199 research outputs found

    (b2023 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE similarities between the ideas of some people (2006-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!)

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    (b2023 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE similarities between the ideas of some people (2006-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!

    Rethinking inconsistent mathematics

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    This dissertation has two main goals. The first is to provide a practice-based analysis of the field of inconsistent mathematics: what motivates it? what role does logic have in it? what distinguishes it from classical mathematics? is it alternative or revolutionary? The second goal is to introduce and defend a new conception of inconsistent mathematics - queer incomaths - as a particularly effective answer to feminist critiques of classical logic and mathematics. This sets the stage for a genuine revolution in mathematics, insofar as it suggests the need for a shift in mainstream attitudes about the rolee of logic and ethics in the practice of mathematics

    Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology

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    This edited volume presents papers on this alternative philosophy of biology that could be called “continental philosophy of biology,” and the variety of positions and solutions that it has spawned. In doing so, it contributes to debates in the history and philosophy of science and the history of philosophy of science, as well as to the craving for ‘history’ and/or ‘theory’ in the theoretical biological disciplines. In addition, however, it also provides inspiration for a broader image of philosophy of biology, in which these traditional issues may have a place. The volume devotes specific attention to the work of Georges Canguilhem, which is central to this alternative tradition of “continental philosophy of biology”. This is the first collection on Georges Canguilhem and the Continental tradition in philosophy of biology. The book should be of interest to philosophers of biology, continental philosophers, historians of biology and those interested in broader traditions in philosophy of science

    Metasemantics and fuzzy mathematics

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    The present thesis is an inquiry into the metasemantics of natural languages, with a particular focus on the philosophical motivations for countenancing degreed formal frameworks for both psychosemantics and truth-conditional semantics. Chapter 1 sets out to offer a bird's eye view of our overall research project and the key questions that we set out to address. Chapter 2 provides a self-contained overview of the main empirical findings in the cognitive science of concepts and categorisation. This scientific background is offered in light of the fact that most variants of psychologically-informed semantics see our network of concepts as providing the raw materials on which lexical and sentential meanings supervene. Consequently, the metaphysical study of internalistically-construed meanings and the empirical study of our mental categories are overlapping research projects. Chapter 3 closely investigates a selection of species of conceptual semantics, together with reasons for adopting or disavowing them. We note that our ultimate aim is not to defend these perspectives on the study of meaning, but to argue that the project of making them formally precise naturally invites the adoption of degreed mathematical frameworks (e.g. probabilistic or fuzzy). In Chapter 4, we switch to the orthodox framework of truth-conditional semantics, and we present the limitations of a philosophical position that we call "classicism about vagueness". In the process, we come up with an empirical hypothesis for the psychological pull of the inductive soritical premiss and we make an original objection against the epistemicist position, based on computability theory. Chapter 5 makes a different case for the adoption of degreed semantic frameworks, based on their (quasi-)superior treatments of the paradoxes of vagueness. Hence, the adoption of tools that allow for graded membership are well-motivated under both semantic internalism and semantic externalism. At the end of this chapter, we defend an unexplored view of vagueness that we call "practical fuzzicism". Chapter 6, viz. the final chapter, is a metamathematical enquiry into both the fuzzy model-theoretic semantics and the fuzzy Davidsonian semantics for formal languages of type-free truth in which precise truth-predications can be expressed

    Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology

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    Materialism has been the subject of extensive and rich controversies since Robert Boyle introduced the term for the first time in the 17th century. But what is materialism and what can it offer today? The term is usually defined as the worldview according to which everything real is material. Nevertheless, there is no philosophical consensus about whether the meaning of matter can be enlarged beyond the physical. As a consequence, materialism is often defined in stark exclusive and reductionist terms: whatever exists is either physical or ontologically reducible to it. This conception, if consistent, mutilates reality, excluding the ontological significance of political, economic, sociocultural, anthropological and psychological realities. Starting from a new history of materialism, the present book focuses on the central ontological and epistemological debates aroused by today’s leading materialist approaches, including some little known to an anglophone readership. The key concepts of matter, system, emergence, space and time, life, mind, and software are checked over and updated. Controversial issues such as the nature of mathematics and the place of reductionism are also discussed from different materialist approaches. As a result, materialism emerges as a powerful, indispensable scientifically-supported worldview with a surprising wealth of nuances and possibilities
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