who inflict it require the death of the convict as part of their plan. They also play down the fourth requirement, on the ground that the weighing of incommensurable goods it requires is impossible. Consequentialists deny the principle of double effect, as do those for whom the crucial distinction is between what we cause by our actions and what just happens. In the most plausible view, the principle does not presuppose exceptionless moral prohibitions, only something stronger than prima facie duties. It is easier to justify an oblique evasion of a moral requirement than a direct violation, even if direct violations are sometimes permissible. So understood, the principle is a guide to prudence rather than a substitute for it.  principle of excluded middle, the principle that the disjunction of any significant statement with its negation is always true; e.g., ‘Either there is a tree over 500 feet tall or it is not the case that there is such a tree’. The principle is often confused with the principle of bivalence. principle of indifference, a rule for assigning a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons.” According to the principle, when the “weight of reasons” favoring one event is equal to the “weight of reasons” favoring another, the two events should be assigned the same probability. When there are n mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive events, and there is no reason to favor one over another, then we should be “indifferent” and the n events should each be assigned probability 1/n the events are equiprobable, according to the principle. This principle is usually associated with the names Bernoulli Ars Conjectandi, 1713 and Laplace Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1812, and was so called by J. M. Keynes A Treatise on Probability, 1. The principle gives probability both a subjective “degree of belief” and a logical “partial logical entailment” interpretation. One rationale for the principle says that in ignorance, when no reasons favor one event over another, we should assign equal probabilities. It has been countered that any assignment of probabilities at all is a claim to some knowledge. Also, several seemingly natural applications of the principle, involving non-linearly related variables, have led to some mathematical contradictions, known as Bertrand’s paradox, and pointed out by Keynes.  principle of insufficient reason, the principle that if there is no sufficient reason or explanation for something’s being the case, then it will not be the case. Since the rise of modern probability theory, many have identified the principle of insufficient reason with the principle of indifference a rule for assigning a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons”. The two principles are closely related, but it is illuminating historically and logically to view the principle of insufficient reason as the general principle stated above which is related to the principle of sufficient reason and to view the principle of indifference as a special case of the principle of insufficient reason applying to probabilities. As Mach noted, the principle of insufficient reason, thus conceived, was used by Archimedes to argue that a lever with equal weights at equal distances from a central fulcrum would not move, since if there is no sufficient reason why it should move one way or the other, it would not move one way or the other. Philosophers from Anaximander to Leibniz used the same principle to argue for various metaphysical theses. The principle of indifference can be seen to be a special case of this principle of insufficient reason applying to probabilities, if one reads the principle of indifference as follows: when there are N mutually exclusive and exhaustive events and there is no sufficient reason to believe that any one of them is more probable than any other, then no one of them is more probable than any other they are equiprobable. The idea of “parity of reasons” associated with the principle of indifference is, in such manner, related to the idea that there is no sufficient reason for favoring one outcome over another. This is significant because the principle of insufficient reason is logically equivalent to the more familiar principle of sufficient reason if something is [the case], then there is a sufficient reason for its being [the case]  which means that the principle of indifference is a logical consequence of the principle of sufficient reason. If this is so, we can understand why so many were inclined to believe the principle of indifference was an a priori truth about probabilities, since it was an application to probabilities of that most fundamental of all alleged a priori principles of reasoning, the principle of sufficient reason. Nor should it surprise us that the alleged a priori truth of the principle of indifference was as controversial in probability theory as was the alleged a priori truth of the principle of sufficient reason in philosophy generally.  principle of plenitude, the principle that every genuine possibility is realized or actualized. This principle of the “fullness of being” was named by A. O. Lovejoy, who showed that it was commonly assumed throughout the history of Western science and philosophy, from Plato to Plotinus who associated it with inexhaustible divine productivity, through Augustine and other medieval philosophers, to the modern rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz and the Enlightenment. Lovejoy connected plenitude to the great chain of being, the idea that the universe is a hierarchy of beings in which every possible form is actualized. In the eighteenth century, the principle was “temporalized”: every possible form of creature would be realized  not necessarily at all times  but at some stage “in the fullness of time.” A clue about the significance of plenitude lies in its connection to the principle of sufficient reason everything has a sufficient reason [cause or explanation] for being or not being. Plenitude says that if there is no sufficient reason for something’s not being i.e., if it is genuinely possible, then it exists  which is logically equivalent to the negative version of sufficient reason: if something does not exist, then there is a sufficient reason for its not being. principle of verifiability, a claim about what meaningfulness is: at its simplest, a sentence is meaningful provided there is a method for verifying it. Therefore, if a sentence has no such method, i.e., if it does not have associated with it a way of telling whether it is conclusively true or conclusively false, then it is meaningless. The purpose for which this verificationist principle was originally introduced was to demarcate sentences that are “apt to make a significant statement of fact” from “nonsensical” or “pseudo-” sentences. It is part of the emotive theory of content, e.g., that moral discourse is not literally, cognitively meaningful, and therefore, not factual. And, with the verifiability principle, the central European logical positivists of the 0s hoped to strip “metaphysical discourse” of its pretensions of factuality. For them, whether there is a reality external to the mind, as the realists claim, or whether all reality is made up of “ideas” or “appearances,” as idealists claim, is a “meaningless pseudo-problem.” The verifiability principle proved impossible to frame in a form that did not admit all metaphysical sentences as meaningful. Further, it casts doubt on its own status. How was it to be verified? So, e.g., in the first edition of Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer proposed that a sentence is verifiable, and consequently meaningful, if some observation sentence can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises, without being deducible from those other premises alone. It follows that any metaphysical sentence M is meaningful since ‘if M, then O’ always is an appropriate premise, where O is an observation sentence. In the preface to the second edition, Ayer offered a more sophisticated account: M is directly verifiable provided it is an observation sentence or it entails, in conjunction with certain observation sentences, some observation sentence that does not follow from them alone. And M is indirectly verifiable provided it entails, in conjunction with certain other premises, some directly verifiable sentence that does not follow from those other premises alone and these additional premises are either analytic or directly verifiable or are independently indirectly verifiable. The new verifiability principle is then that all and only sentences directly or indirectly verifiable are “literally meaningful.” Unfortunately, Ayer’s emendation admits every nonanalytic sentence. Let M be any metaphysical sentence and O1 and O2 any pair of observation sentences logically independent of each other. Consider sentence A: ‘either O1 or not-M and not-O2’. Conjoined with O2, A entails O1. But O2 alone does not entail O1. So A is directly verifiable. Therefore, since M conjoined with A entails O1, which is not entailed by A alone, M is indirectly verifiable. Various repairs have been attempted; none has succeeded.  principle of economy of rational effort -- cheapest-cost avoider, in the economic analysis of law, the party in a dispute that could have prevented the dispute, or minimized the losses arising from it, with the lowest loss to itself. The term encompasses several types of behavior. As the lowest-cost accident avoider, it is the party that could have prevented the accident at the lowest cost. As the lowest-cost insurer, it is the party that could been have insured against the losses arising from the dispute. This could be the party that could have purchased insurance at the lowest cost or self-insured, or the party best able to appraise the expected losses and the probability of the occurrence. As the lowest-cost briber, it is the party least subject to transaction costs. This party is the one best able to correct any legal errors in the assignment of the entitlement by purchasing the entitlement from the other party. As the lowest-cost information gatherer, it is the party best able to make an informed judgment as to the likely benefits and costs of an action.  Principle of economy of rational effort: Coase theorem, a non-formal insight by R. Coase: 1: assuming that there are no transaction costs involved in exchanging rights for money, then no matter how rights are initially distributed, rational agents will buy and sell them so as to maximize individual returns. In jurisprudence this proposition has been the basis for a claim about how rights should be distributed even when as is usual transaction costs are high: the law should confer rights on those who would purchase them were they for sale on markets without transaction costs; e.g., the right to an indivisible, unsharable resource should be conferred on the agent willing to pay the highest price for it. 

 

prini: Grice: “I like Prini, but I won’t expect his “Discorse e situazione” to be about Firth’s context of utterance!” -- “Pensare è infatti la maniera più profonda del nostro desiderare. "Ventisei secoli nel mondo dei filosofi"). Pietro Prini (Belgirate), filosofo. Tra i maggiori esponenti dell'esistenzialismo.   Di modeste origini, Prini mostrò fin da giovane una certa attitudine per gli studi e completò l'intero iter scolastico, iscrivendosi quindi al seminario di Arona nel 1934, dove ebbe come docente di filosofia mons. De Lorenzi. La scelta del seminario, oltre a derivare dalla sua povertà di mezzi materiali, rispondeva a una profonda convinzione di fede che resterà immutata per tutta la vita del filosofo. Prini, tuttavia, lasciò il seminario tre anni più tardi «per amore della filosofia»: gli sembrava infatti che l'impostazione neotomista della filosofia lì insegnata non rispondesse ai bisogni del tempo. Egli quindi, vinto un posto presso il Collegio Borromeo di Pavia, iniziò i suoi studi di filosofia. Particolarmente influenti furono Adolfo Levi e, dopo che questi dovette rassegnare le dimissioni in seguito alle leggi razziali, Michele Federico Sciacca con cui si laureò nel 1941 discutendo una tesi su Rosmini. Durante il servizio militare, contrasse una malattia polmonaregrave che lo costrinse, tra il '43 e il '45, al ricovero presso il Collegio Borromeo, allora trasformato dai tedeschi in ospedale militare. Lì godette della compagnia intellettuale del Rettore, monsignor Cesare Angelini, e approfondì lo studio di Plotino. Il 1950 è un altro anno cruciale per la formazione di Prini: grazie a una borsa di studio, egli trascorse nove mesi a Parigi dove conobbe e frequentò il filosofo Gabriel Marcel.   Una veduta del lago Maggiore dalla terrazza del Collegio Rosmini. Nel suo libro su Belgirate, borgo che si affaccia sullo stesso lago, Prini cita H.F. Amiel e scrive: «Un paesaggio è uno stato d'animo». Prini s'è legato al gruppo di giovani filosofi che Sciacca aveva riunito intorno a sé: Maria Teresa Antonelli, Roberto Crippa, Alberto Caracciolo. Quando Sciacca nel 1946 si trasferì a Genova tutto il gruppo lo seguì, ottenendo ciascunosecondo la specificità dei propri studiun incarico di insegnamento di una disciplina filosofica. A Prini venne affidato l'insegnamento di Storia della filosofia antica. Di qui, vincitore di concorso, si trasferì a Perugia, dove dette vita ad una sua scuola filosofica, che ha in Dario Antiseri l'esponente più noto. Prini sposa Josefa "Pepa" Flores, spagnola, compagna affezionata per tutta la vita, cui Prini dedicherà gran parte dei suoi libri. Dello stesso anno è il testo Verso una nuova ontologia che, insieme a Discorso e situazione del 1961 segnano il passaggio alla fase matura del suo pensiero. Viene chiamato a coprire la cattedra di Storia della filosofia dalla Facoltà di Magistero dell'Università "La Sapienza" di Roma, che terrà fino al 1985, diventando poi docente emerito. Qui svolse una intensa attività didattico-scientifica, che alimentò partecipando anche a molteplici iniziative culturali, impegnandosi in prima persona nella promozione televisiva del sapere filosofico e, nell'attività radiofonica, in programmi di decisa funzione umanistico-culturale. Tra le opere più interessanti e più discusse della sua ultima produzione, va ricordato Lo scisma sommerso del 1998, in cui il filosofo analizza la spaccatura sotterranea che si è creata nella Chiesa cattolica tra il magistero ufficiale e la fede e le scelte di vita dei credenti. Un tema che diviene centrale in quest'ultimo periodo è anche il tema del male, in modo parallelo a quanto andava elaborando nello stesso periodo Luigi Pareyson, amico personale di Prini.  Prini si ritira a Pavia dove lavora, finché le forze glielo consentono, a Ventisei secoli nel mondo dei filosofi, «un ultimo ripensamento, una sorta di commiato personale dagli autori e dai problemi che gli erano stati cari per tutta la vita». È morto a Pavia ed è sepolto a Belgirate nella tomba di famiglia. La sua biblioteca personale e il suo lascito manoscritto sono conservati presso la biblioteca del Collegio Ghislieri di Pavia nel "Fondo Pietro Prini".  Pensiero Si può dire che in nessuna delle opere di Prini sia racchiuso tutto quanto il suo pensiero. Egli è, in questo senso, un pensatore abbastanza asistematico e offre intuizioni in direzioni diverse, che si possono riassumere in alcuni blocchi tematici.  L'ontologia semantica  Una pagina manoscritta del filosofo. Un buon punto da cui partire è la scoperta e la definizione dell'ontologia semantica: accanto al discorso apofantico, che definisce in modo univoco i suoi oggetti e che vuol dimostrare le sue verità in modo necessario, Prini apre lo spazio per il discorso semantico, il linguaggio cioè della musica, della poesia, della preghiera, dell'invocazione, del dialogo. Nel testo Verso una nuova ontologia, egli fa risalire la dimenticanza dell’ontologia semantica ad Aristotele, il quale riteneva i discorsi semantici non verofunzionali e quindi estranei al campo dellafilosofia. Nell'opera successiva Discorso e situazione, l'autore definisce in modo più dettagliato gli ambiti di ciascun discorso.  In un’intervista rilasciata a Vittorio Grassi, Prini argomenta: «Per molti anni ho tenuto presente nello sviluppo delle mie ricerche il volume Discorso e situazione, dove, nel quadro del problema contemporaneo della molteplicità dell’uso logico della ragione, ho delineato un esame sistematico delle diverse forme argomentative del discorso razionale “situato”, ossia in relazione al suo proprio oggetto ed al suo proprio uditorio, e precisamente la verifica come forma della prova del discorso oggettivo o scientifico, la testimonianza, come forma della prova del discorso privato o intersoggettivo, la determinazione particolare, come forma del discorso collettivo o ideologico. È stata un ricerca non inutile, credo, se ha messo in luce, per un verso, contro lo scientismo, la pluralità dell’uso logico della ragione, e per un altro verso, la fondamentale convergenza di quelle forme del discorso razionale in una dottrina della verità ostensiva dell’essere, o, come dicevo nel mio volume Discorso e situazione, inventandone l’espressione, in un’ontologia semantica».  In questo senso, la filosofia di Prini si caratterizza per un confronto rispettoso e vivace con le scienze: da una parte, il filosofo ne riconosce tutta la dirompente importanza, dall'altra è attento a criticare quelle filosofiequali il neopositivismoche ne esasperano i risultati e le spingono oltre il proprio ambito di legittimità conoscitiva.  L'uomo Il secondo punto è quello dell’antropologia e della sociologia filosofica. Prini non dimentica mai la lezione dell’esistenzialismo: l’uomo di cui la filosofia deve occuparsi è l’uomo concreto. E perciò, in primo luogo, è importante considerare il corpo come elemento costituito della soggettività in un’unità psicofisicadel resto, già Rosmini nel mondo cattolico aveva fatto questo movimento verso il corpo, parlando di sentimento fondamentale corporeo. Prini se ne occupa soprattutto nell'opera Il corpo che siamo. Quindi, ne Il paradosso di Icaro, viene elaborata la distinzione tra desiderio e bisogno: il bisogno, cioè la necessità di avere, si distingue dal desiderio, cioè dalla volontà di essere autenticamente.  Nel mondo contemporaneo, che è un mondo capitalistico, tecnologico e nichilistico, l’uomo corre il rischio di essere dominato da bisogni sempre accresciuti e di dimenticare così la propria dimensione più autentica e il proprio desiderio. Prini scrive che «Pensare è […] la maniera più profonda del nostro desiderare»: ciò significa che la filosofia ha, prima di tutto, il compito di domandare intorno al senso di ciò che è e di ciò che si èun domandare che mette in questione anche il domandante stesso.  Qui sono naturalmente molto forti gli echi di Heidegger, che Prini definisce «maestro inevitabile». L’esito socio-politico di queste dottrine priniane è il rifiuto degli assoluti terrestri, cioè di quelle concezioni totalitarie della politica come il nazismo o il comunismo che negano il valore assoluto della coscienza individuale e, insieme, negano lo spazio per ogni trascendenza genuina. Prini, per converso, ritiene che l'unico agire autentico derivi dalla contemplazione, secondo quella dottrina della contemplazione creatrice che egli ritrova in Plotino e che fa propria.  L'Essere Di qui, si può passare a parlare della concezione priniana dell’Essere, che è caratterizzato dall'ambiguità, da cui anche il titolo della sua opera principale su questo tema, L'ambiguità dell'essere, che ha la particolarità di essere scritta in forma di dialogo. L'Essere può intendersicome è stato variamente inteso nella storia della filosofiasia come necessità assoluta (al modo Parmenide), sia come bontà o finalità assoluta (al modo di Leibniz), sia come libertà od opposizione assoluta (al modo di Cusano). Prini cerca di pensare insieme queste tre modalità, ritenendole tutte essenziali all'Essere e, insieme, non deducibili l’una dall'altra. Egli definisce questa sua concezione «problematicismo ontologico». Dal momento che l’Essere è in sé ambiguo, esso non si lascia completamente definire e dimostrare dal discorso apofantico e si presta al discorso semantico in generale e quindi al discorso religioso in particolare.  La fede Assolutamente capitale è, dunque, il problema della religione, della fede cristiana e della Chiesa cattolica. Prini ha sempre pensato la propria attività filosofica come un filosofare nella fede: a differenza dello scienziato, il filosofo mette in gioco se stesso nel proprio filosofare, e un cristiano, quale egli era, non può mettere da parte le proprie convinzioni religiose quando filosofa. Nella prolusione al corso di Filosofia teoretica a 'Perugia, egli argomenta: «C’è un carattere ludico nell'atteggiamento del credente, quando pretende di poter mettere tra parentesi la propria fede e di essere anch'egli, nella ricerca della verità, come dice Husserl, ein wirklicher Anfänger, “un vero e proprio principiante”».  «Ho dedicato tutta la mia vita alla cultura cattolica in modo critico» sostiene Prini nell’intervista. Questo suo lavoro critico può riassumersi così: distinzione tra il nucleo del messaggio evangelico e le forme che esso ha via via assunto nella storia, critica delle posizioni più tradizionaliste della Chiesa, specialmente in filosofia (si veda in particolare il volume La filosofia cattolica italiana del Novecento), invito al dialogo tra la Chiesa e la modernità tutta intera, e proposta di una nuova inculturazione, oggi, di quel messaggio evangelico. Il seguente passaggio de Lo scisma sommerso mostra in modo disambiguo ciò che Prini ha in mente: «Per questa mentalità generata dalla civiltà della scienza esistono uno spazio e un tempo scientifici nei quali è impossibili proporsi di trovare, per esempio, il periodo storico di una presunta prima coppia progenitrice di tutto il genere umano o l'ubicazione dell'Eden, di cui parlanoin un senso simbolico che è da determinarei primi racconti della Genesi. E andando soltanto un poco in profondità nella coscienza giuridica moderna, post-illuministica, del rapporto tra colpa e castigo, chi potrebbe oggi accettare l'idea, trasmessa dalla teologia penale di Agostino nell'interpretazione della Lettera ai Romani di Paolo, che l'umanità intera abbia ereditato da Adamo non solo la pena eterna del suo peccato, ma anche la responsabilità della sua stessa colpa?»  Opere Gabriel Marcel e la metodologia dell’inverificabile. Roma, Studium, Verso una nuova ontologia. Roma, Studium, Rosmini postumo. Roma, Armando, 2ª edizione, “Discorso e situazione.” Roma, Studium,  2ª edizione,  “Il paradosso di Icaro,” Roma, Armando, 2ª edizione, Ripubblicato nel  Gianpiero Gamaleri. “L’ambiguità dell’essere.” Genova, Marietti, Storia dell'esistenzialismo da Kierkegaard a oggi. Roma, Studium,  Il testo è l’ultima versione di una serie di lavori precedenti sulla storia dell’esistenzialismo che risalgono fino agli anni ’50. “Il corpo che siamo: introduzione all'antropologia etica. Torino, SEI, “Plotino e la nascita dell’umanesimo interiore.” Milano, Vita e Pensiero,Anche questa è l’ultima versione di un lavoro “a più strati”, il cui primo nucleo risale agli anni della guerra, mentre Prini era ricoverato presso il Collegio Borromeo di Pavia, allora trasformato dai tedeschi in ospedale militare. Il cristiano e il potere. Roma, Studium, La filosofia cattolica italiana del Novecento. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2ª edizione. Lo scisma sommerso. Milano, Garzanti (per l'editore G due). Ripubblicato dalla casa editrice Interlinea, Novara, . Terra di Belgirate (nuova edizione curata da Vittorio Grassi). Grugliasco (Torino), tipografia Sosso Ventisei secoli nel mondo dei filosofi (Walter Minella). Caltanissetta-Roma, Salvatore Sciascia, . Inediti I seguenti testi inediti, ritrovati tra le carte del "Fondo Pietro Prini", sono stati pubblicati:  Visita a Borges in Paradiso (Andrea Loffi). In: “Avvenire”, Lo stesso testo è presente anche in appendice a: Walter Minella, Pietro Prini, Roberto Cutaia, Prini, un filosofo che canta i Salmi. In: “Avvenire”, Qui sono riportati alcuni passaggi di un commento ai Salmi. Croce e Gentile secondo Prini (Andrea Loffi). In: “Avvenire”, sabato 13 maggio 23 . Premi Prini è stato insignito del Premio Internazionale Medaglia d'Oro al merito della Cultura Cattolica . -- è stato conferito il primo "Premio Pietro Prini" in onore del filosofo, per promuoverne lo studio e la ricerca, presso il Collegio Rosmini di Stresa.  Notizia della morte, Walter Minella, Pietro Prini, Città del Vaticano, Lateran University Press, 25.  Terra di Belgirate, Walter Minella, Pietro Prini, Città del Vaticano, Lateran University Press, Andrea Loffi, Il Prini sommerso , su pietroprini.org.  Pietro Prini, Terra di Belgirate,  Ventisei secoli nel mondo dei filosofi, Walter Minella, Caltanissetta-Roma, Salvatore Sciascia, Ventisei secoli nel mondo dei filosofi, Walter Minella, Caltanissetta-Roma, Salvatore Sciascia, Pietro Prini, Plotino e la fondazione dell'umanesimo interiore, Milano, Vita e Pensiero,Pietro Prini, Terra di Belgirate, Pietro Prini, Cristianesimo e filosofia, in Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia, Terra di Belgirate, Pietro Prini, Lo scisma sommerso, Milano, Garzanti, 1Dario Antiseri e Domenico Conci , Il desiderio di essere. L'itinerario filosofico di Pietro Prini. Roma, Studium, Santo Arcoleo, La filosofia cattolica nell'Italia del Novecento. Intervista a Pietro Prini, in Segni e Comprensione, Biagio Muscherà, L'ontologia del desiderio in P. Prini. Genova-Milano, Marietti, 2005. Massimo Flematti , Pietro Prini, filosofo e uomo. Verbania-Intra, Alberti, . Walter Minella, Città del Vaticano, Lateran University Press, .Walter Minella, Andrea Loffi, Massimo Flematti, Giorgio Sandrini , Credere oggi in Dio e nell'uomo ancora e nonostante. Pietro Prini filosofo del dialogo tra fede e scienza. Roma, Armando. Sito dedicato a Pietro Prini, su pietroprini.org. Enciclopedie on line, sito "Treccani.it L'Enciclopedia italiana".//filosofico.net/prini.htm.

 

prisoner’s dilemma, a problem in game theory, and more broadly the theory of rational choice, that takes its name from a familiar sort of pleabargaining situation: Two prisoners Robin and Carol are interrogated separately and offered the same deal: If one of them confesses “defects” and the other does not, the defector will be given immunity from prosecution and the other will get a stiff prison sentence. If both confess, both will get moderate prison terms. If both remain silent cooperate with each other, both will get light prison terms for a lesser offense. There are thus four possible outcomes: 1 Robin confesses and gets immunity, while Carol is silent and gets a stiff sentence. 2 Both are silent and get light sentences. 3 Both confess and get moderate sentences. 4 Robin is silent and gets a stiff sentence, while Carol confesses and gets immunity. Assume that for Robin, 1 would be the best outcome, followed by 2, 3, and 4, in that order. Assume that for Carol, the best outcome is 4, followed by 2, 3, and 1. Each prisoner then reasons as follows: “My confederate will either confess or remain silent. If she confesses, I must do likewise, in order to avoid the ‘sucker’s payoff’ immunity for her, a stiff sentence for me. If she remains silent, then I must confess in order to get immunity  the best outcome for me. Thus, no matter what my confederate does, I must confess.” Under those conditions, both will confess, effectively preventing each other from achieving anything better than the option they both rank as only third-best, even though they agree that option 2 is second-best. This illustrative story attributed to A. W. Tucker must not be allowed to obscure the fact that many sorts of social interactions have the same structure. In general, whenever any two parties must make simultaneous or independent choices over a range of options that has the ordinal payoff structure described in the plea bargaining story, they are in a prisoner’s dilemma. Diplomats, negotiators, buyers, and sellers regularly find themselves in such situations. They are called iterated prisoner’s dilemmas if the same parties repeatedly face the same choices with each other. Moreover, there are analogous problems of cooperation and conflict at the level of manyperson interactions: so-called n-person prisoner’s diemmas or free rider problems. The provision of public goods provides an example. Suppose there is a public good, such as clean air, national defense, or public radio, which we all want. Suppose that is can be provided only by collective action, at some cost to each of the contributors, but that we do not have to have a contribution from everyone in order to get it. Assume that we all prefer having the good to not having it, and that the best outcome for each of us would be to have it without cost to ourselves. So each of us reasons as follows: “Other people will either contribute enough to produce the good by themselves, or they will not. If they do, then I can have it cost-free the best option for me and thus I should not contribute. But if others do not contribute enough to produce the good by themselves, and if the probability is very low that my costly contribution would make the difference between success and failure, once again I should not contribute.” Obviously, if we all reason in this way, we will not get the public good we want. Such problems of collective action have been noticed by philosophers since Plato. Their current nomenclature, rigorous game-theoretic formulation, empirical study, and systematic philosophical development, however, has occurred since 0. 

 

private language argument: Grice: “Oddly, for me there is a PUBLIC language argument!? Public comes from ‘popolo,’ and I would think that you need at least, to use Peacocke’s symbol, a population P of two – to speak of a ‘lingo’, but cf. my Gricese which I invent while lying on my bath – I’m the master!” -- an argument designed to show that there cannot be a language that only one person can speak  a language that is essentially private, that no one else can in principle understand. In addition to its intrinsic interest, the private language argument is relevant to discussions of linguistic rules and linguistic meaning, behaviorism, solipsism, and phenomenalism. The argument is closely associated with Vitters’s Philosophical Investigations 8. The exact structure of the argument is controversial; this account should be regarded as a standard one, but not beyond dispute. The argument begins with the supposition that a person assigns signs to sensations, where these are taken to be private to the person who has them, and attempts to show that this supposition cannot be sustained because no standards for the correct or incorrect application of the same sign to a recurrence of the same sensation are possible. Thus Vitters supposes that he undertakes to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation; he associates it with the sign ‘S’, and marks ‘S’ on a calendar every day he has that sensation. Vitters finds the nature of the association of the sign and sensation obscure, on the ground that ‘S’ cannot be given an ordinary definition this would make its meaning publicly accessible or even an ostensive definition. He further argues that there is no difference between correct and incorrect entries of ‘S’ on subsequent days. The initial sensation with which the sign ‘S’ was associated is no longer present, and so it cannot be compared with a subsequent sensation taken to be of the same kind. He could at best claim to remember the nature of the initial sensation, and judge that it is of the same kind as today’s. But since the memory cannot confirm its own accuracy, there is no possible test of whether he remembers the initial association of sign and sensation right today. Consequently there is no criterion for the correct reapplication of the sign ‘S’. Thus we cannot make sense of the notion of correctly reapplying ‘S’, and cannot make sense of the notion of a private language. The argument described appears to question only the claim that one could have terms for private mental occurrences, and may not seem to impugn a broader notion of a private language whose expressions are not restricted to signs for sensations. Advocates of Vitters’s argument would generalize it and claim that the focus on sensations simply highlights the absence of a distinction between correct and incorrect reapplications of words. A language with terms for publicly accessible objects would, if private to its user, still be claimed to lack criteria for the correct reapplication of such terms. This broader notion of a private language would thus be argued to be equally incoherent. 

 

privation: Grice: “I was trying to be witty when I enttilted my thing, “Negation and privation,” but I thought an empiricist approach would please my tutor!” -- H. P. Grice, “Negation and privation,” a lack of something that it is natural or good to possess. The term is closely associated with the idea that evil is itself only a lack of good, privatio boni. In traditional theistic religions everything other than God is created by God out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. Since, being perfect, God would create only what is good, the entire original creation and every creature from the most complex to the simplest are created entirely good. The original creation contains no evil whatever. What then is evil and how does it enter the world? The idea that evil is a privation of good does not mean, e.g., that a rock has some degree of evil because it lacks such good qualities as consciousness and courage. A thing has some degree of evil only if it lacks some good that is    741 privileged access privileged access 742 proper for that thing to possess. In the original creation each created thing possessed the goods proper to the sort of thing it was. According to Augustine, evil enters the world when creatures with free will abandon the good above themselves for some lower, inferior good. Human beings, e.g., become evil to the extent that they freely turn from the highest good God to their own private goods, becoming proud, selfish, and wicked, thus deserving the further evils of pain and punishment. One of the problems for this explanation of the origin of evil is to account for why an entirely good creature would use its freedom to turn from the highest good to a lesser good. 

 

privileged access: Grice: “One should take ‘privilegium’ etymologically seriously!” -- H. P. Grice, “Privileged access and incorrigibility,” special first-person awareness of the contents of one’s own mind. Since Descartes, many philosophers have held that persons are aware of the occurrent states of their own minds in a way distinct from both their mode of awareness of physical objects and their mode of awareness of the mental states of others. Cartesians view such apprehension as privileged in several ways. First, it is held to be immediate, both causally and epistemically. While knowledge of physical objects and their properties is acquired via spatially intermediate causes, knowledge of one’s own mental states involves no such causal chains. And while beliefs about physical properties are justified by appeal to ways objects appear in sense experience, beliefs about the properties of one’s own mental states are not justified by appeal to properties of a different sort. I justify my belief that the paper on which I write is white by pointing out that it appears white in apparently normal light. By contrast, my belief that white appears in my visual experience seems to be self-justifying. Second, Cartesians hold that first-person apprehension of occurrent mental contents is epistemically privileged in being absolutely certain. Absolute certainty includes infallibility, incorrigibility, and indubitability. That a judgment is infallible means that it cannot be mistaken; its being believed entails its being true even though judgments regarding occurrent mental contents are not necessary truths. That it is incorrigible means that it cannot be overridden or corrected by others or by the subject himself at a later time. That it is indubitable means that a subject can never have grounds for doubting it. Philosophers sometimes claim also that a subject is omniscient with regard to her own occurrent mental states: if a property appears within her experience, then she knows this. Subjects’ privileged access to the immediate contents of their own minds can be held to be necessary or contingent. Regarding corrigibility, for example, proponents of the stronger view hold that first-person reports of occurrent mental states could never be overridden by conflicting evidence, such as conflicting readings of brain states presumed to be correlated with the mental states in question. They point out that knowledge of such correlations would itself depend on first-person reports of mental states. If a reading of my brain indicates that I am in pain, and I sincerely claim not to be, then the law linking brain states of that type with pains must be mistaken. Proponents of the weaker view hold that, while persons are currently the best authorities as to the occurrent contents of their own minds, evidence such as conflicting readings of brain states could eventually override such authority, despite the dependence of the evidence on earlier firstperson reports. Weaker views on privileged access may also deny infallibility on more general grounds. In judging anything, including an occurrent mental state, to have a particular property P, it seems that I must remember which property P is, and memory appears to be always fallible. Even if such judgments are always fallible, however, they may be more immediately justified than other sorts of judgments. Hence there may still be privileged access, but of a weaker sort. In the twentieth century, Ryle attacked the idea of privileged access by analyzing introspection, awareness of what one is thinking or doing, in terms of behavioral dispositions, e.g. dispositions to give memory reports of one’s mental states when asked to do so. But while behaviorist or functional analyses of some states of mind may be plausible, for instance analyses of cognitive states such as beliefs, accounts in these terms of occurrent states such as sensations or images are far less plausible. A more influential attack on stronger versions of privileged access was mounted by Wilfrid Sellars. According to him, we must be trained to report non-inferentially on properties of our sense experience by first learning to respond with whole systems of concepts to public, physical objects. Before I can learn to report a red sense impression, I must learn the system of color concepts and the logical relations among them by learning to respond to colored objects. Hence, knowledge of my own mental states cannot be the firm basis from which I progress to other knowledge.  Even if this order of concept acquisition is determined necessarily, it still may be that persons’ access to their own mental states is privileged in some of the ways indicated, once the requisite concepts have been acquired. Beliefs about one’s own occurrent states of mind may still be more immediately justified than beliefs about physical properties, for example. 

 

pro attitude, a favorable disposition toward an object or state of affairs. Although some philosophers equate pro attitudes with desires, the expression is more often intended to cover a wide range of conative states of mind including wants, feelings, wishes, values, and principles. My regarding a certain course of action open to me as morally required and my regarding it as a source of selfish satisfaction equally qualify as pro attitudes toward the object of that action. It is widely held that intentional action, or, more generally, acting for reasons, is necessarily based, in part, on one or more pro attitudes. If I go to the store in order to buy some turnips, then, in addition to my regarding my store-going as conducive to turnip buying, I must have some pro attitude toward turnip buying. 

 

Probatum – Grice: “The etymology is fascinating.” Probabile: probability -- doomsday argument, an argument examined by Grice -- an argument associated chiefly with the mathematician Brandon Carter and the philosopher John Leslie purporting to show, by appeal to Bayes’s theorem and Bayes’s rule, that whatever antecedent probability we may have assigned to the hypothesis that human life will end relatively soon is magnified, perhaps greatly, upon our learning or noticing that we are among the first few score thousands of millions of human beings to exist.Leslie’s The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction 6. The argument is based on an allegedly close analogy between the question of the probability of imminent human extinction given our ordinal location in the temporal swath of humanity and the fact that the reader’s name being among the first few drawn randomly from an urn may greatly enhance for the reader the probability that the urn contains fairly few names rather than very many.  probability, a numerical value that can attach to items of various kinds e.g., propositions, events, and kinds of events that is a measure of the degree to which they may or should be expected  or the degree to which they have “their own disposition,” i.e., independently of our psychological expectations  to be true, to occur, or to be exemplified depending on the kind of item the value attaches to. There are both multiple interpretations of probability and two main kinds of theories of probability: abstract formal calculi and interpretations of the calculi. An abstract formal calculus axiomatically characterizes formal properties of probability functions, where the arguments of the function are often thought of as sets, or as elements of a Boolean algebra. In application, the nature of the arguments of a probability function, as well as the meaning of probability, are given by interpretations of probability. The most famous axiomatization is Kolmogorov’s Foundations of the Theory of Probability, 3. The three axioms for probability functions Pr are: 1 PrX M 0 for all X; 2 PrX % 1 if X is necessary e.g., a tautology if a proposition, a necessary event if an event, and a “universal set” if a set; and 3 PrX 7 Y % PrX ! PrY where ‘7’ can mean, e.g., logical disjunction, or set-theoretical union if X and Y are mutually exclusive X & Y is a contradiction if they are propositions, they can’t both happen if they are events, and their set-theoretical intersection is empty if they are sets. Axiom 3 is called finite additivity, which is sometimes generalized to countable additivity, involving infinite disjunctions of propositions, or infinite unions of sets. Conditional probability, PrX/Y the probability of X “given” or “conditional on” Y, is defined as the quotient PrX & Y/PrY. An item X is said to be positively or negatively statistically or probabilistically correlated with an item Y according to whether PrX/Y is greater than or less than PrX/-Y where -Y is the negation of a proposition Y, or the non-occurrence of an event Y, or the set-theoretical complement of a set Y; in the case of equality, X is said to be statistically or probabilistically independent of Y. All three of these probabilistic relations are symmetric, and sometimes the term ‘probabilistic relevance’ is used instead of ‘correlation’. From the axioms, familiar theorems can be proved: e.g., 4 Pr-X % 1  PrX; 5 PrX 7 Y % PrX ! PrY  PrX & Y for all X and Y; and 6 a simple version of Bayes’s theorem PrX/Y % PrY/XPrX/PrY. Thus, an abstract formal calculus of probability allows for calculation of the probabilities of some items from the probabilities of others. The main interpretations of probability include the classical, relative frequency, propensity, logical, and subjective interpretations. According to the classical interpretation, the probability of an event, e.g. of heads on a coin toss, is equal to the ratio of the number of “equipossibilities” or equiprobable events favorable to the event in question to the total number of relevant equipossibilities. On the relative frequency interpretation, developed by Venn The Logic of Chance, 1866 and Reichenbach The Theory of Probability, probability attaches to sets of events within a “reference class.” Where W is the reference class, and n is the number of events in W, and m is the number of events in or of kind X, within W, then the probability of X, relative to W, is m/n. For various conceptual and technical reasons, this kind of “actual finite relative frequency” interpretation has been refined into various infinite and hypothetical infinite relative frequency accounts, where probability is defined in terms of limits of series of relative frequencies in finite nested populations of increasing sizes, sometimes involving hypothetical infinite extensions of an actual population. The reasons for these developments involve, e.g.: the artificial restriction, for finite populations, of probabilities to values of the form i/n, where n is the size of the reference class; the possibility of “mere coincidence” in the actual world, where these may not reflect the true physical dispositions involved in the relevant events; and the fact that probability is often thought to attach to possibilities involving single events, while probabilities on the relative frequency account attach to sets of events this is the “problem of the single case,” also called the “problem of the reference class”. These problems also have inspired “propensity” accounts of probability, according to which probability is a more or less primitive idea that measures the physical propensity or disposition of a given kind of physical situation to yield an outcome of a given type, or to yield a “long-run” relative frequency of an outcome of a given type. A theorem of probability proved by Jacob Bernoulli Ars Conjectandi, 1713 and sometimes called Bernoulli’s theorem or the weak law of large numbers, and also known as the first limit theorem, is important for appreciating the frequency interpretation. The theorem states, roughly, that in the long run, frequency settles down to probability. For example, suppose the probability of a certain coin’s landing heads on any given toss is 0.5, and let e be any number greater than 0. Then the theorem implies that as the number of tosses grows without bound, the probability approaches 1 that the frequency of heads will be within e of 0.5. More generally, let p be the probability of an outcome O on a trial of an experiment, and assume that this probability remains constant as the experiment is repeated. After n trials, there will be a frequency, f n, of trials yielding outcome O. The theorem says that for any numbers d and e greater than 0, there is an n such that the probability P that _pf n_ ‹ e is within d of 1 P  1d. Bernoulli also showed how to calculate such n for given values of d, e, and p. It is important to notice that the theorem concerns probabilities, and not certainty, for a long-run frequency. Notice also the assumption that the probability p of O remains constant as the experiment is repeated, so that the outcomes on trials are probabilistically independent of earlier outcomes. The kinds of interpretations of probability just described are sometimes called “objective” or “statistical” or “empirical” since the value of a probability, on these accounts, depends on what actually happens, or on what actual given physical situations are disposed to produce  as opposed to depending only on logical relations between the relevant events or propositions, or on what we should rationally expect to happen or what we should rationally believe. In contrast to these accounts, there are the “logical” and the “subjective” interpretations of probability. Carnap “The Two Concepts of Probability,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5 has marked this kind of distinction by calling the second concept probability1 and the first probability2. According to the logical interpretation, associated with Carnap  Logical Foundations of Probability, 0; and Continuum of Inductive Methods, 2, the probability of a proposition X given a proposition Y is the “degree to which Y logically entails X.” Carnap developed an ingenious and elaborate set of systems of logical probability, including, e.g., separate systems depending on the degree to which one happens to be, logically and rationally, sensitive to new information in the reevaluation of probabilities. There is, of course, a connection between the ideas of logical probability, rationality, belief, and belief revision. It is natural to explicate the “logical-probabilistic” idea of the probability of X given Y as the degree to which a rational person would believe X having come to learn Y taking account of background knowledge. Here, the idea of belief suggests a subjective sometimes called epistemic or partial belief or degree of belief interpretation of probability; and the idea of probability revision suggests the concept of induction: both the logical and the subjective interpretations of probability have been called “inductive probability”  a formal apparatus to characterize rational learning from experience. The subjective interpretation of probability, according to which the probability of a proposition is a measure of one’s degree of belief in it, was developed by, e.g., Ramsey “Truth and Probability,” in his Foundations of Mathematics and Other Essays, 6; Definetti “Foresight: Its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources,” 7, translated by H. Kyburg, Jr., in H. E. Smokler, Studies in Subjective Probability, 4; and Savage The Foundations of Statistics, 4. Of course, subjective probability varies from person to person. Also, in order for this to be an interpretation of probability, so that the relevant axioms are satisfied, not all persons can count  only rational, or “coherent” persons should count. Some theorists have drawn a connection between rationality and probabilistic degrees of belief in terms of dispositions to set coherent betting odds those that do not allow a “Dutch book”  an arrangement that forces the agent to lose come what may, while others have described the connection in more general decision-theoretic terms. 

 

Problem – Grice: “The etymology is fascinating: why we attach a problem to a solution amazes me!” -- problem“ Grice: “Note that ‘problematic’ is relative for Kant’s four categories!” -- Philosophy is about problems”Grice. Problem of induction. First stated by Hume, this problem concerns the logical basis of inferences from observed matters of fact to unobserved matters of fact. Although discussion often focuses upon predictions of future events e.g., a solar eclipse, the question applies also to inferences to past facts e.g., the extinction of dinosaurs and to present occurrences beyond the range of direct observation e.g., the motions of planets during daylight hours. Long before Hume the ancient Skeptics had recognized that such inferences cannot be made with certainty; they realized there can be no demonstrative deductive inference, say, from the past and present to the future. Hume, however, posed a more profound difficulty: Are we justified in placing any degree of confidence in the conclusions of such inferences? His question is whether there is any type of non-demonstrative or inductive inference in which we can be justified in placing any confidence at all. According to Hume, our inferences from the observed to the unobserved are based on regularities found in nature. We believe, e.g., that the earth, sun, and moon move in regular patterns according to Newtonian mechanics, and on that basis astronomers predict solar and lunar eclipses. Hume notes, however, that all of our evidence for such uniformities consists of past and present experience; in applying these uniformities to the future behavior of these bodies we are making an inference from the observed to the unobserved. This point holds in general. Whenever we make inferences from the observed to the unobserved we rely on the uniformity of nature. The basis for our belief that nature is reasonably uniform is our experience of such uniformity in the past. If we infer that nature will continue to be uniform in the future, we are making an inference from the observed to the unobserved  precisely the kind of inference for which we are seeking a justification. We are thus caught up in a circular argument. Since, as Hume emphasized, much of our reasoning from the observed to the unobserved is based on causal relations, he analyzed causality to ascertain whether it could furnish a necessary connection between distinct events that could serve as a basis for such inferences. His conclusion was negative. We cannot establish any such connection a priori, for it is impossible to deduce the nature of an effect from its cause  e.g., we cannot deduce from the appearance of falling snow that it will cause a sensation of cold rather than heat. Likewise, we cannot deduce the nature of a cause from its effect  e.g., looking at a diamond, we cannot deduce that it was produced by great heat and pressure. All such knowledge is based on past experience. If we infer that future snow will feel cold or that future diamonds will be produced by great heat and pressure, we are again making inferences from the observed to the unobserved. Furthermore, if we carefully observe cases in which we believe a causeeffect relation holds, we cannot perceive any necessary connection between cause and effect, or any power in the cause that brings about the effect. We observe only that an event of one type e.g., drinking water occurs prior to and contiguously with an event of another type quenching thirst. Moreover, we notice that events of the two types have exhibited a constant conjunction; i.e., whenever an event of the first type has occurred in the past it has been followed by one of the second type. We cannot discover any necessary connection or causal power a posteriori; we can only establish priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction up to the present. If we infer that this constant conjunction will persist in future cases, we are making another inference from observed to unobserved cases. To use causality as a basis for justifying inference from the observed to the unobserved would again invovle a circular argument. Hume concludes skeptically that there can be no rational or logical justification of inferences from the observed to the unobserved  i.e., inductive or non-demonstrative inference. Such inferences are based on custom and habit. Nature has endowed us with a proclivity to extrapolate from past cases to future cases of a similar kind. Having observed that events of one type have been regularly followed by events of another type, we experience, upon encountering a case of the first type, a psychological expectation that one of the second type will follow. Such an expectation does not constitute a rational justification. Although Hume posed his problem in terms of homely examples, the issues he raises go to the heart of even the most sophisticated empirical sciences, for all of them involve inference from observed phenomena to unobserved facts. Although complex theories are often employed, Hume’s problem still applies. Its force is by no means confined to induction by simple enumeration. Philosophers have responded to the problem of induction in many different ways. Kant invoked synthetic a priori principles. Many twentieth-century philosophers have treated it as a pseudo-problem, based on linguistic confusion, that requires dissolution rather than solution. Carnap maintained that inductive intuition is indispensable. Reichenbach offered a pragmatic vindication. Goodman has recommended replacing Hume’s “old riddle” with a new riddle of induction that he has posed. Popper, taking Hume’s skeptical arguments as conclusive, advocates deductivism. He argues that induction is unjustifiable and dispensable. None of the many suggestions is widely accepted as correct.  problem of the criterion, a problem of epistemology, arising in the attempt both to formulate the criteria and to determine the extent of knowledge. Skeptical and non-skeptical philosophers disagree as to what, or how much, we know. Do we have knowledge of the external world, other minds, the past, and the future? Any answer depends on what the correct criteria of knowledge are. The problem is generated by the seeming plausibility of the following two propositions: 1 In order to recognize instances, and thus to determine the extent, of knowledge, we must know the criteria for it. 2 In order to know the criteria for knowledge i.e., to distinguish between correct and incorrect criteria, we must already be able to recognize its instances. According to an argument of ancient Grecian Skepticism, we can know neither the extent nor the criteria of knowledge because 1 and 2 are both true. There are, however, three further possibilities. First, it might be that 2 is true but 1 false: we can recognize instances of knowledge even if we do not know the criteria of knowledge. Second, it might be that 1 is true but 2 false: we can identify the criteria of knowledge without prior recognition of its instances. Finally, it might be that both 1 and 2 are false. We can know the extent of knowledge without knowing criteria, and vice versa. Chisholm, who has devoted particular attention to this problem, calls the first of these options particularism, and the second methodism. Hume, a skeptic about the extent of empirical knowledge, was a methodist. Reid and Moore were particularists; they rejected Hume’s skepticism on the ground that it turns obvious cases of knowledge into cases of ignorance. Chisholm advocates particularism because he believes that, unless one knows to begin with what ought to count as an instance of knowledge, any choice of a criterion is ungrounded and thus arbitrary. Methodists turn this argument around: they reject as dogmatic any identification of instances of knowledge not based on a criterion.  problem of the speckled hen: a problem propounded by Ryle as an objection to Ayer’s analysis of perception in terms of sense-data. It is implied by this analysis that, if I see a speckled hen in a good light and so on, I do so by means of apprehending a speckled sense-datum. The analysis implies further that the sense-datum actually has just the number of speckles that I seem to see as I look at the hen, and that it is immediately evident to me just how many speckles this is. Thus, if I seem to see many speckles as I look at the hen, the sense-datum I apprehend must actually contain many speckles, and it must be immediately evident to me how many it does contain. Now suppose it seems to me that I see more than 100 speckles. Then the datum I am apprehending must contain more than 100 speckles. Perhaps it contains 132 of them. The analysis would then imply, absurdly, that it must be immediately evident to me that the number of speckles is exactly 132. One way to avoid this implication would be to deny that a sense-datum of mine could contain exactly 132 speckles  or any other large, determinate number of them  precisely on the ground that it could never seem to me that I was seeing exactly that many speckles. A possible drawback of this approach is that it involves committing oneself to the claim, which some philosophers have found problem of the criterion problem of the speckled hen 747    747 self-contradictory, that a sense-datum may contain many speckles even if there is no large number n such that it contains n speckles. 

 

prodi: Grice: “While he likes semiotics, Prodi is the Italian C. L. Stevenson, who read English at Yale! No philosophy background!” -- Giorgio Prodi (Scandiano), filosofo. Figlio di Mario, ingegnere, ed Enrica, maestra, è il terzo di nove fratelli (tra cui anche il politico ed economista Romano, il fisico ed europarlamentare Vittorio, il matematico Giovanni, il fisico Franco e lo storico Paolo).  Si è laureato a Bologna, dove ha poi insegnato, dal 1958, Patologia Generale. In seguito gli fu affidata la prima cattedra di Oncologia dell'ateneo.Direttore dell'Istituto di Cancerologia di Bologna, di cui fu fondatore, e del progetto Biologia cellulare del Cnr, pubblicò anche diversi libri riguardo alla medicina ed alla biologia, sviluppando anche, congiuntamente a Thomas Sebeok e Thure von Uexküll, un approccio semiotico alla biologia negli anni Settanta e Ottanta.  Fece parte inoltre del Consiglio Superiore di Sanità della Commissione Oncologica del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione e fu consulente del Ministero per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica.  Con Il neutrone borghese, ha pubblicato anche alcuni romanzi e racconti, tra cui Lazzaro, biografia romanzata (con riflessi autobiografici) di Lazzaro Spallanzani, per cui è risultato "supervincitore" del Premio Grinzane Cavour e finalista al Premio Bergamo. L'ultimo libro è stato Il cane di Pavlov, uscito nell'anno stesso della sua morte di cancro, ma altri sono stati pubblicati postumi. Sono stati raccolti tutti nel volume L'opera narrativa,A Giorgio Prodi, l'Bologna ha dedicato il Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerche sul cancro nonché un'aula situata nel complesso di San Giovanni in Monte . Ogni anno, una conferenza della riunione annuale della Società Italiana di Cancerologia è dedicata a lui.   Pubblicazioni Scienza e potere, Il Mulino, Bologna, [s.d.] estr. da Il Mulino, La scienza, il potere, la critica, Il Mulino, Bologna, Oncologia sperimentale, Esculapio, Bologna, “Le basi materiali della significazione,” Bompiani, Milano, La biologia dei tumori, Casa editrice ambrosiana, Milano, “Soggettività e comportamento,” Giuliano Piazzi, prefazione di Giorgio Prodi, FrancoAngeli,  Orizzonti della genetica, Editoriale L'Espresso, Il neutrone borghese, Bompiani, Milano, Patologia Generale, con Giovanni Favilli, CEA, “La storia naturale della logica,” Bompiani, Milano, “L'uso estetico del linguaggio,” Il Mulino, Bologna, Lazzaro: il romanzo di un naturalista del '700, Camunia, Brescia, Oncologia generale, Esculapio, Bologna, Gli artifici della ragione, disegni di Cesare Paolantonio, Edizioni del Sole 24 ore, Milano, “Il cane di Pavlov,” Camunia, Brescia, Alla radice del comportamento morale, Marietti, Milano, Teoria e metodo in biologia e medicina, CLUEB, Bologna, L'individuo e la sua firma. Biologia e cambiamento antropologico, Il Mulino, Bologna, Il profeta, Camunia, Brescia, L'opera narrativa, introduzione di Elvio Guagnini, Diabasis, Reggio Emilia. Conferenza "Prodi" È morto ieri a Bologna Prodi, da Repubblica  Apprezzato anche da Giuseppe Dossetti, La parola e il silenzio. Discorsi e scritti  ed. Paoline,  in riferimento ad un articolo che si rifaceva ai "geni invisibili della città" di Guglielmo Ferrero. Sul sottotitolo (i “geni invisibili” della città) dell'opera Potere, v. Giampiero Buonomo, Titolo V e "forme di governo": il caso Abruzzo (dopo la Calabria), in Diritto e Giustizia on-line: RACCOLTA PREMIO NAZIONALE DI NARRATIVA BERGAMO, su legacy.bibliotecamai.org. Sito del Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerche sul cancro "Giorgio Prodi"  Brochure dell'Aula Prodi. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

 

Pro-latum -- participle for ‘pro-ferre,’ to utter. A much better choice than Austin’s pig-latin “utteratum”! Grice prefferd Latinate when going serious. While the verb is ‘proferothe participle corresponds to the ‘implicaturum’: what the emissor profers. profer (v.)c. 1300, "to utter, express," from Old French proferer (13c.) "utter, present verbally, pronounce," from Latin proferre "to bring forth, produce," figuratively "make known, publish, quote, utter." Sense confused with proffer. Related: Profered; profering.

 

Proc-cess – Grice: “I should have asked Whitehead what the etymology of pro-cess is, he was in love with the word!” -- process-product ambiguity, an ambiguity that occurs when a noun can refer either to a process or activity or to the product of that process or activity. E.g., ‘The definition was difficult’ could mean either that the activity of defining was a difficult one to perform, or that the definiens the form of words proposed as equivalent to the term being defined that the definer produced was difficult to understand. Again, ‘The writing absorbed her attention’ leaves it unclear whether it was the activity of writing or a product of that activity that she found engrossing. Philosophically significant terms that might be held to exhibit processproduct ambiguity include: ‘analysis’, ‘explanation’, ‘inference’, ‘thought’. P.Mac. process theology, any theology strongly influenced by the theistic metaphysics of Whitehead or Hartshorne; more generally, any theology that takes process or change as basic characteristics of all actual beings, including God. Those versions most influenced by Whitehead and Hartshorne share a core of convictions that constitute the most distinctive theses of process theology: God is constantly growing, though certain abstract features of God e.g., being loving remain constant; God is related to every other actual being and is affected by what happens to it; every actual being has some self-determination, and God’s power is reconceived as the power to lure attempt to persuade each actual being to be what God wishes it to be. These theses represent significant differences from ideas of God common in the tradition of Western theism, according to which God is unchanging, is not really related to creatures because God is not affected by what happens to them, and has the power to do whatever it is logically possible for God to do omnipotence. Process theologians also disagree with the idea that God knows the future in all its details, holding that God knows only those details of the future that are causally necessitated by past events. They claim these are only certain abstract features of a small class of events in the near future and of an even smaller class in the more distant future. Because of their understanding of divine power and their affirmation of creaturely self-determination, they claim that they provide a more adequate theodicy. Their critics claim that their idea of God’s power, if correct, would render God unworthy of worship; some also make this claim about their idea of God’s knowledge, preferring a more traditional idea of omniscience. Although Whitehead and Hartshorne were both philosophers rather than theologians, process theology has been more influential among theologians. It is a major current in contemporary  Protestant theology and has attracted the attention of some Roman Catholic theologians as well. It also has influenced some biblical scholars who are attempting to develop a distinctive process hermeneutics.

 

De-ductium, in-ductum, pro-ductum -- . production theory, the economic theory dealing with the conversion of factors of production into consumer goods. In capitalistic theories that assume ideal markets, firms produce goods from three kinds of factors: capital, labor, and raw materials. Production is subject to the constraint that profit the difference between revenues and costs be maximized. The firm is thereby faced with the following decisions: how much to produce, what price to charge for the product, what proportions to combine the three kinds of factors in, and what price to pay for the factors. In markets close to perfect competition, the firm will have little control over prices so the decision problem tends to reduce to the amounts of factors to use. The range of feasible factor combinations depends on the technologies available to firms. Interesting complications arise if not all firms have access to the same technologies, or if not all firms make accurate responses concerning technological changes. Also, if the scale of production affects the feasible technologies, the firms’ decision process must be subtle. In each of these cases, imperfect competition will result. Marxian economists think that the concepts used in this kind of production theory have a normative component. In reality, a large firm’s capital tends to be owned by a rather small, privileged class of non-laborers and labor is treated as a commodity like any other factor. This might lead to the perception that profit results primarily from capital and, therefore, belongs to its owners. Marxians contend that labor is primarily responsible for profit and, consequently, that labor is entitled to more than the market wage. 

 

Professum -- professional ethics, a term designating one or more of 1 the justified moral values that should govern the work of professionals; 2 the moral values that actually do guide groups of professionals, whether those values are identified as a principles in codes of ethics promulgated by professional societies or b actual beliefs and conduct of professionals; and 3 the study of professional ethics in the preceding senses, either i normative philosophical inquiries into the values desirable for professionals to embrace, or ii descriptive scientific studies of the actual beliefs and conduct of groups of professionals. Professional values include principles of obligation and rights, as well as virtues and personal moral ideals such as those manifested in the lives of Jane Addams, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood Marshall. Professions are defined by advanced expertise, social organizations, society-granted monopolies over services, and especially by shared commitments to promote a distinctive public good such as health medicine, justice law, or learning education. These shared commitments imply special duties to make services available, maintain confidentiality, secure informed consent for services, and be loyal to clients, employers, and others with whom one has fiduciary relationships. Both theoretical and practical issues surround these duties. The central theoretical issue is to understand how the justified moral values governing professionals are linked to wider values, such as human rights. Most practical dilemmas concern how to balance conflicting duties. For example, what should attorneys do when confidentiality requires keeping information secret that might save the life of an innocent third party? Other practical issues are problems of vagueness and uncertainty surrounding how to apply duties in particular contexts. For example, does respect for patients’ autonomy forbid, permit, or require a physician to assist a terminally ill patient desiring suicide? Equally important is how to resolve conflicts of interest in which self-seeking places moral values at risk. 

 

Provatum -- proof by recursion, also called proof by mathematical induction, a method for conclusively demonstrating the truth of universal propositions about the natural numbers. The system of natural numbers is construed as an infinite sequence of elements beginning with the number 1 and such that each subsequent element is the immediate successor of the preceding element. The immediate successor of a number is the sum of that number with 1. In order to apply this method to show that every number has a certain chosen property it is necessary to demonstrate two subsidiary propositions often called respectively the basis step and the inductive step. The basis step is that the number 1 has the chosen property; the inductive step is that the successor of any number having the chosen property is also a number having the chosen property in other words, for every number n, if n has the chosen property then the successor of n also has the chosen property. The inductive step is itself a universal proposition that may have been proved by recursion. The most commonly used example of a theorem proved by recursion is the remarkable fact, known before the time of Plato, that the sum of the first n odd numbers is the square of n. This proposition, mentioned prominently by Leibniz as requiring and having demonstrative proof, is expressed in universal form as follows: for every number n, the sum of the first n odd numbers is n2. 1 % 12, 1 ! 3 % 22, 1 ! 3 ! 5 % 32, and so on. Rigorous formulation of a proof by recursion often uses as a premise the proposition called, since the time of De Morgan, the principle of mathematical induction: every property belonging to 1 and belonging to the successor of every number to which it belongs is a property that belongs without exception to every number. Peano took the principle of mathematical induction as an axiom in his 9 axiomatization of arithmetic or the theory of natural numbers. The first acceptable formulation of this principle is attributed to Pascal.  proof theory, a branch of mathematical logic founded by David Hilbert in the 0s to pursue Hilbert’s Program. The foundational problems underlying that program had been formulated around the turn of the century, e.g., in Hilbert’s famous address to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris 0. They were closely connected with investigations on the foundations of analysis carried out by Cantor and Dedekind; but they were also related to their conflict with Kronecker on the nature of mathematics and to the difficulties of a completely unrestricted notion of set or multiplicity. At that time, the central issue for Hilbert was the consistency of sets in Cantor’s sense. He suggested that the existence of consistent sets multiplicities, e.g., that of real numbers, could be secured by proving the consistency of a suitable, characterizing axiomatic system; but there were only the vaguest indications on how to do that. In a radical departure from standard practice and his earlier hints, Hilbert proposed four years later a novel way of attacking the consistency problem for theories in Über die Grundlagen der Logik und der Arithmetik 4. This approach would require, first, a strict formalization of logic together with mathematics, then consideration of the finite syntactic configurations constituting the joint formalism as mathematical objects, and showing by mathematical arguments that contradictory formulas cannot be derived. Though Hilbert lectured on issues concerning the foundations of mathematics during the subsequent years, the technical development and philosophical clarification of proof theory and its aims began only around 0. That involved, first of all, a detailed description of logical calculi and the careful development of parts of mathematics in suitable systems. A record of the former is found in Hilbert and Ackermann, Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik 8; and of the latter in Supplement IV of Hilbert and Bernays, Grundlagen der Mathematik II 9. This presupposes the clear distinction between metamathematics and mathematics introduced by Hilbert. For the purposes of the consistency program metamathematics was now taken to be a very weak part of arithmetic, so-called finitist mathematics, believed to correspond to the part of mathematics that was accepted by constructivists like Kronecker and Brouwer. Additional metamathematical issues concerned the completeness and decidability of theories. The crucial technical tool for the pursuit of the consistency problem was Hilbert’s e-calculus. The metamathematical problems attracted the collaboration of young and quite brilliant mathematicians with philosophical interests; among them were Paul Bernays, Wilhelm Ackermann, John von Neumann, Jacques Herbrand, Gerhard Gentzen, and Kurt Schütte. The results obtained in the 0s were disappointing when measured against the hopes and ambitions: Ackermann, von Neumann, and Herbrand established essentially the consistency of arithmetic with a very restricted principle of induction. That limits of finitist considerations for consistency proofs had been reached became clear in 1 through Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Also, special cases of the decision problem for predicate logic Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem had been solved; its general solvability was made rather implausible by some of Gödel’s results in his 1 paper. The actual proof of unsolvability had to wait until 6 for a conceptual clarification of ‘mechanical procedure’ or ‘algorithm’; that was achieved through the work of Church and Turing. The further development of proof theory is roughly characterized by two complementary tendencies: 1 the extension of the metamathematical frame relative to which “constructive” consistency proofs can be obtained, and 2 the refined formalization of parts of mathematics in theories much weaker than set theory or even full second-order arithmetic. The former tendency started with the work of Gödel and Gentzen in 3 establishing the consistency of full classical arithmetic relative to intuitionistic arithmetic; it led in the 0s and 0s to consistency proofs of strong subsystems of secondorder arithmetic relative to intuitionistic theories of constructive ordinals. The latter tendency reaches back to Weyl’s book Das Kontinuum 8 and culminated in the 0s by showing that the classical results of mathematical analysis can be formally obtained in conservative extensions of first-order arithmetic. For the metamathematical work Gentzen’s introduction of sequent calculi and the use of transfinite induction along constructive ordinals turned out to be very important, as well as Gödel’s primitive recursive functionals of finite type. The methods and results of proof theory are playing, not surprisingly, a significant role in computer science. Work in proof theory has been motivated by issues in the foundations of mathematics, with the explicit goal of achieving epistemological reductions of strong theories for mathematical practice like set theory or second-order arithmetic to weak, philosophically distinguished theories like primitive recursive arithmetic. As the formalization of mathematics in strong theories is crucial for the metamathematical approach, and as the programmatic goal can be seen as a way of circumventing the philosophical issues surrounding strong theories, e.g., the nature of infinite sets in the case of set theory, Hilbert’s philosophical position is often equated with formalism  in the sense of Frege in his Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie 306 and also of Brouwer’s inaugural address Intuitionism and Formalism 2. Though such a view is not completely unsupported by some of Hilbert’s polemical remarks during the 0s, on balance, his philosophical views developed into a sophisticated instrumentalism, if that label is taken in Ernest Nagel’s judicious sense The Structure of Science, 1. Hilbert’s is an instrumentalism emphasizing the contentual motivation of mathematical theories; that is clearly expressed in the first chapter of Hilbert and Bernays’s Grundlagen der Mathematik I 4. A sustained philosophical analysis of proof-theoretic research in the context of broader issues in the philosophy of mathematics was provided by Bernays; his penetrating essays stretch over five decades and have been collected in Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Mathematik 6. 

 

Pro-pensum – Grice: “The pro- is a very interesting prefix – or profix, if you must!” cf. Pro-positio -- propensum -- propensity, an irregular or non-necessitating causal disposition of an object or system to produce some result or effect. Propensities are usually conceived as essentially probabilistic in nature. A die may be said to have a propensity of “strength” or magnitude 1 /6 to turn up a 3 if thrown from a dice box, of strength 1 /3 to turn up, say, a 3 or 4, etc. But propensity talk is arguably appropriate only when determinism fails. Strength is often taken to vary from 0 to 1. Popper regarded the propensity notion as a new physical or metaphysical hypothesis, akin to that of forces. Like Peirce, he deployed it to interpret probability claims about single cases: e.g., the probability of this radium atom’s decaying in 1,600 years is 1 /2. On relative frequency interpretations, probability claims are about properties of large classes such as relative frequencies of outcomes in them, rather than about single cases. But single-case claims appear to be common in quantum theory. Popper advocated a propensity interpretation of quantum theory. Propensities also feature in theories of indeterministic or probabilistic causation. Competing theories about propensities attribute them variously to complex systems such as chance or experimental set-ups or arrangements a coin and tossing device, to entities within such set-ups the coin itself, and to particular trials of such set-ups. Long-run theories construe propensities as dispositions to give rise to certain relative frequencies of, or probability distributions over, outcomes in long runs of trials, which are sometimes said to “manifest” or “display” the propensities. Here a propensity’s strength is identical to some such frequency. By contrast, single-case theories construe propensities as dispositions of singular trials to bring about particular outcomes. Their existence, not their strength, is displayed by such an outcome. Here frequencies provide evidence about propensity strength. But the two can always differ; they converge with a limiting probability of 1 in an appropriate long run. 

 

Uni-versus – Grice: Why did the Romans think of ‘all’ and ‘no’ as involving the ‘universe’? Surely they couldn’t be thinking of Venn’s ‘universe of discourse’!” Grice: “The actual antonym for proposition particularis would be propositio totalis, and I’ll be damned if Kneale does not produce a MS where ‘propositio totalis’ IS used!” --  propositio universalis: cf. substitutional account of universal quantification, referred to by Grice for his treatment of what he calls a Ryleian agitation caused by his feeling Byzantine. Vide inverted A. A proposition (protasis), then, is a sentence affirming or denying something of something; and this is either universal or particular or indefinite. By universal I mean a statement that something belongs to all or none of something; by particular that it belongs to some or not to some or not to all; by indefinite that it does or does not belong, without any mark of being universal or particular, e.g. ‘contraries are subjects of the same science’, or ‘pleasure is not good’. (Prior Analytics I, 1, 24a16–21.). propositional complexum: In logic, the first proposition of a syllogism (class.): “propositio est, per quem locus is breviter exponitur, ex quo vis omnis oportet emanet ratiocinationis,” Cic. Inv. 1, 37, 67; 1, 34, 35; Auct. Her. 2, 18, 28.— B. Transf. 1. A principal subject, theme (class.), Cic. de Or. 3, 53; Sen. Ben. 6, 7, 1; Quint. 5, 14, 1.— 2. Still more generally, a proposition of any kind (post-Aug.), Quint. 7, 1, 47, § 9; Gell. 2, 7, 21.—Do not expect Grice to use the phrase ‘propositional content,’ as Hare does so freely. Grices proposes a propositional complexum, rather, which frees him from a commitment to a higher-order calculus and the abstract entity of a feature or a proposition. Grice regards a proposition as an extensional family of propositional complexa (Paul saw Peter; Peter was seen by Paul). The topic of a propositional complex Grice regards as Oxonian in nature. Peacocke struggles with the same type of problems, in his essays on content. Only a perception-based account of content in terms of qualia gets the philosopher out of the vicious circle of appealing to a linguistic entity to clarify a psychological entity. One way to discharge the burden of giving an account of a proposition involves focusing on a range of utterances, the formulation of which features no connective or quantifier. Each expresses a propositional complexum which consists of a sequence simplex-1 and simplex-2, whose elements would be a set and an ordered sequence of this or that individuum which may be a member of the set. The propositional complexum ‘Fido is shaggy’ consists of a sequence of the set of shaggy individua and the singleton consisting of the individuum Fido. ‘Smith loves Fido’ is a propositional complexum, i. e., a sequence whose first element is the class “love” correlated to a two-place predicate) and a the ordered pair of the singletons Smith and Fido. We define alethic satisfactoriness. A propositional complexum is alethically satisfactory just in case the sequence is a member of the set. A “proposition” (prosthesis) simpliciter is defined as a family of propositional complexa. Family unity may vary in accordance with context.  proposition, an abstract object said to be that to which a person is related by a belief, desire, or other psychological attitude, typically expressed in language containing a psychological verb ‘think’, ‘deny’, ‘doubt’, etc. followed by a thatclause. The psychological states in question are called propositional attitudes. When I believe that snow is white I stand in the relation of believing to the proposition that snow is white. When I hope that the protons will not decay, hope relates me to the proposition that the protons will not decay. A proposition can be a common object for various attitudes of various agents: that the protons will not decay can be the object of my belief, my hope, and your fear. A sentence expressing an attitude is also taken to express the associated proposition. Because ‘The protons will not decay’ identifies my hope, it identifies the proposition to which my hope relates me. Thus the proposition can be the shared meaning of this sentence and all its synonyms, in English or elsewhere e.g., ‘die Protonen werden nicht zerfallen’. This, in sum, is the traditional doctrine of propositions. Although it seems indispensable in some form  for theorizing about thought and language, difficulties abound. Some critics regard propositions as excess baggage in any account of meaning. But unless this is an expression of nominalism, it is confused. Any systematic theory of meaning, plus an apparatus of sets or properties will let us construct proposition-like objects. The proposition a sentence S expresses might, e.g., be identified with a certain set of features that determines S’s meaning. Other sentences with these same features would then express the same proposition. A natural way to associate propositions with sentences is to let the features in question be semantically significant features of the words from which sentences are built. Propositions then acquire the logical structures of sentences: they are atomic, conditional, existential, etc. But combining the view of propositions as meanings with the traditional idea of propositions as bearers of truthvalues brings trouble. It is assumed that two sentences that express the same proposition have the same truth-value indeed, that sentences have their truth-values in virtue of the propositions they express. Yet if propositions are also meanings, this principle fails for sentences with indexical elements: although ‘I am pale’ has a single meaning, two utterances of it can differ in truth-value. In response, one may suggest that the proposition a sentence S expresses depends both on the linguistic meaning of S and on the referents of S’s indexical elements. But this reveals that proposition is a quite technical concept  and one that is not motivated simply by a need to talk about meanings. Related questions arise for propositions as the objects of propositional attitudes. My belief that I am pale may be true, yours that you are pale false. So our beliefs should take distinct propositional objects. Yet we would each use the same sentence, ‘I am pale’, to express our belief. Intuitively, your belief and mine also play similar cognitive roles. We may each choose the sun exposure, clothing, etc., that we take to be appropriate to a fair complexion. So our attitudes seem in an important sense to be the same  an identity that the assignment of distinct propositional objects hides. Apparently, the characterization of beliefs e.g. as being propositional attitudes is at best one component of a more refined, largely unknown account. Quite apart from complications about indexicality, propositions inherit standard difficulties about meaning. Consider the beliefs that Hesperus is a planet and that Phosphorus is a planet. It seems that someone might have one but not the other, thus that they are attitudes toward distinct propositions. This difference apparently reflects the difference in meaning between the sentences ‘Hesperus is a planet’ and ‘Phosphorus is a planet’. The principle would be that non-synonymous sentences express distinct propositions. But it is unclear what makes for a difference in meaning. Since the sentences agree in logico-grammatical structure and in the referents of their terms, their specific meanings must depend on some more subtle feature that has resisted definition. Hence our concept of proposition is also only partly defined. Even the idea that the sentences here express the same proposition is not easily refuted. What such difficulties show is not that the concept of proposition is invalid but that it belongs to a still rudimentary descriptive scheme. It is too thoroughly enmeshed with the concepts of meaning and belief to be of use in solving their attendant problems. This observation is what tends, through a confusion, to give rise to skepticism about propositions. One may, e.g., reasonably posit structured abstract entities  propositions  that represent the features on which the truth-values of sentences depend. Then there is a good sense in which a sentence is true in virtue of the proposition it expresses. But how does the use of words in a certain context associate them with a particular proposition? Lacking an answer, we still cannot explain why a given sentence is true. Similarly, one cannot explain belief as the acceptance of a proposition, since only a substantive theory of thought would reveal how the mind “accepts” a proposition and what it does to accept one proposition rather than another. So a satisfactory doctrine of propositions remains elusive.  propositional function, an operation that, when applied to something as argument or to more than one thing in a given order as arguments, yields a truth-value as the value of that function for that argument or those arguments. This usage presupposes that truth-values are objects. A function may be singulary, binary, ternary, etc. A singulary propositional function is applicable to one thing and yields, when so applied, a truth-value. For example, being a prime number, when applied to the number 2, yields truth; negation, when applied to truth, yields falsehood. A binary propositional function is applicable to two things in a certain order and yields, when so applied, a truth-value. For example, being north of when applied to New York and Boston in that order yields falsehood. Material implication when applied to falsehood and truth in that order yields truth. The term ‘propositional function’ has a second use, to refer to an operation that, when applied to something as argument or to more than one thing in a given order as arguments, yields a proposition as the value of the function for that argument or those arguments. For example, being a prime number when applied to 2 yields the proposition that 2 is a prime number. Being north of, when applied to New York and Boston in that order, yields the proposition that New York is north of Boston. This usage presupposes that propositions are objects. In a third use, ‘propositional function’ designates a sentence with free occurrences of variables. Thus, ‘x is a prime number’, ‘It is not the case that p’, ‘x is north of y’ and ‘if p then q’ are propositional functions in this sense. C.S. propositional justification. propositional opacity, failure of a clause to express any particular proposition especially due to the occurrence of pronouns or demonstratives. If having a belief about an individual involves a relation to a proposition, and if a part of the proposition is a way of representing the individual, then belief characterizations that do not indicate the believer’s way of representing the individual could be called propositionally opaque. They do not show all of the propositional elements. For example, ‘My son’s clarinet teacher believes that he should try the bass drum’ would be propositionally opaque because ‘he’ does not indicate how my son John’s teacher represents John, e.g. as his student, as my son, as the boy now playing, etc. This characterization of the example is not appropriate if propositions are as Russell conceived them, sometimes containing the individuals themselves as constituents, because then the propositional constituent John has been referred to. Generally, a characterization of a propositional    754 attitude is propositionally opaque if the expressions in the embedded clause do not refer to the propositional constituents. It is propositionally transparent if the expressions in the embedded clause do so refer. As a rule, referentially opaque contexts are used in propositionally transparent attributions if the referent of a term is distinct from the corresponding propositional constituent.

 

Proprium – Grice: “What IS the etymology of proprium’?” From ‘proprium’ you get the abstdract noun, “proprietas”as in “proprietates terminorum,” each one being a “proprietas”-- Latin, ‘properties of terms’, in medieval logic from the twelfth century on, a cluster of semantic properties possessed by categorematic terms. For most authors, these properties apply only when the terms occur in the context of a proposition. The list of such properties and the theory governing them vary from author to author, but always include 1 suppositio. Some authors add 2 appellatio ‘appellating’, ‘naming’, ‘calling’, often not sharply distinguishing from suppositio, the property whereby a term in a certain proposition names or is truly predicable of things, or in some authors of presently existing things. Thus ‘philosophers’ in ‘Some philosophers are wise’ appellates philosophers alive today. 3 Ampliatio ‘ampliation’, ‘broadening’, whereby a term refers to past or future or merely possible things. The reference of ‘philosophers’ is ampliated in ‘Some philosophers were wise’. 4 Restrictio ‘restriction’, ‘narrowing’, whereby the reference of a term is restricted to presently existing things ‘philosophers’ is so restricted in ‘Some philosophers are wise’, or otherwise narrowed from its normal range ‘philosophers’ in ‘Some Grecian philosophers were wise’. 5 Copulatio ‘copulation’, ‘coupling’, which is the type of reference adjectives have ‘wise’ in ‘Some philosophers are wise’, or alternatively the semantic function of the copula. Other meanings too are sometimes given to these terms, depending on the author. Appellatio especially was given a wide variety of interpretations. In particular, for Buridan and other fourteenth-century Continental authors, appellatio means ‘connotation’. Restrictio and copulatio tended to drop out of the literature, or be treated only perfunctorily, after the thirteenth century.  proprium: idion. See Nicholas White's "The Origin of Aristotle's Essentialism," Review of Metaphysics ~6. (September 1972): ... vice versa. The proprium is a necessary, but non-essential, property. ... Alan Code pointed this out to me. ' Does Aristotle ... The proprium is defined by the fact that it only holds of a particular subject or ... Of the appropriate answers some are more specific or distinctive (idion) and are in ... and property possession comes close to what Alan Code in a seminal paper ...  but "substance of" is what is "co-extensive (idion) with each thing" (1038b9); so ... by an alternative name or definition, and by a proprium) and the third which is ... Woods's idea (recently nicknamed "Izzing before Having" by Code and Grice) . As my chairmanship was winding down, I suggested to Paul Grice on one of his ... in Aristotle's technical sense of an idion (Latin proprium), i.e., a characteristic or feature ... Code, which, arguably, is part of the theory of Izzing and Having: D. Keyt. a proprium, since proprium belongs to the genus of accident. ... Similarly, Code claims (10): 'In its other uses the predicate “being'' signifies either “what ... Grice adds a few steps to show that the plurality of universals signified correspond ... Aristotle elsewhere calls an idion.353 If one predicates the genus in the absence of. has described it by a paronymous form, nor as a property (idion), nor ... terminology of Code and Grice.152 Thus there is no indication that they are ... (14,20-31) 'Genus' and 'proprium' (ἰδίου) are said homonymously in ten ways, as are. Ackrill replies to this line of argument (75) as follows: [I]t is perfectly clear that Aristotle’s fourfold classification is a classification of things and not names, and that what is ‘said of’ something as subject is itself a thing (a species or genus) and not a name. Sometimes, indeed, Aristotle will speak of ‘saying’ or ‘predicating’ a name of a subject; but it is not linguistic items but the things they signify which are ‘said of a subject’… Thus at 2a19 ff. Aristotle sharply distinguishes things said of subjects from the names of those things. This last argument seems persuasive on textual grounds. After all, τὰ καθ᾽ ὑποκειμένου λεγόμενα ‘have’ definitions and names (τῶν καθ᾽ υποκειμένου λεγομένων… τοὔνομα καὶ τὸν λὸγον, 2a19-21): it is not the case that they ‘are’ definitions and names, to adapt the terminology of Code and Grice.152 See A. Code, ‘Aristotle: Essence and Accident’, in Grandy and Warner (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality (Oxford, 1986), 411-39: particulars have their predicables, but Forms are their predicables. Thus there is no indication that they are linguistic terms in their own right.proprium, one of Porphyry’s five predicables, often tr. as ‘property’ or ‘attribute’; but this should not be confused with the broad modern sense in which any feature of a thing may be said to be a property of it. A proprium is a nonessential peculiarity of a species. There are no propria of individuals or genera generalissima, although they may have other uniquely identifying features. A proprium necessarily holds of all members of its species and of nothing else. It is not mentioned in a real definition of the species, and so is not essential to it. Yet it somehow follows from the essence or nature expressed in the real definition. The standard example is risibility the ability to laugh as a proprium of the species man. The real definition of ‘man’ is ‘rational animal’. There is no mention of any ability to laugh. Nevertheless anything that can laugh has both the biological apparatus to produce the sounds and so is an animal and also a certain wit and insight into humor and so is rational. Conversely, any rational animal will have both the vocal chords and diaphragm required for laughing since it is an animal, although the inference may seem too quick and also the mental wherewithal to see the point of a joke since it is rational. Thus any rational animal has what it takes to laugh. In short, every man is risible, and conversely, but risibility is not an essential feature of man.  property, roughly, an attribute, characteristic, feature, trait, or aspect. propensity property 751    751 Intensionality. There are two salient ways of talking about properties. First, as predicables or instantiables. For example, the property red is predicable of red objects; they are instances of it. Properties are said to be intensional entities in the sense that distinct properties can be truly predicated of i.e., have as instances exactly the same things: the property of being a creature with a kidney & the property of being a creature with a heart, though these two sets have the same members. Properties thus differ from sets collections, classes; for the latter satisfy a principle of extensionality: they are identical if they have the same elements. The second salient way of talking about properties is by means of property abstracts such as ‘the property of being F’. Such linguistic expressions are said to be intensional in the following semantical vs. ontological sense: ‘the property of being F’ and ‘the property of being G’ can denote different properties even though the predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ are true of exactly the same things. The standard explanation Frege, Russell, Carnap, et al. is that ‘the property of being F’ denotes the property that the predicate ‘F’ expresses. Since predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ can be true of the same things without being synonyms, the property abstracts ‘being F’ and ‘being G’ can denote different properties. Identity criteria. Some philosophers believe that properties are identical if they necessarily have the same instances. Other philosophers hold that this criterion of identity holds only for a special subclass of properties  those that are purely qualitative  and that the properties for which this criterion does not hold are all “complex” e.g., relational, disjunctive, conditional, or negative properties. On this theory, complex properties are identical if they have the same form and their purely qualitative constituents are identical. Ontological status. Because properties are a kind of universal, each of the standard views on the ontological status of universals has been applied to properties as a special case. Nominalism: only particulars and perhaps collections of particulars exist; therefore, either properties do not exist or they are reducible following Carnap et al. to collections of particulars including perhaps particulars that are not actual but only possible. Conceptualism: properties exist but are dependent on the mind. Realism: properties exist independently of the mind. Realism has two main versions. In rebus realism: a property exists only if it has instances. Ante rem realism: a property can exist even if it has no instances. For example, the property of being a man weighing over ton has no instances; however, it is plausible to hold that this property does exist. After all, this property seems to be what is expressed by the predicate ‘is a man weighing over a ton’. Essence and accident. The properties that a given entity has divide into two disjoint classes: those that are essential to the entity and those that are accidental to it. A property is essential to an entity if, necessarily, the entity cannot exist without being an instance of the property. A property is accidental to an individual if it is possible for the individual to exist without being an instance of the property. Being a number is an essential property of nine; being the number of the planets is an accidental property of nine. Some philosophers believe that all properties are either essential by nature or accidental by nature. A property is essential by nature if it can be an essential property of some entity and, necessarily, it is an essential property of each entity that is an instance of it. The property of being self-identical is thus essential by nature. However, it is controversial whether every property that is essential to something must be essential by nature. The following is a candidate counterexample. If this automobile backfires loudly on a given occasion, loudness would seem to be an essential property of the associated bang. That particular bang could not exist without being loud. If the automobile had backfired softly, that particular bang would not have existed; an altogether distinct bang  a soft bang  would have existed. By contrast, if a man is loud, loudness is only an accidental property of him; he could exist without being loud. Loudness thus appears to be a counterexample: although it is an essential property of certain particulars, it is not essential by nature. It might be replied echoing Aristotle that a loud bang and a loud man instantiate loudness in different ways and, more generally, that properties can be predicated instantiated in different ways. If so, then one should be specific about which kind of predication instantiation is intended in the definition of ‘essential by nature’ and ‘accidental by nature’. When this is done, the counterexamples might well disappear. If there are indeed different ways of being predicated instantiated, most of the foregoing remarks about intensionality, identity criteria, and the ontological status of properties should be refined accordingly. 

 

Prosona: personalismo, inter-personalismo -- Grice’s favoured spelling for ‘person’“seeing that it means a mask to improve sonorisation’ personalism, a Christian socialism stressing social activism and personal responsibility, the theoretical basis for the Christian workers’ Esprit movement begun in the 0s by Emmanuel Mounier 550, a Christian philosopher and activist. Influenced by both the religious existentialism of Kierkegaard and the radical social action called for by Marx and in part taking direction from the earlier work of Charles Péguy, the movement strongly opposed fascism and called for worker solidarity during the 0s and 0s. It also urged a more humane treatment of France’s colonies. Personalism allowed for a Christian socialism independent of both more conservative Christian groups and the Communist labor unions and party. Its most important single book is Mounier’s Personalism. The quarterly journal Esprit has regularly published contributions of leading  and international thinkers. Such well-known Christian philosophers as Henry Duméry, Marcel, Maritain, and Ricoeur were attracted to the movement. 

 

prospero: Michele Prospero (Pescosolido), filosofo. Si è laureato in Filosofia a Roma, discutendo una tesi su Kelsen. Professore a Roma. Autore di numerosi saggi, collabora con diverse riviste scientifiche e quotidiani., tra i quali soprattutto L'Unità.  I suoi interessi sono principalmente rivolti al sistema istituzionale italiano e al pensiero politico della sinistra. Inoltre, svolge attività di editorialista: le posizioni da lui espresse come analista politico sono state aspramente criticate dal giornalista  Travaglio, che lo ha accusato di "pagnottismo". Tra i punti di dissenso, vi è la posizione critica assunta da Prospero nei confronti della democrazia diretta, e nei confronti della fiducia riposta daTravaglio, e dal Movimento 5 stelle di Grillo, nella intrinseca infallibilità del giudizio espresso dagli elettori e del popolo della Rete.  Dal  fa parte della direzione nazionale di Sinistra Italiana ed è responsabile cultura del partito.   parziale La politica postclassica, Il nuovo inizio, Nostalgia della grande politica, La democrazia mediata, Sistemi politici e storia, Il pensiero politico della destra, Newton Compton, I sistemi politici europei, Newton Compton, Politica e vita buona, Euroma la Goliardica, Sinistra e cambiamento istituzionale, Storia delle istituzioni in Italia, Editori Riuniti, Il fallimento del maggioritario, La politica moderna. Teorie e profili istituzionali, Carocci,  Lo Stato in appalto. Berlusconi e la privatizzazione del Politico, Manni Editori, Politica e società globale, Laterza, L'equivoco riformista, Manni Editori, Alle origini del laico, FrancoAngeli, La costituzione tra populismo e leaderismo, FrancoAngeli, Filosofia del diritto di proprietà, FrancoAngeli, Perché la sinistra ha perso le elezioni, Prospero e Mario Morcellini, Ediesse, Il comico della politica, nichilismo e aziendalismo nella comunicazione di Berlusconi, Ediesse, . Il libro nero della società civile. Il nuovismo realizzato, Bordeaux edizioni, . La scienza politica di Gramsci, Bordeaux edizioni.  Elenco dei principali interventi di Prospero sulla stampa italiana, da "Rassegnacamera.it"  Addio al mito del capo, Il Manifesto, Contropotere del Quirinale, Left-avvenimenti, Caro Prodi, l'errore più grande della sinistra europea è stato dimenticare il lavoro, il manifesto, Bruno Gravagnuolo, Grillo, il travaglio di Marco nel duello tv con Prospero l'Unità  Gli organismi di Sinistra Italiana, da "Sinistraitaliana.si"  Sinistra Italiana rispolvera il Pci: nascono le nuove Frattocchie. Ma a Testaccio, da HuffingtonPost.it  Pagina Web del docente sul sito della SapienzaRoma, su coris.uniroma1.it.

 

Protocol: “The etymology is fascinatingif I knew it.”GriceGrice’s protocol. from Medieval Latin protocollum "draft," literally "the first sheet of a volume" (on which contents and errata were written), from Greek prōtokollon "first sheet glued onto a manuscript," from prōtos "first" (see proto-) + kolla "glue. -- one of the statements that constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. The term was introduced by proponents of foundationalism, who were convinced that in order to avoid the most radical skepticism, one must countenance beliefs that are justified but not as a result of an inference. If all justified beliefs are inferentially justified, then to be justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of another, E, one would have to be justified in believing both E and that E confirms P. But if all justification were inferential, then to be justified in believing E one would need to infer it from some other proposition one justifiably believes, and so on ad infinitum. The only way to avoid this regress is to find some statement knowable without inferring it from some other truth. Philosophers who agree that empirical knowledge has foundations do not necessarily agree on what those foundations are. The British empiricists restrict the class of contingent protocol statements to propositions describing the contents of mind sensations, beliefs, fears, desires, and the like. And even here a statement describing a mental state would be a protocol statement only for the person in that state. Other philosophers, however, would take protocol statements to include at least some assertions about the immediate physical environment. The plausibility of a given candidate for a protocol statement depends on how one analyzes non-inferential justification. Some philosophers rely on the idea of acquaintance. One is non-inferentially justified in believing something when one is directly acquainted with what makes it true. Other philosophers rely on the idea of a state that is in some sense self-presenting. Still others want to understand the notion in terms of the inconceivability of error. The main difficulty in trying to defend a coherent conception of non-inferential justification is to find an account of protocol statements that gives them enough conceptual content to serve as the premises of arguments, while avoiding the charge that the application of concepts always brings with it the possibility of error and the necessity of inference. 

 

Primum – The Greek for primum was prote, ‘prima philosophia,’ ‘prote philosophia’ -- prototype: a theory according to which human cognition involves the deployment of “categories” organized around stereotypical exemplars. Prototype theory differs from traditional theories that take the concepts with which we think to be individuated by means of boundary-specifying necessary and sufficient conditions. Advocates of prototypes hold that our concept of bird, for instance, consists in an indefinitely bounded conceptual “space” in which robins and sparrows are central, and chickens and penguins are peripheral  though the category may be differently organized in different cultures or groups. Rather than being all-ornothing, category membership is a matter of degree. This conception of categories was originally inspired by the notion, developed in a different context by Vitters, of family resemblance. Prototypes were first discussed in detail and given empirical credibility in the work of Eleanor Rosch see, e.g., “On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories,” 3. 

 

Prudents: “Grice: What IS the eetymology of ‘pru-dence’? prudens: practical reason: In “Epilogue” Grice states that the principle of conversational rationality is a sub-principle of the principle of rationality, simpliciter, which is not involved with ‘communication’ per se. This is an application of Occam’s razor: Rationalities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” This motto underlies his aequi-vocality thesis: one reason: desiderative side, judicative side. Literally, ‘practical reason’ is the buletic part of the soul (psyche) that deals with praxis, where the weighing is central. We dont need means-end rationality, we need value-oriented rationality. We dont need the rationality of the meansthis is obvious --. We want the rationality of the ends. The end may justify the means. But Grice is looking for what justifies the end. The topic of freedom fascinated Grice, because it merged the practical with the theoretical. Grice sees the conception of freedom as crucial in his elucidation of a rational being. Conditions of freedom are necessary for the very idea, as Kant was well aware. A thief who is forced to steal is just a thief. Grice would engage in a bit of language botany, when exploring the ways the adjective free is used, freely, in ordinary language: free fall, alcohol-free, sugar-free, and his favourite: implicaturum-free. Grices more systematic reflections deal with Pology, or creature construction. A vegetals, for example is less free than an animal, but more free than a stone! And Humans are more free than non-human. Grice wants to deal with some of the paradoxes identified by Kant about freedom, and he succeeds in solving some of them. There is a section on freedom in Action and events for PPQ  where he expands on eleutheria and notes the idiocy of a phrase like free fall. Grice was irritated by the fact that his friend Hart wrote an essay on liberty and not on freedom, cf. praxis. Refs.: essays on ‘practical reason,’ and “Aspects,” in BANC.

 

Missum – e-missum – mittente – trasmittente -- Trans-mission – trasmittente – ricevente -- ψ-transmissum. Or ‘soul-to-soul transfer’ “Before we study ‘psi’-transmission we should study ‘transmission’ simpliciter. It is cognate with ‘emission.’ In Italian, to send a message is ‘mandar un messagio,’ where ‘mandare’ is cognate with command, but etymologically handle, manus-dare. The idea is that the transmitter, trasmittente, or mittente, was a mandante, give the message in the hand of the recivente. So the emissor is a transmissor. And the emissee is a transemissee.  Grice would never have thougth that he had to lecture on what conversation is all about! He would never have lectured on this to his tutees at St. John’sbut at Brighton is all different. So, to communicate, for an emissor is to intend his recipient to be in a state with content “p.” The modality of the ‘state’desiderative or creditativeis not important. In a one-off predicament, the emissor draws a skull to indicate that there is danger. So his belief and desire were successfully transmitted. A good way to formulate the point of communication. Note that Grice is never sure about analsans and analysandum: Emissor communicates THAT P iff Emissor M-INTENDS THAT addressee is to psi- that P. Which seems otiose. “It is raining” can be INFORMATIVE, but it is surely INDICATIVE first. So it’s moke like the emissor intends his addressee to believe that he, the utterer believes that p (the belief itself NOT being part of what is meant, of course). So, there is psi-transmission not necessarily when the utterer convinces his addressee, but just when he gets his addressee to BELIEF that he, the utterer, psi-s that p. So the psi HAS BEEN TRANSMITTED. Surely when the Beatles say “HELP” they don’t expect that their addressee will need help. They intend their addressee to HELP them! Used by Grice in WoW: 287, and emphasised by J. Baker. The gist of communication. trans-mitto or trāmitto , mīsi, missum, 3, v. a. I. To send, carry, or convey across, over, or through; to send off, despatch, transmit from one place or person to another (syn.: transfero, traicio, traduco). A. Lit.: “mihi illam ut tramittas: argentum accipias,” Plaut. Ep. 3, 4, 27: “illam sibi,” id. ib. 1, 2, 52: “exercitus equitatusque celeriter transmittitur (i. e. trans flumen),” are conveyed across, Caes. B. G. 7, 61: “legiones,” Vell. 2, 51, 1: “cohortem Usipiorum in Britanniam,” Tac. Agr. 28: “classem in Euboeam ad urbem Oreum,” Liv. 28, 5, 18: “magnam classem in Siciliam,” id. 28, 41, 17: “unde auxilia in Italiam transmissurus erat,” id. 23, 32, 5; 27, 15, 7: transmissum per viam tigillum, thrown over or across, id. 1, 26, 10: “ponte transmisso,” Suet. Calig. 22 fin.: in partem campi pecora et armenta, Tac. A. 13, 55: “materiam in formas,” Col. 7, 8, 6.— 2. To cause to pass through: “per corium, per viscera Perque os elephanto bracchium transmitteres,” you would have thrust through, penetrated, Plaut. Mil. 1, 30; so, “ensem per latus,” Sen. Herc. Oet. 1165: “facem telo per pectus,” id. Thyest. 1089: “per medium amnem transmittit equum,” rides, Liv. 8, 24, 13: “(Gallorum reguli) exercitum per fines suos transmiserunt,” suffered to pass through, id. 21, 24, 5: “abies folio pinnato densa, ut imbres non transmittat,” Plin. 16, 10, 19, § 48: “Favonios,” Plin. Ep. 2, 17, 19; Tac. A. 13, 15: “ut vehem faeni large onustam transmitteret,” Plin. 36, 15, 24, § 108.— B. Trop. 1. To carry over, transfer, etc.: “bellum in Italiam,” Liv. 21, 20, 4; so, “bellum,” Tac. A. 2, 6: “vitia cum opibus suis Romam (Asia),” Just. 36, 4, 12: vim in aliquem, to send against, i. e. employ against, Tac. A. 2, 38.— 2. To hand over, transmit, commit: “et quisquam dubitabit, quin huic hoc tantum bellum transmittendum sit, qui, etc.,” should be intrusted, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 14, 42: “alicui signa et summam belli,” Sil. 7, 383: “hereditas transmittenda alicui,” to be made over, Plin. Ep. 8, 18, 7; and with inf.: “et longo transmisit habere nepoti,” Stat. S. 3, 3, 78 (analog. to dat habere, Verg. A. 9, 362; “and, donat habere,” id. ib. 5, 262); “for which: me famulo famulamque Heleno transmisit habendam,” id. ib. 3, 329: “omne meum tempus amicorum temporibus transmittendum putavi,” should be devoted, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 1, 1: “poma intacta ore servis,” Tac. A. 4, 54.— 3. To let go: animo transmittente quicquid acceperat, letting pass through, i. e. forgetting, Sen. Ep. 99, 6: “mox Caesarem vergente jam senectā munia imperii facilius tramissurum,” would let go, resign, Tac. A. 4, 41: “Junium mensem transmissum,” passed over, omitted, id. ib. 16, 12 fin.: “Gangen amnem et quae ultra essent,” to leave unconquered, Curt. 9, 4, 17: “leo imbelles vitulos Transmittit,” Stat. Th. 8, 596.— II. To go or pass over or across, to cross over; to cross, pass, go through, traverse, etc. A. Lit. 1. In gen. (α). Act.: “grues cum maria transmittant,” Cic. N. D. 2, 49, 125: “cur ipse tot maria transmisit,” id. Fin. 5, 29, 87; so, “maria,” id. Rep. 1, 3, 6: “satis constante famā jam Iberum Poenos transmisisse,” Liv. 21, 20, 9 (al. transisse): “quem (Euphratem) ponte,” Tac. A. 15, 7: “fluvium nando,” Stat. Th. 9, 239: “lacum nando,” Sil. 4, 347: “murales fossas saltu,” id. 8, 554: “equites medios tramittunt campos,” ride through, Lucr. 2, 330; cf.: “cursu campos (cervi),” run through, Verg. A. 4, 154: quantum Balearica torto Funda potest plumbo medii transmittere caeli, can send with its hurled bullet, i. e. can send its bullet, Ov. M. 4, 710: “tectum lapide vel missile,” to fling over, Plin. 28, 4, 6, § 33; cf.: “flumina disco,” Stat. Th. 6, 677.—In pass.: “duo sinus fuerunt, quos tramitti oporteret: utrumque pedibus aequis tramisimus,” Cic. Att. 16, 6, 1: “transmissus amnis,” Tac. A. 12, 13: “flumen ponte transmittitur,” Plin. Ep. 8, 8, 5.— (β). Neutr.: “ab eo loco conscendi ut transmitterem,” Cic. Phil. 1, 3, 7: “cum exercitus vestri numquam a Brundisio nisi summā hieme transmiserint,” id. Imp. Pomp. 12, 32: “cum a Leucopetrā profectus (inde enim tramittebam) stadia circiter CCC. processissem, etc.,” id. Att. 16, 7, 1; 8, 13, 1; 8, 11, 5: “ex Corsicā subactā Cicereius in Sardiniam transmisit,” Liv. 42, 7, 2; 32, 9, 6: “ab Lilybaeo Uticam,” id. 25, 31, 12: “ad vastandam Italiae oram,” id. 21, 51, 4; 23, 38, 11; 24, 36, 7: “centum onerariae naves in Africam transmiserunt,” id. 30, 24, 5; Suet. Caes. 58: “Cyprum transmisit,” Curt. 4, 1, 27. — Pass. impers.: “in Ebusum insulam transmissum est,” Liv. 22, 20, 7.—* 2. In partic., to go over, desert to a party: “Domitius transmisit ad Caesa rem,” Vell. 2, 84 fin. (syn. transfugio).— B. Trop. (post-Aug.). 1. In gen., to pass over, leave untouched or disregarded (syn praetermitto): “haud fas, Bacche, tuos taci tum tramittere honores,” Sil. 7, 162; cf.: “sententiam silentio, deinde oblivio,” Tac. H. 4, 9 fin.: “nihil silentio,” id. ib. 1, 13; “4, 31: aliquid dissimulatione,” id. A. 13, 39: “quae ipse pateretur,” Suet. Calig. 10; id. Vesp. 15. — 2. In partic., of time, to pass, spend (syn. ago): “tempus quiete,” Plin. Ep. 9, 6, 1: so, “vitam per obscurum,” Sen. Ep. 19, 2: steriles annos, Stat. S. 4, 2, 12: “aevum,” id. ib. 1, 4, 124: “quattuor menses hiemis inedia,” Plin. 8, 25, 38, § 94: “vigiles noctes,” Stat. Th. 3, 278 et saep. — Transf.: “febrium ardorem,” i. e. to undergo, endure, Plin. Ep. 1, 22, 7; cf. “discrimen,” id. ib. 8, 11, 2: “secessus, voluptates, etc.,” id. ib. 6, 4, 2

 

pseudo-hallucination, a non-deceptive hallucination. An ordinary hallucination might be thought to comprise two components: i a sensory component, whereby one experiences an image or sensory episode similar in many respects to a veridical perceiving except in being non-veridical; and ii a cognitive component, whereby one takes or is disposed to take the image or sensory episode to be veridical. A pseudohallucination resembles a hallucination, but lacks this second component. In experiencing a pseudohallucination, one appreciates that one is not perceiving veridically. The source of the term seems to be the painter Wassily Kandinsky, who employed it in 5 to characterize a series of apparently drug-induced images experienced and pondered by a friend who recognized them, at the very time they were occurring, not to be veridical. Kandinsky’s account is discussed by Jaspers in his General Psychopathology, 6, and thereby entered the clinical lore. Pseudohallucinations may be brought on by the sorts of pathological condition that give rise to hallucinations, or by simple fatigue, emotional adversity, or loneliness. Thus, a driver, late at night, may react to non-existent objects or figures on the road, and immediately recognize his error. 

 

Animatum -- Psychologia -- psycholinguistics, an interdisciplinary research area that uses theoretical descriptions of language taken from linguistics to investigate psychological processes underlying language production, perception, and learning. There is considerable disagreement as to the appropriate characterization of the field and the major problems. Philosophers discussed many of the problems now studied in psycholinguistics before either psychology or linguistics were spawned, but the self-consciously interdisciplinary field combining psychology and linguistics emerged not long after the birth of the two disciplines. Meringer used the adjective ‘psycholingisch-linguistische’ in an 5 book. Various national traditions of psycholinguistics continued at a steady but fairly low level of activity through the 0s and declined somewhat during the 0s and 0s because of the antimentalist attitudes in both linguistics and psychology. Psycholinguistic researchers in the USSR, mostly inspired by L. S. Vygotsky Thought and Language, 4, were more active during this period in spite of official suppression. Numerous quasi-independent sources contributed to the rebirth of psycholinguistics in the 0s; the most significant was a seminar held at a  during the summer of 3 that led to the publication of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems 4, edited by C. E. Osgood and T. A. Sebeok  a truly interdisciplinary book jointly written by more than a dozen authors. The contributors attempted to analyze and reconcile three disparate approaches: learning theory from psychology, descriptive linguistics, and information theory which came mainly from engineering. The book had a wide impact and led to many further investigations, but the nature of the field changed rapidly soon after its publication with the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics and the cognitive turn in psychology. The two were not unrelated: Chomsky’s positive contribution, Syntactic Structures, was less broadly influential than his negative review Language, 9 of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Against the empiricist-behaviorist view of language understanding and production, in which language is merely the exhibition of a more complex form of behavior, Chomsky argued the avowedly rationalist position that the ability to learn and use language is innate and unique to humans. He emphasized the creative aspect of language, that almost all sentences one hears or produces are novel. One of his premises was the alleged infinity of sentences in natural languages, but a less controversial argument can be given: there are tens of millions of five-word sentences in English, all of which are readily understood by speakers who have never heard them. Chomsky’s work promised the possibility of uncovering a very special characteristic of the human mind. But the promise was qualified by the disclaimer that linguistic theory describes only the competence of the ideal speaker. Many psycholinguists spent countless hours during the 0s and 0s seeking the traces of underlying competence beneath the untidy performances of actual speakers. During the 0s, as Chomsky frequently revised his theories of syntax and semantics in significant ways, and numerous alternative linguistic models were under consideration, psychologists generated a range of productive research problems that are increasingly remote from the Chomskyan beginnings. Contemporary psycholinguistics addresses phonetic, phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic influences on language processing. Few clear conclusions of philosophical import have been established. For example, several decades of animal research have shown that other species can use significant portions of human language, but controversy abounds over how central those portions are to language. Studies now clearly indicate the importance of word frequency and coarticulation, the dependency of a hearer’s identification of a sound as a particular phoneme, or of a visual pattern as a particular letter, not only on the physical features of the pattern but on the properties of other patterns not necessarily adjacent. Physically identical patterns may be heard as a d in one context and a t in another. It is also accepted that at least some of the human lignuistic abilities, particularly those involved in reading and speech perception, are relatively isolated from other cognitive processes. Infant studies show that children as young as eight months learn statistically important patterns characteristic of their natural language  suggesting a complex set of mechanisms that are automatic and invisible to us.

 

pucci: Francesco Pucci (Firenze), filosofo. Scrisse alcuni trattati dove ambiva a una religione universale di stampo utopistico e fu molto polemico contro le principali dottrine religiose dell'epoca, tanto da essere tacciato di eresia e giustiziato dall'Inquisizione romana.  Forse imparentato, come lui stesso sostenne, con la potente e ricca famiglia fiorentina dei Pucci, della quale fece parte, tra gli altri, il cardinale Antonio Pucci, da quella tuttavia non ne venne mai riconosciuto membro. Secondo quanto scrisse lui stesso, trovandosi a Lione per affari di commercio, fu colto da un improvviso «mutamento et cambiamento» che lo fece decidere a darsi allo studio delle «cose celesti ed eterne» e a scoprire i reali motivi dei contrasti religiosi che laceravano l'Europa.  A questo scopo, si trasferì a Parigi per studiare teologia e, avendo assistito personalmente alla strage degli Ugonotti nella notte di San Bartolomeo, decise di aderire alle tesi protestanti. Trasferitosi in Inghilterra, si iscrisse all'Oxford, ottenendo il titolo di Magister atrium. Controversie dottrinali gli procurarono l'espulsione dalla comunità calvinista francese alla quale aveva aderito in primavera: come scrisse al teologo svizzero Johann Jacob Grynaeus, vi aveva discusso del peccato originale e aveva altresì contestato l'autoritarismo del concistoro della comunità.  Quest'ultima gli rimproverava, oltre a importanti punti dottrinali come la concezione del peccato originale, della fede e dell'eucaristia, la sua pretesa di profetizzare, ricordandogli che, con la scomparsa dei primi apostoli, il carisma profetico non poteva più esistere in nessuna chiesa cristiana. Emigrato a Basilea nel 1577 su invito di Francesco Betti, v'incontrò Fausto Sozzini, ma pochi mesi dopo, espulso anche dalla città svizzera, fu costretto a tornare in Inghilterra, mantenendosi ancora in contatto epistolare col Sozzini.  La natura umana e il problema della salvezza Dapprima il Pucci pubblicò un manifesto, e poi scrisse in autunno a Niccolò Balbani, a Basilea, una lunga lettera in cui esponeva la sua teoria dell'innocenza naturale dell'uomo, già discussa col Sozzini, secondo la quale «tutti gli uomini nascono et restano innanzi all'uso della ragione e del giuditio». Grazie alla redenzione operata da Cristo, il peccato originale non può causare la dannazione quando siamo ancora nel grembo materno, e dunque il battesimo dei bambini, che sono «naturalmente» innocenti per la naturale bontà della natura umana, per quanto non censurabile, è inutile. L'eventualità della dannazione è un problema dell'adulto che, raggiunta l'età della ragione, è in grado di distinguere il bene dal male.  Si tratta di evidenti tesi pelagiane: l'uomo è buono per natura e a causa dell'amore di Dio verso il genere umano, che ha creato l'uomo di natura buona, si fonda la vera fede cristiana: «il fondamento della religione, et bontà vera, è propriamente la fidanza generale in Dio del cielo e della terra», una fiducia fondata sulla conoscenza di Dio che, secondo Pucci, è comune a tutti gli uomini, una fede che egli contrappone alla concezione della fede protestante, che consiste invece in una «fidanza particulare» che il singolo protestante ripone in Dio. È del resto la tesi sostenuta da Sozzini nel suo De Jesu Christo servatore.  Francesco Pucci sosteneva di aver tratto le proprie concezioni in virtù del dono dello Spirito Santo che, attraverso visioni, lo ispirava permettendogli di preconizzare il prossimo avvento del regno di Dio che avrebbe provocato la conversione di tutti i popoli, qualunque fosse la loro religione, sotto un'unica confessione cristiana. La redenzione operata da Cristo riguarda infatti tutti gli uomini, anche i non cristiani, perché esalta la loro naturale bontà: la salvezza non deve costituire un dubbio tormentoso ma è un obbiettivo che può essere raggiunto abbandonandosi con fiducia alla fede in Dio, è la fedenaturale che, prima della caduta, aveva Adamo, uomo naturale e immortale perché fatto a immagine e somiglianza di Dio nella mente e nello spirito. Affermata la bontà naturale della specie umana, ne discende che debba essere escluso tanto che il peccato originale si trasmetta nelle generazioni, quanto che possa esistere una predestinazionesemplice o doppia che sia, una per gli eletti e una per i dannatistabilita ab aeterno.  Sozzini rispose al Pucci con il De statu primi hominis ante lapsum, obiettando che la somiglianza di Adamo con Dio risiedeva nel fatto di essere il dominatore di tutte le cose della natura, e non nella sua immortalità, e se Adamo, l'essere naturale per eccellenza, finì col peccare, ciò dimostra che non era affatto innocente, visto che egli peccò per sua libera scelta. La natura dell'uomo attuale non è diversa da quella adamitica, la sua salvezza risiede nella sua volontà di scegliere il bene, ed è sulla sua libera volontà, non sulla sua natura, che si fonda la sua etica.  La Forma d'una Republica Catholica Dopo un breve periodo passato in Olanda, a Londra scrisse nel 1581 la sua opera principale, la Forma d'una repubblica cattolica, che pubblicò in forma anonima.. Per porre rimedio alla confusione e agli scandali regnante nel cristianesimo, sarebbe necessario «un libero e santo concilio al quale si vede che tutti gli uomini da bene di tutte le province inclinano», ma che viene rifiutato dai potenti prelati che oggi comandano «non solo nella religione, ma anche nella repubblica».  Per preparare questo futuro concilio, è necessario che gli uomini dabbene, all'interno di ogni singolo stato, si organizzino in un'unione, in un «collegio» o comunità nella quale essi si governino secondo comuni principi, senza «alienarsi da i loro principi e magistrati civili» e senza entrare in polemica contro la confessione religiosa vigente; questi uomini, infatti, «d'animo et tal volta anche di corpo alienato da gli ordini et usanze di quelle repubbliche nelle quali è sono nati et allevati, conviene ch'e' vivino come forestieri nel loro natio terreno, o forastieri interamente per gli altrui paesi, è necessario ch'e' si portino molto saviamente e discretamente con i principi e magistrati de' luoghi dove essi habitano».  Si tratta di un'aperta giustificazione del nicodemismo, seppure teorizzata come mezzo provvisorio allo scopo di raggiungere un fine superiore nell'interesse di tutti i cristiani. L'insieme di questi collegi avrebbe formato di fatto una repubblica cattolica, cioè universale, che, con l'esempio dei retti comportamenti dei suoi aderenti, avrebbe col tempo acquisito il consenso della grande maggioranza della popolazione di ogni singolo stato, promuovendo così il rinnovamento dei costumi e delle diverse confessioni, fino a rifondare un'unica religione cristiana.  Gli elementi essenziali di questa rinnovata e unificata religione dovranno essere la fede «in un solo Dio del cielo e della terra, creatore et governatore dello Universo», nel Cristo morto e risorto per redimerci, nella giustizia divina che premia i buoni e punisce i malvagi, la testimonianza degli Apostoli, il rispetto dei dieci comandamenti, l'«orazione domenicale» e le opere di carità. Tutte le questioni dottrinarie che storicamente dividevano le confessioni cristiane sono sfumate dal Pucci, che vuole che sui problemi del battesimo, dell'eucaristia, della Trinità e dell'incarnazione non si utilizzino sottigliezze e non si creino divisioni.  I membri di queste comunità dovranno essere tutti gli uomini maggiorenni e laicigli ecclesiastici, infatti, sono evidentemente incapaci di superare le divisioni che essi stessi hanno creatoorganizzati sotto un capo temporaneo, «provosto o console», assistito da un «censore», che non deve avere alcun'autorità particolare, ma dovrà proporre le risoluzioni da approvare all'unanimità nell'assemblea generale dei membri: quando non vi fosse unanimità, si deciderà a sorte fra le diverse opzioni. Le donne, dovendo essere sottoposte ai mariti, possono assistere ma non possono avere alcun'autorità né diritto di voto.  Il collegio aveva anche il potere di punire le cattive condotte dei singoli membri, sino all'espulsione. Le diverse comunità si sarebbero tenute in contatto epistolarea questo scopo era costituito l'incarico di un cancellieree, attraverso delegati, si sarebbero riunite in diete da tenersi periodicamente nelle terre «di qualche gentilhomo o signore» aderente a un collegio di una delle maggiori città europee «come Francoforte, Lione, Parigi et simili», perché qui i convenuti alla dieta sarebbero passati inosservati più facilmente.  Se gli aderenti ai collegi devono manifestare un formale ossequio alle autorità costituite, essi devono anche proporre una sia pur cauta propaganda per far guadagnare alla comunità nuove adesioni: ciascuno deve mantenere il segreto della sua attività tramite giuramento, essere amico dei compagni e nemico di chi è loro nemico. Per saldare insieme i "fratelli", è opportuno che essi si sposino nello stesso ambiente, con donne «sane e gagliarde» per averne una buona discendenza, evitando però rapporti sessuali frequenti che, secondo il Pucci, sono nocivi alla salute fisica degli uomini e a quella morale delle donne. Nella famiglia, il padre riveste il ruolo di capo e di sacerdote laico: battezza egli stesso i figli in età audulta, i quali dovranno crescere in una decorosa austerità, studiando nelle scuole consigliate dalla comunità ed evitando carriere immorali, come quella ecclesiastica o avvocatesca. Fu a Cracovia, dove incontrò Fausto Sozzini e altri dissidenti religiosi. Le sue idee però non trovarono successo in nessuna confessione calvinista o luterana, né fra gli anabattisti e i sociniani. In compenso qui conobbe il mago e astrologo inglese John Dee, con il quale si recò a Praga alla corte di Rodolfo II. Anche qui la sua indole (John Dee lo descrisse come pericolosamente chiacchierone e utopico) non venne accolta positivamente e deluso dai protestanti si riconvertì al cattolicesimo (forse dopo un incontro con il cardinale Ippolito Aldobrandini, futuro papa Clemente VIII).  In Olanda lavorò alla sua ultima opera, il trattato De Christi servatoris efficacitate in omnibus et singulis hominibus (L'efficacia salvifica del Cristo in tutti e in ogni uomo del 1592), dedicato al neo eletto pontefice Clemente VIII. Qui riassunse e sviluppò tutte le sue teorie su una Chiesa universale ed ecumenica: secondo lui ogni uomo aveva il diritto di professare una Chiesa di Cristo, e Dio, grazie al suo amore universale per l'intera umanità, doveva aiutare ad abbattere le barriere che separavano le chiese. Una volta pubblicata l'opera egli volle andare a Roma per presentarla la papa stesso, ma venne catturato a Salisburgo dall'Inquisizione e condotto in carcere a Roma, dove conobbe Bruno e Campanella. Venne condannato a morte per eresia, decapitato e poi bruciato sul rogo a Campo de' Fiori  Il "puccismo" però gli sopravvisse nella Chiesa luterana grazie al pastore Samuel Huber.  Note  Francesco Pucci, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.   Lettera in A. Rotondò, Studi e ricerche di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento  F. Pucci, Lettere, documenti e testimonianze  In D. Cantimori, Per la storia degli eretici italiani del secolo XVI in Europa  Lucia Felici, La riforma protestante nell'Europa del cinquecento, Carocci editore Opere Lettere, documenti e testimonianze, Luigi Firpo e Renato Piattoli, Firenze, Olschki, De praedestinatione, Firenze, Olschki,  Studi Cesare Cantù, Gli eretici d'Italia, Torino, Unione Tipografico-Editrice. Per la storia degli eretici italiani del secolo XVI in Europa, D. Cantimori ed E. Feist, Roma, Reale Accademia d'Italia, Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, Firenze, Sansoni, Antonio Rotondò, Studi e ricerche di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento, Torino, Giappichelli, Élie BarnaviMiriam Eliav-Feldon, Le périple de Francesco Pucci, Paris, Hachette, Roberta Lorenzetti, Una disputa di antropologia filosofica sul primo uomo. Francesco Pucci di fronte al naturalismo di Fausto Sozzini, Milano, Cusl, Paolo Carta, Nunziature ed eresia nel Cinquecento. Nuovi documenti sul processo e la condanna di Francesco Pucci Padova, Cedam, 1999 Censura ecclesiastica e cultura politica in Italia tra Cinquecento e Seicento, C. Stango, Firenze Giorgio Caravale, Il profeta disarmato. L'eresia di Francesco Pucci nell'Europa del Cinquecento, Bologna, Il Mulino,  Mario Biagioni, Francesco Pucci e l'Informatione della religione christiana, Torino, Claudiana,  Vincenzo Vozza, Pucci e l’Informatione della religione christiana, in «Nuova Rivista Storica», n Giorgio Caravale, Francesco Pucci's Heresy in Sixteenth-Century Europe, Leiden-Boston, Brill,   Francesco Pucci, su Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Opere su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Opere di Francesco Pucci, eresie.it, su eresie.it.

 

puccinotti: Francesco Puccinotti (Urbino), filosofo. Dopo aver studiato presso gli Scolopi, venne ammesso nel Collegio militare di Pavia. Si trasferì poi a Roma dove si dedicò allo studio della medicina seguendo le lezioni del noto clinic Mattheys. Dopo essersi laureato in medicina, praticò la medicina nelle campagne laziali, studiando le febbri di tipo petecchiale che imperversavano in quella zona. Per i suoi studi ottenne la cattedra di Anatomia e fisiologia ad Urbino, per poi insegnare Patologia e medicina legale a Macerata fino a quando, dopo aver preso parte ai moti delle Legazioni, venne allontanato dalla città e gli fu impedito di esercitare la professione medica. Si spostò quindi nella più liberale Toscana dove ottenne la cattedra di Igiene nell'Pisa. Qui approfondì il suo studio sulla medicina civile e si rese protagonista di molti dibattiti culturali e scientifici presso la locale Università (fu segretario della sezione di medicina ai congressi pisani e fiorentini degli scienziati italiani).  Nel 1843 il Granduca Leopoldo II di Toscana lo inserì in una commissione incaricata di studiare l'ipotesi di introdurre sul litorale pisano le risaie, dal punto di vista della medicina civile. Espose le sue analisi nel saggio Sulle risaie in Italia e sulla loro introduzione in Toscana dello stesso anno 1843: conclusioni che saranno alla base del Regolamento sulla cultura del riso in Toscana del settembre 1849. Negli ultimi anni trascorsi a Pisa ottenne la cattedra di Storia della medicina, che mantenne anche al suo trasferimento a Firenze. In questi anni conobbe Pietro Siciliani, suo allievo, col quale mantenne un costante rapporto di amicizia e collaborazione. Morì a Firenze e per i suoi meriti fu sepolto nella Basilica di Santa Croce.  Puccinotti fu uno storico della medicina, ma altri sono gli aspetti della sua complessa personalità: fu fisiologo, clinico, medico legale, letterato (fraterna amicizia con Leopardi), filosofo, sociologo e politico. La sua vita si svolse tra le conquiste napoleoniche e la proclamazione di Roma capitale, periodo di profonde divisioni ideologiche. Non è da trascurare il merito di aver sostenuto la necessità di una protezione medica dei lavoratori e di aver indicato il futuro della medicina nel suo sviluppo igienico e sociale.  Opere: “Storia delle febbri intermittenti perniciose, (Roma). Il Boezio ed altri scritti filosofici, (Firenze); Storia della medicina  (Firenze). Adalberto Pazzini, Dizionario Letterario Bompiani. Autori, III, Milano, Valentino Bompiani editore, Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it, Sistema Informativo Unificato per le Soprintendenze Archivistiche.  accademicidellacrusca.org, Accademia della Crusca.  Opere su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl.

 

pulchrum – Grice: “In Italian, it’s pulcro.” -- beauty, an aesthetic property commonly thought of as a species of aesthetic value. As such, it has been variously thought to be 1 a simple, indefinable property that cannot be defined in terms of any other properties; 2 a property or set of properties of an object that makes the object capable of producing a certain sort of pleasurable experience in any suitable perceiver; or 3 whatever produces a particular sort of pleasurable experience,  even though what produces the experience may vary from individual to individual. It is in this last sense that beauty is thought to be “in the eye of the beholder.” If beauty is a simple, indefinable property, as in 1, then it cannot be defined conceptually and has to be apprehended by intuition or taste. Beauty, on this account, would be a particular sort of aesthetic property. If beauty is an object’s Bayle, Pierre beauty 75   75 capacity to produce a special sort of pleasurable experience, as in 2, then it is necessary to say what properties provide it with this capacity. The most favored candidates for these have been formal or structural properties, such as order, symmetry, and proportion. In the Philebus Plato argues that the form or essence of beauty is knowable, exact, rational, and measurable. He also holds that simple geometrical shapes, simple colors, and musical notes all have “intrinsic beauty,” which arouses a pure, “unmixed” pleasure in the perceiver and is unaffected by context. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many treatises were written on individual art forms, each allegedly governed by its own rules. In the eighteenth century, Hutcheson held that ‘beauty’ refers to an “idea raised in us,” and that any object that excites this idea is beautiful. He thought that the property of the object that excites this idea is “uniformity in variety.” Kant explained the nature of beauty by analyzing judgments that something is beautiful. Such judgments refer to an experience of the perceiver. But they are not merely expressions of personal experience; we claim that others should also have the same experience, and that they should make the same judgment i.e., judgments that something is beautiful have “universal validity”. Such judgments are disinterested  determined not by any needs or wants on the part of the perceiver, but just by contemplating the mere appearance of the object. These are judgments about an object’s free beauty, and making them requires using only those mental capacities that all humans have by virtue of their ability to communicate with one another. Hence the pleasures experienced in response to such beauty can in principle be shared by anyone. Some have held, as in 3, that we apply the term ‘beautiful’ to things because of the pleasure they give us, and not on the basis of any specific qualities an object has. Archibald Alison held that it is impossible to find any properties common to all those things we call beautiful. Santayana believed beauty is “pleasure regarded as a quality of a thing,” and made no pretense that certain qualities ought to produce that pleasure. The Grecian term to kalon, which is often tr. as ‘beauty’, did not refer to a thing’s autonomous aesthetic value, but rather to its “excellence,” which is connected with its moral worth and/or usefulness. This concept is closer to Kant’s notion of dependent beauty, possessed by an object judged as a particular kind of thing such as a beautiful cat or a beautiful horse, than it is to free beauty, possessed by an object judged simply on the basis of its appearance and not in terms of any concept of use

 

castigo -- punishment, a distinctive form of legal sanction, distinguished first by its painful or unpleasant nature to the offender, and second by the ground on which the sanction is imposed, which must be because the offender offended against the norms of a society. None of these three attributes is a strictly necessary condition for proper use of the word ‘punishment’. There may be unpleasant consequences visited by nature upon an offender such that he might be said to have been “punished enough”; the consequences in a given case may not be unpleasant to a particular offender, as in the punishment of a masochist with his favorite form of self-abuse; and punishment may be imposed for reasons other than offense against society’s norms, as is the case with punishment inflicted in order to deter others from like acts. The “definitional stop” argument in discussions of punishment seeks to tie punishment analytically to retributivism. Retributivism is the theory that punishment is justified by the moral desert of the offender; on this view, a person who culpably does a wrongful action deserves punishment, and this desert is a sufficient as well as a necessary condition of just punishment. Punishment of the deserving, on this view, is an intrinsic good that does not need to be justified by any other good consequences such punishment may achieve, such as the prevention of crime. Retributivism is not to be confused with the view that punishment satisfies the feelings of vengeful citizens nor with the view that punishment preempts such citizens from taking the law into their own hands by vigilante action  these latter views being utilitarian. Retributivism is also not the view sometimes called “weak” or “negative” retributivism that only the deserving are to be punished, for desert on such a view typically operates only as a limiting and not as a justifying condition of punishment. The thesis known as the “definitional stop” says that punishment must be retributive in its justification if it is to be punishment at all. Bad treatment inflicted in order to prevent future crime is not punishment but deserves another name, usually ‘telishment’. The dominant justification of non-retributive punishment or telishment is deterrence. The good in whose name the bad of punishing is justified, on this view, is prevention of future criminal acts. If punishment is inflicted to prevent the offender from committing future criminal acts, it is styled “specific” or “special” deterrence; if punishment is inflicted to prevent others from committing future criminal acts, it is styled “general” deterrence. In either case, punishment of an action is justified by the future effect of that punishment in deterring future actors from committing crimes. There is some vagueness in the notion of deterrence because of the different mechanisms by which potential criminals are influenced not to be criminals by the example of punishment: such punishment may achieve its effects through fear or by more benignly educating those would-be criminals out of their criminal desires.

 

punzo: Giorgio Punzo (Napoli), filosofo. Laureatosi a  Napoli con una tesi su Kant alla luce della dottrina tomistica, decise di continuare i suoi studi. Tuttavia per accedere alla Facoltà di Scienze dovette diplomarsi come privatista npresso il Liceo classico Giuseppe Garibaldi di Napoli poiché avendo fino ad allora frequentato solo scuole e istituti universitari ecclesiastici, non possedeva ancora una licenza liceale valida per lo Stato italiano. Si laureò a pieni voti in Scienze Naturali, con una tesi in erpetologia sul sistema nervoso dei serpenti. Vinse i concorsi per assistente di ruolo di anatomia comparata e d'insegnante di ruolo di Scienze Naturali nei licei. In un primo tempo scelse la vita accademica che però abbandonò per dedicarsi all'insegnamento scolastico. Si laureò anche in filosofia, con una tesi sulla morale nelle Lettere di Paolo.  Fondò la Lega Nazionale Contro la Distruzione degli Uccelli, poi divenuta la LIPU e, successivamente, l'associazione culturale "Unione trifoglio" (di cui pubblicò anche una rivista trimestrale dal titolo Il Trifoglio).  Visse per circa vent'anni sull'isolotto disabitato di Vivara (Procida, NA) contribuendo a preservarlo da possibili scempi e tutelandone il patrimonio ambientale. Per il suo impegno a favore di Vivara ricevette  il "Premio Mediterraneo" conferitogli da un'agenzia dell'ONU.  PStudioso e pensatore dai molteplici interessi che spaziarono dalla Commedia dantesca, alla botanica, all'ornitologia e alla zoologia, fu anche un profondo conoscitore del latino. Dedicò gran parte della sua vita intellettuale alla filosofia. Per Punzo la pedagogia costituisce uno dei compiti più importanti al quale una società deve adempiere poiché l'educazione delle giovani generazioni e, in particolare, dell’adolescente, rapresenta il punto fondativo di ogni aggregato umano. In tale prospettiva il "fanciullo", per potersi sviluppare al meglio, deve essere educato al bello attraverso la contemplazione della natura e dell'arte. Il suo pensiero ebbe come culmine la definizione del concetto di "Religioso Assoluto", inteso come elemento distintivo della spiritualità umana poiché capace di definire l'identità dell'individuo rispetto alle altre forme di vita.   Nota sull'episodio dantesco di Brunetto Latini, Napoli, Ed. Carlo Martello, Contributo per un superamento dei tradizionali schemi sessuologici, Napoli, Tip. G. Genovese, Nuovo contributo per un superamento dei tradizionali schemi sessuologici, Napoli, Ed. Carlo Martello, “Lettere erotologiche,”  Napoli, Ed. Carlo Martello, “Dialogo dell'amore olarrenico,” Napoli, Ed. Carlo Martello, L'altro viaggio, Napoli, Denaro Editore,  LIPU Vivara.. L. Miraglia , Il guardiano del verde isolotto, su vivara.it.

 

purgotti: Sebastiano Purgotti (Cagli), filosofo. Linceo. Ha avuto come maestro nelle lettere Imerio Cibo di Amelia, mentre nelle scienze filosofiche e matematiche è stato allievo di Pallieri, domenicano originario di Alba. Per quest'ultimo, all'indomani della morte,  Purgotti ha composto un elogio funebre e una poesia in memoria. Si iscrive a Roma conseguendo il diploma di magistero in diritto pubblico e criminale e distinguendosi tra i dotti suoi colleghi nelle suddette discipline.  Tornato a Cagli collabora inizialmente con il padre nella farmacia di famiglia posta nella piazza maggiore (l'attuale piazza Matteotti), senza abbandonare però la viva aspirazione a ricoprire una cattedra universitaria con particolare predilezione per l'insegnamento della chimica.  In mancanza di una laurea specifica per detta disciplina (all'epoca dei suoi studi l'Roma non ne conferiva il diploma)i fa domanda di concorso con esame per una cattedra a Urbino, ma nel contempo, è chiamato dall'ateneo di Perugia grazie alla sua fama di studioso ad insegnare chimica, botanica e farmaceutica.  A Perugia ricopre varie e sempre più importanti cariche all'interno dell'Università: nel 1831 è nominato membro del collegio filosofico, nel 1834 diviene professore di matematica, dal 1853 è bibliotecario e vice direttore ed infine il 23 aprile del 1854 è elevato alla carica di Rettore dell'Perugia. È stato inoltre preside delle facoltà di scienze fisiche e matematiche unitamente all'accademia medico-chirurgica, e direttore delle scuole di farmacia. Nel corso della sua vita pubblica oltre cento opere scientifiche di vario argomento che spaziano dalle scienze fisico-chimiche all'idrologia minerale, dalle scienze matematiche alle filosofiche con particolare riguardo alla teoria degli atomi.  Si spegne a Perugia la mattina del 31 marzo 1879 lasciando la consorte Berenice Rosini d'Arezzo, sua compagna di vita dal 1826, e tre figli tra cui due maschi e una femmina. Il maggiore di questi Enrico diviene professore di fisica e matematica, il secondo uomo di Chiesa mentre la figlia prende i voti monastici.  Gli avi La famiglia Purgotti ha origini veneziane, il bisavolo Girolamo, farmacista, giunto ad Urbino nel 1731 ha facoltà di insegnare farmaceutica in questa città, il nonno Sebastiano, nato a Fossombrone, consegue in Urbino  il diploma di chirurgo, il padre Nicola è stato farmacista in Cagli e sposò Rosa Morbidi. Grazie alle sue qualità di studioso e alla sua modestia stringe amicizie illustri ed è nominato membro onorario di trentadue accademie di scienze e di lettere tra cui l'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, dei Georgofili di Firenze, la Società di farmacia degli Stati sardi, l'Associazione farmaceutica lombarda e la Società farmaceutica umbra della quale è stato anche presidente.  Altre onorificenze gli sono tributate dal Pontefice Pio IX, a cui il Purgotti dedica il suo trattato di chimica, che lo onora di medaglia d'oro quale attestato di stima e nel 1855 lo insignisce della croce dell'Ordine di San Silvestro. Il comune di Perugia nel 1867 conia appositamente per lui una medaglia d'oro mentre il re Vittorio Emanuele II nel 1871 lo nomina cavaliere dell'Ordine della Corona d'Italia.  Cagli, città natale di Sebastiano, il 14 ottobre 1880 celebra solenni onoranze al suo benemerito cittadino dedicandogli una delle principali vie del centro storico: così via Giuoco del Formaggio diviene l'odierna via Purgotti. Nel Salone degli Stemmi del Palazzo Pubblico è stata posizionata una lapide con l'effigie a rilievo del benemerito cittadino al quale pochi anni prima era stato dedicato uno dei medaglioni dei cittadini illustri realizzati a rilievo da Alessandro Venanzi nella balconata del secondo ordine del Teatro Comunale. Nella lapide del Palazzo Pubblico in Cagli è dato leggere la seguente scritta incisa:  « A SEBASTIANO PURGOTTI DECRETÒ QUESTA MEMORIA LA PATRIA CHE DAGLI SCRITTI E DALLE VIRTÙ DEL SOMMO SCIENZIATO EBBE TANTO LUSTRO ED ONORE NATO IN CAGLI IL XXI LUGLIO MDCCLXXXXIX morì IN PERUGIA IL XXXI MARZO MDXXXLXXIX  » A Perugia, la città che lo aveva accolto, gli sono stati tributati particolari onori e nel cimitero gli è stato eretto un monumento la cui epigrafe recita:  « QUI RIPOSA SEBASTIANO PURGOTTI INSIGNE CHIMICO E MATEMATICO NOTO IN ITALIA E FUORI ESEMPIO RARO DI VIRTÙ DOMESTICHE E CIVILI  » Una corona d'alloro in metallo dorato donata dal comune di Cagli è stabilmente collocata sopra il citato monumento funebre a perpetuo omaggio.  Opere scientifiche e letterarie Due articoli: inseriti nel Giornale Scientifico Letterario di Perugia secondo trimester, Lettere ad un amico intorno a vari filosofici argomenti, Riflessioni sulla teoria degli atomi, Trattato di chimica applicato specialmente alla medicina e alla agricoltura Trattato elementare di chimica applicata specialmente alla medicina Trattato elementare di chimica applicata specialmente alla medicina e alla agricoltura Intorno all'azione dell'acido solfo-idrico sul solfato di protossido di ferro Osservazioni intorno a varie inesattezze che allignano nei moderni corsi di matematica elementare Riflessioni di Sebastiano Purgotti sopra un opuscolo che porta per titolo se si possa difendere, ed insegnare non come ipotesi, ma come verissima, e come tesi la mobilita della terra, e la stabilita del sole da chi ha fatta la professione di fede di Pio IV Elementi di aritmetica, algebra e geometria Studi chimici sulle acque minerali di Valle Zangona. Del professore Sebastiano Purgotti, del chimico-farmacista Pio Mazzolini, seguiti da una lettera intorno agli usi ed effetti delle medesime del dottore Antonio Federici Riflessioni sulla teoria degli atomi Chimica Analisi delle acque minerali di S. Gemini eseguita da Sebastiano Purgotti professore di chimica nell'universita di Perugia Aritmetica e algebra Chimica organica: seguita da un saggio di filosofia chimica Geometria Per la morte di Canali: rettore della Pontificia Universita di Perugia e pubblico bibliotecario. Due funebri orazioni seguite dalla sua biografia Problemi tratti dagli elementi di Aritmetica, Algebra e Geometria Nozioni elementari ragionate del calcolo aritmetico ad uso dei giovanetti. Compilate per dimande e risposte da Sebastiano Purgotti Pensieri intorno al primitivo insegnamento della scienza delle quantità Chimica inorganica Metalli delle terre aride e metalli propriamente detti Elementi di aritmetica ragionata ad uso dei giovanetti Elementi di aritmetica, algebra e geometria Analisi delle acque minerali di S. Gemini eseguita da Purgotti Lettere filosofiche: principalmente riguardanti l'elementare insegnamento delle scienze esatte Chimica inorganica. Metalloidi Compendio di nozioni farmaceutiche di Sebastiano Purgotti ad uso degli studenti medicina e farmacia, ossia, Esposizione delle avvertenze teorico-pratiche le più interessanti per ben preparare, conservare ed apprestare i farmaci Sul fluido biotico e le sue influenze nei moti delle tavole e dei pendoli indovini e nel magnetismo animale e nelle manifestazioni spiritualiste. Discorso del professore Sebastiano Purgotti da lui letto in latino. Nozioni elementari intorno all'algorismo sui numeri interi estratte dal trattato di aritmetica ragionata Chimica inorganica. Metalli “Lettere filosofiche.” Principalmente risguardanti l'elementare insegnamento delle scienze Chimica organica e nozioni le più interessanti di chimica agraria e filosofia Studi chimici di Sebastiano Purgotti sulle sorgive minerali del distretto di Civita Ducale presso il Velino nel secondo Abruzzo Ulteriore Sull'acqua salino-ferruginosa di Giano. Chimiche ricerche Elementi di algebra Elementi di aritmetica Elementi di geometria Elogio funebre del professore Lorenzo Massini. Letto nelle esequie nella chiesa dell'Universita, “I segreti dell'arte di comunicare le idee negli elementi delle scienze esatte ed i difetti che anche attualmente vi sono coperti dal falso manto della matematica evidenza svelati dalla filosofica investigazione. Studi Esercizi aritmetici. In addizione alla quarta edizione della sua aritmetica Idrologia minerale del distretto di Civita Ducale nel secondo Abruzzo Ulteriore. Per gli studi di Sebastiano Purgotti Studi chimici di Sebastiano Purgotti sulle sorgive minerali del distretto di Civita Ducale presso il Velino nel secondo Abruzzo ulteriore 1859 Intorno ai fisici e ai metafisici del chiarissimo prof. Francesco Puccinotti. Lettera al medesimo Idrologia narnese o rapporto degli studi chimici sulle acque potabili e minerali di Narni del dottore Sebastiano Purgotti fatti per cura dell'inclita giunta municipale della stessa città, Articolo del ch. prof. Sebastiano Purgotti intorno alcuni scritti inediti di Michelangelo Poggioli pubblicati per cura del figlio avv. Giuseppe Delle acque minerali di San Galgano di Perugia. Memorie istoriche per il conte Gio. Battista Rossi-Scotti. Seguite dai relativi studi analitici da Sebastiano Purgotti Intorno alla nutrizione. Frammenti tratti dalla chimica animale Sulle sorgenti acidule-ferro-manganesiache di Monte Castello Vibio. Studi chimici di Sebastiano ed Enrico Purgotti, seguiti da una relazione intorno alle loro virtù medicamentose di Antonio Melloni Intorno all'articolo dei corpi organici naturali inserito nell'Apologenico. Osservazioni di Sebastiano Purgotti Intorno alle opinioni dello Schoenbein relative alle azioni catalitiche Le forze. Allocuzione per l'inaugurazione degli studi nella Libera Universita di Perugia nell'anno scolastico Intorno agli esami liceali. Vaganti idee Delucidazioni intorno alla sua allocuzione "Le forze" Euclide e la logica naturale. Riflessioni Compendio di nozioni farmaceutiche Compendio di nozioni farmaceutiche, ossia Raccolta di cognizioni teorico-pratiche per ben preparare, conservare ed apprestare i farmaci, le quali sono utili al medico, e indispensabili al farmacista, di Sebastiano Purgotti. A queste fa seguito un trattatello sull'arte di ben scrivere le ricette si nel latino idioma usando pesi antichi, che nell'idioma italiano usando i pesi metrici moderni Intorno ai saggi idrotimetrici delle acque potabili. Nota di Sebastiano Purgotti; Sull'esame critico della sua prolusione. Le forze. Osservazioni di Sebastiano Purgotti Sulla necessità di escludere lo studio della geometria dai pubblici ginnasi e l'Euclide dai licei. Nota Intorno alle odierne difese degli antichi errori nell'insegnamento delle matematiche. Cicaloate polemiche di Sebastiano Purgotti Lettera di SPurgotti al chiarissimo Prof. J. W. Wilson intorno a quistioni relative a questa scienza Rilievi di Sebastiano Purgotti intorno ad alcune critiche osservazioni sull'ultimo opuscolo risguardante la combustione Cenni di Sebastiano Purgotti intorno alla conformità delle sue opinioni con la lettera scritta al rettore dell'universita di Lilla per ordine di Pio IX Riflessioni di Sebastiano Purgotti intorno al discorso Cosa e la fisiologia. Prolusione del prof. Alessandro Herzen letta nell'Istituto superiore di Firenze Uno scherzo scientifico. Dato da Sebastiano Purgotti  F. Magni, S. da Campagnola e L. Severi, Sebastiano Purgotti e i suoi tempi Cagli, A. Tarducci, Dizionarietto biografico cagliese. Cenni storici su 360 cittadini cagliesi, Cagli, Enrico Purgotti  Sebastiano Purgotti, in Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

 

Quadrini, Gustavo: One of Luigi Speranza’s philosophical companions.

 

quale: the second of Aristotle’s four categories, after the quantum, and before the relatum and the modus. A property of a mental state or event, in particular of a sensation and a perceptual state, which determine “what it is like” to have them. Sometimes ‘phenomenal properties’ and ‘qualitative features’ are used with the same meaning. The felt difference between pains and itches is said to reside in differences in their “qualitative character,” i.e., their qualia. For those who accept an “actobject” conception of perceptual experience, qualia may include such properties as “phenomenal redness” and “phenomenal roundness,” thought of as properties of sense-data, “phenomenal objects,” or portions of the visual field. But those who reject this conception do not thereby reject qualia; a proponent of the adverbial analysis of perceptual experience can hold that an experience of “sensing redly” is so in virtue of, in part, what qualia it has, while denying that there is any sense in which the experience itself is red. Qualia are thought of as non-intentional, i.e., non-representational, features of the states that have them. So in a case of “spectrum inversion,” where one person’s experiences of green are “qualitatively” just like another person’s experiences of red, and vice versa, the visual experiences the two have when viewing a ripe tomato would be alike in their intentional features both would be of a red, round, bulgy surface, but would have different qualia. Critics of physicalist and functionalist accounts of mind have argued from the possibility of spectrum inversion and other kinds of “qualia inversion,” and from such facts as that no physical or functional description will tell one “what it is like” to smell coffee, that such accounts cannot accommodate qualia. Defenders of such accounts are divided between those who claim that their accounts can accommodate qualia and those who claim that qualia are a philosophical myth and thus that there are none to accommodate.  qualitative predicate, a kind of predicate postulated in some attempts to solve the grue paradox. 1 On the syntactic view, a qualitative predicate is a syntactically more or less simple predicate. Such simplicity, however, is relative to the choice of primitives in a language. In English, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ are primitive, while ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ must be introduced by definitions ‘green and first examined before T, or blue otherwise’, ‘blue and first examined before T, or green otherwise’, respectively. In other languages, ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ may be primitive and hence “simple,” while ‘green’ and ‘blue’ must be introduced by definitions ‘grue and first examined before T, or bleen otherwise’, ‘bleen and first examined before T, or grue otherwise’, respectively. 2 On the semantic view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to which there corresponds a property that is “natural” to us or of easy semantic access. The quality of greenness is easy and natural; the quality of grueness is strained. 3 On the ontological view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to which there corresponds a property that is woven into the causal or modal structure of reality in a way that gruesome properties are not.  qualities, properties or characteristics. There are three specific philosophical senses. 1 Qualities are physical properties, logical constructions of physical properties, or dispositions. Physical properties, such as mass, shape, and electrical charge, are properties in virtue of which objects can enter into causal relations. Logical constructions of physical properties include conjunctions and disjunctions of them; being 10 # .02 cm long is a disjunctive property. A disposition of an object is a potential for the object to enter into a causal interaction of some specific kind under some specific condition; e.g., an object is soluble in water if and only if it would dissolve were it in enough pure water. Locke held a very complex theory of powers. On Locke’s theory, the dispositions of objects are a kind of power and the human will is a kind of power. However, the human will is not part of the modern notion of disposition. So, predicating a disposition of an object implies a subjunctive conditional of the form: if such-and-such were to happen to the object, then so-and-so would happen to it; that my vase is fragile implies that if my vase were to be hit sufficiently hard then it would break. Whether physical properties are distinct from dispositions is disputed. Three sorts of qualities are often distinguished. Primary qualities are physical properties or logical constructions from physical properties. Secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensory experiences of certain phenomenal sorts under appropriate conditions. The predication of a secondary quality, Q, to an object implies that if the object were to be perceived under normal conditions then the object would appear to be Q to the perceivers: if redness is a secondary quality, then that your coat is red implies that if your coat were to be seen under normal conditions, it would look red. Locke held that the following are secondary qualities: colors, tastes, smells, sounds, and warmth or cold. Tertiary qualities are dispositions that are not secondary qualities, e.g. fragility. Contrary to Locke, the color realist holds that colors are either primary or tertiary qualities; so that x is yellow is logically independent of the fact that x looks yellow under normal conditions. Since different spectral reflectances appear to be the same shade of yellow, some color realists hold that any shade of yellow is a disjunctive property whose components are spectral reflectances. 2 Assuming a representative theory of perception, as Locke did, qualities have two characteristics: qualities are powers or dispositions of objects to produce sensory experiences sensedata on some theories in humans; and, in sensory experience, qualities are represented as intrinsic properties of objects. Instrinsic properties of objects are properties that objects have independently of their environment. Hence an exact duplicate of an object has all the intrinsic properties of the original, and an intrinsic property of x never has the form, x-stands-in-suchand-such-a-relation-to-y. Locke held that the primary qualities are extension size, figure shape, motion or rest, solidity impenetrability, and number; the primary qualities are correctly represented in perception as intrinsic features of objects, and the secondary qualities listed in 1 are incorrectly represented in perception as intrinsic features of objects. Locke seems to have been mistaken in holding that number is a quality of objects. Positional qualities are qualities defined in terms of the relative positions of points in objects and their surrounding: shape, size, and motion and rest. Since most of Locke’s primary qualities are positional, some non-positional quality is needed to occupy positions. On Locke’s account, solidity fulfills this role, although some have argued Hume that solidity is not a primary quality. 3 Primary qualities are properties common to and inseparable from all matter; secondary qualities are not really qualities in objects, but only powers of objects to produce sensory effects in us by means of their primary qualities. This is another use of ‘quality’ by Locke, where ‘primary’ functions much like ‘real’ and real properties are given by the metaphysical assumptions of the science of Locke’s time. Qualities are distinct from representations of them in predications. Sometimes the same quality is represented in different ways by different predications: ‘That is water’ and ‘That is H2O’. The distinction between qualities and the way they are represented in predications opens up the Lockean possibility that some qualities are incorrectly represented in some predications. Features of predications are sometimes used to define a quality; dispositions are sometimes defined in terms of subjunctive conditionals see definition of ‘secondary qualities’ in 1, and disjunctive properties are defined in terms of disjunctive predications. Features of predications are also used in the following definition of ‘independent qualities’: two qualities, P and Q, are independent if and only if, for any object x, the predication of P and of Q to x are logically independent i.e., that x is P and that x is Q are logically independent; circularity and redness are independent, circularity and triangularity are dependent. If two determinate qualities, e.g., circularity and triangularity, belong to the same determinable, say shape, then they are dependent, but if two determinate qualities, e.g., squareness and redness, belong to different determinables, say shape and color, they are independent.

 

quantum:  The first of Aristotle’s four categoryes, followed by the quale, the relatum, and the modus. Quantification: H. P. Grice, “Every nice girl loves a sailor.” -- the application of one or more quantifiers e.g., ‘for all x’, ‘for some y’ to an open formula. A quantification or quantified sentence results from first forming an open formula from a sentence by replacing expressions belonging to a certain class of expressions in the sentences by variables whose substituends are the expressions of that class and then prefixing the formula with quantifiers using those variables. For example, from ‘Bill hates Mary’ we form ‘x hates y’, to which we prefix the quantifiers ‘for all x’ and ‘for some y’, getting the quantification sentence ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ ‘Everyone hates someone’. In referential quantification only terms of reference may be replaced by variables. The replaceable terms of reference are the substituends of the variables. The values of the variables are all those objects to which reference could be made by a term of reference of the type that the variables may replace. Thus the previous example ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ is a referential quantification. Terms standing for people ‘Bill’, ‘Mary’, e.g. are the substituends of the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’. And people are the values of the variables. In substitutional quantification any type of term may be replaced by variables. A variable replacing a term has as its substituends all terms of the type of the replaced term. For example, from ‘Bill married Mary’ we may form ‘Bill R Mary’, to which we prefix the quantifier ‘for some R’, getting the substitutional quantification ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’. This is not a referential quantification, since the substituends of ‘R’ are binary predicates such as ‘marries’, which are not terms of reference. Referential quantification is a species of objectual quantification. The truth conditions of quantification sentences objectually construed are understood in terms of the values of the variable bound by the quantifier. Thus, ‘for all v, fv’ is true provided ‘fv’ is true for all values of the variable ‘v’; ‘for some v, fv’ is true provided ‘fv’ is true for some value of the variable ‘v’. The truth or falsity of a substitutional quantification turns instead on the truth or falsity of the sentences that result from the quantified formula by replacing variables by their substituends. For example, ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’ is true provided some sentence of the form ‘Bill R Mary’ is true. In classical logic the universal quantifier ‘for all’ is definable in terms of negation and the existential quantifier ‘for some’: ‘for all x’ is short for ‘not for some x not’. The existential quantifier is similarly definable in terms of negation and the universal quantifier. In intuitionistic logic, this does not hold. Both quantifiers are regarded as primitive. Then there’s quantifying in, use of a quantifier outside of an opaque construction to attempt to bind a variable within it, a procedure whose legitimacy was first questioned by Quine. An opaque construction is one that resists substitutivity of identity. Among others, the constructions of quotation, the verbs of propositional attitude, and the logical modalities can give rise to opacity. For example, the position of ‘six’ in: 1 ‘six’ contains exactly three letters is opaque, since the substitution for ‘six’ by its codesignate ‘immediate successor of five’ renders a truth into a falsehood: 1H ‘the immediate successor of five’ contains exactly three letters. Similarly, the position of ‘the earth’ in: 2 Tom believes that the earth is habitable is opaque, if the substitution of ‘the earth’ by its codesignate ‘the third planet from the sun’ renders a sentence that Tom would affirm into one that he would deny: 2H Tom believes that the third planet from the sun is habitable. Finally, the position of ‘9’ and of ‘7’ in: 3 Necessarily 9  7 is opaque, since the substitution of ‘the number of major planets’ for its codesignate ‘9’ renders a truth into a falsehood: 3H Necessarily the number of major planets  7. Quine argues that since the positions within opaque constructions resist substitutivity of identity, they cannot meaningfully be quantified. Accordingly, the following three quantified sentences are meaningless: 1I Ex ‘x’  7, 2I Ex Tom believes that x is habitable, 3I Ex necessarily x  7. 1I, 2I, and 3I are meaningless, since the second occurrence of ‘x’ in each of them does not function as a variable in the ordinary nonessentialist quantificational way. The second occurrence of ‘x’ in 1I functions as a name that names the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. The second occurrences of ‘x’ in 2I and in 3I do not function as variables, since they do not allow all codesignative terms as substituends without change of truth-value. Thus, they may take objects as values but only objects designated in certain ways, e.g., in terms of their intensional or essential properties. So, short of acquiescing in an intensionalist or essentialist metaphysics, Quine argues, we cannot in general quantify into opaque contexts.  Quantum: one of Aristotle’s categories. Cicero’s translation of Aristotle -- quantum logic, the logic of which the models are certain non-Boolean algebras derived from the mathematical representation of quantum mechanical systems. The models of classical logic are, formally, Boolean algebras. This is the central notion of quantum logic in the literature, although the term covers a variety of modal logics, dialogics, and operational logics proposed to elucidate the structure of quantum mechanics and its relation to classical mechanics. The dynamical quantities of a classical mechanical system position, momentum, energy, etc. form a commutative algebra, and the dynamical properties of the system e.g., the property that the position lies in a specified range, or the property that the momentum is greater than zero, etc. form a Boolean algebra. The transition from classical to quantum mechanics involves the transition from a commutative algebra of dynamical quantities to a noncommutative algebra of so-called observables. One way of understanding the conceptual revolution from classical to quantum mechanics is in terms of a shift from the class of Boolean algebras to a class of non-Boolean algebras as the appropriate relational structures for the dynamical properties of mechanical systems, hence from a Boolean classical logic to a non-Boolean quantum logic as the logic applicable to the fundamental physical processes of our universe. This conception of quantum logic was developed formally in a classic 6 paper by G. Birkhoff and J. von Neumann although von Neumann first proposed the idea in 7. The features that distinguish quantum logic from classical logic vary with the formulation. In the Birkhoffvon Neumann logic, the distributive law of classical logic fails, but this is by no means a feature of all versions of quantum logic. It follows from Gleason’s theorem 7 that the non-Boolean models do not admit two-valued homomorphisms in the general case, i.e., there is no partition of the dynamical properties of a quantum mechanical system into those possessed by the system and those not possessed by the system that preserves algebraic structure, and equivalently no assignment of values to the observables of the system that preserves algebraic structure. This result was proved independently for finite sets of observables by S. Kochen and E. P. Specker 7. It follows that the probabilities specified by the Born interpretation of the state function of a quantum mechanical system for the results of measurements of observables cannot be derived from a probability distribution over the different possible sets of dynamical properties of the system, or the different possible sets of values assignable to the observables of which one set is presumed to be actual, determined by hidden variables in addition to the state function, if these sets of properties or values are required to preserve algebraic structure. While Bell’s theorem 4 excludes hidden variables satisfying a certain locality condition, the Kochen-Specker theorem relates the non-Booleanity of quantum logic to the impossibility of hidden variable extensions of quantum mechanics, in which value assignments to the observables satisfy constraints imposed by the algebraic structure of the observables. Then there’s quantum mechanics, also called quantum theory, the science governing objects of atomic and subatomic dimensions. Developed independently by Werner Heisenberg as matrix mechanics, 5 and Erwin Schrödinger as wave mechanics, 6, quantum mechanics breaks with classical treatments of the motions and interactions of bodies by introducing probability and acts of measurement in seemingly irreducible ways. In the widely used Schrödinger version, quantum mechanics associates with each physical system a time-dependent function, called the state function alternatively, the state vector or Y function. The evolution of the system is represented by the temporal transformation of the state function in accord with a master equation, known as the Schrödinger equation. Also associated with a system are “observables”: in principle measurable quantities, such as position, momentum, and energy, including some with no good classical analogue, such as spin. According to the Born interpretation 6, the state function is understood instrumentally: it enables one to calculate, for any possible value of an observable, the probability that a measurement of that observable would find that particular value. The formal properties of observables and state functions imply that certain pairs of observables such as linear momentum in a given direction, and position in the same direction are incompatible in the sense that no state function assigns probability 1 to the simultaneous determination of exact values for both observables. This is a qualitative statement of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle alternatively, the indeterminacy principle, or just the uncertainty principle. Quantitatively, that principle places a precise limit on the accuracy with which one may simultaneously measure a pair of incompatible observables. There is no corresponding limit, however, on the accuracy with which a single observable say, position alone, or momentum alone may be measured. The uncertainty principle is sometimes understood in terms of complementarity, a general perspective proposed by Niels Bohr according to which the connection between quantum phenomena and observation forces our classical concepts to split into mutually exclusive packages, both of which are required for a complete understanding but only one of which is applicable under any particular experimental conditions. Some take this to imply an ontology in which quantum objects do not actually possess simultaneous values for incompatible observables; e.g., do not have simultaneous position and momentum. Others would hold, e.g., that measuring the position of an object causes an uncontrollable change in its momentum, in accord with the limits on simultaneous accuracy built into the uncertainty principle. These ways of treating the principle are not uncontroversial. Philosophical interest arises in part from where the quantum theory breaks with classical physics: namely, from the apparent breakdown of determinism or causality that seems to result from the irreducibly statistical nature of the theory, and from the apparent breakdown of observer-independence or realism that seems to result from the fundamental role of measurement in the theory. Both features relate to the interpretation of the state function as providing only a summary of the probabilities for various measurement outcomes. Einstein, in particular, criticized the theory on these grounds, and in 5 suggested a striking thought experiment to show that, assuming no action-at-a-distance, one would have to consider the state function as an incomplete description of the real physical state for an individual system, and therefore quantum mechanics as merely a provisional theory. Einstein’s example involved a pair of systems that interact briefly and then separate, but in such a way that the outcomes of various measurements performed on each system, separately, show an uncanny correlation. In 1 the physicist David Bohm simplified Einstein’s example, and later 7 indicated that it may be realizable experimentally. The physicist John S. Bell then formulated a locality assumption 4, similar to Einstein’s, that constrains factors which might be used in describing the state of an individual system, so-called hidden variables. Locality requires that in the EinsteinBohm experiment hidden variables not allow the measurement performed on one system in a correlated pair immediately to influence the outcome obtained in measuring the other, spatially separated system. Bell demonstrated that locality in conjunction with other assumptions about hidden variables restricts the probabilities for measurement outcomes according to a system of inequalities known as the Bell inequalities, and that the probabilities of certain quantum systems violate these inequalities. This is Bell’s theorem. Subsequently several experiments of the Einstein-Bohm type have been performed to test the Bell inequalities. Although the results have not been univocal, the consensus is that the experimental data support the quantum theory and violate the inequalities. Current research is trying to evaluate the implications of these results, including the extent to which they rule out local hidden variables. See J. Cushing and E. McMullin, eds., Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory, 9. The descriptive incompleteness with which Einstein charged the theory suggests other problems. A particularly dramatic one arose in correspondence between Schrödinger and Einstein; namely, the “gruesome” Schrödinger cat paradox. Here a cat is confined in a closed chamber containing a radioactive atom with a fifty-fifty chance of decaying in the next hour. If the atom decays it triggers a relay that causes a hammer to fall and smash a glass vial holding a quantity of    766 prussic acid sufficient to kill the cat. According to the Schrödinger equation, after an hour the state function for the entire atom ! relay ! hammer ! glass vial ! cat system is such that if we observe the cat the probability for finding it alive dead is 50 percent. However, this evolved state function is one for which there is no definite result; according to it, the cat is neither alive nor dead. How then does any definite fact of the matter arise, and when? Is the act of observation itself instrumental in bringing about the observed result, does that result come about by virtue of some special random process, or is there some other account compatible with definite results of measurements? This is the so-called quantum measurement problem and it too is an active area of research. 

 

quarta: Essential Italian philosopher. Cosimo Quarta (Leverano), filosofo. Filosofo dell'utopia fu uno dei maggiori studiosi di Moro, sul quale scrisse “Una re-interpretazione dell'utopia.” Docente a Salento, fu uno studioso di Platone sul quale scrisse L'utopia platonica: Il progetto politico di un grande filosofo. Fu tra i fondatori del Centro interdipartimentale di ricerca sull'utopia  Opere Tommaso MoroUna reinterpretazione dell'utopia,  Edizioni Dedalo,  Thomas More,  ECP L'utopia platonicaIl progetto politico di un grande filosofo,  Edizioni Dedalo, Globalizzazione, giustizia, solidarietà,  Edizioni Dedalo, Una nuova etica per l'ambiente, Edizioni Dedalo, “ Homo utopicusLa dimensione storico-antropologica dell'"utopia.” Edizioni Dedalo,  Lutto nell’Università del Salento: scomparso Quarta, in TR News.it. Lutto per la cultura, è morto Quarta, filosofo dell'utopia. Centro interdipartimentale di ricerca sull'utopia, su unisalento.it. Grice: “Strictly, utopia is no-where, or erehwon if you must!” Luigi Speranza, “As in Lennon, “He’s a real nowhere man!” --. Gilbert and Sullivan, “Utopia, Ltd.”

 

quasi-demonstratum: Grice: “What _is_ the Roman etymology of ‘quasi’? Apparently, the Greeks never needed the concept!” – Grice: “’quasi’ comes from ‘quam’”. The use of ‘quasi-‘ is implicatural. Grice is implicating this is NOT a demonstratum. By a demonstratum he is having in mind a Kaplanian ‘dthis’ or ‘dthat.’ Grice was obsessed with this or that. An abstractum (such as “philosopher”) needs to be attached in a communicatum by what Grice calls a ‘quasi-demonstrative,’ and for which he uses “φ.” Consider, Grice says, an utterance, out of the blue, such as ‘The philosopher in the garden seems bored,’ involving two iota-operators. As there may be more that a philosopher in a garden in the great big world, the utterer intends his addressee to treat the utterance as expandable into ‘The A which is φ is B,’ where “φ” is a quasi-demonstrative epithet to be identified in a particular context of utterance. The utterer intends that, to identify  the denotatum of “φ” for a particular utterance of ‘The philosopher in the garden seems bored,’ the addressee wil proceed via the identification of a particular philosopher, say Grice, as being a good candidate for being the philosopher meant. The addressee is also intended to identify the candidate for a denotatum of φ by finding in the candidate a feature, e. g., that of being the garden at St. John’s, which is intended to be used to yield a composite epithet (‘philosopher in St. John’s garden’), which in turn fills the bill of being the epithet which the utterer believes is being uniquely satisfied by the philosopher selected as the candidate. Determining the denotatum of “φ” standardly involve determining what feature the utterer believes is uniquely instantiated by the predicate “philosopher.” This in turn involves satisfying oneself that some particular feature is in fact uniquely satisfied by a particular actual item, viz. a particular philosopher such as Grice seeming bored in the garden of St. John’s. “Quasi-implicatura.” Grice: “If I quasi-implicate that p, there is a quasi-implicature to the effect that I don’t, for oftentimes things *are* as they seem!”

 

italianistica.

 

quattromani: Italianistica. essential Italian philosophe. Sertorio Quattromani (Cosenza), filosofo. Nacque da Bartolo ed Elisabetta d'Aquino, lontana parente diTelesio. Cresciuto in un ambiente strettamente collegato alla cultura e alla nobiltà cosentina, viene educato alle idee religiose valdesiane del suo maestro Fascitelli.  Come si desume dal suo epistolario, si trasferisce a Roma. Qui frequenta la Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana e ha modo di intessere relazioni con diversi esponenti del panorama intellettuale e culturale romano. I suoi primi studi riguardarono il Canzoniere di Petrarca, con particolare riferimento alle sue fonti. Dopo un breve soggiorno a Napoli, torna a Cosenza. Da qui scrive a Berardino Rota, per suggerirgli alcune correzioni alla seconda edizione accresciuta delle sue Rime. Effettua una serie di spostamenti tra la sua città natale e Roma. Il periodo è contrassegnato da alcune sue epistole, a carattere storico-letterario, con corrispondenti, quali Ardoino, Ferrari e Aragona.  Risiede a Napoli. Rientrato a Cosenza scrive a Cavalcanti, che sarà con lui consulente della Congregazione dell'Indice, e  assume la direzione della Accademia cosentina, cui Quattromani diede nuovo impulso, sia dal punto di vista squisitamente letterario, sia incentivando l'attenzione per gli studi filosofici.  A Napoli pubblica La philosophia di Telesio, che dedica a Carafa e le rime dedicate a Bernaudo. Rimonta, invece, al 1595 la sua traduzione de Le historie del Cantalicio, nelle quali il nome è celato dietro lo pseudonimo di «Incognito Academico Cosentino».  Il suo ultimo periodo di vita lo trascorre a Cosenza, dove muore. Opere: Manoscritti Città del Vaticano, B.A.V., Reg. Lat. cart., misc., sec. XVI ex.-XVII, cc. 423, mm. 185x130. Contiene i seguenti scritti di Sertorio Quattromani:  Sonetto di Ms. della Casa esposto dal Sr. Sertorio Quattromani Achademico Cosentino cc. 9r-12v, Oratione di Marco Catone tradotta dal medesimo S.rio Q.ni cc. 236v-237v, Giuditio di S. Q. sopra alcune stanze di Torquato Tasso Città del Vaticano, B.A.V., Reg. Lat. 1603, cart., misc., sec. XVI ex.-XVII, cc. 574, mm. 190x130. Contiene i seguenti scritti di Sertorio Quattromani:  cc. 19v-22v, Commento a tre sonetti del Casa cc. 22v-23v, Lettera ad Annibal Caro cc. 23v-24r, Lettera a Francesco Mauro c. 24r, Lettera al S. Principe della Scalea,  Lettera a G.B. Ardoino cc. 28v-29r, Lettera a Vincenzo Bombino c. 29r-v, Lettera a F.A. d'Amico c. 30r-v, Lettera a Fabrizio Marotta cc. 31r-35r, Oratione di Marco Catone cc. 49r-50v, Lettera a Gio. Maria Bernaudo cc. 50v-52r, Lettera a G.V. Egidio cc. 52r-54r, Lettera a Vincenzo Bilotta cc. 140r-144v, Parallelo tra il Petrarca et il Casa del Q.ni cc. 147r-157v, Delle metafore cc. 220r-223r, Parallelo tra il Petrarca et il Casa cc. 255r-280v, Poetica di Orazio tradotta da Quattromani (in prosa), Sentimento del Q.ni della Poet.ca d'Orat.o cc. 285v-306r, La Poetica d'Orat.o volgarizzata da Sartorio Q.ni (in versi) cc. 320r-324r, Oratione di Marco Catone cc. 327r-332r, A Torquato Tasso Il Monta.no Acc.co Cose.no cc. 332r-344v, Delle metafore cc. 426v-427r, Lettera ad Horatio Pellegrino cc. 427r-428r, Lettera a Teseo Sambiase c. 428v, Lettera alla Duchessa cc. 428v-429r, Lettera a Teseo Sambiase cc. 430r-431v, Lettera a Teseo Sambiase cc. 431v-433r, Lettera a Teseo Sambiase cc. 433v-434v, Lettera a Teseo Sambiase Città del Vaticano, B.A.V., Reg. Lat. , parte I, misc., sec. XVI, diversi formati. Contiene:  c. 231r, Autografo della Lettera al Cardinale Guglielmo Sirleto, 1583. Cosenza, Biblioteca Civica, ms. 7, cart., sec. XVII ex.-XVIII in., cc. 3r-76v, mm. 265x190; ex libris: “Bibliothecae Marchionis D. Matthaei de Sarno”: Contiene:  Istoria della Città di Cosenza | Di Sertorio Quattromani (ora in prima edizione moderna, Michele Orlando, tesi di dottorato di ricerca in Italianistica, Bari. Cosenza, Biblioteca privata della Famiglia De Bonis,  I-60, mm. 290x200: Contiene:  Copia | delle | Lettere Originali | Del Sigr. Sertorio Quattromani | dirette Al Sig.r Giovanni Maria Bernaudo | da una raccolta | (cucite in fascicolo) | Favoritami dal Sigr. Frascritto Bombini | Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Fondo Palatino cart., sec. XVI ex., cc. 71, mm. 205x150; ex libris: “Vincentii Mariae Karaphae”: Contiene:  Luoghi difficili del Bembo Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, XIII E 50, cart., misc., sec. XVI, cc. 48, diversi formati. Manuscripta autographa P. Summontis et aliorum aetate eius clariorum431: Contiene:  c. 29r, Autografo della Lettera a S. Reski, 1599 Roma, Biblioteca Angelica, GG 3 35/2, cart., sec. XVI, cc. 25; rilegato con Gab. Barrii Francicani De Antiquitate et situ Calabriae libri quinque, Romae, Apud Iosephum de Angelis, 1571: Contiene:  cc. 1r-24r, Annotationes D.ni Sertorii Quattrimani in Barrium Stampe LA | PHILOSOPHIA | DI BERARDINO | TELESIO | Ristretta in | brevità, |Et scritta in lingua Toscana dal | Montano Academico | Cosentino. | Alla Eccellenza del Sig. Duca | di Nocera. | Con Licenza de' Superiori. Marchio ed. | In Napoli | Appresso Gioseppe Cacchi. AL ILUSTRE | S. Gioan Maria Bernaudo, in a a LE RIME | Del Sig. Gio. Batt. Ardoino | Academico Cosentino | In morte della Signora Isabella | Quattromani sua moglie | Con Licenza de' Superiori. | Marchio ed. | in Napoli | Appresso Gioseppe Cacchi. LE HISTORIE | DE MONSIG. | GIO. BATTISTA | CANTALICIO | VESCOVO DI CIVITA DI PENNA, ET D'ATRI | DELLE GVERRE FATTE IN ITAlia da Consaluo Ferrando di Aylar, di Cordoua, detto il gran Capitano TRADOTTE IN LINGUA TOSCANA dall'Incognito Academico Cosentino: | A RICHIESTA DI GIO. MARIA BERNAVDO. | IN COSENZA. | Per Luigi Castellano. 1595 LE HISTORIE | DE MONSIGNOR | GIO. BATTISTA CANTALICIO, VESCOVO DI | Ciuita di Penna et d'Atri. | DELLE GUERRE FATTE IN ITALIA DA CONSALUO FERRANDO DE AYLAR, DI COR- | DOUA, DETTO IL GRAN CAPITANO | TRADOTTE IN LINGUA TOSCA- | na dall'Incognito Academico Cosentino. | A richiesta di Gio. Maria Bernaudo. Nuouamente corretta, et ristampata, | IN COSENZA | Per Leonardo Angrisano, e Luigi Castellano, ad istanza di Enrico Bacco, libraro in Napoli. 1597 (postumo) LE HISTORIE | DI MONSIG. | GIO. BATTISTA | CANTALICIO, VESCOVO D'ATRI, ET CIVITA DI PENNA,  DELLE GUERRE FATTE IN ITALIA DA CONSALVO | Ferrando di Aylar, di Cordoua, detto il gran Capitano, | Tradotte in lingua Toscana dal Signor Sertorio Quattromani, detto l'Incognito Academico Cosentino. | A RICHIESTA DEL SIG. GIO. MARIA BERNAUDO. | IN NAPOLI, Apresso Gio Giacomo Carlino. 1607. | Ad istanza di Henrico Bacco, alla Libraria dell'Alicorno RIME | DI MONS. GIO. DELLA CASA. Fregio In Napoli, Appresso Lazaro Scoriggio.LETTERE | DI SERTORIO | QUATTROMANI | DIVISE IN DUE LIBRI. Et la tradottione del Quarto dell'Eneide di Virgilio | del medesimo Auttore. | All'Illustrissimo, & Eccellentissimo Signor | MARCHESE DELLA VALLE, & c. | Stemma | In Napoli, Per Lazzaro Scoriggio. 1624 Il IV libro di Vergilio in verso Toscano. | Trattato della Metafora. | Parafrasi Toscana della Poetica di Orazio. Traduzione della medesima Poetica in verso | Toscano. Alcune annotazioni sopra di essa. | Alcune poesie Toscane, e Latine Fregio In Napol Nella Stamperia di Felice Mosca | Con Licenza de' Superiori.Gabrielis Barrii Francicani: De Antiquitate et situ Calabriae libri quinque, nunc primum ex authographo restitutos ac per capita distributi. Prolegomena, Additiones, et Notae. Quibus accesserunt animadversiones Sertorii Quattrimani patricii consentini, Romae, ex Typographia S. Michaelis ad Ripam Sumptibus Hieronymi Mainardi Superiorum permissu. Scritti vari, editi per la prima volta in Napoli nel MDCCXIV da Matteo Egizio ed ora riveduti, riordinati e ripubblicati in più nitida edizione da Luigi Stocchi, Castrovillari, Dalla Tipografia del Calabrese, A questo proposito, in un'articolata lettera inviata, da Roma a Cosenza,  Quattromani illustrò a Marcello Ferrao le ragioni per cui l'opera del Petrarca meritava la sua attenzione, e la ricerca che stava compiendo sui poeti provenzali, riferendo che di ciò aveva già parlato con Paolo Manuzio.  Edizione veneziana di Giolito de' Ferrari  Stessa cosa si verificherà per la seconda edizione del 1597, mentre soltanto postumo, nell'edizione napoletana del 1607, comparirà il nome di Quattromani quale traduttore.  Luigi Accattatis, Le biografie degli uomini illustri delle Calabrie, Cosenza Andreotti D., Storia dei cosentini (Napoli S. Di Bella, Cosenza Biografia degli uomini illustri del Regno di Napoli, redatta da G. Terracina, Napoli, Nicola Gervasi, A. Borrelli, “Scienza” e “scienza della letteratura” in S. Quattromani, in Bernardino Telesio e la cultura napoletana, R. Sirri e M. Torrini, Napoli L. Borsetto, La “Poetica d'Horatio” tradotta. Contributo alla studio della ricezione oraziana tra Rinascimento e Barocco, in Orazio e la letteratura italiana, Roma Eadem, Quattromani Sertorio, in Enciclopedia oraziana, Eadem, “Pulzelle” e “Femine di mondo”. L'epistolario postumo di S. Quattromani, in Alla lettera. Teorie e pratiche epistolari dai Greci al Novecento, A. Chemello, Milano Capacius I.C., Illustrium mulierum et illustrium litteris virorum Elogia, Neapoli, I.I. Carlinus & C. Vitale, Chioccarello B., De illustribus scriptoribus Regni NeapolitaniCornacchioli T., Nobili, borghesi e intellettuali nella Cosenza del Quattrocento, Cosenza Cozzetto F., Aspetti della vita e inventano della biblioteca di S. Quattromani attraverso un documento cosentino del Seicento, in «Periferia», Crupi P., Storia della letteratura calabrese. Autori e Testi, II, Cosenza  De Franco L., Filosofia e scienza in Calabria nei secoli XV e XVII, Cosenza,  De Franco L., La biblioteca di un letterato del tardo Rinascimento: S. Quattromani, in «Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale», De Frede C., I libri di un letterato calabrese del Cinquecento (S. Quattromani, Napoli De Frede C., Un letterato del tardo Cinquecento e i suoi libri (S. Quattromani,-in «Atti dell'Accademia Pontaniana», Debenedetti S., Gli studi provenzali in Italia nel Cinquecento, Torino  Matteo Egizio, Di Sertorio Quattromani Gentiluomo, & Accademico Cosentino, Napoli (rist. in S. Quattromani, Scritti vari, editi per la prima volta in Napoli da Matteo Egizio ed ora riveduti, riordinati e ripubblicati in più nitida edizione da Luigi Stocchi, Dalla Tipografia del Calabrese, Castrovillari Filice E.E., Sertorio Quattromani. Accademico cosentino, Cosenza  Fratta A., Il “Ristretto” di S. Quattromani nell'ambito delle traduzioni scientifico-filosofiche del secondo Cinquecento, in Bernardino Telesio e la cultura napoletana, R. Sirri e M. Torrini, Napoli Gorni G., Un commento inedito alle “Rime” del Bembo da attribuire a S. Quattromani, in «Schifanoia. Notizie dell'Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali di Ferrara», Lattari F., Nuove notizie su S. Quattromani, in Stocchi, Lombardi A., Discorsi accademici, Cosenza Lupi W. F., Telesio, Della Casa e Quattromani, in «Quaderni del ‘Rendano'», I S. Quattromani interprete di Tasso, in Torquato Tasso quattrocento anni dopo, A. Daniele e F.W. Lupi, Soveria Mannelli  Mango F., Gli amori del Quattromani, in Note letterarie, Palermo Meliadò R., Sertorio Quattromani, Reggio CalabriaMoscati R., Quattromani, Sertorio, in «Enciclopedia Italiana», Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma  Napolillo V., La poetessa Lucrezia della Valle e il disegno culturale di S. Quattromani, in «Calabria Letteraria»,Fabrizio della Valle nelle lettere e nel profilo storico del Quattromani, in «Calabria Letteraria», Aulo Giano Parrasio e l'Accademia Cosentina, in «Atti dell'Accademia Cosentina»,  Protetty A., La critica e le lettere di S. Quattromani, Catanzaro Quattromani S., Scritti, F. Walter Lupi, Rende Spiriti S., Memorie degli scrittori cosentini, Muzi, Napoli (ora in rist. anast., Bologna Tancredi G., Sertorio Quattromani (umanista e critico). Appunti per una monografia, Siracusa Toppi N., Biblioteca napoletana et apparato a gli huomini illustri in lettere di Napoli e del Regno [...], Napoli Troilo E., Sertorio Quattromani, introduzione a Montano Accademico Cosentino (S. Quattromani), La filosofia di B. Telesio, Bari Zangari D., Di un manoscritto inedito di S. Quattromani e delle sue relazioni col Tasso, in «La Cultura Calabrese»,  Zavarrone A., Bibliotheca calabra, Neapoli, J. de Simone (rist. anast., Bologna Accademia Cosentina. Sertorio Quattromani, su Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Sertorio Quattromani, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Opere su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl.  Una incisione su tropeamagazine.it.

 

quinto: essential Italian philosopher. Riccardo Quinto (Pieve di Cadore), filosofo. Diplomatosi al liceo di Conegliano, si iscrisse a Milano, dove conseguì la laurea e  il dottorato di ricerca in Filosofia, avendo in entrambi i casi come relatore Pupi. Proseguì la sua formazione con soggiorni di studio a Monaco di iera e Copenaghen (Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin) e presso l'Università Cattolica di Lovanio e l'Università Cattolica di Louvain-la-Neuve. Vinto il concorso ordinario come insegnante di Italiano, Storia ed Educazione civica, Geografia nella scuola media inferiore, dal 1995 al 1998 fu preside della Scuola Italiana di Winterthur (Svizzera). Nel 1998 prese servizio come ricercatore di Storia della Filosofia presso la Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione dell'Padova, dove nel 2006 diventò professore associato nel medesimo ambito. Interruppe l'insegnamento universitario nel  per motivi di salute. Fu membro del Centro Interdipartimentale per Ricerche di Filosofia Medievale “Carlo Giacon” dell'Padova, ora CIRFIM, che diresse, e del consiglio di presidenza (Vorstand) dell'Internationale Gesellschaft für Theologische Mediävistik (IGTM), per la quale svolse i compiti di Publications Manager. Direttore responsabile di Medioevo. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia medievale (Padova) e co-editor di Medieval Sermon Studies (Leeds), Quinto fece inoltre parte del comitato di redazione di Archa Verbi. Yearbook for the Study of Medieval Theology e della collana “Sermo”. Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching (Turnhout). L'ambito principale delle ricerche di Quinto, contrassegnate dall'adozione di un rigoroso metodo filologico, è costituito dalla letteratura teologica latina protoscolastica (tardo XII secoloprimo XIII secolo) e specialmente dall'opera teologica di Stefano Langton. Quinto inoltre studiò la storia del concetto di “scolastica”, dalle origini sino al XVIII secolo.  Opere principali «“Timor” e “timiditas”. Note di lessicografia tomista», Rivista di Filosofia neo-scolastica  «Latino patristico e latino scolastico. Dalla comprensione della lingua all'interpretazione del pensiero», Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica  «Un testo inedito di Stefano Langton sui quattro sensi della Scrittura (ms. Venezia, Archivio di S. Maria della Fava, 43)», in Contributi al corso di storia della filosofia, Milano: Pubblicazioni dell'I.S.U.Università Cattolica, «Stefano Langton e i quattro sensi della Scrittura», Medioevo, Formulazioni scolastiche della tradizione nell'opera di Stefano Langton dissertazione per l'ottenimento del titolo di dottore della ricerca in filosofia, discussa presso il Ministero della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (Roma,  «Il “timor reverentialis” nella lingua della scolastica», Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi  «Die “Quaestiones” des Stephan Langton über die Gottesfurcht (Eingeleitet und herausgegeben von R.Q.)», Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin  «Un Data-Base per le Quaestiones medievali: Il catalogo delle “Quaestiones theologiae” di Stefano Langton», Studi medievali,  “Doctor Nominatissimus”.  Langton e la tradizione delle sue opere, Münster: Aschendorff, 1994 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und der Theologie des Mittelalters. Neue Folge, 39) «Per la storia del trattato tomistico “de passionibus animi”. Il “timor” nella letteratura teologica fra il 1200 e il 1230ca», in E. Manning (ed.), Thomistica, Leuven: Peeters, 1995, 35-87 «The Influence of Stephen Langton on the Idea of the Preacher in Humbert of Romans “De eruditione praedicatorum” and Hugh of St.-Cher's “Postille” on the Scriptures», in K. Emery, Jr.J. Wawrikow (ed.), Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of the Preachers, Notre Dame [Ind.]: The University of Notre Dame Press,  «Hugh of St.-Cher's Use of Stephen Langton», in S. EbbesenR. L. Friedman (ed.), Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition. Acts of the Symposium ‘The Copenhagen School of Medieval Philosophy, Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1999 (Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser), «Le “scholae” del medioevo come comunità di sapienti», Studi Medievali, I “Scholastica”. Storia di un concetto, Padova: Il Poligrafo (Subsidia Mediaevalia Patavina, 2) «“Lectio, disputatio, praedicatio”: la triade dell'esercizio scolastico secondo Aquino», Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana  «Le Commentaire des Sentences d'Hugues de St.-Cher et la littérature théologique de son temps», in L.-J. Bataillon OPG. DahanP.-M. Gy OP (éd.), Hugues de Saint-Cher bibliste et théologien, Turnhout: Brepols, 2004, 299-324 «Stephen Langton: Theology and Literature of the Pastoral Care», in B.-M. Tock (éd.), “In principio erat uerbum”. Mélanges offerts en hommage à Paul Tombeur par des anciens étudiants à l'occasion de son émeritat, Turnhout: F.I.d.E.M.Brepols,(Textes et Etudes du Moyen-Age, «La teologia dei maestri secolari di Parigi e la primitiva scuola domenicana», in G. Bertuzzi (ed.), L'origine dell'Ordine dei Predicatori e l'Bologna, Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano (Philosophia, 32) = Divus Thomas 4Manoscritti medievali nella Biblioteca dei Redentoristi di Venezia (S. Maria della Consolazione, detta “Della Fava”). Catalogo dei manoscritti. Catalogo dei sermoniIdentificazione dei codici dell'antica biblioteca del convento domenicano dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo di Venezia, con una prefazione di L.-J. Bataillon, Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2006 (Subsidia Mediaevalia Patavina, 9) «Teologia dei maestri secolari e predicazione mendicante: Pietro Cantore e la “Miscellanea del codice del tesoro”», Il Santo. Rivista francescana di Storia Dottrina Arte  «Peter the Chanter and the “Miscellanea del Codice del Tesoro” (Etymology as a Way for Constructing a Sermon)», in R. Andersson (ed.), Constructing the Medieval Sermon, Turnhout: Brepols, (Sermo,  «Dalla discussione in aula alla “Summa quaestionum theologiae” di Stefano Langton: Testi sul timore di Dio dal ms. Paris, BnF, lat. 14526 ed Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek-Hauptbibliothek, 260», Rivista di Storia della Filosofia  «“Teologia allegorica” e “teologia scolastica” in alcuni commenti all'“Historia scholastica” di Pietro Comestore», Archa Verbi. Yearbook for the Study of Medieval Theology  L.-J. Bataillon †N. BériouG. DahanR. Quinto (éd.), Étienne Langton, prédicateur, bibliste, théologien. Actes du Colloque International, Paris, Turnhout: Brepols,  (Bibliothèque d'Histoire Culturelle du Moyen Age, 9) Stephen Langton, Quaestiones Theologiae, Liber I, ed. by R. QuintoM. Bieniak, Oxford: Oxford University Press,  (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 22)  Giovanni Catapano, «In memoriam Riccardo Quinto», Bulletin de Philosophie médiévale Massimiliano d'Alessandro, report of «Breves dies hominis. Giornata internazionale di studio in memoria  Padova, 4 novembre », Archa VerbiDonato Gallo, report of «Breves dies hominis. Giornata internazionale di studio in memoria di Riccardo Quinto, Padova, 4 novembre », Quaderni per la Storia dell'Padova Gregorio Piaia, «Riccardo Quinto: in memoriam», Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale Caterina Tarlazzi, report of «Breves dies hominis. Giornata internazionale di studio in memoria Padova, 4 novembre », Bulletin de Philosophie médiévale Scolastica (filosofia) Stephen Langton   scientifica e Curriculum Vitae di Riccardo Quinto, su academia.edu. Giovanni Catapano,  Catalogo del Fondo archivistico “Riccardo Quinto.”

 

Quinton -- A.M. Quinton’s Gedanke Experiment: from “Spaces and Times,” Philosophy.“hardly Thought Out”Is this apriori or a posteriori? H. P. Grice. Space is ordinarily seen to be a unique individual. All real things are contained in one and the same space, and all spaces are part of the one space. In principle, every place can be reached from every other place by traveling through intermediate places. The spatial relation is symmetrical. Grice’s friend, A. M. Quinton devised a thought experiment to challenge this picture. Suppose that we have richly coherent and connected experience in our dreams just as we have in waking life, so that it becomes arbitrary to claim that our dream experience is not of an objectively existing world like the world of our waking experience. If the space of my waking world and my dream world are not mutually accessible, it is unlikely that we are justified in claiming to be living in a single spatially isolated world. Hence, space is not essentially singular. In assessing this account, we might distinguish between systematic and public physical space and fragmentary and private experiential space. The two-space myth raises questions about how we can justify moving from experiential space to objective space in the world as it is. “We can at least conceive circumstances in which we should have good reason to say that we know of real things located in two distinct spaces.” Quinton, “Spaces and Times,” Philosophy 37.

 

quod: quidquiddity. A term used by Grice when talking to his wife. “What quiddity did you buy?”

 

qv-quæstio -- x-question: Grice borrowed the erotetic from Cook Wilson, who in fact was influenced by Stout and will also influence Collingwood. While Grice starts by considering the pseudo-distinction between x-questions and yes/no questions, he soon finds out that they all reduce to the x-question, since a yes/no question obviously asks for a variable (the truth value of the whole proposition) to be filled. Grice sometimes follows Ryle who had quoted Carnap on the ‘w  frage.’ Grice is aware of the ‘wh’ rune in Anglo-Saxon, but was confused by ‘how.’ “For fun, I will spell ‘how,’ ‘whow.’” Although a Midlander Grice preferred the northern English pronunciation of aspirating the ‘wh-‘ and was irritated that only ‘who’ and ‘whose’ keep the aspiration. Note that “Where is your wife?” is a qu-quaestio, but “(a) in the kitchen, (b) in the bedroom” provides a ‘p v q’ as an answer“Disjunctive answers to intrusive questions.” Cf. “Iffy answers to intrusive questions.” “The lady doth protest too much: ampliative conjunctive answers to intrusive questions.”

 

radice – Grice: “”Vitters’, as Austin mocked him, is being funny, or trying to – perhaps this is due to the fact that Russell called him “The Austrian engineer,” and engineers know about stuff, such as chemical stuff.” Grice: “Man koennte dieses Bild (cheisch gesprochen) ein Satzradical nennn.”” “Since the root sign is taken to represent the rhota, I will symbolise this as root p, which is what Euluer says it originates from as first used by Rudolff in “Die Crosse.” Radix -- Radix -- Grice often talked about logical atomism and molecular propositionsand radixwhich is an atomic metaphor -- Democritus, Grecian preSocratic philosopher. He was born at Abdera, in Thrace. Building on Leucippus and his atomism, he developed the atomic theory in The Little World-system and numerous other writings. In response to the Eleatics’ argument that the impossibility of not-being entailed that there is no change, the atomists posited the existence of a plurality of tiny indivisible beings  the atoms  and not-being  the void, or empty space. Atoms do not come into being or perish, but they do move in the void, making possible the existence of a world, and indeed of many worlds. For the void is infinite in extent, and filled with an infinite number of atoms that move and collide with one another. Under the right conditions a concentration of atoms can begin a vortex motion that draws in other atoms and forms a spherical heaven enclosing a world. In our world there is a flat earth surrounded by heavenly bodies carried by a vortex motion. Other worlds like ours are born, flourish, and die, but their astronomical configurations may be different from ours and they need not have living creatures in them. The atoms are solid bodies with countless shapes and sizes, apparently having weight or mass, and capable of motion. All other properties are in some way derivative of these basic properties. The cosmic vortex motion causes a sifting that tends to separate similar atoms as the sea arranges pebbles on the shore. For instance heavier atoms sink to the center of the vortex, and lighter atoms such as those of fire rise upward. Compound bodies can grow by the aggregations of atoms that become entangled with one another. Living things, including humans, originally emerged out of slime. Life is caused by fine, spherical soul atoms, and living things die when these atoms are lost. Human culture gradually evolved through chance discoveries and imitations of nature. Because the atoms are invisible and the only real properties are properties of atoms, we cannot have direct knowledge of anything. Tastes, temperatures, and colors we know only “by convention.” In general the senses cannot give us anything but “bastard” knowledge; but there is a “legitimate” knowledge based on reason, which takes over where the senses leave off  presumably demonstrating that there are atoms that the senses cannot testify of. Democritus offers a causal theory of perception  sometimes called the theory of effluxes  accounting for tastes in terms of certain shapes of atoms and for sight in terms of “effluences” or moving films of atoms that impinge on the eye. Drawing on both atomic theory and conventional wisdom, Democritus develops an ethics of moderation. The aim of life is equanimity euthumiê, a state of balance achieved by moderation and proportionate pleasures. Envy and ambition are incompatible with the good life. Although Democritus was one of the most prolific writers of antiquity, his works were all lost. Yet we can still identify his atomic theory as the most fully worked out of pre-Socratic philosophies. His theory of matter influenced Plato’s Timaeus, and his naturalist anthropology became the prototype for liberal social theories. Democritus had no immediate successors, but a century later Epicurus transformed his ethics into a philosophy of consolation founded on atomism. Epicureanism thus became the vehicle through which atomic theory was transmitted to the early modern period. 

 

Ragusa: Peripateticae disputationes. Giorgio Raguseo (Ragusa), filosofo. Nato a Ragusa (Croazia) come figlio illegittimo, dovette mendicare prima di essere condotto a Venezia da un gentiluomo che gli diede un'istruzione. Divenne presbitero. Insegnò all'Padova.  Ebbe una famosa controversia con il suo collega Cesare Cremonini sulla natura degli elementi, sul valore della storia delle interpretazioni di Aristotele e sulle questioni didattiche.   Opere Giorgio Raguseo, Peripateticae disputationes, Venetiis, Pietro Dusinelli, 1613. 12 luglio . Note  Georgius <Raguseius>  François-Marie Appendini, Notizie istorico-critiche sulle antichita, storia e letteratura de Ragusei, Stamp. di A. Martecchini, 1802,  71–.  Cesare Preti, Giorgio da Ragusa, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani,  55, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2001.  François-Marie Appendini, Notizie istorico-critiche sulle antichita, storia e letteratura de Ragusei, Stamp. di A. Martecchini, 1802,  71–.  Cesare Preti, Giorgio Raguseo, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Opere di Giorgio Raguseo, su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl.

 

Raimondi: Giambattista Raimondi, o Giovanni Battista Raimondi (Napoli), filosofo. Figlio del cremonese Alessandro. Viaggiò molto in Oriente acquisendo un'approfondita conoscenza dell'arabo, dell'armeno, del siriaco e dell'ebraico. Nominato professore di matematica al Collegio della Sapienza di Roma,  contribuì alla rinascita del platonismo contro l'aristotelismo, che dominava la vita intellettuale dell'epoca.  Tradusse in latino diversi trattati di matematica: i Data di Euclide (dal greco), Le coniche di Apollonio di Perga (da una versione araba). Fu autore di molti commentari, specialmente su alcuni libri della Synagoge, nota anche come Collectiones mathematicae, di Pappo di Alessandria e sui trattati di Archimede. Fu membro dell'accademia fondata da Cinzio Passeri Aldobrandini, nipote di papa Clemente VIII da parte della sorella, Giulia Aldobrandini.  Raimondi è celebre soprattutto per essere stato il primo direttore scientifico della «Stamperia orientale medicea» (o Typographia Medicea linguarum externarum), fondata a Roma dal cardinale Ferdinando de' Medici. L'attività principale svolta dalla Stamperia fu, con l'appoggio di Papa Gregorio XIII, la pubblicazione di libri nelle diverse lingue orientali per favorire la diffusione delle missioni cattoliche in Oriente. Raimondi formò un gruppo di ricerca costituito da Giovanni Battista Vecchietti,  inviato pontificio ad Alessandria d'Egitto e in Persia, dal fratello Gerolamo, da Paulo Orsino di Costantinopoli, neofita ebreo convertito, e dal frate domenicano Tommaso da Terracina. In un periodo in cui la Santa Sede intratteneva buone relazioni diplomatiche con la dinastia Safavide, al potere in Persia  essi riuscirono a recuperare diversi manoscritti della Bibbia in lingue orientali. Furono portati a Roma più di una ventina di testi biblici ebraici e giudeo-persiani, tra cui i libri del Pentateuco, tra i pochi sopravvissuti ai giorni nostri.  La tipografia fu trasferita a Firenze, in conseguenza dell'elezione di Ferdinando a Granduca di Toscana. Ffu avviata la stampa delle opere. Furono pubblicate dapprima una Grammatica ebraica e una Grammatica caldea. Seguirono: due edizioni bilingui (arabo-latino) dei Vangeli, di cui furono tirate tremila copie; un compendio del Libro di Ruggero di al-Idrisi;  Il canone della medicina di Avicenna. Ill Granduca vendette la Stamperia a Raimondi, il quale a sua volta la cedette al figlio di Ferdinando, Cosimo II, salito al trono. La Stamperia chiuse poiché la realizzazione di volumi nelle lingue orientali non si era rivelata economicamente conveniente. Uno degli ultimi libri pubblicati fu una grammatica araba intitolata Liber Tasriphi, specificamente dedicata alle coniugazioni dei verbi.  Il grande progetto di Raimondi, che egli peraltro non riuscì a realizzare, fu quello di pubblicare una Bibbia poliglotta comprendente le sei lingue principali del cristianesimo orientale: siriaco, armeno, copto, ge'ez, arabo e persiano.  Oggi i manoscritti appartenuti alla Stamperia orientale medicea sono disseminati in diverse istituzioni: la Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze, la Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, la Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, la Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III di Napoli, la Biblioteca nazionale Marciana di Venezia e la Biblioteca nazionale di Francia a Parigi.  Note  Giovanni Battista Vecchietti, su iliesi.cnr.it. 26710/.  L'editoria del Principe, ovvero la stampa ufficiale delle istituzioni laiche e religiose, su docplayer.it. 4 dicembre .  Per la dedicazione al re Ruggero II di Sicilia.  Tipografia Medicea Orientale, su thesaurus.cerl.org.  Persian manuscripts, su iranicaonline.org. 26/10/.  A. M. Piemontese, La «Grammatica persiana» di G. B. Raimondi, in Rivista degli studi orientali,  K. El Bibas, La Stamperia medicea orientale, in , Un Maestro insolito, Scritti per Franco Cardini, Firenze, Vallecchi,  Mario Casari, Giambattista Raimondi, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  ʻAbd-al-Wahhāb Ibn-Ibrāhīm az- Zanǧānī, Liber Tasriphi compositio est Senis Alemami: Traditur in eo compendiosa notitia coniugationum verbi Arabici, Romae, Medicae, 1610. 7 marzo . Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, manoscritti persiani di Giovan Battista Raimondi.

 

raio: Giulio Raio, filosofo. professore di filosofia teoretica presso l'Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale". Si è occupato in particolare dell'ermeneutica e della filosofia diCassirer di cui ha tradotto diverse opere in italiano.  Raio fa parte del comitato di redazione della rivista «Studi Filosofici» e ha fondato la rivista internazionale «Cassirer Studies», entrambe pubblicate dalla casa editrice Bibliopolis. Inoltre è codirettore della collana di studi «Bachelardiana» edita da Il melangolo.  Ha scritto le introduzioni «Antinomia e allegoria» e «Il carattere di chiave», contenute nel volume «Tutti i romanzi e i racconti» di Franz Kafka edito da Newton Compton, per il quale ha anche tradotto la maggior parte dei racconti.  Opere Ermeneutica e teoria del simbolo, Napoli, Liguori Editore, Lezioni su Kant di Felice Tocco: Studio ed edizione, , Napoli, Liguori Editore, Introduzione a Cassirer, Roma-Bari, Laterza, Simbolismo tedesco. Kant Cassirer Szondi, Napoli, Bibliopolis, Ernst Cassirer, Conoscenza, concetto, cultura, introduzione, traduzione e note di Giulio Raio, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, introduzione, traduzione e note di Giulio Raio, Roma, Donzelli Editore, Ernst Cassirer, Metafisica delle forme simboliche, introduzione, traduzione e note di Giulio Raio, Milano, Sansoni, L'io, il tu e l'Es. Saggio sulla "Metafisica delle forme simboliche" di Ernst Cassirer, Macerata, Quodlibet, Rivista "Studi filosofici".  Cassirer Studies-Editor: Giulio Raio.  Pagina docente presso l'Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", su docenti.unior.it.

 

ramseyified description. Grice enjoyed Ramsey’s Engish humour: if you can say it, you can’t whistle it either. Applied by Grice in “Method.”Agent A is in a D state just in case there is a predicate “D”  introduced via implicit definition by nomological generalisation L within theory θ, such L obtains, A instantiates D. Grice distinguishes the ‘descriptor’ from a more primitive ‘name.’ The reference is to Ramsey. The issue is technical and relates to the introduction of a predicate constantsomething he would never have dared to at Oxford with Gilbert Ryle and D. F. Pears next to him! But in the New World, they loved a formalism! And of course Ramsey would not have anything to do with it! Ramsey: p. r.cited by Grice, “The Ramseyfied description. Frank Plumpton 330, influential 769 R    769 British philosopher of logic and mathematics. His primary interests were in logic and philosophy, but decades after his untimely death two of his publications sparked new branches of economics, and in pure mathematics his combinatorial theorems gave rise to “Ramsey theory” Economic Journal 7, 8; Proc. London Math. Soc., 8. During his lifetime Ramsey’s philosophical reputation outside Cambridge was based largely on his architectural reparation of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, strengthening its claim to reduce mathematics to the new logic formulated in Volume 1  a reduction rounded out by Vitters’s assessment of logical truths as tautologous. Ramsey clarified this logicist picture of mathematics by radically simplifying Russell’s ramified theory of types, eliminating the need for the unarguable axiom of reducibility Proc. London Math. Soc., 5. His philosophical work was published mostly after his death. The canon, established by Richard Braithwaite The Foundations of Mathematics . . . , 1, remains generally intact in D. H. Mellor’s edition Philosophical Papers, 0. Further writings of varying importance appear in his Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics M. C. Galavotti, ed., 1 and On Truth Nicholas Rescher and Ulrich Majer, eds., 1. As an undergraduate Ramsey observed that the redundancy account of truth “enables us to rule out at once some theories of truth such as that ‘to be true’ means ‘to work’ or ‘to cohere’ since clearly ‘p works’ and ‘p coheres’ are not equivalent to ‘p’.” Later, in the canonical “Truth and Probability” 6, he readdressed to knowledge and belief the main questions ordinarily associated with truth, analyzing probability as a mode of judgment in the framework of a theory of choice under uncertainty. Reinvented and acknowledged by L. J. Savage Foundations of Statistics, 4, this forms the theoretical basis of the currently dominant “Bayesian” view of rational decision making. Ramsey cut his philosophical teeth on Vitters’s Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. His translation appeared in 2; a long critical notice of the work 3 was his first substantial philosophical publication. His later role in Vitters’s rejection of the Tractatus is acknowledged in the foreword to Philosophical Investigations 3. The posthumous canon has been a gold mine. An example: “Propositions” 9, reading the theoretical terms T, U, etc. of an axiomatized scientific theory as variables, sees the theory’s content as conveyed by a “Ramsey sentence” saying that for some T, U, etc., the theory’s axioms are true, a sentence in which all extralogical terms are observational. Another example: “General Propositions and Causality” 9, offering in a footnote the “Ramsey test” for acceptability of conditionals, i.e., add the if-clause to your ambient beliefs minimally modified to make the enlarged set self-consistent, and accept the conditional if the then-clause follows.  Refs: “Philosophical psychology,” in BANC. ‘

 

Rashdall: English historian, theologian, and personal idealist. While acknowledging that Berkeley needed to be corrected by Kant, Rashdall defended Berkeley’s thesis that objects only exist for minds. From this he concluded that there is a divine mind that guarantees the existence of nature and the objectivity of morality. In his most important philosophical work, The Theory of Good and Evil 7, Rashdall argued that actions are right or wrong according to whether they produce well-being, in which pleasure as well as a virtuous disposition are constituents. Rashdall coined the name ‘ideal utilitarianism’ for this view.

 

IN-LATUM – Grice: “The Romans are fun: to re-fer, is to re-late, but still, Strawson got confused!” Illatum: rational choice: as oppose to irrational choice. V. choose. Grice, “Impicatures of ‘choosing’” “Hobson’s choice, or Hobson’s ‘choice’?” Pears on conversational implicaturum and choosing. That includes choosing in its meaning, and then it is easy to ac- cept the suggestion that choosing might be an S-factor, and that the hypothetical might be a Willkür: one of Grice’s favourite words from Kant“It’s so Kantish!” I told Pears about this, and having found it’s cognate with English ‘choose,’ he immediately set to write an essay on the topic!” f., ‘option, discretion, caprice,’ from MidHG. willekür, f., ‘free choice, free will’; gee kiesen and Kur-.kiesen, verb, ‘to select,’ from Middle High German kiesen, Old High German chiosan, ‘to test, try, taste for the purpose of testing, test by tasting, select after strict examination.’ Gothic kiusan, Anglo-Saxon ceósan, English to choose. Teutonic root kus (with the change of s into r, kur in the participle erkoren, see also Kur, ‘choice’), from pre-Teutonic gus, in Latin gus-tus, gus-tare, Greek γεύω for γεύσω, Indian root juš, ‘to select, be fond of.’ Teutonic kausjun passed as kusiti into Slavonic. Insofar as a philosopher explains and predicts the actum as consequences of a choice, which are themselves explained in terms of alleged reasons, it must depict agents as to some extent rational. Rationality, like reasons, involves evaluation, and just as one can assess the rationality of individual choices, so one can assess the rationality of social choices and examine how they are and ought to be related to the preferences and judgments of the actor. In addition, there are intricate questions concerning rationality in ‘strategic’ situations in which outcomes depend on the choices of multiple individuals. Since rationality is a central concept in branches of philosophy such as Grice’s pragmatics, action theory, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind, studies of rationality frequently cross the boundaries various branches of philosophy. The barebones theory of rationality  takes an agent’s preferences, i. e. his rankings of states of affairs, to be rational if they are complete and transitive, and it takes the agent’s choice to be rational if the agent does not prefer any feasible alternative to the one he chooses. Such a theory of rationality is clearly too weak. It says nothing about belief or what rationality implies when the agent does not know (with certainty) everything relevant to his choice. It may also be too strong, since there is nothing irrational about having incomplete preferences in situations involving uncertainty. Sometimes it is rational to suspend judgment and to refuse to rank alternatives that are not well understood. On the other hand, transitivity is a plausible condition, and the so-called “money pump” argument demonstrates that if one’s preferences are intransitive and one is willing to make exchanges, then one can be exploited. Suppose an agent A prefers X to Y, Y to Z and Z to X, and that A will pay some small amount of money $P to exchange Y for X, Z for Y, and X for Z. That means that, starting with Z, A will pay $P for Y, then $P again for X, then $P again for Z and so on. An agent need not be this stupid. He will instead refuse to trade or adjust his preferences to eliminate the intransitivity. On the other hand, there is evidence that an agent’s preferences are not in fact transitive. Such evidence does not establish that transitivity is not a requirement of rationality. It may show instead that an agent may sometimes not be rational. In, e. g. the case of preference reversals,” it seems plausible that the agent in fact makes the ‘irrational choice.’ Evidence of persistent violations of transitivity is disquieting, since standards of rationality should not be impossibly high. A further difficulty with the barebones theory of rationality concerns the individuation of the objects of preference or choice. Consider e. g. data from a multi-stage ultimatum game. Suppose A can propose any division of $10 between A and B. B can accept or reject A’s proposal. If B rejects the proposal, the amount of money drops to $5, and B gets to offer a division of the $5 which A can accept or reject. If A rejects B’s offer, both players get nothing. Suppose that A proposes to divide the money with $7 for A and $3 for B. B declines and offers to split the $5 evenly, with $2.50 for each. Behaviour such as this is, in fact, common. Assuming that B prefers more money to less, these choices appear to be a violation of transitivity. B prefers $3 to $2.50, yet declines $3 for certain for $2.50 (with some slight chance of A declining and B getting nothing). But the objects of choice are not just quantities of money. B is turning down $3 as part of “a raw deal” in favour of $2.50 as part of a fair arrangement. If the objects of choice are defined in this way, there is no failure of transitivity. This plausible observation gives rise to a serious conceptual problem that Grice thinks he can solve. Unless there are constraints on how the objects of choice are individuated, conditions of rationality such as transitivity are empty. A’s choice of X over Y, Y over Z and Z over X does not violate transitivity if “X when the alternative is Y” is not the same object of choice as “X when the alternative is Z”. A further substantive principle of rationality isrequired to limit how alternatives are individuated or to require that agents be indifferent between alternatives such as “X when the alternative is Y” and “X when the alternative is Z.” To extend the theory of rationality to circumstances involving risk (where the objects of choice are lotteries with known probabilities) and uncertainty (where agents do not know the probabilities or even all the possible outcomes of their choices) requires a further principle of rationality, as well as a controversial technical simplification. Subjective Bayesians suppose that the agent in circumstances of uncertainty has well-defined subjective probabilities (degrees of belief) over all the payoffs and thus that the objects of choice can be modeled as lotteries, just as in circumstances involving risk, though with subjective probabilities in place of objective probabilities. The most important of the axioms needed for the theory of rational choice under conditions of risk and uncertainty is the independence condition. The preferences of a rational agent between two lotteries that differ in only one outcome should match his preferences between the differing outcomes. A considerable part of Grice’s rational choice theory is concerned with formalizations of conditions of rationality and investigation of their implications. When they are complete and transitive and satisfy a further continuity condition, the agent’s preferences can be represented by an ordinal utility function, i. e. it is then possible to define a function that represents an agent’s preferences so that U(X) > U(Y) iff if the agent prefers X to Y, and U(X) = U(Y) iff if the agent is indifferent between X and Y. This function represents the preference ranking, and contains no information beyond the ranking. When in addition they satisfy the independence condition, the agent’s preferences can be represented by an expected utility function (Ramsey 1926). Such a function has two important properties. First, the expected utility of a lottery is equal to the sum of the expected utilities of its prizes weighted by their probabilities. Second, expected utility functions are unique up to a positive affine transformation. If U and V are both expected utility functions representing the preferences of an agent, for all objects of preference, X, V(X) must be equal to aU(X) + b, where a and b are real numbers and a is positive. The axioms of rationality imply that the agent’s degrees of belief will satisfy the axioms of the probability calculus. A great deal of controversy surrounds Grice’s theory of rationality, and there have been many formal investigations into amendeding it. Although a conversational pair is very different from this agent and this other agent, the pair has a mechanism to evaluate alternatives and make a choice. The evaluation and the choice may be rational or irrational. Pace Grice’s fruitful seminars on rational helpfulness in cooperation, t is not, however, obvious, what principles of rationality should govern the choices and evaluations of the conversational dyad. Transitivity is one plausible condition. It seems that a conversational dyad that chooses X when faced with the alternatives X or Y, Y when faced with the alternatives Y or Z and Z when faced with the alternatives X or Z, the conversational dyad has had “a change of hearts” or is choosing ‘irrationally.’ Yet, purported irrationalities such as these can easily arise from a standard mechanism that aims to link a ‘conversational choice’ and individual preferences. Suppose there are two conversationalists in the dyad. Individual One ranks the alternatives X, Y, Z. Individual Two ranks them Y, Z, X. (An Individual Three if he comes by, may ranks them Z, X, Y). If decisions are made by pairwise majority voting, X will be chosen from the pair (X, Y), Y will be chosen from (Y, Z), and Z will be chosen from (X, Z). Clearly this is unsettling. But is a possible cycle in a ‘conversational choice’ “irrational”? Similar problems affect what one might call the logical coherence of a conversational judgment Suppose the dyad consists of two individuals who make the following judgments concerning the truth or falsity of the propositions P and Q and that “conversational” judgment follows the majority. P if P, Q Q Conversationalist A true true true Conversationalist B false true false (Conversationalist C, if he passes by) true false false “Conversation” as an Institution: true true false. The judgment of each conversationalist is consistent with the principles of logic, while the “conversational co-operative” judgment violates the principles of logic. The “cooperative conversational,” “altruistic,” “joint judgment” need not be consistent with the principles of egoist logic. Although conversational choice theory bears on questions of conversational rationality, most work in conversational choice theory explores the consequences of principles of rationality coupled with this or that explicitly practical, or meta-ethical constraint. Grice does not use ‘moral,’ since he distinguishes what he calls a ‘conversational maxim’ from a ‘moral maxim’ of the type Kant universalizes. Arrow’s impossibility theorem assumes that an individual preference and a concerted, joint preference are complete and transitive and that the method of forming a conversational, concerted, joint preference (or making a conversational, concerted, choice) issues in some joint preference ranking or joint choice for any possible profile (or dossier, as Grice prefers) of each individual preference. Arrow’s impossibility theorem imposes a weak UNANIMITY (one-soul) condition. If A and B prefers X to Y, Y must not jointly preferred. Arrow’s impossibility theorem requires that there be no boss (call him Immanuel, the Genitor) whose preference determines a joint preference or choice irrespective of the preferences of anybody else. Arrow’s impossibility theorem imposes the condition that the joint concerted conversational preference between X and Y should depend on how A and B rank X and Y and on nothing else. Arrow’s impossibility theorem proves that no method of co-relating or linking conversational and a monogogic preference can satisfy all these conditions. If an monopreference and a mono-evaluations both satisfy the axioms of expected utility theory (with shared or objective probabilities) and that a duo-preference conform to the unanimous mono-preference, a duo- evaluation is determined by a weighted sum of individual utilities. A form of weighted futilitarianism, which prioritizes the interests of the recipient, rather than the emissor, uniquely satisfies a longer list of rational and practical constraints. When there are instead disagreements in probability assignments, there is an impossibility result. The unanimity (‘one-soul’) condition implies that for some profiles of individual preferences, a joint or duo-evaluation will not satisfy the axioms of expected utility theory. When outcomes depend on what at least two autonomous free agents do, one agent’s best choice may depend on what the other agent chooses. Although the principles of rationality governing mono-choice still apply, there is a further principle of conversational rationality governing the ‘expectation’ (to use Grice’s favourite term) of the action (or conversational move) of one’s co-conversationalist (and obviously, via the mutuality requirement of applicational universalizability) of the co-conversationalist’s ‘expectation’ concerning the conversationalist’s action and expectation, and so forth. Grice’s Conversational Game Theory plays a protagonist role within philosophy, and it is relevant to inquiries concerning conversational rationality and inquiries concerning conversational ethics. Rational choice -- Probability -- Dutch book, a bet or combination of bets whereby the bettor is bound to suffer a net loss regardless of the outcome. A simple example would be a bet on a proposition p at odds of 3 : 2 combined with a bet on not-p at the same odds, the total amount of money at stake in each bet being five dollars. Under this arrangement, if p turned out to be true one would win two dollars by the first bet but lose three dollars by the second, and if p turned out to be false one would win two dollars by the second bet but lose three dollars by the first. Hence, whatever happened, one would lose a dollar.  Dutch book argument, the argument that a rational person’s degrees of belief must conform to the axioms of the probability calculus, since otherwise, by the Dutch book theorem, he would be vulnerable to a Dutch book. R.Ke. Dutch book theorem, the proposition that anyone who a counts a bet on a proposition p as fair if the odds correspond to his degree of belief that p is true and who b is willing to make any combination of bets he would regard individually as fair will be vulnerable to a Dutch book provided his degrees of belief do not conform to the axioms of the probability calculus. Thus, anyone of whom a and b are true and whose degree of belief in a disjunction of two incompatible propositions is not equal to the sum of his degrees of belief in the two propositions taken individually would be vulnerable to a Dutch book. Illatum: rational decision theory -- decidability, as a property of sets, the existence of an effective procedure a “decision procedure” which, when applied to any object, determines whether or not the object belongs to the set. A theory or logic is decidable if and only if the set of its theorems is. Decidability is proved by describing a decision procedure and showing that it works. The truth table method, for example, establishes that classical propositional logic is decidable. To prove that something is not decidable requires a more precise characterization of the notion of effective procedure. Using one such characterization for which there is ample evidence, Church proved that classical predicate logic is not decidable. decision theory, the theory of rational decision, often called “rational choice theory” in political science and other social sciences. The basic idea probably Pascal’s was published at the end of Arnaud’s Port-Royal Logic 1662: “To judge what one must do to obtain a good or avoid an evil one must consider not only the good and the evil in itself but also the probability of its happening or not happening, and view geometrically the proportion that all these things have together.” Where goods and evils are monetary, Daniel Bernoulli 1738 spelled the idea out in terms of expected utilities as figures of merit for actions, holding that “in the absence of the unusual, the utility resulting from a fixed small increase in wealth will be inversely proportional to the quantity of goods previously possessed.” This was meant to solve the St. Petersburg paradox: Peter tosses a coin . . . until it should land “heads” [on toss n]. . . . He agrees to give Paul one ducat if he gets “heads” on the very first throw [and] with each additional throw the number of ducats he must pay is doubled. . . . Although the standard calculation shows that the value of Paul’s expectation [of gain] is infinitely great [i.e., the sum of all possible gains $ probabilities, 2n/2 $ ½n], it has . . . to be admitted that any fairly reasonable man would sell his chance, with great pleasure, for twenty ducats. In this case Paul’s expectation of utility is indeed finite on Bernoulli’s assumption of inverse proportionality; but as Karl Menger observed 4, Bernoulli’s solution fails if payoffs are so large that utilities are inversely proportional to probabilities; then only boundedness of utility scales resolves the paradox. Bernoulli’s idea of diminishing marginal utility of wealth survived in the neoclassical texts of W. S. Jevons 1871, Alfred Marshall 0, and A. C. Pigou 0, where personal utility judgment was understood to cause preference. But in the 0s, operationalistic arguments of John Hicks and R. G. D. Allen persuaded economists that on the contrary, 1 utility is no cause but a description, in which 2 the numbers indicate preference order but not intensity. In their Theory of Games and Economic Behavior 6, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern undid 2 by pushing 1 further: ordinal preferences among risky prospects were now seen to be describable on “interval” scales of subjective utility like the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales for temperature, so that once utilities, e.g., 0 and 1, are assigned to any prospect and any preferred one, utilities of all prospects are determined by overall preferences among gambles, i.e., probability distributions over prospects. Thus, the utility midpoint between two prospects is marked by the distribution assigning probability ½ to each. In fact, Ramsey had done that and more in a little-noticed essay “Truth and Probability,” 1 teasing subjective probabilities as well as utilities out of ordinal preferences among gambles. In a form independently invented by L. J. Savage Foundations of Statistics, 4, this approach is now widely accepted as a basis for rational decision analysis. The 8 book of that title by Howard Raiffa became a theoretical centerpiece of M.B.A. curricula, whose graduates diffused it through industry, government, and the military in a simplified format for defensible decision making, namely, “costbenefit analyses,” substituting expected numbers of dollars, deaths, etc., for preference-based expected utilities. Social choice and group decision form the native ground of interpersonal comparison of personal utilities. Thus, John C. Harsanyi 5 proved that if 1 individual and social preferences all satisfy the von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms, and 2 society is indifferent between two prospects whenever all individuals are, and 3 society prefers one prospect to another whenever someone does and nobody has the opposite preference, then social utilities are expressible as sums of individual utilities on interval scales obtained by stretching or compressing the individual scales by amounts determined by the social preferences. Arguably, the theorem shows how to derive interpersonal comparisons of individual preference intensities from social preference orderings that are thought to treat individual preferences on a par. Somewhat earlier, Kenneth Arrow had written that “interpersonal comparison of utilities has no meaning and, in fact, there is no meaning relevant to welfare economics in the measurability of individual utility” Social Choice and Individual Values, 1  a position later abandoned P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics and Society, 7. Arrow’s “impossibility theorem” is illustrated by cyclic preferences observed by Condorcet in 1785 among candidates A, B, C of voters 1, 2, 3, who rank them ABC, BCA, CAB, respectively, in decreasing order of preference, so that majority rule yields intransitive preferences for the group of three, of whom two 1, 3 prefer A to B and two 1, 2 prefer B to C but two 2, 3 prefer C to A. In general, the theorem denies existence of technically democratic schemes for forming social preferences from citizens’ preferences. A clause tendentiously called “independence of irrelevant alternatives” in the definition of ‘democratic’ rules out appeal to preferences among non-candidates as a way to form social preferences among candidates, thus ruling out the preferences among gambles used in Harsanyi’s theorem. See John Broome, Weighing Goods, 1, for further information and references. Savage derived the agent’s probabilities for states as well as utilities for consequences from preferences among abstract acts, represented by deterministic assignments of consequences to states. An act’s place in the preference ordering is then reflected by its expected utility, a probability-weighted average of the utilities of its consequences in the various states. Savage’s states and consequences formed distinct sets, with every assignment of consequences to states constituting an act. While Ramsey had also taken acts to be functions from states to consequences, he took consequences to be propositions sets of states, and assigned utilities to states, not consequences. A further step in that direction represents acts, too, by propositions see Ethan Bolker, Functions Resembling Quotients of Measures,  Microfilms, 5; and Richard Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, 5, 0. Bolker’s representation theorem states conditions under which preferences between truth of propositions determine probabilities and utilities nearly enough to make the position of a proposition in one’s preference ranking reflect its “desirability,” i.e., one’s expectation of utility conditionally on it. decision theory decision theory 208   208 Alongside such basic properties as transitivity and connexity, a workhorse among Savage’s assumptions was the “sure-thing principle”: Preferences among acts having the same consequences in certain states are unaffected by arbitrary changes in those consequences. This implies that agents see states as probabilistically independent of acts, and therefore implies that an act cannot be preferred to one that dominates it in the sense that the dominant act’s consequences in each state have utilities at least as great as the other’s. Unlike the sure thing principle, the principle ‘Choose so as to maximize CEU conditional expectation of utility’ rationalizes action aiming to enhance probabilities of preferred states of nature, as in quitting cigarettes to increase life expectancy. But as Nozick pointed out in 9, there are problems in which choiceworthiness goes by dominance rather than CEU, as when the smoker like R. A. Fisher in 9 believes that the statistical association between smoking and lung cancer is due to a genetic allele, possessors of which are more likely than others to smoke and to contract lung cancer, although among them smokers are not especially likely to contract lung cancer. In such “Newcomb” problems choices are ineffectual signs of conditions that agents would promote or prevent if they could. Causal decision theories modify the CEU formula to obtain figures of merit distinguishing causal efficacy from evidentiary significance  e.g., replacing conditional probabilities by probabilities of counterfactual conditionals; or forming a weighted average of CEU’s under all hypotheses about causes, with agents’ unconditional probabilities of hypotheses as weights; etc. Mathematical statisticians leery of subjective probability have cultivated Abraham Wald’s Theory of Statistical Decision Functions 0, treating statistical estimation, experimental design, and hypothesis testing as zero-sum “games against nature.” For an account of the opposite assimilation, of game theory to probabilistic decision theory, see Skyrms, Dynamics of Rational Deliberation 0. The “preference logics” of Sören Halldén, The Logic of ‘Better’ 7, and G. H. von Wright, The Logic of Preference 3, sidestep probability. Thus, Halldén holds that when truth of p is preferred to truth of q, falsity of q must be preferred to falsity of p, and von Wright with Aristotle holds that “this is more choiceworthy than that if this is choiceworthy without that, but that is not choiceworthy without this” Topics III, 118a. Both principles fail in the absence of special probabilistic assumptions, e.g., equiprobability of p with q. Received wisdom counts decision theory clearly false as a description of human behavior, seeing its proper status as normative. But some, notably Davidson, see the theory as constitutive of the very concept of preference, so that, e.g., preferences can no more be intransitive than propositions can be at once true and false.  Rational decision: envelope paradox, an apparent paradox in decision theory that runs as follows. You are shown two envelopes, M and N, and are reliably informed that each contains some finite positive amount of money, that the amount in one unspecified envelope is twice the amount in the unspecified other, and that you may choose only one. Call the amount in M ‘m’ and that in N ‘n’. It might seem that: there is a half chance that m % 2n and a half chance that m = n/2, so that the “expected value” of m is ½2n ! ½n/2 % 1.25n, so that you should prefer envelope M. But by similar reasoning it might seem that the expected value of n is 1.25m, so that you should prefer envelope N.  illatum. rationalitywhile Grice never used to employ ‘rationality’ he learned to! In “Retrospective epilogue” in fact he refers to the principle of conversational helpfulness as ‘promoting conversational rationality.’ Rationality as a faculty psychology, the view that the mind is a collection of departments responsible for distinct psychological functions. Related to faculty psychology is the doctrine of localization of function, wherein each faculty has a specific brain location. Faculty psychologies oppose theories of mind as a unity with one function e.g., those of Descartes and associationism or as a unity with various capabilities e.g., that of Ockham, and oppose the related holistic distributionist or mass-action theory of the brain. Faculty psychology began with Aristotle, who divided the human soul into five special senses, three inner senses common sense, imagination, memory and active and passive mind. In the Middle Ages e.g., Aquinas Aristotle’s three inner senses were subdivied, creating more elaborate lists of five to seven inward wits. Islamic physicianphilosophers such as Avicenna integrated Aristotelian faculty psychology with Galenic medicine by proposing brain locations for the faculties. Two important developments in faculty psychology occurred during the eighteenth century. First, Scottish philosophers led by Reid developed a version of faculty psychology opposed to the empiricist and associationist psychologies of Locke and Hume. The Scots proposed that humans were endowed by God with a set of faculties permitting knowledge of the world and morality. The Scottish system exerted considerable influence in the United States, where it was widely taught as a moral, character-building discipline, and in the nineteenth century this “Old Psychology” opposed the experimental “New Psychology.” Second, despite then being called a charlatan, Franz Joseph Gall 17581828 laid the foundation for modern neuropsychology in his work on localization of function. Gall rejected existing faculty psychologies as philosophical, unbiological, and incapable of accounting for everyday behavior. Gall proposed an innovative behavioral and biological list of faculties and brain localizations based on comparative anatomy, behavior study, and measurements of the human skull. Today, faculty psychology survives in trait and instinct theories of personality, Fodor’s theory that mental functions are implemented by neurologically “encapsulated” organs, and localizationist theories of the brain. rationalism, the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge, or, more strongly, that it is the unique path to knowledge. It is most often encountered as a view in epistemology, where it is traditionally contrasted with empiricism, the view that the senses are primary with respect to knowledge. It is important here to distinguish empiricism with respect to knowledge from empiricism with respect to ideas or concepts; whereas the former is opposed to rationalism, the latter is opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas. The term is also encountered in the philosophy of religion, where it may designate those who oppose the view that revelation is central to religious knowledge; and in ethics, where it may designate those who oppose the view that ethical principles are grounded in or derive from emotion, empathy, or some other non-rational foundation. The term ‘rationalism’ does not generally designate a single precise philosophical position; there are several ways in which reason can have precedence, and several accounts of knowledge to which it may be opposed. Furthermore, the very term ‘reason’ is not altogether clear. Often it designates a faculty of the soul, distinct from sensation, imagination, and memory, which is the ground of a priori knowledge. But there are other conceptions of reason, such as the narrower conception in which Pascal opposes reason to “knowledge of the heart” Pensées, section 110, or the computational conception of reason Hobbes advances in Leviathan I.5. The term might thus be applied to a number of philosophical positions from the ancients down to the present. Among the ancients, ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’ especially denote two schools of medicine, the former relying primarily on a theoretical knowledge of the hidden workings of the human body, the latter relying on direct clinical experience. The term might also be used to characterize the views of Plato and later Neoplatonists, who argued that we have pure intellectual access to the Forms and general principles that govern reality, and rejected sensory knowledge of the imperfect realization of those Forms in the material world. In recent philosophical writing, the term ‘rationalism’ is most closely associated with the positions of a group of seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and sometimes Malebranche. These thinkers are often referred to collectively as the Continental rationalists, and are generally opposed to the socalled British empiricists, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. All of the former share the view that we have a non-empirical and rational access to the truth about the way the world is, and all privilege reason over knowledge derived from the senses. These philosophers are also attracted to mathematics as a model for knowledge in general. But these common views are developed in quite different ways. Descartes claims to take his inspiration from mathematics  not mathematics as commonly understood, but the analysis of the ancients. According to Descartes, we start from first principles known directly by reason the cogito ergo sum of the Meditations, what he calls intuition in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind; all other knowledge is deduced from there. A central aim of his Meditations is to show that this faculty of reason is trustworthy. The senses, on the other hand, are generally deceptive, leading us to mistake sensory qualities for real qualities of extended bodies, and leading us to the false philosophy of Aristotle and to Scholasticism. Descartes does not reject the senses altogether; in Meditation VI he argues that the senses are most often correct in circumstances concerning the preservation of life. Perhaps paradoxically, experiment is important to Descartes’s scientific work. However, his primary interest is in the theoretical account of the phenomena experiment reveals, and while his position is unclear, he may have considered experiment as an auxiliary to intuition and deduction, or as a second-best method that can be used with problems too complex for pure reason. Malebranche, following Descartes, takes similar views in his Search after Truth, though unlike Descartes, he emphasizes original sin as the cause of our tendency to trust the senses. Spinoza’s model for knowledge is Euclidean geometry, as realized in the geometrical form of the Ethics. Spinoza explicitly argues that we cannot have adequate ideas of the world through sensation Ethics II, propositions 1631. In the Ethics he does see a role for the senses in what he calls knowledge of the first and knowledge of the second kinds, and in the earlier Emendation of the Intellect, he suggests that the senses may be auxiliary aids to genuine knowledge. But the senses are imperfect and far less valuable, according to Spinoza, than intuition, i.e., knowledge of the third kind, from which sensory experience is excluded. Spinoza’s rationalism is implicit in a central proposition of the Ethics, in accordance with which “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” Ethics II, proposition 7, allowing one to infer causal connections between bodies and states of the material world directly from the logical connections between ideas. Leibniz, too, emphasizes reason over the senses in a number of ways. In his youth he believed that it would be possible to calculate the truth-value of every sentence by constructing a logical language whose structure mirrors the structure of relations between concepts in the world. This view is reflected in his mature thought in the doctrine that in every truth, the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject, so that if one could take the God’s-eye view which, he concedes, we cannot, one could determine the truth or falsity of any proposition without appeal to experience Discourse on Metaphysics, section 8. Leibniz also argues that all truths are based on two basic principles, the law of non-contradiction for necessary truths, and the principle of sufficient reason for contingent truths Monadology, section 31, both of which can be known a priori. And so, at least in principle, the truth-values of all propositions can be determined a priori. This reflects his practice in physics, where he derives a number of laws of motion from the principle of the equality of cause and effect, which can be known a priori on the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. But, at the same time, referring to the empirical school of ancient medicine, Leibniz concedes that “we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions” Monadology, section 28. Each of the so-called Continental rationalists does, in his own way, privilege reason over the senses. But the common designation ‘Continental rationalism’ arose only much later, probably in the nineteenth century. For their contemporaries, more impressed with their differences than their common doctrines, the Continental rationalists did not form a single homogeneous school of thought. Illatum: rationality. In its primary sense, rationality is a normative concept that philosophers have generally tried to characterize in such a way that, for any action, belief, or desire, if it is rational we ought to choose it. No such positive characterization has achieved anything close to universal assent because, often, several competing actions, beliefs, or desires count as rational. Equating what is rational with what is rationally required eliminates the category of what is rationally allowed. Irrationality seems to be the more fundamental normative category; for although there are conflicting substantive accounts of irrationality, all agree that to say of an action, belief, or desire that it is irrational is to claim that it should always be avoided. Rationality is also a descriptive concept that refers to those intellectual capacities, usually involving the ability to use language, that distinguish persons from plants and most other animals. There is some dispute about whether some non-human animals, e.g., dolphins and chimpanzees, are rational in this sense. Theoretical rationality applies to beliefs. An irrational belief is one that obviously conflicts with what one should know. This characterization of an irrational belief is identical with the psychiatric characterization of a delusion. It is a personrelative concept, because what obviously conflicts with what should be known by one person need not obviously conflict with what should be known by another. On this account, any belief that is not irrational counts as rational. Many positive characterizations of rational beliefs have been proposed, e.g., 1 beliefs that are either self-evident or derived from self-evident beliefs by a reliable procedure and 2 beliefs that are consistent with the overwhelming majority of one’s beliefs; but all of these positive characterizations have encountered serious objections. Practical rationality applies to actions. For some philosophers it is identical to instrumental rationality. On this view, commonly called instrumentalism, acting rationally simply means acting in a way that is maximally efficient in achieving one’s goals. However, most philosophers realize that achieving one goal may conflict with achieving another, and therefore require that a rational action be one that best achieves one’s goals only when these goals are considered as forming a system. Others have added that all of these goals must be ones that would be chosen given complete knowledge and understanding of what it would be like to achieve these goals. On the latter account of rational action, the system of goals is chosen by all persons for themselves, and apart from consistency there is no external standpoint from which to evaluate rationally any such system. Thus, for a person with a certain system of goals it will be irrational to act morally. Another account of rational action is not at all person-relative. On this account, to act rationally is to act on universalizable principles, so that what is a reason for one person must be a reason for everyone. One point of such an account is to make it rationally required to act morally, thus making all immoral action irrational. However, if to call an action irrational is to claim that everyone would hold that it is always to be avoided, then it is neither irrational to act immorally in order to benefit oneself or one’s friends, nor irrational to act morally even when that goes against one’s system of goals. Only a negative characterization of what is rational as what is not irrational, which makes it rationally permissible to act either morally or in accordance with one’s own system of goals, as long as these goals meet some minimal objective standard, seems likely to be adequate.   Illatum: rationalization, 1 an apparent explanation of a person’s action or attitude by appeal to reasons that would justify or exculpate the person for it  if, contrary to fact, those reasons were to explain it; 2 an explanation or interpretation made from a rational perspective. In sense 1, rationalizations are pseudo-explanations, often motivated by a desire to exhibit an item in a favorable light. Such rationalizations sometimes involve self-deception. Depending on one’s view of justification, a rationalization might justify an action  by adducing excellent reasons for its performance  even if the agent, not having acted for those reasons, deserves no credit for so acting. In sense 2 a sense popularized in philosophy by Donald Davidson, rationalizations of intentional actions are genuine explanations in terms of agents’ reasons. In this sense, we provide a rationalization for  or “rationalize”  Robert’s shopping at Zed’s by identifying the reasons for which he does so: e.g., he wants to buy an excellent kitchen knife and believes that Zed’s sells the best cutlery in town. Also, the reasons for which an agent acts may themselves be said to rationalize the action. Beliefs, desires, and intentions may be similarly rationalized. In each case, a rationalization exhibits the rationalized item as, to some degree, rational from the standpoint of the person to whom it is attributed. rational psychology, the a priori study of the mind. This was a large component of eighteenthand nineteenth-century psychology, and was contrasted by its exponents with empirical psychology, which is rooted in contingent experience. The term ‘rational psychology’ may also designate a mind, or form of mind, having the property of rationality. Current philosophy of mind includes much discussion of rational psychologies, but the notion is apparently ambiguous. On one hand, there is rationality as intelligibility. This is a minimal coherence, say of desires or inferences, that a mind must possess to be a mind. For instance, Donald Davidson, many functionalists, and some decision theorists believe there are principles of rationality of this sort that constrain the appropriate attribution of beliefs and desires to a person, so that a mind must meet such constraints if it is to have beliefs and desires. On another pole, there is rationality as justification. For someone’s psychology to have this property is for that psychology to be as reason requires it to be, say for that person’s inferences and desires to be supported by proper reasons given their proper weight, and hence to be justified. Rationality as justification is a normative property, which it would seem some minds lack. But despite the apparent differences between these two sorts of rationality, some important work in philosophy of mind implies either that these two senses in fact collapse, or at least that there are intervening and significant senses, so that things at least a lot like normative principles constrain what our psychologies are.  rational reconstruction, also called logical reconstruction, translation of a discourse of a certain conceptual type into a discourse of another conceptual type with the aim of making it possible to say everything or everything important that is expressible in the former more clearly or perspicuously in the latter. The best-known example is one in Carnap’s Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Carnap attempted to translate discourse concerning physical objects e.g., ‘There is a round brown table’ into discourse concerning immediate objects of sense experience ‘Color patches of such-and-such chromatic characteristics and shape appear in such-and-such a way’. He was motivated by the empiricist doctrine that immediate sense experience is conceptually prior to everything else, including our notion of a physical object. In addition to talk of immediate sense experience, Carnap relied on logic and set theory. Since their use is difficult to reconcile with strict empiricism, his translation would not have fully vindicated empiricism even if it had succeeded.  Illatum: rationality -- reasons for action, considerations that call for or justify action. They may be subjective or objective. A subjective reason is a consideration an agent understands to support a course of action, whether or not it actually does. An objective reason is one that does support a course of action, regardless of whether the agent realizes it. What are cited as reasons may be matters either of fact or of value, but when facts are cited values are also relevant. Thus the fact that cigarette smoke contains nicotine is a reason for not smoking only because nicotine has undesirable effects. The most important evaluative reasons are normative reasons  i.e., considerations having e.g. ethical force. Facts become obligating reasons when, in conjunction with normative considerations, they give rise to an obligation. Thus in view of the obligation to help the needy, the fact that others are hungry is an obligating reason to see they are fed. Reasons for action enter practical thinking as the contents of beliefs, desires, and other mental states. But not all the reasons one has need motivate the corresponding behavior. Thus I may recognize an obligation to pay taxes, yet do so only for fear of punishment. If so, then only my fear is an explaining reason for my action. An overriding reason is one that takes precedence over all others. It is often claimed that moral reasons override all others objectively, and should do so subjectively as well. Finally, one may speak of an all-things-considered reason  one that after due consideration is taken as finally determinative of what shall be done.    reasons for belief, roughly, bases of belief. The word ‘belief’ is commonly used to designate both a particular sort of psychological state, a state of believing, and a particular intentional content or proposition believed. Reasons for belief exhibit an analogous duality. A proposition, p, might be said to provide a normative reason to believe a proposition, q, for instance, when p bears some appropriate warranting relation to q. And p might afford a perfectly good reason to believe q, even though no one, as a matter of fact, believes either p or q. In contrast, p is a reason that I have for believing q, if I believe p and p counts as a reason in the sense above to believe q. Undoubtedly, I have reason to believe countless propositions that I shall never, as it happens, come to believe. Suppose, however, that p is a reason for which I believe q. In that case, I must believe both p and q, and p must be a reason to believe q  or, at any rate, I must regard it as such. It may be that I must, in addition, believe q at least in part because I believe p. Reasons in these senses are inevitably epistemic; they turn on considerations of evidence, truth-conduciveness, and the like. But not all reasons for belief are of this sort. An explanatory reason, a reason why I believe p, may simply be an explanation for my having or coming to have this belief. Perhaps I believe p because I was brainwashed, or struck on the head, or because I have strong non-epistemic motives for this belief. I might, of course, hold the belief on the basis of unexceptionable epistemic grounds. When this is so, my believing p may both warrant and explain my believing q. Reflections of this sort can lead to questions concerning the overall or “all-things-considered” reasonableness of a given belief. Some philosophers e.g., Clifford argue that a belief’s reasonableness depends exclusively on its epistemic standing: my believing p is reasonable for me provided it is epistemically reasonable for me; where belief is concerned, epistemic reasons are overriding. Others, siding with James, have focused on the role of belief in our psychological economy, arguing that the reasonableness of my holding a given belief can be affected by a variety of non-epistemic considerations. Suppose I have some evidence that p is false, but that I stand to benefit in a significant way from coming to believe p. If that is so, and if the practical advantages of my holding p considerably outweigh the practical disadvantages, it might seem obvious that my holding p is reasonable for me in some all-embracing sense. 

 

Ray, J. English naturalist whose work on the structure and habits of plants and animals led to important conclusions on the methodology of classification and gave a strong impetus to the design argument in natural theology. In an early paper he argued that the determining characteristics of a species are those transmitted by seed, since color, scent, size, etc., vary with climate and nutriment. Parallels from the animal kingdom suggested the correct basis for classification would be structural. But we have no knowledge of real essences. Our experience of nature is of a continuum, and for practical purposes kinships are best identified by a plurality of criteria. His mature theory is set out in Dissertatio Brevis 1696 and Methodus Emendata 1703. The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation 1691 and three revisions was a best-selling compendium of Ray’s own scientific learning and was imitated and quarried by many later exponents of the design argument. Philosophically, he relied on others, from Cicero to Cudworth, and was superseded by Paley.

 

reale:  “Io ho infatti la ferma convinzione che, come Reinach afferma, Platone sia il "più grande filosofo in assoluto" comparso sulla terra, e che il compito di chi lo vuole comprendere e fare comprendere agli altri, pur avvicinandosi sempre di più alla Verità, non può mai avere fine” (Platone: alla ricerca della sapienza segreta). Giovanni Reale (Candia Lomellina), filosofo. Frequentò il liceo di Casale Monferrato per poi formarsi a Milano, laureandosi con Olgiati. Successivamente, perfezionerà i suoi studi a Marburgo e a Monaco di iera.  Dopo un periodo di insegnamento nei licei e conseguita la libera docenza in Storia della filosofia antica nel 1962, vinse una cattedra presso l'Università degli Studi di Parma, ove terrà i corsi di Filosofia morale e di Storia della filosofia. Quindi, nel 1972, passò all'Università Cattolica di Milano, nella quale sarà a lungo Professore di Storia della filosofia antica (fino al 2002), istituendovi e dirigendo il Centro di ricerche di Metafisica (luogo di formazione della maggior parte dei suoi allievi). Dal 2005 insegnò alla nuova Facoltà di Filosofia del San Raffaele di Milano, presso la quale intendeva fondare un nuovo centro internazionale di studi e ricerche su Platone, e sulle radici platoniche del pensiero e della civiltà occidentale.  Morì il 15 ottobre , a 83 anni, nella sua casa di Luino.  Il pensiero La sua tesi di fondo è la seguente: la filosofia greca ha creato quelle categorie e quel peculiare modo di pensare che hanno consentito la nascita e lo sviluppo della scienza e della tecnica dell'Occidente.  I suoi interessi scientifici spaziano lungo tutto l'arco del pensiero antico pagano e cristiano, e i suoi contributi di maggior rilievo hanno toccato via via Aristotele, Platone, Plotino, Socrate e Agostino. Egli ha studiato ognuno di questi autori andando, in un certo senso, 'contro-corrente' e inaugurandone, secondo l'opinione di Cornelia de Vogel, una lettura nuova.  La rilettura che Reale ha dato di Aristotele contesta l'interpretazione di Werner Jaeger, secondo il quale gli scritti aristotelici seguirebbero positivisticamente un andamento storico-genetico che partirebbe dalla teologia, passerebbe per la metafisica, per approdare infine alla scienza; Reale ha sostenuto invece la fondamentale unità del pensiero metafisico dello Stagirita.  Ne La Filosofia antica, mette in evidenza come il pensiero di Teofrasto si diffuse per l'aspetto scientifico con un'ampiezza del tutto paragonabile a quella del maestro Aristotele, rivelando però uno scarso spessore nella speculazione filosofica. Da Stratone in poi, ciò provocò un ripiegamento della scuola peripatetica verso l'ambito della fisica e delle scienze empiriche.  Per quel che riguarda Platone, Reale, importando in Italia gli studi della scuola platonica di Tubinga, ha messo in crisi l'interpretazione romantica di Platone stesso, che risale a Friedrich Schleiermacher, e ha voluto rivalutare il senso e la portata delle cosiddette «dottrine non scritte», vale a dire gli insegnamenti che Platone ha tenuto solo oralmente all'interno dell'Accademia e che conosciamo dalle testimonianze dei discepoli; in questo senso, Platone risulterebbe essere il testimone e l'interprete più geniale di quel peculiare momento della civiltà greca che passava dalla cultura dell'oralità a quella della scrittura.  Negli studi su Plotino, ha contestato la tesi di fondo di Eduard Zeller che vedeva nel grande neoplatonico il principale teorico del panteismo e dell'immanentismo; al contrario, Reale ha riletto Plotino come il campione della trascendenza metafisica dell'Uno.  L'interpretazione che Reale ha dato di Socrate, analogamente, si propone di risolvere le aporie della cosiddetta questione socratica, entrata in un vicolo cieco dopo gli studi di Olof Gigon, secondo cui di Socrate non possiamo sapere nulla con certezza; Reale ha inaugurato, invece, un nuovo modo di interpretare Socrate, non solo cercando di risolvere dall'interno le testimonianze contraddittorie degli allievi, ma soprattutto guardando al contesto della filosofia greca prima di Socrate e dopo Socrate: in questo modo, balzerebbe agli occhi la scoperta socratica del concetto di psyché come essenza e nucleo pensante dell'uomo.  «Socrate diceva che il compito dell'uomo è la cura dell'anima: la psicoterapia, potremmo dire. Che poi oggi l'anima venga interpretata in un altro senso, questo è relativamente importante. Socrate per esempio non si pronunciava sull'immortalità dell'anima, perché non aveva ancora gli elementi per farlo, elementi che solo con Platone emergeranno. Ma, nonostante più di duemila anni, ancora oggi si pensa che l'essenza dell'uomo sia la psyché. Molti, sbagliando, ritengono che il concetto di anima sia una creazione cristiana: è sbagliatissimo. Per certi aspetti il concetto di anima e di immortalità dell'anima è contrario alla dottrina cristiana, che parla invece di risurrezione dei corpi. Che poi i primi pensatori della Patristica abbiano utilizzato categorie filosofiche greche, e che quindi l'apparato concettuale del cristianesimo sia in parte ellenizzante, non deve far dimenticare che il concetto di psyché è una grandiosa creazione dei greci. L'Occidente viene da qui.»  (G. Reale, Storia della filosofia antica, Milano, Vita e pensiero, 1975) Infine, per quanto riguarda Agostino, gli studi di Reale tenderebbero a ricollocare questo autore nel contesto neoplatonico della tarda antichità e quindi nel momento dell'impatto del Cristianesimo con la filosofia greca, cercando di scrostarlo di tutte le successive interpretazioni dell'agostinismo medioevale.  Reale ritiene, poi, che la cifra spirituale che caratterizza il pensiero occidentale sia costituita dalla filosofia creata dai Greci. È stato infatti il logos greco a caratterizzare le due componenti essenziali del pensiero occidentale e precisamente a fornire gli strumenti concettuali per elaborare la Rivelazione cristiana, dando luogo, così, a quella peculiare mentalità da cui sono scaturite la scienza e la tecnica. Ma se la cultura occidentale non si capisce senza la filosofia dei Greci, questa a sua volta non si capisce senza la metafisica come studio dell'"Unità dell'Essere". Il lavoro che Reale svolge, studiando i grandi pensatori del passato, vuole anche servire a un confronto fra la metafisica antica e quella moderna. La preferenza che accorda a Platone dipende dal fatto che il filosofo ateniese è, con la "seconda navigazione" di cui parla nel Fedone, il vero creatore di questa problematica.  Reale, studioso di fama internazionale, si fa così portavoce di un «meditato ritorno alle radici della nostra cultura» attraverso la riproposta dei classici, in particolare Platone. Di quest'ultimo, Realein sintonia con la Scuola di Tubingarinnova l'interpretazione, mettendo in luce la primaria importanza delle cosiddette «dottrine non scritte» (agrafa dogmata) di cui riferiscono gli allievi di Platone stesso (Aristotele in primis).  Nel suo scritto Per una nuova interpretazione di Platone fa affiorare l'immagine di un Platone diverso, un Platone orale ein certo sensodogmatico: del resto, non è forse Platone stesso (ad esempio, nella Lettera VII) a garantirci che la sua filosofia dev'essere ricercata altrove rispetto agli scritti? Lo stesso corpus degli scritti platonici, giuntoci nella sua interezza (circostanza, questa, unica nella storiografia del pensiero greco), non presenta, invero, quell'unitarietà sistematica che ci si dovrebbe attendere, il che, ancora una volta, depone a favore della tesi secondo cui il vero Platone andrebbe cercato altrove, e precisamente nelle «dottrine non scritte».  Studioso anche della Metafisica di Aristotele, Reale smaschererebbe la tesi fatta valere da Jaeger, secondo cui l'opera non presenterebbe un'unitarietà ma sarebbe piuttosto una sorta di “zibaldone filosofico” (e, in particolare, il libro XII risalirebbein forza del suo spiccato interesse teologicoalla giovinezza dello Stagirita): lungi dal risolversi in un coacervo di scritti risalenti a differenti epoche e contesti, la Metafisica di Aristotelerileva Realeè un'opera profondamente unitaria, al cui centro c'è la definizione di metafisica come: a) scienza delle cause e dei principi primi, b) scienza dell'essere in quanto tale, c) scienza della sostanza, d) scienza teologica, e) scienza della verità.  Ne La saggezza antica sostiene che «tutti i mali di cui soffre l'uomo d'oggi hanno proprio nel nichilismo la loro radice» e che «un'energicquesti mali implicherebbe il loro sradicamento, ossia la vittoria sul nichilismo, mediante il recupero di ideali e valori supremi, e il superamento dell'ateismo». Ma quello che egli propone «non è affatto un ritorno acritico a certe idee del passato, ma l'assimilazione e la fruizione di alcuni messaggi della saggezza antica, che, se ben recepiti e meditati, possono, se non guarire, almeno lenire i mali dell'uomo d'oggi, corrodendo le radici da cui derivano».  In una siffatta prospettiva, può acquistare un valore eminentemente filosofico anche il pensiero di Seneca, a suo parere ingiustamente trascurato da una lunga tradizione che non gli avrebbe riconosciuto alcuna cittadinanza filosofica: in La filosofia di Seneca come terapia dei mali dell'anima, Reale riprende, ancora una volta, l'idea che la filosofia degli antichiin questo caso, quella di Senecapossa costituire un 'farmaco' per l'animo dilaniato dell'uomo moderno.  Tra gli allievi di Reale vi sono: Roberto Radice, docente dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, che si è dedicato al pensiero di Filone di Alessandria e dell'età ellenistica (in particolare dello Stoicismo) e che ha tradotto opere di Platone (Repubblica, Leggi, Lettere) di cui ha pubblicato in versione informatica il lessico; Maurizio Migliori, dell'Macerata, interprete del pensiero platonico; Giuseppe Girgenti, traduttore di Porfirio e del Neoplatonismo, e Vincenzo Cicero, a cui si devono inedite traduzioni italiane di Schelling, Hegel, Trendelenburg, Natorp, Hildebrand e Heidegger.  Opere  L'autografo di Giovanni Reale Oltre al campo specifico della filosofia antica e tardo-antica, Reale si è occupato a vario titolo anche della storia della filosofia generale: per esempio, nella stesura del noto Manuale di filosofia per i licei edito da Editrice La Scuola e scritto insieme a Dario Antiseri, oltre alla direzione delle collane filosofiche «Classici della filosofia», «Testi a fronte» della Bompiani e «I Filosofi» per Laterza.  Oltre a questo, i suoi principali scritti sono i seguenti:  Il concetto di filosofia prima e l'unità della Metafisica di Aristotele, Vita e Pensiero, Milano, Bompiani, Milano,  Introduzione a Aristotele, Laterza, Bari, Storia della filosofia antica,  Vita e Pensiero, Milano, Il pensiero occidentale dalle origini ad oggi, La Scuola, Brescia, Per una nuova interpretazione di Platone, CUSL, Milano, edizione definitiva, Vita e Pensiero, Milano, Introduzione a Proclo, Laterza, Bari, Filosofia antica, Jaca Book, Milano, Saggezza antica, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, Eros demone mediatore. Il gioco delle maschere nel "Simposio" di Platone, Rizzoli, Milano, Platone. Alla ricerca della sapienza segreta, Rizzoli, Milano, Bompiani, Milano, La nave di Teseo, Milano, . Guida alla lettura della Metafisica di Aristotele, Laterza, Bari,  Raffaello: La "Disputa", Rusconi, Milano, Corpo, anima e salute. Il concetto di uomo da Omero a Platone, Collana Scienza e Idee n.49, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, Socrate. Alla scoperta della sapienza umana, Rizzoli, Milano, La nave di Teseo, Milano, . Il pensiero antico, Vita e Pensiero, Milano,  La filosofia di Seneca come terapia dei mali dell'anima, Bompiani, Milano, Radici culturali e spirituali dell'Europa, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, Storia della filosofia greca e romana, Bompiani, Milano, Collana Il pensiero occidentale, Bompiani, . Valori dimenticati dell'Occidente, Bompiani, Milano,  L'arte di Riccardo Muti e la Musa platonica, Bompiani, Milano, Come leggere Agostino, Bompiani, Milano, Karol Wojtyla un pellegrino dell'assoluto, Bompiani, Milano, Autotestimonianze e rimandi dei Dialoghi di Platone alle "Dottrine non scritte", Bompiani, Milano, 2008. Storia del pensiero filosofico e scientifico, La Scuola, Brescia, . Salvare la scuola nell'era digitale, Brescia, La Scuola, . G. Reale-Umberto Veronesi, Responsabilità della vita. Un confronto fra un credente e un non credente, Milano, Bompiani, . Mi sono innamorato della filosofia, Armando Torno, Milano, Bompiani, , Romanino e la «Sistina dei poveri» a Pisogne, Milano, Bompiani, . Cento anni di filosofia. Da Nietzsche ai nostri giorni, La Scuola, Brescia,  Introduzione, traduzione e commentario della Metafisica di Aristotele, su archive.org, Bompiani, Traduzioni e commenti Reale ha tradotto in italiano e commentato molte opere di Platone, di Aristotele e di Plotino (la sua nuova edizione delle Enneadi è stata pubblicata  nella collana "I Meridiani" della Arnoldo Mondadori Editore). Ha pubblicato per Bompiani il poderoso volume I presocratici, da lui presentato come la «prima traduzione integrale» della versione tedesca del Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker di Hermann Diels e Walther Kranz. Nonostante in Italia ne fosse già uscita nel una traduzione di Gabriele Giannantoni edita da Laterza, Reale ha sostenuto la presenza di lacune e manomissioni nella traduzione del Giannantoni, lacune e manomissioni che sarebbero dovute, a parere di Reale, all'ossequio all'ideologia e all'«egemonia culturale marxista», secondo cui in quel periodo gli intellettuali di area comunista avrebbero dominato la scena in campo editoriale. Luciano Canfora, in risposta alle accuse di Reale, ne ha sostenuto la natura «pubblicitaria» e l'«inconsistenza» del ragionamento. Nella polemica sono intervenuti anche altri due studiosi: il primo è Mario Vegetti, il quale ha sostenuto che, se influenza c'è stata nell'edizione di Giannantoni, essa è stata di matrice idealistica, hegeliana e crociana e non marxista; il secondo studioso è Roberto Radice, il quale ha invece sostenuto che qualsiasi omissione è da evitare, specie se non è segnalata nel testo, e con riguardo alla presunta irrilevanza di taluni tagli operati da Giannantoni sottolinea come «i capretti a volte segnano la storia del pensiero più di alcuni filosofi e togliere questi deliziosi animali dai frammenti, così come far sparire dei cavolfiori, potrebbe trasformarsi in una censura».  Di Seneca, il Reale ha poi curato la traduzione delle opere in "Seneca. Tutti gli scritti" Onorificenze Cavaliere di gran croce dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica italiananastrino per uniforme ordinaria Cavaliere di gran croce dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica italiana «Di iniziativa del Presidente della Repubblica» Premio "Roncisvalle" dell'Navarra Cittadinanza onoraria di Siracusa Premio Pax Dantis per il Pensiero di Pace Universale, Centro Lunigianese di Studi Danteschi, . Lauree honoris causa Accademia Internazionale di Filosofia del Liechtenstein Università Cattolica di Lublino Stato di Mosca Universitat Ramon Llull de Barcellona. Filosofico.net  Addio a Giovanni Reale, grande interprete di Platone, La Stampa, 15 Cornelia de Vogel, Ripensando Platone e il Platonismo, Milano, Vita e Pensiero,  «Reale [...] dimostra la profonda unità concettuale di questi scritti di filosofia prima, mettendo in luce come Jaeger, nella sua tesi, sia condizionato dalla filosofia positivista e dalla teoria generale dell'evoluzione della cultura secondo le tre tappe di teologia-metafisica-scienza» (Note di copertina all'opera Il concetto di "filosofia prima" e l'unità della "Metafisica" di Aristotele, Milano, Bompiani, Storia della filosofia antica ,  «La fondazione della botanica fu il suo guadagno essenziale.».   Verso una nuova immagine di Platone, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, Cfr., in particolare, Il paradigma romantico nell'interpretazione di Platone, di Hans Krämer, Napoli,  La filosofia antica, Milano, Editoriale Jaca Book.  «Ha ragione, bisogna imparare ad accettare la morte», Corriere della Sera. Network delle Università Italiane, su uninetwork.it. G. Reale, Il concetto di filosofia prima e l'unità della metafisica di Aristotele, Milano, Vita e Pensiero,La filosofia di Seneca come terapia dei mali dell'anima, Milano, Bompiani, unimc.it/filosoficamente/primo-piano/giovanni-reale-in-memoriam  philosophicalnews.com/wp-content/uploads//07/5.2.pdf  Pur riconoscendo a Giannantoni una statura di studioso di prim'ordine, Reale ha sostenuto che molti marxisti «non presentavano talune cose nella loro effettiva realtà» (dall'Archivio storico del Corriere della Sera). Secondo Reale, pur non potendosi parlare di complotto, «nel testo di Laterza curato da Giannantoni mancanoin un'edizione chiamata l'unica integrale italianadecine e decine di passi che ho elencato in 4 pagine all'inizio della mia traduzione dei Presocratici; ci sono inoltre indebite aggiunte assenti nell'originale. Una raccolta di tal fatta, nata assemblando anche vecchie versioni e tagliando pure molte note di queste ultime, ha l'effetto di svuotare le idee forti di codesti autori. Svuotare, ironizzare, occupare uno spazio e toglierlo ad altri, evitare un vero confronto: ecco la vecchia tattica che rimane ancora molto viva» (dall'Archivio storico del Corriere della Sera   «Naturalmente, sul piano pubblicitario, si comprende la auto-esaltazione: la mia traduzione è più completa della tua, come il mio bucato è più bianco del tuo. Ma anche la pubblicità bisognerebbe saperla fare. Ci sono lauree brevi da poco istituite in proposito. Particolarmente inconsistente appare il ragionamento, se pure così può definirsi, sviluppato dal Reale. Eccolo nella sintesi fornita dal suo intervistatore: Giannantoni era molto bravo (e questo lo sapevamo anche senza il supporto di Reale), Laterza è innocente del sopra menzionato «reato ideologico», la colpa è della «penetrazione» comunista. Sembra quasi di sognare. Ma questa è la caricatura dell'antica cantilena sui comunisti padroni dell'editoria italiana. Per confutare questa sciocchezza, anni fa, Norberto Bobbio si limitò a trascrivere i titoli del catalogo Einaudi. E infatti come negare l'affiliazione bolscevica di Bobbio? Che pena» (in Archivio storico Corriere della sera).  Si fa riferimento all'osservazione di Canfora secondo la quale le omissioni di Giannantoni riguarderebbero aspetti poco rilevanti per un marxista come il frammento 23 di Orfeo, «un malridotto frustulo papiraceo in cui si fa cenno ad un rituale misterico [...]. Queste, e consimili, sono le omissioni rimproverate dal neo-presocratico Reale». (Cfr.Ibidem)  Osserva infatti Radice: «Sembrerebbe del tutto irrilevante sapere se Kant, quando scriveva la Critica della ragion pratica, mangiasse capretto o una particolare minestra, e credo che alla storia della filosofia questo poco interessi. Ma sapere se un orfico mangiasse o no capretto, può essere significativo dal punto di vista filosofico. Se si asteneva, allora era vegetariano e, come tale, non avrebbe condiviso la ritualistica greca in cui si consumavano le carni offerte alla divinità e si lasciavano ad essa gli aromi per segnare la distanza tra uomo e dio. In sostanza egli credeva, evitando il capretto, in una teologia in cui uomo e divino erano legati». (Cfr.Archivio storico Corriere della sera All'obiezione di Canfora ha risposto lo stesso Reale affermando: «Non è un capretto né una vacca quello che manca nel testo di Laterza curato da Giannantoni; mancanoin un'edizione chiamata l'unica integrale italianadecine e decine di passi che ho elencato in 4 pagine all'inizio della mia traduzione dei Presocratici; ci sono inoltre indebite aggiunte assenti nell'originale. Una raccolta di tal fatta, nata assemblando anche vecchie versioni e tagliando pure molte note di queste ultime, ha l'effetto di svuotare le idee forti di codesti autori. Svuotare, ironizzare, occupare uno spazio e toglierlo ad altri, evitare un vero confronto: ecco la vecchia tattica che rimane ancora molto viva». (Cfr. Ibidem)  Sito web del Quirinale: dettaglio decorato. Entrega de los internacionales premios Roncesvalles de Filosofía, su unav.edu, Laudatio del professore Giovanni Reale a cura del professore Antoni Bosch-Veciana., in//url.edu/sites/default/files/llibrethonoris_giovannireale.pdf.  Roberto Radice, Claudio Tiengo , Seconda navigazione. Omaggio a Giovanni Reale, Vita e Pensiero, Milano, .Giuseppe Grampa, "Ritornare ai Greci: intervista a Giovanni Reale sulla sua «Storia della filosofia antica»", Vita e Pensiero. Rivista culturale dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Dizionario di filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Armando Torno, Il mio Platone bocciato all'università, in Corriere della Sera, intervista Armando Torno, Addio,  il cattolico amico di Platone, in Corriere della Sera, Antonio Carioti, Critico il Platone di Reale il marxismo non c'entra, in Corriere della Sera, intervista di Mario Vegetti,   La dittatura culturale del marxismo, in Corriere della Sera, Treccani.itEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Giovanni Reale, su BeWeb, Conferenza Episcopale Italiana. Opere di Giovanni Reale, .  Registrazioni  su RadioRadicale.it, Radio Radicale. Filosofico.net, su filosofico.net. Storia della filosofia antica. Dalle origini a Socrate. Ospitato su gianfrancobertagni.it. Giovanni Reale , Storia della filosofia antica. Platone e Aristotele, Ospitato su gianfrancobertagni.it. Giovanni Reale , Storia della filosofia antica. I sistemi dell'Età ellenistica, gianfrancobertagni.it.

 

Res: “Possibly the most important word in philosophy.” Grice -- Realismcausal realism -- direct realism, the theory that perceiving is epistemically direct, unmediated by conscious or unconscious inference. Direct realism is distinguished, on the one hand, from indirect, or representative, realism, the view that perceptual awareness of material objects is mediated by an awareness of sensory representations, and, on the other hand, from forms of phenomenalism that identify material objects with states of mind. It might be thought that direct realism is incompatible with causal theories of perception. Such theories invoke causal chains leading from objects perceived causes to perceptual states of perceivers effects. Since effects must be distinct from causes, the relation between an instance of perceiving and an object perceived, it would seem, cannot be direct. This, however, confuses epistemic directness with causal directness. A direct realist need only be committed to the former. In perceiving a tomato to be red, the content of my perceptual awareness is the tomato’s being red. I enter this state as a result of a complex causal process, perhaps. But my perception may be direct in the sense that it is unmediated by an awareness of a representational sensory state from which I am led to an awareness of the tomato. Perceptual error, and more particularly, hallucinations and illusions, are usually thought to pose special difficulties for direct realists. My hallucinating a red tomato, for instance, is not my being directly aware of a red tomato, since I may hallucinate the tomato even when none is present. Perhaps, then, my hallucinating a red tomato is partly a matter of my being directly aware of a round, red sensory representation. And if my awareness in this case is indistinguishable from my perception of an actual red tomato, why not suppose that I am aware of a sensory representation in the veridical case as well? A direct realist may respond by denying that hallucinations are in fact indistinguishable from veridical perceivings or by calling into question the claim that, if sensory representations are required to explain hallucinations, they need be postulated in the veridical case.  reality, in standard philosophical usage, how things actually are, in contrast with their mere appearance. Appearance has to do with how things seem to a particular perceiver or group of perceivers. Reality is sometimes said to be twoway-independent of appearance. This means that appearance does not determine reality. First, no matter how much agreement there is, based on appearance, about the nature of reality, it is always conceivable that reality differs from appearance. Secondly, appearances are in no way required for reality: reality can outstrip the range of all investigations that we are in a position to make. It may be that reality always brings with it the possibility of appearances, in the counterfactual sense that if there were observers suitably situated, then if conditions were not conducive to error, they would have experiences of such-and-such a kind. But the truth of such a counterfactual seems to be grounded in the facts of reality. Phenomenalism holds, to the contrary, that the facts of reality can be explained by such counterfactuals, but phenomenalists have failed to produce adequate non-circular analyses. The concept of reality on which it is two-wayindependent of experience is sometimes called objective reality. However, Descartes used this phrase differently, to effect a contrast with formal or actual reality. He held that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause of an effect as in the effect itself, and applied this principle as follows: “There must be at least as much actual or formal reality in the efficient and total cause of an idea as objective reality in the idea itself.” The objective reality of an idea seems to have to do with its having representational content, while actual or formal reality has to do with existence independent of the mind. Thus the quoted principle relates features of the cause of an idea to the representational content of the idea. Descartes’s main intended applications were to God and material objects. 

 

Cursus – ad cursus – in cursus – ex cursus – re- cursus. recursum: Grice, ‘anti-sneak.” The third clause (III) in Grice’s final analysis of utterer’s meaning is self-referential and recursive, in a good way, in that (III) itself counts as one of the ‘inference elements’ (that Grice symbolises as “E”) that (III) specifies. Grice loved the heraldy metaphor of the escrutcheonand the Droste effect. Cf. ‘speculative,’ --.  Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice’s mise-en-abyme,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Then there is the recursive function theory, an area of formal semantics that takes as its point of departure the study of an extremely limited class of functions, the recursive functions. Recursive function theory is a branch of higher arithmetic number theory, or the theory of natural numbers whose universe of discourse is restricted to the non-negative integers: 0, 1, 2, etc. However, the techniques and results of recursive function theory do not resemble those traditionally associated with number theory. The class of recursive functions is defined in a way that makes evident that every recursive function can be computed or calculated. The hypothesis that every calculable function is recursive, which is known as Church’s thesis, is often taken as a kind of axiom in recursive function theory. This theory has played an important role in philosophy of mathematics, especially when epistemological issues are studied, since as Grice knows, super-knowing may be hard, but not impossible!

 

Redintegratum: a psychological process, similar to or involving classical conditioning, in which one feature of a situation causes a person to recall, visualize, or recompose an entire original situation. On opening a pack of cigarettes, a person may visualize the entire process, including striking the match, lighting the cigarette, and puffing. Redintegration is used as a technique in behavior therapy, e.g. when someone trying to refrain from smoking is exposed to unpleasant odors and vivid pictures of lungs caked with cancer, and then permitted to smoke. If the unpleasantness of the odors and visualization outweighs the reinforcement of smoking, the person may resist smoking. Philosophically, for Grice, so-called barbarically “redintegratum” is of interest for two reasons. First, the process may be critical in prudence. By bringing long-range consequences of behavior into focus in present deliberation, redintegration may help to protect long-range interests. Second, redintegration offers a role for visual images in producing behavior. Images figure in paradigmatic cases of redintegration. In recollecting pictures of cancerous lungs, the person may refrain from smoking. Pears: “Oddly, it didn’t work with Grice who remained a  bit of a chain-smokerbut of Navy’s Cut only, except for the very last. He never smelt the odour in a bad way.”

 

In-ductum, de-ductum – ex-ductum – re-ductum -- reduction, the replacement of one expression by a second expression that differs from the first in prima facie reference. So-called reductions have been meant in the sense of uniformly applicable explicit definitions, contextual definitions, or replacements suitable only in a limited range of contexts. Thus, authors have spoken of reductive conceptual analyses, especially in the early days of analytic philosophy. In particular, in the sensedatum theory talk of physical objects was supposed to be reduced to talk of sense-data by explicit definitions or other forms of conceptual analysis. Logical positivists talked of the reduction of theoretical vocabulary to an observational vocabulary, first by explicit definitions, and later by other devices, such as Carnap’s reduction sentences. These appealed to a test condition predicate, T e.g., ‘is placed in water’, and a display predicate, D e.g., ‘dissolves’, to introduce a dispositional or other “non-observational” term, S e.g., ‘is water-soluble’: Ex [Tx / Dx / Sx], with ‘/’ representing the material conditional. Negative reduction sentences for non-occurrence of S took the form Ex [NTx / NDx /Sx]. For coinciding predicate pairs T and TD and -D and ND Carnap referred to bilateral reduction sentences: Ex [Tx / Dx S Sx]. Like so many other attempted reductions, reduction sentences did not achieve replacement of the “reduced” term, S, since they do not fix application of S when the test condition, T, fails to apply. In the philosophy of mathematics, logicism claimed that all of mathematics could be reduced to logic, i.e., all mathematical terms could be defined with the vocabulary of logic and all theorems of mathematics could be derived from the laws of logic supplemented by these definitions. Russell’s Principia Mathematica carried out much of such a program with a reductive base of something much more like what we now call set theory rather than logic, strictly conceived. Many now accept the reducibility of mathematics to set theory, but only in a sense in which reductions are not unique. For example, the natural numbers can equally well be modeled as classes of equinumerous sets or as von Neumann ordinals. This non-uniqueness creates serious difficulties, with suggestions that set-theoretic reductions can throw light on what numbers and other mathematical objects “really are.” In contrast, we take scientific theories to tell us, unequivocally, that water is H20 and that temperature is mean translational kinetic energy. Accounts of theory reduction in science attempt to analyze the circumstance in which a “reducing theory” appears to tell us the composition of objects or properties described by a “reduced theory.” The simplest accounts follow the general pattern of reduction: one provides “identity statements” or “bridge laws,” with at least the form of explicit definitions, for all terms in the reduced theory not already appearing in the reducing theory; and then one argues that the reduced theory can be deduced from the reducing theory augmented by the definitions. For example, the laws of thermodynamics are said to be deducible from those of statistical mechanics, together with statements such as ‘temperature is mean translational kinetic energy’ and ‘pressure is mean momentum transfer’. How should the identity statements or bridge laws be understood? It takes empirical investigation to confirm statements such as that temperature is mean translational kinetic energy. Consequently, some have argued, such statements at best constitute contingent correlations rather than strict identities. On the other hand, if the relevant terms and their extensions are not mediated by analytic definitions, the identity statements may be analogized to identities involving two names, such as ‘Cicero is Tully’, where it takes empirical investigation to establish that the two names happen to have the same referent. One can generalize the idea of theory reduction in a variety of ways. One may require the bridge laws to suffice for the deduction of the reduced from the reducing theory without requiring that the bridge laws take the form of explicit identity statements or biconditional correlations. Some authors have also focused on the fact that in practice a reducing theory T2 corrects or refines the reduced theory T1, so that it is really only a correction or refinement, T1*, that is deducible from T2 and the bridge laws. Some have consequently applied the term ‘reduction’ to any pair of theories where the second corrects and extends the first in ways that explain both why the first theory was as accurate as it was and why it made the errors that it did. In this extended sense, relativity is said to reduce Newtonian mechanics. Do the social sciences, especially psychology, in principle reduce to physics? This prospect would support the so-called identity theory of mind and body, in particular resolving important problems in the philosophy of mind, such as the mindbody problem and the problem of other minds. Many though by no means all are now skeptical about the prospects for identifying mental properties, and the properties of other special sciences, with complex physical properties. To illustrate with an example from economics adapted from Fodor, in the right circumstances just about any physical object could count as a piece of money. Thus prospects seem dim for finding a closed and finite statement of the form ‘being a piece of money is . . .’, with only predicates from physics appearing on the right though some would want to admit infinite definitions in providing reductions. Similarly, one suspects that attributes, such as pain, are at best functional properties with indefinitely many possible physical realizations. Believing that reductions by finitely stable definitions are thus out of reach, many authors have tried to express the view that mental properties are still somehow physical by saying that they nonetheless supervene on the physical properties of the organisms that have them. In fact, these same difficulties that affect mental properties affect the paradigm case of temperature, and probably all putative examples of theoretical reduction. Temperature is mean translational temperature only in gases, and only idealized ones at that. In other substances, quite different physical mechanisms realize temperature. Temperature is more accurately described as a functional property, having to do with the mechanism of heat transfer between bodies, where, in principle, the required mechanism could be physically realized in indefinitely many ways. In most and quite possibly all cases of putative theory reduction by strict identities, we have instead a relation of physical realization, constitution, or instantiation, nicely illustrated by the property of being a calculator example taken from Cummins. The property of being a calculator can be physically realized by an abacus, by devices with gears and levers, by ones with vacuum tubes or silicon chips, and, in the right circumstances, by indefinitely many other physical arrangements. Perhaps many who have used ‘reduction’, particularly in the sciences, have intended the term in this sense of physical realization rather than one of strict identity. Let us restrict attention to properties that reduce in the sense of having a physical realization, as in the cases of being a calculator, having a certain temperature, and being a piece of money. Whether or not an object counts as having properties such as these will depend, not only on the physical properties of that object, but on various circumstances of the context. Intensions of relevant language users constitute a plausible candidate for relevant circumstances. In at least many cases, dependence on context arises because the property constitutes a functional property, where the relevant functional system calculational practices, heat transfer, monetary systems are much larger than the propertybearing object in question. These examples raise the question of whether many and perhaps all mental properties depend ineliminably on relations to things outside the organisms that have the mental properties.  Then there is the reduction sentence, for a given predicate Q3 of space-time points in a first-order language, any universal sentence S1 of the form: x [Q1x / Q2x / Q3 x], provided that the predicates Q1 and Q2 are consistently applicable to the same space-time points. If S1 has the form given above and S2 is of the form x [Q4x / Q5 /Q6] and either S1 is a reduction sentence for Q3 or S2 is a reduction sentence for -Q3, the pair {S1, S2} is a reduction pair for Q3. If Q1 % Q4 and Q2 %Q5, the conjunction of S1 and S2 is equivalent to a bilateral reduction sentence for Q3 of the form x [Q1 / Q3 S Q2]. These concepts were introduced by Carnap in “Testability and Meaning,” Philosophy of Science 637, to modify the verifiability criterion of meaning to a confirmability condition where terms can be introduced into meaningful scientific discourse by chains of reduction pairs rather than by definitions. The incentive for this modification seems to have been to accommodate the use of disposition predicates in scientific discourse. Carnap proposed explicating a disposition predicate Q3 by bilateral reduction sentences for Q3. An important but controversial feature of Carnap’s approach is that it avoids appeal to nonextensional conditionals in explicating disposition predicates.  Then there is the reductio ad absurdum, “Tertullian’s favourite proof,”Grice. 1 The principles A /A / -A and -A / A / A. 2 The argument forms ‘If A then B and not-B; therefore, not-A’ and ‘If not-A then B and not-B; therefore, A’ and arguments of these forms. Reasoning via such arguments is known as the method of indirect proof. 3 The rules of inference that permit i inferring not-A having derived a contradiction from A and ii inferring A having derived a contradiction from not-A. Both rules hold in classical logic and come to the same thing in any logic with the law of double negation. In intuitionist logic, however, i holds but ii does not. reductionism: The issue of reductionism is very much twentieth-century. There was Wisdom’s boring contribtions to Mind on ‘logical construction,’ Grice read the summary from Broad. One of the twelve –isms that Grice finds on his ascent to the City of Eternal Truth. He makes the reductive-reductionist distinction. Against J. M. Rountree. So, for Grice, the bad heathen vicious Reductionism can be defeated by the good Christian virtuous. Reductivism. A reductivist tries to define, say, what an emissor communicates (that p) in terms of the content of that proposition that he intends to transmit to his recipient. Following Aristotle, Grice reduces the effect to a ‘pathemata psucheos,’ i. e. a passio of the anima, as Boethius translates. This can be desiderative (“Thou shalt not kill”) or creditativa (“The grass is green.”)

 

mise-en-abyme-- reflection principles, two varieties of internal statements related to correctness in formal axiomatic systems. 1 Proof-theoretic reflection principles are formulated for effectively presented systems S that contain a modicum of elementary number theory sufficient to arithmetize their own syntactic notions, as done by Kurt Gödel in his 1 work on incompleteness. Let ProvS x express that x is the Gödel number of a statement provable in S, and let nA be the number of A, for any statement A of S. The weakest reflection principle considered for S is the collection RfnS of all statements of the form ProvS nA P A, which express that if A is provable from S then A is true. The proposition ConS expressing the consistency of S is a consequence of RfnS obtained by taking A to be a disprovable statement. Thus, by Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, RfnS is stronger than S if S is consistent. Reflection principles are used in the construction of ordinal logics as a systematic means of overcoming incompleteness. 2 Set-theoretic reflection principles are formulated for systems S of axiomatic set theory, such as ZF Zermelo-Fraenkel. In the simplest form they express that any property A in the language of S that holds of the universe of “all” sets, already holds of a portion of that universe coextensive with some set x. This takes the form A P DxAx where in Ax all quantifiers of A are relativized to x. In contrast to proof-theoretic reflection principles, these may be established as theorems of ZF.  Luigi Speranza has studied how mise-en-abyme flouts three Griceian constraints: perspicuity mainly – seeing that the message is by definition impossible to decipher. There’s self-reference, and there’s a flout to communicative trust, since the representatum cannot be propositional.

 

Re-flexux – in-fluxus – ex-fluxus – re-fluxus -- Reflectum -- reflective equilibrium, as usually conceived, a coherence method for justifying evaluative principles and theories. The method was first described by Goodman, who proposed it be used to justify deductive and inductive principles. According to Goodman Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 5, a particular deductive inference is justified by its conforming with deductive principles, but these principles are justified in their turn by conforming with accepted deductive practice. The idea, then, is that justified inferences and principles are those that emerge from a process of mutual adjustment, with principles being revised when they sanction inferences we cannot bring ourselves to accept, and particular inferences being rejected when they conflict with rules we are unwilling to revise. Thus, neither principles nor particular inferences are epistemically privileged. At least in principle, everything is liable to revision. Rawls further articulated the method of reflective equilibrium and applied it in ethics. According to Rawls A Theory of Justice, 1, inquiry begins with considered moral judgments, i.e., judgments about which we are confident and which are free from common sources of error, e.g., ignorance of facts, insufficient reflection, or emotional agitation. According to narrow reflective equilibrium, ethical principles are justified by bringing them into coherence with our considered moral judgments through a process of mutual adjustment. Rawls, however, pursues a wide reflective equilibrium. Wide equilibrium is attained by proceeding to consider alternatives to the moral conception accepted in narrow equilibrium, along with philosophical arguments that might decide among these conceptions. The principles and considered judgments accepted in narrow equilibrium are then adjusted as seems appropriate. One way to conceive of wide reflective equilibrium is as an effort to construct a coherent system of belief by a process of mutual adjustment to considered moral judgments and moral principles as in narrow equilibrium along with the background philosophical, social scientific, and any other relevant beliefs that might figure in the arguments for and against alternative moral conceptions, e.g., metaphysical views regarding the nature of persons. As in Goodman’s original proposal, none of the judgments, principles, or theories involved is privileged: all are open to revision. 

 

Reggio: Isacco Samuele Reggio Isacco Samuele Reggio (ebraico: יצחק שמואל רג'יו, acronimo YaSHaR יש"ר; Gorizia), filosofo. Uno dei fondatori del movimento Scienza del Giudaismo, diffusore delle idee dell'Haskalah in Italia e rabbino di Gorizia.   Umberto Cassuto, «REGGIO, Isacco Samuele» in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1935. Altri progetti Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Isacco Samuele Reggio  «Réggio, Isacco Samuele», la voce in Enciclopedie on line, sito "Treccani.it L'Enciclopedia italiana".«Reggio, Isaac Samuel (YaSHaR)», la voce in Jewish Encyclopedia, sito "jewishencyclopedia.com".

 

reghini: Grice: “It’s difficult to call Reghini a philosopher; yes, he was interested in Pythagoras – but to what extent can, in spite of Russell, number GROUND a whole philosophy?” -- Arturo Reghini (Firenze), filosofo. Si laureò a Pisa, dedicandosi all'insegnamento della materia in vari istituti superiori in Toscana, a Roma ed in Emilia-Romagna.  Promotóre del Pitagorismo, fu affiliato a vari gruppi dell'esoterismo italiano. Entrò nella Società Teosofica e ne fondò la sezione romana. Più tardi, fonderà a Palermo la Biblioteca Teosofica, alla quale di poi cambierà nome in Biblioteca Filosofica. Venne iniziato al Rito di Memphis di Palermo (rito massonico di supposta origine egizia) ed entrò a Firenze nella loggia Lucifero, dipendente dal Grande Oriente d'Italia. Ebbe una breve adesione al martinismo papusiano, che in Italia era diretto da Sacchi, verso le carenze della cui maestranza e pubblicistica Reghini apporta una demolizione magistrale. Fu poi chiamato d’Armentano, che lo avviò allo studio del pitagorismo. Entrò nel Supremo Consiglio Universale del Rito filosofico italiano, dal quale però si dimise, non aveva infatti un'alta opinione dello stato della massoneria in Italia. Insignito del 33° e massimo grado del Rito Scozzese Antico e Accettato, entrò a far parte come membro effettivo del Supremo Consiglio d'Italia, di cui fu Gran cancelliere e Segretario generale.  Gli anni della Grande Guerra videro discepoli e maestri della “Schola Italica Pitagorica” partire volontari per il fronte. Non rimase inerte innanzi al sorgere delle istanze interventiste. Partecipò attivamente alla manifestazione romana del maggio, culminata in Campidoglio, tesa ad ottenere la dichiarazione di guerra. Accolto nell'Accademia Militare di Torino come allievo ufficiale del Genio partì volontario per il fronte, ottenendo sul campo il grado di capitano del Genio. Lui ed il suo Maestro Armentano crearono a Roma l'Associazione Pitagorica, che riprendeva le fila di precedenti esperienze e si richiamava operativamente al sodalizio pitagorico dell'antichità. Da solo o con altri, fondò e animò varie riviste, con interventi sagaci e ricchi di dottrina: scrisse sul papiniano Leonardo , dando vita ad Atanór, Ignis, e UR, con Colazza,  Evola come direttore, Parise, ed Onofri. Contrasti d'idee e caratteriali prevalser nel rapporto di collaborazione fra Evola e Reghini, provocando la scelta evoliana di allontanamento di questi, assieme a Parise, da UR (rivista sórta a esprimere al pubblico della cultura italiana l'intento dell'occulto Gruppo di Ur; nella quale il Maestro fiorentino pubblicò con l'eteronimo di Pietro Negri); e se ne ebbero anche strascichi giudiziari. Infatti Evola tenterà di fare incriminare Reghini per affiliazione massonica (affiliazione che costituiva reato dopo l'imposizione di scioglimento delle "associazioni segrete" decretata dal Regime fascista); ma il potere giudiziario optò infine per un "accordo" tra i due onde evitare uno scandalo. Per via del condizionamento repressivo fascista vòlto all'emarginazione di tanti esponenti dell'esoterismo italiano (Armentano era partito per il Brasile), Reghini ormai isolato si ritirava dalle attività pubbliche e a Budrio si dedicava all'insegnamento nell'istituto privato "Quirico Filopanti" (diretto da Partengo), alla meditazionein chiave pitagoricadelle scienze matematiche.  Ottenne tuttavia pubblici riconoscimenti dall'Accademia dei Lincei e dall'Accademia d'Italia, per la sua opera sulla restituzione della geometria pitagorica. Il Crepuscolo dei Filosofi regalato dal suo autore, Papini all’amico Arturo al suo ingresso nella Loggia fiorentina ‘Lucifero.” Nel frontespizio una dedica ad inchiostro, scolorito dal tempo, «Al nuovo fratello Reghini il suo G Papini».in: Raffaele K. Salinari, Reghini, pitagorico, su ilmanifesto.it  Rito filosofico italiano Del Massa, Pagine esoteriche, La Finestra, Trento. In questa qualità firmò il decreto del suo scioglimento n(riprodotto in: Luigi Sessa, I Sovrani Grandi Commendatori e breve storia del Supremo Consiglio d'Italia del Rito scozzese antico ed accettato Palazzo Giustiniani dal 1805 ad oggi , Ed. Bastogi, Foggia, in seguito all'approvazione dello stesso anno alla Camera dei deputati del progetto di legge sulla disciplina delle associazioni, presentato da Mussolini, mirante allo scioglimento della massoneria. Iacovella, "Il Barone e il Pitagorico: Evola e Reghini", in: Vie della Tradizione, Cfr. la recensione fattane da Guénon: ed. di Comptes Rendus, Parigi. Opere: “Le parole sacre e di passo dei primi tre gradi ed il massimo mistero massonico, Atanor, Roma, Per la restituzione della geometria pitagorica, nuova edizione Il Basilisco, Genova, che comprende anche I numeri sacri nella tradizione pitagorica; nuovo titolo Numeri sacri e geometria pitagorica. Il fascio littorio, ovvero il simbolismo duodecimale e il fascio etrusco; nuova edizione Il Basilisco, Genova, I numeri sacri nella tradizione pitagorica, Ignis, Roma, 1947. Dei Numeri pitagorici, PrologoAssociazione culturale Ignis, Dei Numeri Pitagorici (Libri sette) Dell'equazione indeterminata di secondo grado con due incogniteArchè/pizeta,  Dei Numeri Pitagorici (Libri sette)Parte PrimaVolume SecondoDelle soluzioni primitive dell'equazione di tipo Pell x2-Dy2=B e del loro numeroArchè/pizeta, . Dei Numeri Pitagorici (Libri sette)Parte SecondaVolume TerzoDei numeri triangolari, dei quadrati e dei numeri piramidali a base triangolare o quadrataArchè/pizeta, . Dizionario Filologico, ("Associazione culturale Ignis"), 2008. Cagliostro, ("Associazione culturale Ignis"), 2007. Considerazioni sul Rituale dell'apprendista libero muratore, Phoenix, Genova, Paganesimo, Pitagorismo, Massoneria, Mantinea, Furnari (Messina),  Per la restituzione della Massoneria Pitagorica Italiana, introduzione di Vinicio Serino, Raffaelli Editore, Rimini, La Tradizione Pitagorica Massonica, Fratelli Melita Editori, Genova, Trascendenza di Spazio e Tempo, rivista "Mondo Occulto", Napoli, ristampa Libreria Ed. ASEQ . Curò fondamentali traduzioni (con introduzione e note), tra cui:  De occulta philosophia di Cornelio Agrippa (Alberto Fidi, Milano, opera in due volumi); ristampato dalle Edizioni Mediterranee e da I Dioscuri, Genova, Le Roi du Monde di René Guénon ( Alberto Fidi editore, Milano. A La Sapienza pagana e pitagorica del '900 (La Cittadella.  I Libri del Graal. Geminello Alvi, Reghini, il massone pitagorico che amava la guerra, Corriere della Sera, Riccardo Paradisi, Reghini, il Pitagorico che sognava l’impero, L’Indipendente, Natale M. Di Luca, "Arturo Reghini. Un intellettuale neo-pitagorico tra massoneria e fascismo", Atanòr, Roma.  Parise, "Nota sulla vita di A. Reghini", in calce a Considerazioni sul rituale dell'apprendista libero muratore, Phoenix, Genova,  Roberto Sestito, Il figlio del Sole. Vita e opere di Arturo Reghini, filosofo e matematico, Ancona, Associazione Culturale "Ignis", Via romana agli Dei Amedeo Rocco Armentano Evola  Parise, Schiavone, Reghini a metà strada tra fascismo e massoneria, su archiviostorico.info. Centro De GiorgiScuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Breve biografia su mathematica.sns.it. Guido Boni, Omaggio su ritosimbolico.it. 1 Thomas Dana Lloyd, Un pitagorico dei nostri tempi, su ritosimbolico.it. Nicola Bizzi, Arturo Reghini. Sulla Tradizione occidentale, su youtube.com. Christian Giudice, Occultism and Traditionalism in Twentieth-Century Italy, su spreaker.com. Christian Giudice,  For a Spiritual Understanding of Life’: Arturo Reghini’s Theosophical Years su academia.edu. Grandi massoni. Arturo Reghini, illustre matematico e antifascista, traduttore e amico di Guenon, su grandeoriente.it.  Raffaele K. Salinari, Arturo Reghini, pitagorico, su ilmanifesto.it.

 

regina: Grice: “When Urmson said that for Prichard, duty cashed out in interest, he was right! But we must wait for Regina to emphasise Kierkegaard’s punning on interest – which literally means, ‘being in between’! The interesting (sic) thing is that Kierkegaard exploits the old Roman aequi-vocation between the alethic (being in between) and the practical (Prichard, ‘duty as interest’). -- Umberto Regina (Sabbioneta), filosofo. Vincitore di una borsa di studio per il Collegio Augustinianum, si è laureato a Milano con una tesi su Lavelle con Severino. Si è perfezionato in Filosofia neoscolastica con una tesi su Heidegger.  Dopo aver insegnato nei licei è passato a Macerata. Ha insegnato a Verona.  Professore a Cagliari, è tornato a Verona, e Direttore del Dipartimento di Filosofia.  Nell'ambito della sua ricerca,  ha ottenuto dall'Unione europea il finanziamento per il primo progetto «Tempus», relativo all'organizzazione presso l'Sarajevo e Mostar di un master sulla tolleranza religiosa..  In collaborazione con Copenaghen ha organizzato due convegni: «Kierkegaard: ripresa, pentimento, perdono», svoltosi a Verona,  e «Mennesket som forhold. Søren Kierkegaards filosofiske og teologiske antropolog -- iL'essere umano come rapporto. L'antropologia filosofica e teologica di Kierkegaard».  Partecipa ai «Forum» che la Conferenza Episcopale Italiana organizza nell'ambito del Progetto culturale della Chiesa. -- è stato nominato docente onorario a Verona.  Ha costruito il suo pensiero basandosi in modo particolare su Kierkegaard, Nietzsche e Heidegger (“the greatest living philosopher” – Grice). In Heidegger ha evidenziato l'importanza del ruolo sapienziale assegnato alla finitezza dell'uomo.  In Kierkegaard vede invece il pensatore da cui partire per costruire una nuova ontologia e una nuova antropologia basate su una nuova concezione dell'essere: l'esse come inter-esse. L'essere come inter-esse (nella doppia valenza ontologica ed etica) pone il pensante in rapporto con un'ulteriorità che, nel trascenderlo, ne accentua e personalizza il differire. La metafisica, se fondata sull’inter-esse, cessa di essere ontoteologia, ossia nient'altro che proiezione idolatrica della logica umana.  Ha pubblicato la monografia su  Strauß.  R. Mahmutćehavjić , Unity and Plurality in Europe, «Forum Bosnæ. Culture, Science, Society, Politics», Quarterly review,  Sarajevo Heidegger. Dal nichilismo alla dignità dell'uomo, Vita e Pensiero, Milano Heidegger. Esistenza e sacro, Morcelliana, Brescia 1Kierkegaard. L'arte dell'esistere, Morcelliana, Brescia, L. Romera, “Acta Philosophica”, VIrecensione a U. Noi eredi dei cristiani e dei Greci, Il Poligrafo, Padova Leggi la recensione.  Il termine è stato acquisito dal pensiero contemporaneo tramite Heidegger.  La vita di Gesù e la filosofia moderna. Uno studio su D. F. Strauss, Morcelliana, Brescia, Pubblicazioni: Heidegger. Dal nichilismo alla dignità dell'uomo, Vita e Pensiero, Milano Heidegger. Esistenza e sacro, Morcelliana, Brescia La vita di Gesù e la filosofia moderna. Uno studio su David Friedrich Strauß, Morcelliana, Brescia  L'uomo complementare. Potenza e valore nella filosofia di Nietzsche, Morcelliana, Brescia Servire l'essere con Heidegger, Morcelliana, Brescia La differenza viva. Con Nietzsche e Heidegger per una nuova concettualità, CUSL “Il Sentiero”, Verona, Noi eredi dei Cristiani e dei Greci, Il Poligrafo, Padova La soglia della fede. L'attuale domanda su Dio, Studium, Roma  Kierkegaard. L'arte dell'esistere, Morcelliana, Brescia Sito personale, su umbertoregina.it.

 

inter-esse: Prichard, “Duty and interest,” repr. in Urmson. Grice knew about this. Kierkegaard notes the etymology of interest, unlike Prichard.Grice’s grand project is to see how ‘morality cashes out in interest.’”

 

in-gressus – ex-gressus – re-gressus -- regressus vitiosum -- viscious regressGrice preferred ‘vicious circle’ versus ‘virtuous circle’“Whether virtuous regress sounds oxymoronic” -- regress that is in some way unacceptable, where a regress is an infinite series of items each of which is in some sense dependent on a prior item of a similar sort, e.g. an infinite series of events each of which is caused by the next prior event in the series. Reasons for holding a regress to be vicious might be that it is either impossible or that its existence is inconsistent with things known to be true. The claim that something would lead to a vicious regress is often made as part of a reductio ad absurdum argument strategy. An example of this can be found in Aquinas’s argument for the existence of an uncaused cause on the ground that an infinite regress of causes is vicious. Those responding to the argument have sometimes contended that this regress is not in fact vicious and hence that the argument fails. A more convincing example of a regress is generated by the principle that one’s coming to know the meaning of a word must always be based on a prior understanding of other words. If this principle is correct, then one can know the meaning of a word w1 only on the basis of previously understanding the meanings of other words w2 and w3. But a further application of the principle yields the result that one can understand these words w2 and w3 only on the basis of understanding still other words. This leads to an infinite regress. Since no one understands any words at birth, the regress implies that no one ever comes to understand any words. But this is clearly false. Since the existence of this regress is inconsistent with an obvious truth, we may conclude that the regress is vicious and consequently that the principle that generates it is false.  Regressus: regression analysis, a part of statistical theory concerned with the analysis of data with the aim of inferring a linear functional relationship between assumed independent “regressor” variables and a dependent “response” variable. A typical example involves the dependence of crop yield on the application of fertilizer. For the most part, higher amounts of fertilizer are associated with higher yields. But typically, if crop yield is plotted vertically on a graph with the horizontal axis representing amount of fertilizer applied, the resulting points will not fall in a straight line. This can be due either to random “stochastic” fluctuations involving measurement errors, irreproducible conditions, or physical indeterminism or to failure to take into account other relevant independent variables such as amount of rainfall. In any case, from any resulting “scatter diagram,” it is possible mathematically to infer a “best-fitting” line. One method is, roughly, to find the line that minimizes the average absolute distance between a line and the data points collected. More commonly, the average of the squares of these distances is minimized this is the “least squares” method. If more than one independent variable is suspected, the theory of multiple regression, which takes into account multiple regressors, can be applied: this can help to minimize an “error term” involved in regression. Computers must be used for the complex computations typically encountered. Care must be taken in connection with the possibility that a lawlike, causal dependence is not really linear even approximately over all ranges of the regressor variables e.g., in certain ranges of amounts of application, more fertilizer is good for a plant, but too much is bad. 

 

Griceian renaissance(“rinascimento”) after J. L. Austin’s death -- Erasmus, D., philosopher who played an important role in Renaissance humanism. Like his  forerunners Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, Lorenzo Valla, Leonardo Bruni, and others, Erasmus stressed within philosophy and theology the function of philological precision, grammatical correctness, and rhetorical elegance. But for Erasmus the virtues of bonae literarae which are cultivated by the study of authors of Latin and Grecian antiquity must be decisively linked with Christian spirituality. Erasmus has been called by Huizinga the first modern intellectual because he tried to influence and reform the mentality of society by working within the shadow of ecclesiastical and political leaders. He epistemology, evolutionary Erasmus, Desiderius 278   278 became one of the first humanists to make efficient use of the then new medium of printing. His writings embrace various forms, including diatribe, oration, locution, comment, dialogue, and letter. After studying in Christian schools and living for a time in the monastery of Steyn near Gouda in the Netherlands, Erasmus worked for different patrons. He gained a post as secretary to the bishop of Kamerijk, during which time he wrote his first published book, the Adagia first edition 1500, a collection of annotated Latin adages. Erasmus was an adviser to the Emperor Charles V, to whom he dedicated his Institutio principii christiani 1516. After studies at the  of Paris, where he attended lectures by the humanist Faber Stapulensis, Erasmus was put in touch by his patron Lord Mountjoy with the British humanists John Colet and Thomas More. Erasmus led a restless life, residing in several European cities including London, Louvain, Basel, Freiburg, Bologna, Turin where he was awarded a doctorate of theology in 1506, and Rome. By using the means of modern philology, which led to the ideal of the bonae literarae, Erasmus tried to reform the Christian-influenced mentality of his times. Inspired by Valla’s Annotationes to the New Testament, he completed a new Latin translation of the New Testament, edited the writings of the early church fathers, especially St. Hieronymus, and wrote several commentaries on psalms. He tried to regenerate the spirit of early Christianity by laying bare its original sense against the background of scholastic interpretation. In his view, the rituals of the existing church blocked the development of an authentic Christian spirituality. Though Erasmus shared with Luther a critical approach toward the existing church, he did not side with the Reformation. His Diatribe de libero arbitrio 1524, in which he pleaded for the free will of man, was answered by Luther’s De servo arbitrio. The historically most influential books of Erasmus were Enchirion militis christiani 1503, in which he attacked hirelings and soldiers; the Encomium moriae id est Laus stultitiae 1511, a satire on modern life and the ecclesiastical pillars of society; and the sketches of human life, the Colloquia first published in 1518, often enlarged until 1553. In the small book Querela pacis 1517, he rejected the ideology of justified wars propounded by Augustine and Aquinas. Against the madness of war Erasmus appealed to the virtues of tolerance, friendliness, and gentleness. All these virtues were for him the essence of Christianity. 

 

Roma: Grice: “There is nothing in England like ‘Roma.’ It describes what the Romans called romanita – the English equivalent would be Englishry, which sounds rough.” Roman:“Hellenism is what happened to the Grecians after they became a Roman province.” -- hellenistic philosophy: “Once the Romans defeated Greece, at Oxford we stop talking of ‘Greek’ philosophy, but ‘Hellenistic’ philosophy insteadsince most Greeks were brought to Rome as slaves to teach philosophy to their children”Grice. Vide “Roman philosophy”“Not everybody knows all these Roman philosophers, so that’s a good thing.”H. P. Grice. Hellenistic philosophy is the philosophical systems of the Hellenistic age 32330 B.C., although 31187 B.C. better defines it as a philosophical era, notably Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. These all emerged in the generation after Aristotle’s death 322 B.C., and dominated philosophical debate until the first century B.C., during which there were revivals of traditional Platonism and of Aristotelianism. The age was one in which much of the eastern Mediterranean world absorbed Grecian culture was “Hellenized,” hence “Hellenistic”, and recruits to philosophy flocked from this region to Athens, which remained the center of philosophical activity until 87 B.C. Then the Roman sack of Athens drove many philosophers into exile, and neither the schools nor the styles of philosophy that had grown up there ever fully recovered. Very few philosophical writings survive intact from the period. Our knowledge of Hellenistic philosophers depends mainly on later doxography, on the Roman writers Lucretius and Cicero both mid-first century B.C., and on what we learn from the schools’ critics in later centuries, e.g. Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch. ’Skeptic’, a term not actually current before the very end of the Hellenistic age, serves as a convenient label to characterize two philosophical movements. The first is the New Academy: the school founded by Plato, the Academy, became in this period a largely dialectical one, conducting searching critiques of other schools’ doctrines without declaring any of its own, beyond perhaps the assertion however guarded that nothing could be known and the accompanying recommendation of “suspension of judgment” epoche. The nature and vivacity of Stoicism owed much to its prolonged debates with the New Academy. The founder of this Academic phase was Arcesilaus school head c.268 c.241; its most revered and influential protagonist was Carneades school head in the mid-second century; and its most prestigious voice was that of Cicero 10643 B.C., whose highly influential philosophical works were written mainly from a New Academic stance. But by the early first century B.C. the Academy was drifting back to a more doctrinal stance, and in the later part of the century it was largely eclipsed by a second “skeptic” movement, Pyrrhonism. This was founded by Aenesidemus, a pioneering skeptic despite his claim to be merely reviving the philosophy of Pyrrho, a philosophical guru of the early Hellenistic period. His neo-Pyrrhonism survives today mainly through the writings of Sextus Empiricus second century A.D., an adherent of the school who, strictly speaking, represents its post-Hellenistic phase. The Peripatos, Aristotle’s school, officially survived throughout the era, but it is not regarded as a distinctively “Hellenistic” movement. Despite the eminence of Aristotle’s first successor, Theophrastus school head 322287, it thereafter fell from prominence, its fortunes only reviving around the mid-first century B.C. It is disputed how far the other Hellenistic philosophers were even aware of Aristotle’s treatises, which should not in any case be regarded as a primary influence on them. Each school had a location in Athens to which it could draw pupils. The Epicurean school was a relatively private institution, its “Garden” outside the city walls housing a close-knit philosophical community. The Stoics took their name from the Stoa Poikile, the “Painted Colonnade” in central Athens where they gathered. The Academics were based in the Academy, a public grove just outside the city. Philosophers were public figures, a familiar sight around town. Each school’s philosophical identity was further clarified by its absolute loyalty to the name of its founder  respectively Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, and Plato  and by the polarities that developed in interschool debates. Epicureanism is diametrically opposed on most issues to Stoicism. Academic Skepticism provides another antithesis to Stoicism, not through any positions of its own it had none, but through its unflagging critical campaign against every Stoic thesis. It is often said that in this age the old Grecian political institution of the city-state had broken down, and that the Hellenistic philosophies were an answer to the resulting crisis of values. Whether or not there is any truth in this, it remains clear that moral concerns were now much less confined to the individual city-state than previously, and that at an extreme the boundaries had been pushed back to include all mankind within the scope of an individual’s moral obligations. Our “affinity” oikeiosis to all mankind is an originally Stoic doctrine that acquired increasing currency with other schools. This attitude partly reflects the weakening of national and cultural boundaries in the Hellenistic period, as also in the Roman imperial period that followed it. The three recognized divisions of philosophy were ethics, logic, and physics. In ethics, the central objective was to state and defend an account of the “end” telos, the moral goal to which all activity was subordinated: the Epicureans named pleasure, the Stoics conformity with nature. Much debate centered on the semimythical figure of the wise man, whose conduct in every conceivable circumstance was debated by all schools. Logic in its modern sense was primarily a Stoic concern, rejected as irrelevant by the Epicureans. But Hellenistic logic included epistemology, where the primary focus of interest was the “criterion of truth,” the ultimate yardstick against which all judgments could be reliably tested. Empiricism was a surprisingly uncontroversial feature of Hellenistic theories: there was little interest in the Platonic-Aristotelian idea that knowledge in the strict sense is non-sensory, and the debate between dogmatists and Skeptics was more concerned with the question whether any proposed sensory criterion was adequate. Both Stoics and Epicureans attached especial importance to prolepsis, the generic notion of a thing, held to be either innate or naturally acquired in a way that gave it a guaranteed veridical status. Physics saw an opposition between Epicurean atomism, with its denial of divine providence, and the Stoic world-continuum, imbued with divine rationality. The issue of determinism was also placed on the philosophical map: Epicurean morality depends on the denial of both physical and logical determinism, whereas Stoic morality is compatible with, indeed actually requires, the deterministic causal nexus through which providence operates. 

 

res: “No doubt the most important expression in the philosophical vocabularynobody knows what it means!”Grice. reism, also called concretism, the theory that the basic entities are concrete objects. Reism differs from nominalism in that the problem of universals is not its only motivation and often not the principal motivation for the theory. Three types of reism can be distinguished. 1 Brentano held that every object is a concrete or individual thing. He said that substances, aggregates of substances, parts of substances, and individual properties of substances are the only things that exist. There is no such thing as the existence or being of an object; and there are no non-existent objects. One consequence of this doctrine is that the object of thought what the thought is about is always an individual object and not a proposition. For example, the thought that this paper is white is about this paper and not about the proposition that this paper is white. Meinong attacked Brentano’s concretism and argued that thoughts are about “objectives,” not objects. 2 Kotarbigski, who coined the term ‘reism’, holds as a basic principle that only concrete objects exist. Although things may be hard or soft, red or blue, there is no such thing as hardness, softness, redness, or blueness. Sentences that contain abstract words are either strictly meaningless or can be paraphrased into sentences that do not contain any abstract words. Kotarbinski is both a nominalist and a materialist. Brentano was a nominalist and a dualist. 3 Thomas Garrigue Masaryk’s concretism is quite different from the first two. For him, concretism is the theory that all of a person’s cognitive faculties participate in every instance of knowing: reason, senses, emotion, and will. 

 

Analysandum/analysans, definiens/definiendum, implicans/implicaturum

 

RE-LATUM: relational logic, the formal study of the properties of and operations on binary relations that was initiated by Peirce between 1870 and 2. Thus, in relational logic, one might examine the formal properties of special kinds of relations, such as transitive relations, or asymmetrical ones, or orderings of certain types. Or the focus might be on various operations, such as that of forming the converse or relative product. Formal deductive systems used in such studies are generally known as calculi of relations.  RE-LATUM: relativum-absolutum distinction, the: “No, we don’t mean Whorft, less so Sapir!”Grice. relativism, the denial that there are certain kinds of universal truths. There are two main types, cognitive and ethical. Cognitive relativism holds that there are no universal truths about the world: the world has no intrinsic characteristics, there are just different ways of interpreting it. The Grecian Sophist Protagoras, the first person on record to hold such a view, said, “Man is the measure of all things; of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.” Goodman, Putnam, and Rorty are contemporary philosophers who have held versions of relativism. Rorty says, e.g., that “ ‘objective truth’ is no more and no less than the best idea we currently have about how to explain what is going on.” Critics of cognitive relativism contend that it is self-referentially incoherent, since it presents its statements as universally true, rather than simply relatively so. Ethical relativism is the theory that there are no universally valid moral principles: all moral principles are valid relative to culture or individual choice. There are two subtypes: conventionalism, which holds that moral principles are valid relative to the conventions of a given culture or society; and subjectivism, which maintains that individual choices are what determine the validity of a moral principle. Its motto is, Morality lies in the eyes of the beholder. As Ernest Hemingway wrote, “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” Conventionalist ethical relativism consists of two theses: a diversity thesis, which specifies that what is considered morally right and wrong varies from society to society, so that there are no moral principles accepted by all societies; and a dependency thesis, which specifies that all moral principles derive their validity from cultural acceptance. From these two ideas relativists conclude that there are no universally valid moral principles applying everywhere and at all times. The first thesis, the diversity thesis, or what may simply be called cultural relativism, is anthropological; it registers the fact that moral rules differ from society to society. Although both ethical relativists and non-relativists typically accept cultural relativism, it is often confused with the normative thesis of ethical relativism. The opposite of ethical relativism is ethical objectivism, which asserts that although cultures may differ in their moral principles, some moral principles have universal validity. Even if, e.g., a culture does not recognize a duty to refrain from gratuitous harm, that principle is valid and the culture should adhere to it. There are two types of ethical objectivism, strong and weak. Strong objectivism, sometimes called absolutism, holds that there is one true moral system with specific moral rules. The ethics of ancient Israel in the Old Testament with its hundreds of laws exemplifies absolutism. Weak objectivism holds that there is a core morality, a determinate set of principles that are universally valid usually including prohibitions against killing the innocent, stealing, breaking of promises, and lying. But weak objectivism accepts an indeterminate area where relativism is legitimate, e.g., rules regarding sexual mores and regulations of property. Both types of objectivism recognize what might be called application relativism, the endeavor to apply moral rules where there is a conflict between rules or where rules can be applied in different ways. For example, the ancient Callactians ate their deceased parents but eschewed the impersonal practice of burying them as disrespectful, whereas contemporary society has the opposite attitudes about the care of dead relatives; but both practices exemplify the same principle of the respect for the dead. According to objectivism, cultures or forms of life can fail to exemplify an adequate moral community in at least three ways: 1 the people are insufficiently intelligent to put constitutive principles in order; 2 they are under considerable stress so that it becomes too burdensome to live by moral principles; and 3 a combination of 1 and 2. Ethical relativism is sometimes confused with ethical skepticism, the view that we cannot know whether there are any valid moral principles. Ethical nihilism holds that there are no valid moral principles. J. L. Mackie’s error theory is a version of this view. Mackie held that while we all believe some moral principles to be true, there are compelling arguments to the contrary. Ethical objectivism must be distinguished from moral realism, the view that valid moral principles are true, independently of human choice. Objectivism may be a form of ethical constructivism, typified by Rawls, whereby objective principles are simply those that impartial human beings would choose behind the veil of ignorance. That is, the principles are not truly independent of hypothetical human choices, but are constructs from those choices.   relativum-absolutum distinction, the: relativity, a term applied to Einstein’s theories of electrodynamics special relativity, 5 and gravitation general relativity, 6 because both hold that certain physical quantities, formerly considered objective, are actually “relative to” the state of motion of the observer. They are called “special” and “general” because, in special relativity, electrodynamical laws determine a restricted class of kinematical reference frames, the “inertial frames”; in general relativity, the very distinction between inertial frames and others becomes a relative distinction. Special relativity. Classical mechanics makes no distinction between uniform motion and rest: not velocity, but acceleration is physically detectable, and so different states of uniform motion are physically equivalent. But classical electrodynamics describes light as wave motion with a constant velocity through a medium, the “ether.” It follows that the measured velocity of light should depend on the motion of the observer relative to the medium. When interferometer experiments suggested that the velocity of light is independent of the motion of the source, H. A. Lorentz proposed that objects in motion contract in the direction of motion through the ether while their local time “dilates”, and that this effect masks the difference in the velocity of light. Einstein, however, associated the interferometry results with many other indications that the theoretical distinction between uniform motion and rest in the ether lacks empirical content. He therefore postulated that, in electrodynamics as in mechanics, all states of uniform motion are equivalent. To explain the apparent paradox that observers with different velocities can agree on the velocity of light, he criticized the idea of an “absolute” or frame-independent measure of simultaneity: simultaneity of distant events can only be established by some kind of signaling, but experiment suggested that light is the only signal with an invariant velocity, and observers in relative motion who determine simultaneity with light signals obtain different results. Furthermore, since objective measurement of time and length presupposes absolute simultaneity, observers in relative motion will also disagree on time and length. So Lorentz’s contraction and dilatation are not physical effects, but consequences of the relativity of simultaneity, length, and time, to the motion of the observer. But this relativity follows from the invariance of the laws of electrodynamics, and the invariant content of the theory is expressed geometrically in Minkowski spacetime. Logical empiricists took the theory as an illustration of how epistemological analysis of a concept time could eliminate empirically superfluous notions absolute simultaneity. General relativity. Special relativity made the velocity of light a limit for all causal processes and required revision of Newton’s theory of gravity as an instantaneous action at a distance. General relativity incorporates gravity into the geometry of space-time: instead of acting directly on one another, masses induce curvature in space-time. Thus the paths of falling bodies represent not forced deviations from the straight paths of a flat space-time, but “straightest” paths in a curved space-time. While space-time is “locally” Minkowskian, its global structure depends on mass-energy distribution. The insight behind this theory is the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass: since a given gravitational field affects all bodies equally, weight is indistinguishable from the inertial force of acceleration; freefall motion is indistinguishable from inertial motion. This suggests that the Newtonian decomposition of free fall into inertial and accelerated components is arbitrary, and that the freefall path itself is the invariant basis for the structure of space-time. A philosophical motive for the general theory was to extend the relativity of motion. Einstein saw special relativity’s restricted class of equivalent reference frames as an “epistemological defect,” and he sought laws that would apply to any frame. His inspiration was Mach’s criticism of the Newtonian distinction between “absolute” rotation and rotation relative to observable bodies like the “fixed stars.” Einstein formulated Mach’s criticism as a fundamental principle: since only relative motions are observable, local inertial effects should be explained by the cosmic distribution of masses and by motion relative to them. Thus not only velocity and rest, but motion in general would be relative. Einstein hoped to effect this generalization by eliminating the distinction between inertial frames and freely falling frames. Because free fall remains a privileged state of motion, however, non-gravitational acceleration remains detectable, and absolute rotation remains distinct from relative rotation. Einstein also thought that relativity of motion would result from the general covariance coordinate-independence of his theory  i.e., that general equivalence of coordinate systems meant general equivalence of states of motion. It is now clear, however, that general covariance is a mathematical property of physical theories without direct implications about motion. So general relativity does not “generalize” the relativity of motion as Einstein intended. Its great accomplishments are the unification of gravity and geometry and the generalization of special relativity to space-times of arbitrary curvature, which has made possible the modern investigation of cosmological structure. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “G. R. Grice, M. Hollis, and Norfolkian relativism.”  RE-LATUM, IN-LATUM: relatumGrice: “One should carefully distinguish between the prior ‘relatum’ and its formative, ‘relatIVUM.’” -- RELATUM -- referentially transparent. An occurrence of a singular term t in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially transparent or purely referential if and only if the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on whether the referent of t satisfies the open sentence ‘. . . x . . .’; the satisfaction of ‘. . . x . . .’ by the referent of t would guarantee the truth of ‘. . . t . . .’, and failure of this individual to satisfy ‘. . . x . . .’ would guarantee that ‘. . . t . . .’ was not true. ‘Boston is a city’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘Boston’ satisfies the open sentence ‘x is a city’, so the occurrence of ‘Boston’ is referentially transparent. But in ‘The expression “Boston” has six letters’, the length of the word within the quotes, not the features of the city Boston, determines the truth-value of the sentence, so the occurrence is not referentially transparent. According to a Fregean theory of meaning, the reference of any complex expression that is a meaningful unit is a function of the referents of its parts. Within this context, an occurrence of a referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially transparent or purely referential if and only if t contributes its referent to the reference of ‘. . . t . . .’. The expression ‘the area around Boston’ refers to the particular area it does because of the referent of ‘Boston’ and the reference or extension of the function expressed by ‘the area around x’. An occurrence of a referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially opaque if and only if it is not referentially transparent. Thus, if t has a referentially opaque occurrence in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’, then the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on something reduction, phenomenological referentially transparent 780    780 other than whether the referent of t satisfies ‘. . . x . . .’. Although these definitions apply to occurrences of referential terms, the terms ‘referentially opaque’ and ‘referentially transparent’ are used primarily to classify linguistic contexts for terms as referentially opaque contexts. If t occurs purely referentially in S but not in CS, then C   is a referentially opaque context. But we must qualify this: C  is a referentially opaque context for that occurrence of t in S. It would not follow without further argument that C  is a referentially opaque context for other occurrences of terms in sentences that could be placed into C . Contexts of quotation, propositional attitude, and modality have been widely noted for their potential to produce referential opacity. Consider: 1 John believes that the number of planets is less than eight. 2 John believes that nine is less than eight. If 1 is true but 2 is not, then either ‘the number of planets’ or ‘nine’ has an occurrence that is not purely referential, because the sentences would differ in truth-value even though the expressions are co-referential. But within the sentences: 3 The number of planets is less than eight. 4 Nine is less than eight. the expressions appear to have purely referential occurrence. In 3 and 4, the truth-value of the sentence as a whole depends on whether the referent of ‘The number of planets’ and ‘Nine’ satisfies ‘x is less than eight’. Because the occurrences in 3 and 4 are purely referential but those in 1 and 2 are not, the context ‘John believes that  ’ is a referentially opaque context for the relevant occurrence of at least one of the two singular terms. Some argue that the occurrence of ‘nine’ in 2 is purely referential because the truth-value of the sentence as a whole depends on whether the referent, nine, satisfies the open sentence ‘John believes that x is less than eight’. Saying so requires that we make sense of the concept of satisfaction for such sentences belief sentences and others and that we show that the concept of satisfaction applies in this way in the case at hand sentence 2. There is controversy about whether these things can be done. In 1, on the other hand, the truth-value is not determined by whether nine the referent of ‘the number of planets’ satisfies the open sentence, so that occurrence is not purely referential. Modal contexts raise similar questions. 5 Necessarily, nine is odd. 6 Necessarily, the number of planets is odd. If 5 is true but 6 is not, then at least one of the expressions does not have a purely referential occurrence, even though both appear to be purely referential in the non-modal sentence that appears in the context ‘Necessarily, ———’. Thus the context is referentially opaque for the occurrence of at least one of these terms. On an alternative approach, genuinely singular terms always occur referentially, and ‘the number of planets’ is not a genuinely singular term. Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, e.g., provides an alternative semantic analysis for sentences involving definite descriptions. This would enable us to say that even simple sentences like 3 and 4 differ considerably in syntactic and semantic structure, so that the similarity that suggests the problem, the seemingly similar occurrences of co-referential terms, is merely apparent. “A formation out of referro,” -- a two-or-more-place property e.g., loves or between, or the extension of such a property. In set theory, a relation is any set of ordered pairs or triplets, etc., but these are reducible to pairs. For simplicity, the formal exposition here uses the language of set theory, although an intensional property-theoretic view is later assumed. The terms of a relation R are the members of the pairs constituting R, the items that R relates. The collection D of all first terms of pairs in R is the domain of R; any collection with D as a subcollection may also be so called. Similarly, the second terms of these pairs make up or are a subcollection of the range counterdomain or converse domain of R. One usually works within a set U such that R is a subset of the Cartesian product U$U the set of all ordered pairs on U. Relations can be: 1 reflexive or exhibit reflexivity: for all a, aRa. That is, a reflexive relation is one that, like identity, each thing bears to itself. Examples: a weighs as much as b; or the universal relation, i.e., the relation R such that for all a and b, aRb. 2 symmetrical or exhibit symmetry: for all a and b, aRb P bRa. In a symmetrical relation, the order of the terms is reversible. Examples: a is a sibling of b; a and b have a common divisor. Also symmetrical is the null relation, under which no object is related to anything. 3 transitive or exhibit transitivity: for all a, b, and c, aRb & bRc P aRc. Transitive relations carry across a middle term. Examples: a is less than b; a is an ancestor of b. Thus, if a is less than b and b is less than c, a is less than c: less than has carried across the middle term, b. 4 antisymmetrical: for all a and b, aRb & bRa P a % b. 5 trichotomous, connected, or total trichotomy: for all a and b, aRb 7 bRa 7 a % b. 6 asymmetrical: aRb & bRa holds for no a and b. 7 functional: for all a, b, and c, aRb & aRc P b % c. In a functional relation which may also be called a function, each first term uniquely determines a second term. R is non-reflexive if it is not reflexive, i.e., if the condition 1 fails for at least one object a. R is non-symmetric if 2 fails for at least one pair of objects a, b. Analogously for non-transitive. R is irreflexive aliorelative if 1 holds for no object a and intransitive if 3 holds for no objects a, b, and c. Thus understands is non-reflexive since some things do not understand themselves, but not irreflexive, since some things do; loves is nonsymmetric but not asymmetrical; and being a cousin of is non-transitive but not intransitive, as being mother of is. 13 define an equivalence relation e.g., the identity relation among numbers or the relation of being the same age as among people. A class of objects bearing an equivalence relation R to each other is an equivalence class under R. 1, 3, and 4 define a partial order; 3, 5, and 6 a linear order. Similar properties define other important classifications, such as lattice and Boolean algebra. The converse of a relation R is the set of all pairs b, a such that aRb; the comreism relation 788    788 plement of R is the set of all pairs a, b such that aRb i.e. aRb does not hold. A more complex example will show the power of a relational vocabulary. The ancestral of R is the set of all a, b such that either aRb or there are finitely many cI , c2, c3, . . . , cn such that aRcI and c1Rc2 and c2Rc3 and . . . and cnRb. Frege introduced the ancestral in his theory of number: the natural numbers are exactly those objects bearing the ancestral of the successor-of relation to zero. Equivalently, they are the intersection of all sets that contain zero and are closed under the successor relation. This is formalizable in second-order logic. Frege’s idea has many applications. E.g., assume a set U, relation R on U, and property F. An element a of U is hereditarily F with respect to R if a is F and any object b which bears the ancestral of R to a is also F. Hence F is here said to be a hereditary property, and the set a is hereditarily finite with respect to the membership relation if a is finite, its members are, as are the members of its members, etc. The hereditarily finite sets or the sets hereditarily of cardinality ‹ k for any inaccessible k are an important subuniverse of the universe of sets. Philosophical discussions of relations typically involve relations as special cases of properties or sets. Thus nominalists and Platonists disagree over the reality of relations, since they disagree about properties in general. Similarly, one important connection is to formal semantics, where relations are customarily taken as the denotations of relational predicates. Disputes about the notion of essence are also pertinent. One says that a bears an internal relation, R, to b provided a’s standing in R to b is an essential property of a; otherwise a bears an external relation to b. If the essentialaccidental distinction is accepted, then a thing’s essential properties will seem to include certain of its relations to other things, so that we must admit internal relations. Consider a point in space, which has no identity apart from its place in a certain system. Similarly for a number. Or consider my hand, which would perhaps not be the same object if it had not developed as part of my body. If it is true that I could not have had other parents  that possible persons similar to me but with distinct parents would not really be me  then I, too, am internally related to other things, namely my parents. Similar arguments would generate numerous internal relations for organisms, artifacts, and natural objects in general. Internal relations will also seem to exist among properties and relations themselves. Roundness is essentially a kind of shape, and the relation larger than is essentially the converse of the relation smaller than. In like usage, a relation between a and b is intrinsic if it depends just on how a and b are; extrinsic if they have it in virtue of their relation to other things. Thus, higher-than intrinsically relates the Alps to the Appalachians. That I prefer viewing the former to the latter establishes an extrinsic relation between the mountain ranges. Note that this distinction is obscure as is internal-external. One could argue that the Alps are higher than the Appalachians only in virtue of the relation of each to something further, such as space, light rays, or measuring rods. Another issue specific to the theory of relations is whether relations are real, given that properties do exist. That is, someone might reject nominalism only to the extent of admitting one-place properties. Although such doctrines have some historical importance in, e.g., Plato and Bradley, they have disappeared. Since relations are indispensable to modern logic and semantics, their inferiority to one-place properties can no longer be seriously entertained. Hence relations now have little independent significance in philosophy. 

 

Replicatura – pe-plico – replication – Grice: “A replicature is when B agrees with A’s implicature and implies so! E. g. “Some of the students passed. B: “Away?” --.

 

 

relevans: “Hardly in the vocabulary of Cartesio!”Grice. relevance logic, any of a range of logics and philosophies of logic united by their insistence that the premises of a valid inference must be relevant to the conclusion. Standard, or classical, logic contains inferences that break this requirement, e.g., the spread law, that from a contradiction any proposition whatsoever follows. Relevance logic had its genesis in a system of strenge Implikation published by Wilhelm Ackermann in 6. Ackermann’s idea for rejecting irrelevance was taken up and developed by Alan Anderson and Nuel Belnap in a series of papers between 9 and Anderson’s death in 4. The first main summaries of these researches appeared under their names, and those of many collaborators, in Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity  1, 5;  2, 2. By the time of Anderson’s death, a substantial research effort into relevance logic was under way, and it has continued. Besides the rather vague unity of the idea of relevance between premises and conclusion, there is a technical criterion often used to mark out relevance logic, introduced by Belnap in 0, and applicable really only to propositional logics the main focus of concern to date: a necessary condition of relevance is that premises and conclusion should share a propositional variable. Early attention was focused on systems E of entailment and T of ticket entailment. Both are subsystems of C. I. Lewis’s system S4 of strict implication and of classical truth-functional logic i.e., consequences in E and T in ‘P’ are consequences in S4 in ‘ ’ and in classical logic in ‘/’. Besides rejection of the spread law, probably the most notorious inference that is rejected is disjunctive syllogism DS for extensional disjunction which is equivalent to detachment for material implication: A 7 B,ÝA , B. The reason is immediate, given acceptance of Simplification and Addition: Simplification takes us from A & ÝA to each conjunct, and Addition turns the first conjunct into A 7 B. Unless DS were rejected, the spread law would follow. Since the late 0s, attention has shifted to the system R of relevant implication, which adds permutation to E, to mingle systems which extend E and R by the mingle law A P A P A, and to contraction-free logics, which additionally reject contraction, in one form reading A P A P B P A P B. R minus contraction RW differs from linear logic, much studied recently in computer science, only by accepting the distribution of ‘&’ over ‘7’, which the latter rejects. Like linear logic, relevance logic contains both truth-functional and non-truth-functional connectives. Unlike linear logic, however, R, E, and T are undecidable unusual among propositional logics. This result was obtained only in 4. In the early 0s, relevance logics were given possible-worlds semantics by several authors working independently. They also have axiomatic, natural deduction, and sequent or consecution formulations. One technical result that has attracted attention has been the demonstration that, although relevance logics reject DS, they all accept Ackermann’s rule Gamma: that if A 7 B and ÝA are theses, so is B. A recent result occasioning much surprise was that relevant arithmetic consisting of Peano’s postulates on the base of quantified R does not admit Gamma. Refs.: “’Be relevant’—as a conversational maxim under the category of relation.” Grice, “Strawson’s Principle of Relevancewhere did he take it from?”, H. P. Grice, “Nowell-Smith on conversational relevance, and why he left Oxford.” Luigi Rossi, PhD dissertataion on P. H. Nowell-Smith’s conversational relevance. P. H. Nowell-Smith, “Grice et moi.” --. H. P. Grice, “Strawson’s relevance, Urmson’s appositeness, and my helpfulness! Post-war Oxford pragmatics!”

 

reliabile, the, n. neuter. -- reliabilism, a type of theory in epistemology that holds that what qualifies a belief as knowledge or as epistemically justified is its *reliable* linkage to the truth. Philosophers usually motivate reliabilism with an analogy between a thermometer that reliably indicates the temperature and a belief that reliably indicates the truth. A belief qualifies as knowledge,  if there is a lawlike connection in nature that guarantees that the belief is true. A cousin of the nomic sufficiency account is the counterfactual approach, proposed by Dretske, Goldman, and Nozick. A typical formulation of this approach says that a belief qualifies relativity, general reliabilism 792    792 as knowledge if the belief is true and the cognizer has reasons for believing it that would not obtain unless it were true. For example, someone knows that the telephone is ringing if he believes this, it is true, and he has a specific auditory experience that would not occur unless the telephone were ringing. In a slightly different formulation, someone knows a proposition if he believes it, it is true, and if it were not true he would not believe it. In the example, if the telephone were not ringing, he would not believe that it is, because he would not have the same auditory experience. These accounts are guided by the idea that to know a proposition it is not sufficient that the belief be “accidentally” true. Rather, the belief, or its mode of acquisition, must “track,” “hook up with,” or “indicate” the truth. Unlike knowledge, justified belief need not guarantee or be “hooked up” with the truth, for a justified belief need not itself be true. Nonetheless, reliabilists insist that the concept of justified belief also has a connection with truth acquisition. According to the reliable process account, a belief’s justificational status depends on the psychological processes that produce or sustain it. Justified beliefs are produced by appropriate psychological processes, unjustified beliefs by inappropriate processes. For example, beliefs produced or preserved by perception, memory, introspection, and “good” reasoning are justified, whereas beliefs produced by hunch, wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning are unjustified. Why are the first group of processes appropriate and the second inappropriate? The difference appears to lie in their reliability. Among the beliefs produced by perception, introspection, or “good” reasoning, a high proportion are true; but only a low proportion of beliefs produced by hunch, wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning are true. Thus, what qualifies a belief as justified is its being the outcome of a sequence of reliable belief-forming processes. Reliabilism is a species of epistemological externalism, because it makes knowledge or justification depend on factors such as truth connections or truth ratios that are outside the cognizer’s mind and not necessarily accessible to him. Yet reliabilism typically emphasizes internal factors as well, e.g., the cognitive processes responsible for a belief. Process reliabilism is a form of naturalistic epistemology because it centers on cognitive operations and thereby paves the way for cognitive psychology to play a role in epistemology. Grice: “I expect that my co-conversationalist shall be realiable, as I assume he expects I will, tooor is it I assume he expects I *shall*?” Grice: “Covnersational reliability.”

 

renier: Essential Italian philosopher. Rodolfo Renier (Treviso), filosofo. Nacque dall'antica famiglia patrizia veneziana dei Renier, figlio di Luigi e Fanny Venturi. Studiò in Camerino, Urbino, ed Ancona, sempre seguendo gli spostamenti del padre Luigi, magistrato.  Fu poi allievo a Bologna di Carducci, per passare a Torino, dove si laureò. Si perfezionò quindi a Firenze sotto la guida di Bartoli, conseguendo  il diploma. Professore a 'Torino. Fondò con Graf e Novati “il Giornale storico di litteratura,” che pochi anni dopo passò sostanzialmente a dirigere da solo, «profondendovi, negli studi particolari, nelle rassegne, negli annunci analitici e in un ricchissimo notiziario, un vero inesauribile tesoro di cultura, di notizie, di rilievi. Curò importanti edizioni critiche e monografie; i suoi saggi critici spaziano attraverso tutta la letteratura.  Opere: “Il tipo estetico della donna nel Medio Evo, Ancona, Morelli, Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, Roma, Vercellini, Mantova e Urbino (con A. Luzio), Torino / Roma, L. Roux e C., La cultura e le relazioni letterarie d'Isabella d'Este Gonzaga (con A. Luzio), Torino, Loescher, 1903. Svaghi critici, Bari, Laterza, Note  Alessandro Luzio, Rodolfo Renier, La coltura e le relazioni letterarie di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, Sylvestre Bonnard, 2005310.  Luigi De Vendittis, “Rodolfo Renier”, in Letteratura italiana. I critici,  II, Milano, Marzorati, 1987853.  Umberto RendaPiero Operti, Dizionario storico della letteratura italiana, Torino, G.B. Paravia, 1851936.  Luigi De Vendittis, cit.  Gabriella Macciocca, “Renier, Rodolfo”, in Letteratura italiana. Gli Autori,  II, Torino, Einaudi, Umberto RendaPiero Operti, cit.  Gabriella Macciocca, cit.  Luigi De Vendittis, “Rodolfo Renier”, in Letteratura italiana. I critici,  II, Milano, Marzorati, Umberto RendaPiero Operti, Dizionario storico della letteratura italiana, Torino, G.B. Paravia, Gabriella Macciocca, “Renier, Rodolfo”, in Letteratura italiana. Gli Autori,  II, Torino, Einaudi, Rodolfo Renier, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Opere dsu openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl.

 

re-praesentatum: Grice plays with this as a philosophical semanticist, rather than a philosophical psychologist. But the re-praesentatum depends on the ‘praesentatum,’ which corresponds to Grice’s sub-perceptum (not the ‘conceptus’). cf. Grice on Peirce’s representamen (“You don’t want to go there,”Grice to his tutees). It seems that in the one-off predicament, iconicy plays a role: the drawing of a skull to indicate danger, the drawing of an arrow at the fork of a road to indicate which way the emissor’s flowers, who were left behind, are supposed to take (Carruthers). Suppose Grice joins the Oxfordshire cricket club. He will represent Oxfordshire. He will do for Oxfordshire what Oxfordshire cannot do for herself. Similarly, by uttering “Smoke!,” the utterer means that there is fire somewhere. “Smoke!” is a communication-device if it does for smoke what smoke cannot do for itself, influence thoughts and behaviour. Or does it?! It MWheIGHT. But suppose that the fire is some distant from the addresse. And the utterer HAS LEARNED That there is fire in the distance. So he utters ‘Smoke!’ Where? Oh, you won’t see it. But I was told there is smoke on the outskirts. Thanks for warning me! rĕ-praesento , āvi, ātum, 1, v. a.  I. To bring before one, to bring back; to show, exhibit, display, manifest, represent (class.): “per quas (visiones) imagines rerum absentium ita repraesentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere videamur,” Quint. 6, 2, 29: “memoriae vis repraesentat aliquid,” id. 11, 2, 1; cf. Plin. Ep. 9, 28, 3: “quod templum repraesentabat memoriam consulatūs mei,” Cic. Sest. 11, 26: si quis vultu torvo ferus simulet Catonem, Virtutemne repraesentet moresque Catonis? * Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 14: “imbecillitatem ingenii mei,” Val. Max. 2, 7, 6: “movendi ratio aut in repraesentandis est aut imitandis adfectibus,” Quint. 11, 3, 156: “urbis species repraesentabatur animis,” Curt. 3, 10, 7; cf.: “affectum patris amissi,” Plin. Ep. 4, 19, 1: “nam et vera esse et apte ad repraesentandam iram deūm ficta possunt,” Liv. 8, 6, 3 Weissenb. ad loc.: “volumina,” to recite, repeat, Plin. 7, 24, 24, § 89: “viridem saporem olivarum etiam post annum,” Col. 12, 47, 8: “faciem veri maris,” id. 8, 17, 6: “colorem constantius,” to show, exhibit, Plin. 37, 8, 33, § 112: “vicem olei,” i. e. to supply the place of, id. 28, 10, 45, § 160; cf. id. 18, 14, 36, § 134.— B. Of painters, sculptors, etc., to represent, portray, etc. (post-Aug. for adumbro): “Niceratus repraesentavit Alcibiadem,” Plin. 34, 8, 19, § 88.—With se, to present one's self, be present, Col. 1, 8, 11; 11, 1, 26; Dig. 48, 5, 15, § 3.— II. In partic., mercant. t. t., to pay immediately or on the spot; to pay in ready money: reliquae pecuniae vel usuram Silio pendemus, dum a Faberio vel ab aliquo qui Faberio debet, repraesentabimus, shall be enabled to pay immediately, Cic. Att. 12, 25, 1; 12, 29, 2: “summam,” Suet. Aug. 101: “legata,” id. Calig. 16: “mercedem,” id. Claud. 18; id. Oth. 5; Front. Strat. 1, 11, 2 Oud. N. cr.: “dies promissorum adest: quem etiam repraesentabo, si adveneris,” shall even anticipate, Cic. Fam. 16, 14, 2; cf. fideicommissum, to discharge immediately or in advance, Dig. 35, 1, 36.— B. Transf., in gen., to do, perform, or execute any act immediately, without delay, forthwith; hence, not to defer or put off; to hasten (good prose): se, quod in longiorem diem collaturus esset, repraesentaturum et proximā nocte castra moturum, * Caes. B. G. 1, 40: “festinasse se repraesentare consilium,” Curt. 6, 11, 33: “petis a me, ut id quod in diem suum dixeram debere differri, repraesentem,” Sen. Ep. 95, 1; and Front. Aquaed. 119 fin.: “neque exspectare temporis medicinam, quam repraesentare ratione possimus,” to apply it immediately, Cic. Fam. 5, 16, 6; so, “improbitatem suam,” to hurry on, id. Att. 16, 2, 3: “spectaculum,” Suet. Calig. 58: “tormenta poenasque,” id. Claud. 34: “poenam,” Phaedr. 3, 10, 32; Val. Max. 6, 5, ext. 4: “verbera et plagas,” Suet. Vit. 10: “vocem,” to sing immediately, id. Ner. 21 et saep.: “si repraesentari morte meā libertas civitatis potest,” can be immediately recovered, Cic. Phil. 2, 46, 118: “minas irasque caelestes,” to fulfil immediately, Liv. 2, 36, 6 Weissenb. ad loc.; cf. Suet. Claud. 38: “judicia repraesentata,” held on the spot, without preparation, Quint. 10, 7, 2.— C. To represent, stand in the place of (late Lat.): nostra per eum repraesentetur auctoritas, Greg. M. Ep. 1, 1.

 

Popolo -- Il popolo griceiano -- Populazione – popolo res publica --:Grice: “The etymology of ‘publicus’ is fascinating. Two people constitute a publicus for the Romans.” republicanism: cf. Cato -- Grice was a British subject and found classical republicanism false -- also known as civic humanism, a political outlook developed by Machiavelli in Renaissance Italy and by James Harrington in England, modified by eighteenth-century British and Continental writers and important for the thought of the  founding fathers. Drawing on Roman historians, Machiavelli argued that a state could hope for security from the blows of fortune only if its male citizens were devoted to its well-being. They should take turns ruling and being ruled, be always prepared to fight for the republic, and limit their private possessions. Such men would possess a wholly secular virtù appropriate to political beings. Corruption, in the form of excessive attachment to private interest, would then be the most serious threat to the republic. Harrington’s utopian Oceana 1656 portrayed England governed under such a system. Opposing the authoritarian views of Hobbes, it described a system in which the well-to-do male citizens would elect some of their number to govern for limited terms. Those governing would propose state policies; the others would vote on the acceptability of the proposals. Agriculture was the basis of economics, civil rights classical republicanism 145   145 but the size of estates was to be strictly controlled. Harringtonianism helped form the views of the political party opposing the dominance of the king and court. Montesquieu in France drew on classical sources in discussing the importance of civic virtue and devotion to the republic. All these views were well known to Jefferson, Adams, and other  colonial and revolutionary thinkers; and some contemporary communitarian critics of  culture return to classical republican ideas. 

 

stimulatum – Grice: “A stimulates B so that B responds – no response without stimulus, no point in stimulating without the expectation of a response.”  Grice: “I shall use ‘response’ and abbreviate it by ‘r’ – this suggest that the utterance is the stimulus, as per Watson’s well-known ‘stimolo-risposta’ model. Note that in English, from the French, we use the present form, respondere – while the Italians, perhaps more appropriately, use the past participle form, ‘riposta.’” -- Stimulatum -- stimulus/response distinction, the: Grice’s motto: “No stimulus, no response.” “The black box is meant to EXPLAIN (make plain) the link between the stimulus and the responseand no item in the black box should be postulated that it lacks this explanatory adequacy. “As Witters says, “No mental concept without the behaviour the mental concept is brought to explain.” Chomsky hated it. Grice changed it to ‘effect.’ Or not. “Stimulus and response,” Skinner's behavioral theory was largely set forth in his first book, Behavior of Organisms (1938). Here, he gives a systematic description of the manner in which environmental variables control behavior. He distinguished two sorts of behavior which are controlled in different ways:  Respondent behaviors are elicited by stimuli, and may be modified through respondent conditioning, often called classical (or pavlovian) conditioning, in which a neutral stimulus is paired with an eliciting stimulus. Such behaviors may be measured by their latency or strength. Operant behaviors are 'emitted,' meaning that initially they are not induced by any particular stimulus. They are strengthened through operant conditioning (aka instrumental conditioning), in which the occurrence of a response yields a reinforcer. Such behaviors may be measured by their rate. Both of these sorts of behavior had already been studied experimentally, most notably: respondents, by Ivan Pavlov;[25] and operants, by Edward Thorndike.[26] Skinner's account differed in some ways from earlier ones,[27] and was one of the first accounts to bring them under one roof.

 

rerum natura: Latin, ‘the nature of things’, or ‘reality,’ to use the root of ‘res,’ cognate with ‘ratio,’(as ‘ding’ is connected with ‘denken,’ and ‘logos’ with ‘legein’ -- metaphysics. The phrase can also be used more narrowly to mean the nature of physical reality, and often it presupposes a naturalistic view of all reality. Lucretius’s epic poem “De rerum natura,” is an Epicurean physics, designed to underpin the Epicurean morality. Seneca told Lucrezio, “You could have looked for a catchier title if you want it a best-seller.”

 

responsabile, the responsabile: responsibilitycited by H. P. Grice in “The causal theory of perception” -- a condition that relates an agent to actions of, and consequences connected to, that agent, and is always necessary and sometimes sufficient for the appropriateness of certain kinds of appraisals of that agent. Responsibility has no single definition, but is several closely connected specific concepts. Role responsibility. Agents are identified by social roles that they occupy, say parent or professor. Typically duties are associated with such roles  to care for the needs of their children, to attend classes and publish research papers. A person in a social role is “responsible for” the execution of those duties. One who carries out such duties is “a responsible person” or “is behaving responsibly.” Causal responsibility. Events, including but not limited to human actions, cause other events. The cause is “responsible” for the effect. Causal responsibility does not imply consciousness; objects and natural phenomena may have causal responsibility. Liability responsibility. Practices of praise and blame include constraints on the mental stance that an agent must have toward an action or a consequence of action, in order for praise or blame to be appropriate. To meet such constraints is to meet a fundamental necessary condition for liability for praise or blame  hence the expression ‘liability responsibility’. These constraints include such factors as intention, knowledge, recklessness toward consequences, absence of mistake, accident, inevitability of choice. An agent with the capability for liability responsibility may lack it on some occasion  when mistaken, for example. Capacity responsibility. Practices of praise and blame assume a level of intellectual and emotional capability. The severely mentally disadvantaged or the very young, for example, do not have the capacity to meet the conditions for liability responsibility. They are not “responsible” in that they lack capacity responsibility. Both morality and law embody and respect these distinctions, though law institutionalizes and formalizes them. Final or “bottom-line” assignment of responsibility equivalent to indeed deserving praise or blame standardly requires each of the latter three specific kinds of responsibility. The first kind supplies some normative standards for praise or blame.