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Notes on negation and contradiction
SUMMARY:
Conflicts are human situations in which we experience the negative force of an opposition.
It depends on the different roles a negation actually plays in it,
whether a conflict is a contradiction or it is not. Working out these concepts,
the article draws some general conclusions about "contradiction" as
dynamic core of a living Totality.
Cartesian
skepticism and empirical beliefs
SUMMARY:
In the
on-line Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind (‹PoM›), Cartesian
skepticism is defined as follows:
Any of a class of skeptical views against empirical knowledge based
on the claim that claims to empirical knowledge are defeated by the possibility
that we might be deceived insofar as we might be, for example, dreaming,
hallucinating, deceived by demons, or brains in vats . From this standpoint,
Pete Mandik, in the same Dictionary, builds an argument to be used as a
representative for the whole class
of skeptical views having the properties stated above. He intends to defend Cartesian
skepticism, taken under the form of the given definition, and inquiries
into the propositions which constitute the inference: the argument is not only
valid, he concludes, it is also sound. But If we distinguished the case of our
ordinary language from the case of theoretical or scientific discourse, for
instance, would the answer remain the same ?
The problem of scientific abstraction in Marx
SUMMARY:
The logical and epistemological
status of Marx's work, in Dobb's Theories, appears not to be
substantially different from that of the other authors, whose ideas the book
explains. Of course, when the motives and the aims of Marx’s work are considered, the contrast between his work and that of the economists appear to be important and deep. Marx intended to draw up a synoptic view of the development of the whole system of human society. His economics was only a part, though a fundamental part, of his all-embracing conceptions, which concerned the unhappiness of man in mass society not less than the way it produces goods and services. But he also thought that any inquiring into the ideas and the culture of a given historical epoch should be backed by a scientific analysis into the empirical forms of its determinate existence.
SUMMARY:
In the attempt to give a characterization of a complex and mostly indefinable
idea such as ‘dialectic’, one move may consist in stressing its analytical aspects,
i.e. its power to dissolve ‹rigid things› into ‹dynamical relations›.
‘Dialectic’ reveals ‹reification› (by which relations are given the form
of a thing ) and so doing it discloses the pattern of connections which lay
under the surface of our everyday experience, in the very place where we can
see but unrelated particulars. Now, a problem arises with this dissolving
power metaphor , when we observe it matches two different models of
reasoning at the same time. We say we bring into relation either when
relation stands between two elements, whose level of generality is for the one
equal or higher than that of the other, either when relation stands between two
elements, whose level of generality is for the one lower than that of the
other. Either when, to make it clear, we connect humanity with animality
(i.e. a class taken as one with another class taken as one)
either when we connect humanity with men (a class taken as one
with a class taken as many). For instance, dialectically discussing of
the thought of God, Hegel brings it into relation with the beauty
of fine art and the truth of philosophy. Marx brings religion into
relation with a social sufferance , i.e. with something which has to do with
existence and the determinate forms of its empirical presence.
Modelli
di razionalità non monotonica
(considerazioni su Dobb che espone Marx)
SUMMARY:
In his Theories of value, 1973, when explaining the salient features
of Marx's thought, M. Dobb stresses its building process regarded as a part of
a larger cultural debate and as an intellectual work of an individual mind,
still in search of its way to the categories of the system. The fundamental
concept of exploitation, for instance, is investigated when it is but
an analogy and an assumption, before its turning into an
accurate definition. There are scientific contexts, in which systems are taught
and learned without even mentioning the earlier moves they were engendered by.
But according to what Dobb says about Marx and the other authors of his Theories,
this is not the case here. The article assumes this point of view and seeks to
trace it back to Marx's idea that object is not a "position" of thought.
The metaphysical myth of everyday language as «the
immaturity of Tought»
SUMMARY:
The sphere of our everyday life can be regarded or as a chaotic "matter"
to be molded and enlightened by reason or as an organism already bearing a
"form", though still in embryo, to be "brought to
light" by labor of Philosophy. Focusing on the "bringing to
light" metaphor, the article tries to show what an ambiguity lies
concealed in it.
SUMMARY: Despite of its
technical appearance the "problem of epistemological adequacy"
("Church’s thesis" being the most famous instance of it) meets
the major themes of Western Metaphysics. Pursuing this path and exploring what
gap there is between a defined term and the term which corresponds to it in a
language already in use, the article draws some general implications concerning
existence and the intellectual efforts to get hold of its "inner"
meaning.
SUMMARY:
The marxian concept of Ideology is here reviewed and revised on a
logical thinking base: can it survive the challenge without dropping its
distinctive features and loosing its original identity ?
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Christian
List
" This paper
proposes to revive the twenty-year old debate on the question of whether
Craig’s theorem poses a challenge to the empirical underdetermination thesis.
It will be demonstrated that Quine’s account of this issue in his paper
"Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World" (1975) is
mathematically flawed and that Quine makes too strong a concession to the
Craigian challenge. It will further be pointed out that Craig’s theorem would
threaten the empirical underdetermination thesis only if the set of
all relevant observation conditionals could be shown to be recursively
enumerable — a condition which Quine seems to overlook —, and it will be
argued that, at least within the framework of Quine’s philosophy, it is
doubtful whether this condition is satisfiable. " |
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Graham Priest
"A dialetheia
is a true contradiction, a statement, A, such that both it and its
negation, ¬A are true. Hence, dialeth(e)ism is the view that there are
true contradictions. Dialetheism opposes the so-called Law of
Non-Contradiction (LNC) (sometimes also called the Law of
Contradiction): for any A, it is impossible for both A and
¬A to be true. Since Aristotle's defence of the LNC, the Law has been
orthodoxy in Western philosophy. Nonetheless, there are some dialetheists in
the history of Western Philosophy. Moreover, since the development of
paraconsistent logic in the second half of this century, dialetheism has now
become a live issue once more [ ... ]". |
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Witold Marciszewski "[ ... ] Let us
start from a comparison of Leibniz views to those of Rene Descartes
(1596-1650). Why should we start in this way? The answer is as follows. There
are two Leibniz's views, to be discussed in this essay, which oppose each
other, namely his (i) explicit belief in the possibility of automation of the
processes of producing knowledge, and his (ii) implicit questioning of the
same possibility because of the role attributed by him to perception as
characteristic of organic life [ ...]". |
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· Descartes: Meditationes
(Latin text) |
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·
Whole text. |
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·
K. Marx, Introduzione a Per
la critica dell'economia politica,
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Traduzione, introduzione
e commento di Stefano Garroni (German text
with Italian and English translations, available) |
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