We investigate the higher-order modal logic , which is a variant of the system presented in our previous work. A semantics for that system, founded on the theory of quasi sets, is outlined. We show how such a semantics, motivated by the very intuitive base of Schrödinger logics, provides an alternative way to formalize some intensional concepts and features which have been used in recent discussions on the logical foundations of quantum mechanics; for example, that some terms like 'electron' have (...) no precise reference and that 'identical' particles cannot be named unambiguously. In the last section, we sketch a classical semantics for quasi set theory. (shrink)

The issue of what consequences to draw from the existence of non-classical logical systems has been the subject of an interesting debate across a diversity of fields. In this paper the matter of alternative logics is considered with reference to a specific belief system and its propositions :the Azande are said to maintain beliefs about witchcraft which, when expressed propositionally, appear to be inconsistent. When the Azande have been presented with such inconsistencies, they either fail to see them as such (...) or else accept them as non-problematical. Is our knowledge of logical truths a relative and culturally determined phenomenon, or is there some (transcendent) criterion that allows us to adjudicate between alternative logical systems? The authors propose an approach for resolving disputes about the status of Azande reasoning which assumes a paraconsistent framework, thus providing a new perspective on this debate. (shrink)

Rousseau é reconhecido como um dos grandes filósofos da nossa tradição ocidental, sobretudo pelo impacto que os seus ideais tiveram na definição da ideologia moderna de viés republicano e até mesmo liberal. Porém, apesar da defesa incansável daqueles que viriam a ser os ideais revolucionários franceses, Rousseau insiste em manter uma prática de desigualdade naturalizada, considerando as mulheres como inferiores e eternas desiguais dos homens. Mary Wollstonecraft foi a primeira a fazer a denúncia da contradição do pensamento de Rousseau, na (...) obra que viria a ser o marco de uma literatura feminista: A Vindication for the Rights of Women. Porém, até mesmo esta denúncia está circunscrita àquele horizonte que Rousseau contribuira para desenhar: o horizonte da universalidade dos direitos, das liberdades e da igualdade. Neste artigo queremos caracterizar esta contradição levando em conta contribuições recentes de críticas feministas e apontando sua relação com o projeto democrático mais vasto. (shrink)

In this paper we will present the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s main reflections on the scientific enterprise, its relation to the metaphysical tradition, and how the German author drew on the nineteenth century cosmological discussion to develop a worldview that ultimately endorses a dynamic and more creative form of science, whose representations and values should not be separated from human interests.

The partial structures approach has two major components: a broad notion of structure (partial structure) and a weak notion of truth (quasi-truth). In this paper, we discuss the relationship between this approach and free logic. We also compare the model-theoretic analysis supplied by partial structures with the method of supervaluations, which was initially introduced as a technique to provide a semantic analysis of free logic. We then combine the three formal frameworks (partial structures, free logic and supervaluations), and apply the (...) resulting approach to accommodate semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the particular problems raised by observations of phenomena outside the common course of nature for their validation as knowledge. It examines to what extent the content of the reports and, in particular, their lack of intrinsic plausibility affected the methods used in their authentication and the assessment of testimony at the Royal Society in the first half of the eighteenth century. I show that literary strategies were usually necessary but not sufficient for the validation of (...) these kinds of observations. Next, I discuss why visual representations were especially useful in establishing the singularity of the observations, but I point out that their high costs and other restrictions meant that they were not so widespread. In contrast I show that, for a long period of time, testimony was used in the majority of the reports as the true stamp of authenticity. I note, however, that the Royal Society accepted reports by authors of varied social status, level of education and occupation, and I discuss some of the factors responsible for the complexity of the handling of testimony at the Society. I argue against Shapin that in the case of reports of extraordinary phenomena, the competence of the reporter and witnesses was often more important than their social status. The increasing role of expertise in the assessment of observations at the Society become especially apparent by the middle of the eighteenth century.Author Keywords: Authentication; Competence; Monstrous births; Singular; Testimony; Royal Society of London. (shrink)

crueldade no direito natural e na cena política a partir de Hobbes e Agamben. Relaciona o conceito hobbesiano de estado de natureza às figuras do direito romano arcaico, homo lupus (homem lobo) e homo sacer (homem sagrado) em seu duplo processo de inclusão/exclusão da vida nua (zoé) na vida política (bíos). Adentra nos limites da natureza e da condição humana, a fim de perceber as flutuações de sentido implicadas na situação de abandono que acerca um malfeitor ou bando junto à (...) comunidade, com sua exposição à morte ou desaparecimento social sem as formas sancionadas pela lei. Reitera a permanente fronteira entre animal e humano, limite paradoxal e intransponível, situado entre polidez e nudez, crueldade e sacralidade, bem e mal. (shrink)

This paper is a critic analysis of a doctorate thesis and a master dissertation, which subjects are the samba and the afro religions in the city of São Paulo. Both consider the samba and the religion as manifestations and cultural expressions through which the black population in afro-diaspora rebuilded and reupdated memories via religiosity, rythm, dance and performan.

Sports occupy an interesting ethical space from a pedagogic point of view, being included in physical education curricula in most Western countries. The approach of physical education to sports as vehicle for ethical education is too limited when it is restricted to their minimal functional, constitutive and regulatory goals. This essay’s aim is to argue the extent to which the ethical potential of physical education can embrace more than functional purposes, or whether that will be neglected in terms of limited (...) educational aspirations. We present data from nineteen exploratory interviews with experienced philosophy, sports and physical education researchers and teachers, from six different nations, concerning the ethical potentiality of physical education. We highlight five ethical themes: (i) the regulatory and normative structure of sports; (ii) the spirit of sports and its internal values; (iii) the right playing/doing of sports; (iv) the overcoming in sports; and (v) sports as an opportunity for a supererogatory ethics as fertile ground for future operationalization of the potential of physical education for ethical education through sports.El deporte ocupa un interesante espacio ético desde un punto de vista pedagógico, integrándose en los curricula de educación física en la mayoría de países occidentales. El planteamiento de la educación física como vehículo de la educación ética es limitado cuando restringido a sus objetivos mínimos funcionales, constitutivos y regulatorios. El objetivo de este estudio es discutir si el potencial ético de la educación física puede ir más allá de los propósitos funcionales, que considerados aisladamente constituyen un desperdicio de la experiencia pedagógica del deporte. Para conseguirlo, presentamos datos de diecinueve entrevistas exploratorias con experimentados investigadores y profesores de filosofía, deporte y educación física relacionadas con las potencialidades éticas de la educación física. La muestra incluye individuos de seis diferentes nacionalidades, cuyo trabajo demuestra preocupaciones con el tema. La argumentación resulta de cinco temáticas principales: (i) Estructura normativa y regulativa del deporte; (ii) El espírito del deporte y sus valores internos; (iii) El bien hacer deportivo; (iv) La superación deportiva; (v) El deporte como oportunidad de una ética supererogatoria como contexto fértil para la concretización del potencial ético de una educación deportiva. (shrink)

Procuramos expor o pluralismo de leituras da obra freudiana mediante a exploração da hipótese de historicização da formação psíquica dos sujeitos, especialmente relativa ao complexo de Édipo e Supereu. Partindo da perspectiva de estudos feministas, verificamos no corpus teórico freudiano se há a possibilidade de que o avanço sócio-histórico seja um fator de modificação de concepções que, na leitura freudiana clássica, seriam lidas como imutáveis, fixas e rígidas cultural e historicamente. Madelon Sprengnether, Nancy Chodorow e Judith Butler serão retomadas para (...) criticar a leitura clássica e generalizante do complexo de Édipo enquanto “estrutural”, essencializado e substancializado. Sugerimos que, sendo uma lei hegemônica, a vivência edípica não pode ser completamente ultrapassada, mas pode ser performativamente atuada de formas desviantes de sua estrutura classicamente pensada por Freud. Nesse âmbito, a transmissão geracional é nosso enfoque primordial. Ela é debatida ao menos em três momentos complementares: na análise da filogênese, da herança arcaica e do Édipo social exposta em Totem e tabu, na herança narcísica de expectativas e ideais compreendida em Introdução ao narcisismo e na teoria da perpetuação de valores e tradições morais via identificações geracionais superegoicas que consta nas Novas Conferências sobre Psicanálise. (shrink)

Esta pesquisa pretende investigar sobretudo a relação entre Sociedade e Estado. A sociedade sob a perspectiva de Tocqueville enquanto corpo coletivo democrático, ou igual. A igualdade é entendida pelo autor como um “fato social”. Tocqueville chama de estado social de igualdade de condições a conjuntura política organizacional do povo americano por ele encontrado à época de sua visita aos EUA. Já o Estado, visto pelo autor como resultado das condições da sociedade, sendo este, instituição arquitetada dentro de parâmetros democráticos de (...) igualdade e liberdade, pelo próprio povo, que se auto governa, não apenas como instituições ou órgãos degoverno. (shrink)

In his influential work, A social history of truth, Steven Shapin has argued for the central role of social status in the assessment of experimental knowledge. In his view, in seventeenth-century England, gentlemen were considered the right kind of persons to trust because of their freedom of action, codes of virtue and honour. These characteristics ensured credibility and, hence, compelled assent. However, Shapin does not put sufficient emphasis on the relevance of the testifier’s competence in the validation of knowledge. When (...) and in which circumstances did expertise become more important than social status in the accreditation of natural knowledge? [...] I argue in this paper that it is in the realm of interpretation of unusual and ambiguous anatomies that medical and, in particular, anatomical expertise assumed its most crucial role. Moreover, the medical understanding of the hermaphroditic body in the eighteenth century can be considered one of the most illustrative cases of the construction and display of anatomical expertise. In fact, several of the academic memoirs and dissertations published on hermaphrodites in the eighteenth century attempted precisely to fulfil this purpose. (shrink)

The fact that monstrous births were not represented in independent learned publications of the eighteenth century, except for the case of hermaphrodites, does not mean that the interest in them had disappeared or that they were no more considered proper objects of inquiry. This paper focuses on the medical understanding of monstrosity at the Royal Society of London. I point to the use of monstrous births in strengthening the authority of medical practitioners and lecturers. I also show some of their (...) uses in providing new questions for the scenes of medical inquiry of the period and as crucial evidence in the understanding of regular physiological phenomena. I discuss some of the reasons why monstrous formations continued to defy an 'Enlightenment' approach to nature based on the search for order and regularity. (shrink)

Da Costa and French explore the consequences of adopting a 'pragmatic' notion of truth in the philosophy of science. Their framework sheds new light on issues to do with belief, theory acceptance, and the realism-antirealism debate, as well as the nature of scientific models and their heuristic development.

There are very few (published) accounts of editorial misconduct, and those that do exist are almost exclusively focused on medicine-related areas. In the present article we detail a case of editorial misconduct in a rather underexplored domain, the social sciences. This case demonstrates that although legal systems provide different instruments of protection to avoid, compensate for, and punish misconduct on the part of journal editors, the social and economic power unbalance between authors and publishers suggests the importance of alternative solutions (...) before or instead of bringing a lawsuit to court. It puts forward strong arguments in favour of the need for effective regulatory bodies so as to achieve and maintain a culture of research integrity by all involved in the process. (shrink)

There are several conceptions of truth, such as the classical correspondence conception, the coherence conception and the pragmatic conception. The classical correspondence conception, or Aristotelian conception, received a mathematical treatment in the hands of Tarski (cf. Tarski [1935] and [1944]), which was the starting point of a great progress in logic and in mathematics. In effect, Tarski's semantic ideas, especially his semantic characterization of truth, have exerted a major influence on various disciplines, besides logic and mathematics; for instance, linguistics, the (...) philosophy of science, and the theory of knowledge. The importance of the Tarskian investigations derives, among other things, from the fact that they constitute a mathematical, formal mark to serve as a reference for the philosophical (informal) conceptions of truth. Today the philosopher knows that the classical conception can be developed and that it is free from paradoxes and other difficulties, if certain precautions are taken. We believe that is not an exaggeration if we assert that Tarski's theory should be considered as one of the greatest accomplishments of logic and mathematics of our time, an accomplishment which is also of extraordinary relevance to philosophy, as we have already remarked. In this paper we show that the pragmatic conception of truth, at least in one of its possible interpretations, has also a mathematical formulation, similar in spirit to that given by Tarski to the classical correspondence conception. (shrink)

In order to develop an account of scientific rationality, two problems need to be addressed: (i) how to make sense of episodes of theory change in science where the lack of a cumulative development is found, and (ii) how to accommodate cases of scientific change where lack of consistency is involved. In this paper, we sketch a model of scientific rationality that accommodates both problems. We first provide a framework within which it is possible to make sense of scientific revolutions, (...) but which still preserves some (partial) relations between old and new theories. The existence of these relations help to explain why the break between different theories is never too radical as to make it impossible for one to interpret the process in perfectly rational terms. We then defend the view that if scientific theories are taken to be quasi-true, and if the underlying logic is paraconsistent, it's perfectly rational for scientists and mathematicians to entertain inconsistent theories without triviality. As a result, as opposed to what is demanded by traditional approaches to rationality, it's not irrational to entertain inconsistent theories. Finally, we conclude the paper by arguing that the view advanced here provides a new way of thinking about the foundations of science. In particular, it extends in important respects both coherentist and foundationalist approaches to knowledge, without the troubles that plague traditional views of scientific rationality. (shrink)

Thirty years after the conference that gave rise to The Structure of Scientific Theories, there is renewed interest in the nature of theories and models. However, certain crucial issues from thirty years ago are reprised in current discussions; specifically: whether the diversity of models in the science can be captured by some unitary account; and whether the temporal dimension of scientific practice can be represented by such an account. After reviewing recent developments we suggest that these issues can be accommodated (...) within the partial structures formulation of the semantic or model-theoretic approach. (shrink)

An introduction to the model-theoretic approach in the philosophy of science is given and it is argued that this program is further enhanced by the introduction of partial structures. It is then shown that this leads to a natural and intuitive account of both "iconic" and mathematical models and of the role of the former in science itself.

Our aim in this paper is to replace the old concept of truth in mathematics, based on the Set Structure provided with idea of true and false characterized by the presence of a characteric function \, by a mathematical structures founded on the idea of Topos, the triple structure \\}\) and the notion of Gradual Truth or Steps from the truth. Our motivations is to understand the mathematical structures underlying the emergence’s mechanism and phenomena. We think that this approach could (...) be useful to better appreciate the subtleties of the notion of truth and gives us a better understanding of the complex and changing phenomena. (shrink)

Physical superpositions exist both in classical and in quantum physics. However, what is exactly meant by ‘superposition’ in each case is extremely different. In this paper we discuss some of the multiple interpretations which exist in the literature regarding superpositions in quantum mechanics. We argue that all these interpretations have something in common: they all attempt to avoid ‘contradiction’. We argue in this paper, in favor of the importance of developing a new interpretation of superpositions which takes into account contradiction, (...) as a key element of the formal structure of the theory, “right from the start”. In order to show the feasibility of our interpretational project we present an outline of a paraconsistent approach to quantum superpositions which attempts to account for the contradictory properties present in general within quantum superpositions. This approach must not be understood as a closed formal and conceptual scheme but rather as a first step towards a different type of understanding regarding quantum superpositions. (shrink)

Fertility levels have dropped substantially in Latin America in recent decades, fuelled by increased contraceptive use and notably a method mix skewed towards female sterilization. This study examined choice of female sterilization in four Latin American countries: Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Peru. Data were drawn from national Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 1995s reproductive histories to consider the effects of a number of sociodemographic and contextual determinants as they pertained to status at the moment of the event. (...) The results revealed that the likelihood of a womans propensity to choose sterilization. (shrink)

The mathematical concept of pragmatic truth, first introduced in Mikenberg, da Costa and Chuaqui (1986), has received in the last few years several applications in logic and the philosophy of science. In this paper, we study the logic of pragmatic truth, and show that there are important connections between this logic, modal logic and, in particular, Jaskowski's discussive logic. In order to do so, two systems are put forward so that the notions of pragmatic validity and pragmatic truth can (...) be accommodated. One of the main results of this paper is that the logic of pragmatic truth is paraconsistent. The philosophical import of this result, which justifies the application of pragmatic truth to inconsistent settings, is also discussed. (shrink)

An appropriately unprejudiced logical investigation of causation as a type of implication relation is undertaken. The implication delineated is bounded syntactically. The developing argument then leads to a very natural process analysis, which demonstrably captures the established syntactical features. Next relevantly-based semantics for the resulting logical theory are adduced, and requisite adequacy results delivered. At the end of the tour, further improvements are pointed out, and the attractive terrain beyond present developments is glimpsed.

Body awareness refers to the individual ability to process signals originating from within the body, which provide a mapping of the body’s internal landscape and its relation with space and movement. The present study aims to evaluate psychometric properties and validate in French two self-report measures of body awareness: the Postural Awareness Scale, and the last version of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness questionnaire. We collected data in a non-clinical, adult sample using online survey, and a subset of the (...) original sample also completed the retest control. Factor analyses and reliability analyses were conducted. Construct validity of the PAS and the MAIA-2 were examined by testing their association with each other, and with self-report measures of personality, alexithymia and dispositional trait mindfulness. Factor analyses of the PAS supported the same two-factor structure as previously published versions. For the MAIA-2, factor analyses suggested that a six-factor structure, excluding Not-Worrying and Not-Distracting factors, could successfully account for a common general factor of self-reported interoception. We found satisfactory internal consistency, construct validity, and reliability over time for both the PAS and the MAIA-2. Altogether, our findings suggest that the French version of the PAS and the MAIA-2 are reliable self-report tools to assess both components of body awareness. (shrink)

Our purpose in this paper is to delineate an ontology for quantum mechanics that results adequate to the formalism of the theory. We will restrict our aim to the search of an ontology that expresses the conceptual content of the recently proposed modal-Hamiltonian interpretation, according to which the domain referred to by non-relativistic quantum mechanics is an ontology of properties. The usual strategy in the literature has been to focus on only one of the interpretive problems of the theory and (...) to design an interpretation to solve it, leaving aside the remaining difficulties. On the contrary, our aim in the present work is to formulate a “global” solution, according to which different problems can be adequately tackled in terms of a single ontology populated of properties, in which systems are bundles of properties. In particular, we will conceive indistinguishability between bundles as a relation derived from indistinguishability between properties, and we will show that states, when operating on combinations of indistinguishable bundles, act as if they were symmetric with no need of a symmetrization postulate. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is to consider the traditional interpretive problems of quantum mechanics from the viewpoint of a modal ontology of properties. In particular, we will try to delineate a quantum ontology that (i) is modal, because describes the structure of the realm of possibility, and (ii) lacks the ontological category of individual. The final goal is to supply an adequate account of quantum non-individuality on the basis of this ontology.

Resumo : O presente artigo visa mostrar e analisar como se constituem alguns dos argumentos sobre a eternidade das coisas no tratado primeiro, capítulo De aeternitate rerum do Exigit ordo, de Nicolau de Autrécourt. Como o próprio título do capítulo diz, trata-se de um conjunto de argumentos que buscam justificar a eternidade das coisas. A estratégia utilizada por nós é reconstruir e mostrar como se constituem e se organizam tais argumentos sobre a eternidade das coisas, elucidando o postulado autrecuriano de (...) que é provável que todas as coisas, sem exceção, sejam eternas; e que o universo seja eterno e composto de átomos, e regido por apenas um movimento, a saber, o movimento local. Nossa interpretação buscará abordar a questão, reconstruindo a filosofia da natureza de Autrécourt e alguns enunciados epistemológicos e ontológicos elaborados por ele. Palavras-chave : eternidade das coisas; filosofia da natureza; Nicolau de Autrécourt. (shrink)