Measurement results are stated in terms of sentences ascribing measured values, as obtained via measurement processes, to measurands, as defined by measuring agents. Since both the definition of the measurands and the characterization of the processes depend on models constructed on the basis of relevant theories, the issue arises of the theory dependence of the truth of those sentences. This paper aims at assessing the question by introducing suitable distinctions about the sense and reference of the terms used to refer (...) to individual and general quantities, in a framework where measurement is construed as an agent-dependent, model-based, purpose-driven activity. (shrink)

God — as we well know since Nietzsche — is dead. However, it is necessary to correct this sentence that was a sacrilege yesterday and has become common place today. We should be talking of the death of the “gods,” rather than of God; for what has been disappearing from the social space of modernity (I do not speak of the inner conscience of the faithful here), is not just the God who sits enthroned atop altar and dogma. What has (...) disappeared are the “gods” more generally; by this we understand the link with the world that, certainly rooted in religion but transcending it, surrounds things and beings with an aura of wonderful significances; that places them outside of those structures that modern man understands to be the utilitarian, the rational and the functional. (shrink)

Examina-se a função da dialética, da indução e da inteligência intuitiva na aquisição dos primeiros princípios em Aristóteles, enfatizando a análise de Segundos Analíticos I 18, II 19 e Tópicos I 2. Afirma-se que o processo de aquisição requer a indução, que leva a perceber o universal nos particulares, a dialética, com seus critérios e testes baseados em endoxa para que, então, os primeiros princípios possam ser apreendidos de forma inequívoca pela inteligência, disposição responsável por conhecer os princípios. Vê-se a (...) indução como o método pelo qual se conhece o universal por meio de particulares, a dialética como instrumento metodológico auxiliando na busca pelos princípios, mais especificamente, pelas definições e o nous como faculdade, movimento noético, que opera de forma infalível na intuição dos indemonstráveis. (shrink)

Pode-se afirmar que a filosofia crítica kantiana é uma espécie de suporte para a fundamentação epistemológica de Schopenhauer, mas que a teoria schopenhaueriana de modo algum a ela se reduz até porque Schopenhauer reprova desde a compreensão de Kant a respeito do papel que desempenham intuição e razão até a arquitetônica kantiana que exige doze categorias como alicerce do processo de conhecer. Nosso texto versará sobre a importância que Schopenhauer concede à intuição e, principalmente, sobre a justificação de Schopenhauer acerca (...) da causalidade como única “categoria” necessária e suficiente para a percepção dos objetos. (shrink)

On December 29, 1886, in Florence, Pope Leo XIII beatified Thomas More together with other English martyrs from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The canonization happened on May 19, 1935, conducted by Pope Pius XI at Vatican City. On October 31, 2000, also at Vatican City, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Thomas More "the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians," praising him for being capable of conciliating the natural and the supernatural. Perhaps it is exactly this capacity of amalgamating the (...) natural and supernatural that made it possible for More to create not only an entirely innovative book but also an entirely new literary form. However, the connection between More and Italy goes beyond the... (shrink)

Tom Moylan's Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia was first published in the year 2000. Seventeen years later, this work still enlightens discussions and catches the attention of both science fiction and Utopian studies. Still, we have to acknowledge the fact that we are facing a belated translation. This could easily be a problem if the present edition had not provided a new perspective on Moylan's Scraps. This edition, brought together by the Brazilian research group "Literature and (...) Utopia," not only shows the contemporaneity of Tom Moylan's insights but also sheds new light on the original book thanks to the introduction by Ildney Cavalcanti and Felipe Benicio, "Reflections" by Elton... (shrink)

Este ensaio acadêmico sobre a infância de terreiro está redigido segundo uma leitura de mundo do candomblé. Há muitas leituras de mundo. Nossas experiências de vida colocaram-nos diante de, pelo menos duas delas: a leitura religiosa como a do candomblé e a leitura laica da pedagogia. No desenrolar dessas experiências observamos no cotidiano de nossas salas de aula - nos cursos de formação de professores e no cotidiano da Educação Infantil - um grande desconhecimento sobre a população de terreiro, em (...) especial sobre suas crianças. O texto aborda o conceito de infância afrodescendente, com base em pesquisas realizadas nos últimos dez anos pelo Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa Educação, Diversidade e Religião em comunidades religiosas tradicionais situadas no estado do Rio de Janeiro e no estado da Bahia, cujo objetivo é identificar, levar em consideração, compreender de forma pluridisciplinar formas de apropriação, expropriação do legado ancestral africano e afro-brasileiro. No texto trabalhamos com a escuta sensível, inspirado na abordagem italiana segundo a experiência de Reggio Emillia, e com o conceito de vivência de Lev Semenovitch Vigotsky, onde o conceito de vivência como é apreendido como caminho possível para uma educação libertadora, onde a tomada de consciência pela criança possibilita que ela entenda que é autora do próprio mundo. Uma realidade onde a escola valorize e dê visibilidade a infância afrodescendente pertencente as comunidades religiosas tradicionais. (shrink)

A temática do estudo é o ensino de sociologia no ensino médio direcionado aos jovens do campo. Tem-se o seguinte problema de pesquisa: A práxis pedagógica do ensino de sociologia está embasada no modo de vida dos jovens rurais e dos jovens rurais assentados, contribuindo para o desenvolvimento humano (capacitações)? Para responder a esta questão foram pesquisadas três escolas no município de Abelardo Luz, Santa Catarina, uma escola em área urbana e duas escolas no assentamento do MST. O estudo teve (...) abordagem quantitativa e qualitativa, juntamente com o método das representações sociais. Conclui-se que os jovens ainda não conseguem transpor a fronteira entre conhecimento de senso comum e conhecimento científico, mesmo que em nível de ensino médio. Compreende-se que, para que o ensino de sociologia contribua ao desenvolvimento rural, além dos pontos sobre formação docente, currículo, participação, acessos e recursos voltados a educação e demais serviços, a práxis pedagógica em sociologia necessita ser resultante da utilização da teoria para analisar a própria prática docente, ou seja, pesquisar o próprio ensino de sociologia e as características dos sujeitos que fazem parte da mediação pedagógica, sem estereotipar seu modo de vida e potencializando o engajamento. (shrink)

Este artigo é um recorte de pesquisa realizada na Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste, tendo como objetivo articular as propostas de políticas públicas de educação e trabalho para juventude. Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, fundamentada no método do materialismo histórico dialético. Para fundamentarmos nossa proposta, dividimos este texto em quatro momentos. Inicialmente analisamos a construção histórica do conceito de juventude e sua representação no contexto social; posteriormente, foram levantados dados estatísticos das condições sociais, emprego, renda e escolarização em que estes jovens (...) se encontram. Seguimos, discorrendo sobre o perfil pretendido do jovem trabalhador, nas matrizes do capitalismo, atrelados aos propósitos da educação e finalizamos com discussões pertinentes as políticas educacionais para juventude e suas determinações por meio dos organismos multilaterais. A maioria das políticas de educação e trabalho possui caráter neoliberal, adotando um enfoque estratégico de ações para juventude pobre e vulnerável em favor de desenvolvimento econômico. . (shrink)

RESUMO O escopo da pesquisa é a análise de 1142b 17-28 da “Ética Nicomaqueia”, trecho em que Aristóteles disserta sobre a correção, tendo em vista que a boa deliberação é uma espécie de correção. A passagem não é clara e sugere que: i) na boa deliberação, a moralidade restringe-se aos fins, cabendo aos meios apenas a característica de serem eficazes na obtenção dos fins; ou que ii) na boa deliberação, a moralidade recai sobre meios e sobre fins pois, com a (...) expressão “usar os meios corretos na obtenção do fim”, Aristóteles estaria incluindo o critério moral dos meios como condição necessária à boa deliberação. Opto por “i)” e defendo que a boa deliberação consiste tão somente em uma habilidade exitosa na obtenção de um fim bom, habilidade que leva em conta o que é melhor, mais fácil, mais eficaz, feita em tempo oportuno. ABSTRACT The scope of research is the analysis of “Nicomachean Ethics”, section 1142b 17-28, a passage in which Aristotle discusses the correction, since good deliberation is a kind of correction. The passage is not clear and suggests that: i) in good deliberation, morality is restricted to the ends, the means having only the characteristic of being effective in attaining the ends; or that ii) in good deliberation, morality pertains to means and ends since, in the expression "to use the right means in obtaining the end", Aristotle seems to include the moral criterion of means as a necessary condition for good deliberation. I opt for “i)” and argue that good deliberation consists only in a successful ability to attain a good end, a skill that takes into account what is better, easier, more effective, done in a timely manner. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss whether the relation between formulas in the relating model can be directly introduced into the language of relating logic, and present some stances on that problem. Other questions in the vicinity, such as what kind of functor would be the incorporated relation, or whether the direct incorporation of the relation into the language of relating logic is really needed, will also be addressed.

Is ‘knowledge society’ yet another empty slogan? More than ever, ‘knowledge is power’. But we can hardly affirm that the society we live in is based on the vigour of knowledge. The market price placed on knowledge fails to provide it with the needed qualitative impetus. Inequities remain the blind spot of technological systems. To be sure, we are living in an information society at higher scales of exchange, with ‘a great deal of information, but little knowledge’. We may indeed (...) be restoring a sort of enlightened despotism of a technologically neo-positivistic type, a realm of experts whose ‘know-how’ is but another term for ‘doing without knowing’. In a truly democratic sense, the knowledge society is a basic human right. Knowledge is nourished in society. Conversely, societies find in knowledge a compass for their peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

To the extent that our future depends on our ability to change and ‘live together’, we cannot do without utopian thought. We know utopia goes astray when it puts off indefinitely confronting the present, trying to prolong the temptation to go back to complete, stable models. It goes astray when its totality merges into totalitarianism. But if utopia was shattered, broken into pieces, divided into lots, would it still be utopia? Turned into a listed heritage, a legacy that is both (...) fertile and too weighty, utopia demands an approach at the same time critical and self-critical. (shrink)

We study imagination as reality-oriented mental simulation : the activity of simulating nonactual scenarios in one’s mind, to investigate what would happen if they were realized. Three connected questions concerning ROMS are: What is the logic, if there is one, of such an activity? How can we gain new knowledge via it? What is voluntary in it and what is not? We address them by building a list of core features of imagination as ROMS, drawing on research in cognitive psychology (...) and the philosophy of mind. We then provide a logic of imagination as ROMS which models such features, combining techniques from epistemic logic, action logic, and subject matter semantics. Our logic comprises a modal propositional language with non-monotonic imagination operators, a formal semantics, and an axiomatization. (shrink)

The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said commitment (...) and that Raven's new reasons fail. Moreover, we present a novel ground-theoretic interpretation of the Aristotelian view, referred to as strong immanence, and introduce a new argument against the Aristotelian view, intended to sidestep any commitment to the transitivity of ground. (shrink)

Measurement is a process aimed at acquiring and codifying information about properties of empirical entities. In this paper we provide an interpretation of such a process comparing it with what is nowadays considered the standard measurement theory, i.e., representational theory of measurement. It is maintained here that this theory has its own merits but it is incomplete and too abstract, its main weakness being the scant attention reserved to the empirical side of measurement, i.e., to measurement systems and to the (...) ways in which the interactions of such systems with the entities under measurement provide a structure to an empirical domain. In particular it is claimed that (1) it is on the ground of the interaction with a measurement system that a partition can be induced on the domain of entities under measurement and that relations among such entities can be established, and that (2) it is the usage of measurement systems that guarantees a degree of objectivity and intersubjectivity to measurement results. As modeled in this paper, measurement systems link the abstract theory of measuring, as developed in representational terms, and the practice of measuring, as coded in standard documents such as the International Vocabulary of Metrology. (shrink)

Resumo: A proposta desse trabalho é repensar a linguagem, tema central da filosofia contemporânea, não mais como um instrumento do qual o sujeito se apropria e desapropria de acordo com a própria vontade, mas, juntamente com Heidegger, como a própria casa do ser. A função de comunicação é apenas uma das múltiplas possibilidades da linguagem. Com Heidegger é desenvolvida a questão de como a fenomenologia transforma-se em hermenêutica e de como a autocompreensão surge paralela a toda compreensão. A filosofia autêntica (...) é aquela na qual, ao questionar-se sobre algo, o sujeito é inserido na própria questão. A compreensão nunca é impessoal, pois a aletheia perpassa o sujeito que, ao compreender algo, está compreendendo a si mesmo. Palavras-chave: Filosofia. Martin Heidegger. Linguagem. Lógica. Verdade. Metafísica.: The purpose of this paper is to rethink the language, the central theme of contemporary philosophy, not as an instrument to which the subject is appropriate and unappropriate according to their will, but, along with Heidegger, as the house of being. The function of communication is only one of the many possibilities of language. With Heidegger is developed the question of how phenomenology turns to hermeneutics and how the selfunderstanding is parallel to all understanding. The authentic philosophy is that in which is questioned about something and the subject is inserted in the issue. The understanding is never impersonal, therefore Aletheia permeates the subject that by understanding something is to understand yourself. Keywords: Philosophy. Martin Heidegger. Language. Logic. Thuth. Metaphysics. (shrink)

This study aims to discuss the crisis in which philosophy of science finds itself from the weakening of positivist logic, based on Marcelo Dascal’s proposal that defends the idea that a closer study to the controversy could collaborate in the process of evolution of scientific questions. For this purpose, the philosopher suggests a pragmatic perspective, that is, the perspective of the language in use. Therefore, the relationship between language and science, the controversies generated by science and the relationship between pragmatics (...) and controversy are addressed. This investigation, allows to demonstrate the solidity of the foundations used by Dascal, which authorizes to give controversy and pragmatics a prominent place in the philosophy of science, guiding the modern philosophies of language towards the use of language and controversy as an open space for the new, for the ‘real world’, every day. Keywords: Philosophy of science. Dascal. Controversy. Pragmatics. (shrink)

Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary status in the history of capitalist development (which we term the ‘origins-subsistence’ approach). This paper offers an alternative account (...) of the relationship between capitalism and the transhistorical status of ‘patriarchy’. In aid of a ‘unitary theory’ of Marxist Feminism, we argue that the transhistorical status of patriarchy is better understood through an application of Marx’s concepts of formal and real subsumption. A modified version of these concepts can illuminate not only capitalist appropriation of antecedent social and economic forms, but also its capacity to produce new forms of gendered exploitation and oppression. (shrink)

The common account of the analog vs digital distinction is based on features of physical systems, being related to the usage of continuous vs discrete supports respectively. It is proposed here to alternatively characterize the concepts of analog and digital as related to coding systems, of which a formal definition is given, by suggesting that the distinction refers to the strategy adopted to define the coding function: extensional in digital systems, isomorphic intensional in analog systems. This thesis is supported by (...) examples, in particular of analog systems exploiting discrete supports, and is discussed to explain why digital coding is currently so widespread in technological and social practice. (shrink)

In a recent paper Berto introduces a semantic system for a logic of imagination, intended as positive conceivability, and aboutness of imaginative acts. This system crucially adopts elements of both the semantics of conditionals and the semantics of analytical implications in order to account for the central logical traits of the notion of truth in an act of imagination based on an explicit input. The main problem left unsolved is to put forward a complete set of axioms for the proposed (...) system. In the present paper I offer a solution to this problem by providing a complete axiomatization of a generalization of the original semantics. The difficulty in proving completeness lies in the fact that the modalities that capture the notion of truth in an act of imagination are neither standard nor minimal, so that the construction of the canonical model and the proof of the truth lemma are to be substantially modified. (shrink)

The concept system around 'quantity' and 'quantity value' is fundamental for measurement science, but some very basic issues are still open on such concepts and their relation. This paper argues that quantity values are in fact individual quantities, and that a complementarity exists between measurands and quantity values. This proposal is grounded on the analysis of three basic 'equality' relations: (i) between quantities, (ii) between quantity values and (iii) between quantities and quantity values. A consistent characterization of such concepts is (...) obtained, which is then generalized to 'property' and 'property value'. This analysis also throws some light on the elusive concept of magnitude. (shrink)

Não é possível ter pleno desenvolvimento da virtude moral e, consequentemente, uma boa educação sem entender o uso da razão e dos recursos metodológicos que orientam à ação moral. A partir de conceitos da ética aristotélica, seu método e sua finalidade, o objetivo deste estudo é apontar à necessidade de compreendê-los adequadamente para poder indicar possíveis contribuições para o debate em torno da necessidade de formação moral e ética nos ambientes educativos. "Saber viver", para além do conhecimento científico e mesmo (...) do conhecimento do bem, significa desenvolver habilidades de deliberar bem, de escolha acertada no rumo da vida, visando sempre ao melhor dos bens: a felicidade. Isso exige entender a estrutura e as funções das partes anímicas responsáveis pelo ato moral da proposta aristotélica, cuja tarefa da filosofia prática é ensinar a "agir bem" e tornar os homens bons e virtuosos e, consequentemente, verdadeiros cidadãos. (shrink)

This English translation of _Sorel’s Study on Vico_ opens the way to a radical re-evaluation not only of Sorel’s trajectory, but of his French intellectual contexts, and the anarcho-syndicalism he is sometimes said to represent.

Na obra Multiculturalismo: examinando a política do reconhecimento de Charles Taylor, a ideia de identidade individual é apresentada, em termos político-culturais, como fosse em parte dependente das identidades coletivas. Nesse sentido, a solução política para a harmonização social e até mesmo para a formação cultural das identidades particulares está ligada à coletividade. No Político de Platão, embora a preocupação final também seja de harmonizar o coletivo, a pólis, a arte política atua antes no ajuste da psyché individual. Isto porque o (...) coletivo é uma espécie de espelhamento do indivíduo. Se por um lado Platão é taxado de idealista para as soluções políticas que apresenta para a questão coletiva, por outro, não o é quando aponta que o discurso (filosófico) é capaz de reorientar o indivíduo para a vida política. (shrink)

Published in honor of Sergio Galvan, this collection concentrates on the application of logical and mathematical methods for the study of central issues in formal philosophy. The volume is subdivided into four sections, dedicated to logic and philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. The contributions adress, from a logical point of view, some of the main topics in these areas. The first two sections include formal treatments of: truth and paradoxes; definitions by (...) abstraction; the status of abstract objects, such as mathematical objects and universal concepts; and the structure of explicit knowledge. The last two sections include papers on classical problems in philosophy of science, such as the status of subjective probability, the notion of verisimilitude, the notion of approximation, and the theory of mind and mental causation, and specific issues in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, such as the ontology of species, actions, and intelligible worlds, and the logic of religious belonging. (shrink)

Um número significativo de crianças e adolescentes vive hoje nas ruas das cidades. Para esses sujeitos, as instâncias primordiais de formação como a família e a escola, foram substituídos por outras que se situam no âmbito da rua. Demonstrar como ocorre essa formação a partir do referencial foucaultiano constitui-se no principal propósito deste texto.

O êxodo rural brasileiro compreendeu um processo de grande magnitude desde o seu início, onde, em comparativo, poucos países experimentaram fluxo migratório tão intenso, tendo em vista a quantidade absoluta da população atingida. Uma das características encontradas nos movimentos migratórios brasileiros se estabelece na diferenciação por sexo. Estudos apontam que as mulheres migram mais do que os homens, além do fluxo migratório se caracterizar cada vez mais pela saída de jovens do campo. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo se propõe a (...) analisar a categoria rural, abordando a situação das mulheres migrantes no contexto do Norte de Minas. Para tanto, utilizará do levantamento bibliográfico na construção de uma revisão acerca das práticas migratórias do campo realizadas por jovens, de modo a entender e problematizar a questão do gênero no processo migratório. Como resultado parcial tem-se que as mulheres continuam migrando, sendo tal deslocamento realizado com propósitos variados e, muitas vezes, devido à ausência de políticas públicas regionais, que resultam em pouca perspectiva de valorização do campo/gênero. Sendo assim, o processo migratório, principalmente no que diz respeito à questão de gênero, não se encerra nas discussões apresentadas, sendo necessários estudos que acompanhem as distintas dimensões que o migrar implica. (shrink)

To be an Aristotelian about universals is to hold that universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers. An argument against Aristotelianism about universals has recently been put forward by Costa to the effect that a contradiction follows from assuming a certain formulation of Aristotelianism together with some highly plausible principles governing the notions employed in that formulation. In this paper, we provide different ways of articulating the Aristotelian position which, while being related with some of the main contributions in (...) the current Aristotelian tradition, do not fall prey to the argument. (shrink)

How do objects persist through time? According to endurantism, objects persist through time and do not have temporal parts. According to the transcendentist version of endurantism, objects exist at times by participating in events that occur at those times. This version of transcendentism offers specific metaphysical and semantical advantages over other versions of endurantism. In this paper, we defend transcendentist endurantism against a series of criticisms that have been recently offered by Kristie Miller.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new system of logic for existence and essence, in which the traditional distinctions between essential and accidental properties, abstract and concrete objects, and actually existent and possibly existent objects are described and related in a suitable way. In order to accomplish this task, a primitive relation of essential identity between different objects is introduced and connected to a first order existence property and a first order abstractness property. The basic idea is (...) that possibly existent objects are completely determinate and that essentially identical objects are just different individuations of the same individual essence. Accordingly, essential properties are defined as properties that are invariant with respect to this kind of identity, while abstract objects are determined by being characterized by essential properties only. Once such ideas are implemented, a number of classical intuitions about objects, their essence, and their way of existence can be consistently interpreted. (shrink)

Until recently, an almost perfect parallelism seemed to hold between theories of identity through time and across possible worlds,as every account in the temporal case(endurantism,perdurantism, exdurantism) was mirrored by a twin account in the modal case (trans-world identity, identity-via-parts, identity-via-counterparts). Nevertheless, in the recent literature, this parallelism has been broken because of the implementation in the debate of the relation of location. In particular, endurantism has been subject to a more in-depth analysis, and different versions of it, corresponding to different (...) ways an entity can be located in time, emerged. In this article, we provide a precise map of the conceptions at stake, complete the debate by introducing a version of endurantism not yet considered in the debate — we call transcendentism — and show that it allows us to provide an effective interpretation of the relation of trans-world identity and an intuitive solution in the temporal case. (shrink)

In the last few decades the role played by models and modeling activities has become a central topic in the scientific enterprise. In particular, it has been highlighted both that the development of models constitutes a crucial step for understanding the world and that the developed models operate as mediators between theories and the world. Such perspective is exploited here to cope with the issue as to whether error-based and uncertainty-based modeling of measurement are incompatible, and thus alternative with one (...) another, as sometimes claimed nowadays. The crucial problem is whether assuming this standpoint implies definitely renouncing to maintain a role for truth and the related concepts, particularly accuracy, in measurement. It is argued here that the well known objections against true values in measurement, which would lead to refuse the concept of accuracy as non-operational, or to maintain it as only qualitative, derive from a not clear distinction between three distinct processes: the metrological characterization of measuring systems, their calibration, and finally measurement. Under the hypotheses that (1) the concept of true value is related to the model of a measurement process, (2) the concept of uncertainty is related to the connection between such model and the world, and (3) accuracy is a property of measuring systems (and not of measurement results) and uncertainty is a property of measurement results (and not of measuring systems), not only the compatibility but actually the conjoint need of error-based and uncertainty-based modeling emerges. (shrink)

In the present paper we propose a system of propositional logic for reasoning about justification, truthmaking, and the connection between justifiers and truthmakers. The logic of justification and truthmaking is developed according to the fundamental ideas introduced by Artemov. Justifiers and truthmakers are treated in a similar way, exploiting the intuition that justifiers provide epistemic grounds for propositions to be considered true, while truthmakers provide ontological grounds for propositions to be true. This system of logic is then applied both for (...) interpreting the notorious definition of knowledge as justified true belief and for advancing a new solution to Gettier counterexamples to this standard definition. (shrink)

Measurement is widely applied because its results are assumed to be more reliable than opinions and guesses, but this reliability is sometimes justified in a stereotyped way. After a critical analysis of such stereotypes, a structural characterization of measurement is proposed, as partly empirical and partly theoretical process, by showing that it is in fact the structure of the process that guarantees the reliability of its results. On this basis the role and the structure of background knowledge in measurement and (...) the justification of the conditions of object-relatedness ("objectivity") and subject-independence ("intersubjectivity") of measurement are specifically discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce a system of dynamic deontic logic in which the main problems related to the de finition of deontic concepts, especially those emerging from a standard analysis of permission in terms of possibility of doing an action without incurring in a violation of the law, are solved. The basic idea is to introduce two crucial distinctions allowing us to differentiate (i) what is ideal with respect to a given code, which fixes the types (...) of action that are abstractly prescribed, and what is ideal with respect to the specific situation in which the agent acts, and (ii) the transitions associated with actions and the results of actions, which can obtain even without the action being performed. (shrink)