In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 133 The Foundations of Mysticism. Vol. I of The Pl'.esence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. By BERNARD McGINN. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Pp. xxii and 49. Index and bibliography. $39.00 (cloth). With this work Bernard McGinn delivers the first of a projected four volume History of Western Christian Mysticism. The Foundations in· cludes, as one might expect, the Scriptural tradition, Neoplatonic phi· losophy, early (...) Greek Fathers who influenced the Latins, as well as the early "Founders" Ambrose and Augustine. Judged by the quality of its start, this work promises to become a standard history for years to come. The author displays a stunning acquaintance with the sources of a subject that extends over full twenty centuries. Though " spe-·cialized " in the spirituality of the high and late Middle Ages (he has written substantial studies on Joachim de Fiore and Eckhart), the Chi· cago professor has admirably succeeded in mastering the mass of per· tinent literature of this early period, as the 150 pages of notes and bibliography testify. His ideas are clearly presented, his evaluations of others critical yet generous, his overall judgment impressively balanced. Moreover, he ventures well beyond the usual territory. His work in- -eludes subjects rarely discussed hut often alluded to in the history of.early Christian spirituality: e.g. Gnosticism, which appears here not as a " heresy ", but as a spiritual movement in its own right. The thorough discussion of Philo together with the introductory chapter on 4 ' The Jewish Matrix" (somewhat improperly entitled since it deals only with the Hebrew Bible) display an unusual appreciation of the underestimated influence of Jewish mysticism. One would have been happy to read more about Marius Victorinus, hut is grateful to find him present at all. A historical survey of this scope may easily degenerate into an enumeration of titles and trends, whereby ideas are treated as facts. Professor McGinn has judiciously avoided that. Entire sections of his history are rich monographs about spiritual systems treated for their intrinsic interest rather than as transitory moments of an indifferent history. The sections dealing with Origen, Evagrius, and Ambrose in particular deserve to be read as independent treatises. The long concluding chapter on Augustine also presents a marvelous synthesis, though one primarily written from the point of view of its later impact. In a study of this nature the definition of its formal object presents.a unique problem. Before the late Middle Ages the concept of a purely private spiritual experience remained largely unknown in Christian 134 BOOK REVIEWS spirituality and until the seventeenth century even the substantive " my,;· ticism ", referring to a separate activity, did not exist. H what we now take to be characteristic were to serve as normative concept, almost all spiritual writers of the :first Christian millennium and a good many after that would he excluded. Moreover, the subjective mystical ex· perience remains inaccessible to the historian. McGinn has wisely confined his subject to the spiritual text in its social and ecclesiastical context. But this choice leads to a further, equally difficult question: What constitutes a mystical text? Obviously not all religious or theo· logical writings are mystical. Protestant theologians of the nineteenth century tended to consider a genuine Christian faith incompatible with mysticism, while prominent students of mysticism in this century (such as Underhill, Butler) :remained highly suspicious of speculative theology, including the so-called "mystical" one, But friend and foe of mysticism agree that the mystical, however conceived, cannot simply he identified with the religious. Some scholars, such as von Hiigel, distinguish the mystical from other aspects of religion, but leave its positive content vague and controvertible. Avoiding a precision which the nature of the subject precludes, McGinn nevertheless goes to the heart of the matter in :referring to the mystical as to the dynamic power that drives the religious mind toward the experienced presence of God, without necessarily bringing it to the state of full union. The author's position appears in the felicitous choice of the general title: The Presence God. All religious life aims at entering into the presence of God. But " mystical " religious texts speak of a particular mode of divine presence, not ordinarily... (shrink)

An old and well-known objection to non-classical logics is that they are too weak; in particular, they cannot prove a number of important mathematical results. A promising strategy to deal with this objection consists in proving so-called recapture results. Roughly, these results show that classical logic can be used in mathematics and other unproblematic contexts. However, the strategy faces some potential problems. First, typical recapture results are formulated in a purely logical language, and do not generalize nicely to languages containing (...) the kind of vocabulary that usually motivates non-classical theories—for example, a language containing a naïve truth predicate. Second, proofs of recapture results typically employ classical principles that are not valid in the targeted non-classical system; hence, non-classical theorists do not seem entitled to those results. In this paper, we analyze these problems and provide solutions on behalf of non-classical theorists. To address the first problem, we provide a novel kind of recapture result, which generalizes nicely to a truth-theoretic language. As for the second problem, we argue that it relies on an ambiguity and that, once the ambiguity is removed, there are no reasons to think that non-classical logicians are not entitled to their recapture results. (shrink)

Often, two logical systems differ in what seems a merely superficial way; for example, in the symbols they choose for a given operation. When this happens, we say that the systems are notational variants of each other and that, as a consequence, they are presentations of the same logical theory. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to certain logical systems that are radically substructural, in the sense that they abandon the reflexivity and/or transitivity of consequence. The contribution of (...) this paper is twofold. First, I argue that such systems pose serious challenges to our extant criteria for deciding when two systems are notational variants. Second, I give some steps towards a new, improved criterion. Intuitively, I suggest that two logical systems are notational variants just in case, once we translate them properly, they give rise to the same non-logical theories—where, crucially, a non-logical theory can contain not only statements, but also inferences. (shrink)

The emergence of the strict-tolerant logic ST (advocated by Cobreros, Egré, Ripley and van Rooij) and of the hierarchy of increasingly classical logics based upon it (advanced by Barrio, Pailos and Szmuc) sparked many new questions, developments, and debates. One of the central points of discussion is how to identify a logic, or in other words, when two logics can be said to be alternative presentations of one another. Recently, Brian Porter tentatively suggested a new criterion of identity, premised on (...) the intuitive idea that two logics cannot be the same if they admit different applications. In this article, I argue that, although Porter’s criterion is on the right track, it is still unsatisfactory by the author’s own lights. Then, I propose a different criterion which better captures the mentioned intuitive idea. (shrink)

Connexive logics are based on two ideas: that no statement entails or is entailed by its own negation (this is Aristotle’s thesis) and that no statement entails both something and the negation of this very thing (this is Boethius' thesis). Usually, connexive logics are contra-classical. In this note, I introduce a reading of the connexive theses that makes them compatible with classical logic. According to this reading, the theses in question do not talk about validity alone; rather, they talk in (...) part about (a property related to) the soundness of arguments. (shrink)

In philosophical logic and proof theory, we often find multiple-conclusion systems that induce a conjunctive reading of premises and a disjunctive reading of conclusions. In mathematical logic, in contrast, we often find multiple-conclusion systems that induce a conjunctive reading of both premises and conclusions. This paper studies some technical and philosophical aspects of this latter approach to multiple-conclusion consequence. The takeaway is that, while the importance of disjunctive multiple conclusions is beyond doubt, conjunctive multiple conclusions also have philosophical interest. First, (...) because there is some evidence that there are arguments with conjunctive multiple conclusions in natural language. Second, because conjunctive multiple conclusions are compatible with the reflexivity and transitivity of logical consequence, and this allows them to cohere better with some of our best accounts of what logical consequence is. (shrink)

In this paper, Andrea Fiore sketches the notion of familiarity in Dewey's thought, particularly in its relations with education, aesthetics, and art. The importance of that notion emerges in Dewey's well-known writings such as How We Think, The School and Society, and Art as Experience, where he shows that not only does familiarity play a fundamental role in our lives, but it also constitutes a helpful tool to make our experience deeper and richer. This is particularly evident in two (...) aspects or functions related to familiarity: recognition and interpretation. For Dewey, especially the latter has an educational value through aesthetics and art, because it allows us to activate the peculiar capacity of human beings to transform the quality of experience. (shrink)

When logicians work with multiple-conclusion systems, they use a metalinguistic comma ‘,’ to aggregate premises and/or conclusions. In this note, I present an analogy between this comma and Prior’s infamous connective tonk. The analogy reveals that these expressions have much in common. I argue that, indeed, the comma can be seen as a structural incarnation of tonk. The upshot is that, whatever story one has to tell about tonk, there are good reasons to tell a similar story about the comma (...) in typical multiple-conclusion systems, and vice versa. (shrink)

A metainference is usually understood as a pair consisting of a collection of inferences, called premises, and a single inference, called conclusion. In the last few years, much attention has been paid to the study of metainferences—and, in particular, to the question of what are the valid metainferences of a given logic. So far, however, this study has been done in quite a poor language. Our usual sequent calculi have no way to represent, e.g. negations, disjunctions or conjunctions of inferences. (...) In this paper we tackle this expressive issue. We assume some background sentential language as given and define what we call an inferential language, that is, a language whose atomic formulas are inferences. We provide a model-theoretic characterization of validity for this language—relative to some given characterization of validity for the background sentential language—and provide a proof-theoretic analysis of validity. We argue that our novel language has fruitful philosophical applications. Lastly, we generalize some of our definitions and results to arbitrary metainferential levels. (shrink)

Saul Kripke proposed a skeptical challenge that Romina Padró defended and popularized by the name of the Adoption Problem. The challenge is that, given a certain definition of adoption, there are some logical principles that cannot be adopted—paradigmatic cases being Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens. Kripke has used the Adoption Problem to argue that there is an important sense in which logic is not revisable. In this essay, I defend two independent claims. First, that the Adoption Problem does not entail (...) that logic is never revisable in the sense that Kripke addresses. Second, that, to assess whether an agent can revise their logic in the sense that Kripke addresses, it is best to consider a different definition of adoption, according to which Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens are sometimes adoptable. (shrink)

The present work looks at what we call “the multiverse of quantification”, where visible and invisible numbers permeate all aspects and venues of life. We review the contributions of different authors who focus on the roles of quantification in society, with the aim of capturing different and sometimes separate voices. Several scholars, including economists, jurists, philosophers, sociologists, communication and data scientists, express concerns or identify critical areas of our relationship with new technologies of ‘numericization’. While mindful of the important specificities (...) of the different families of quantification, we use our broad and holistic canvas to explore possible spaces for a more systematic investigation of incumbent and novel quantifications, as to increase communication among disciplinary communities, and among these and society, in the pursuit a democratic agency and self-defence. (shrink)

Even though the American thinker John Dewey and the Italian Luigi Pareyson belong to two different philosophical traditions, on the aesthetic ground they show many resonances and similarities. Using Pareyson’s words, “just as it happens between people, who in particularly happy encounters […] reveal themselves to each other,” it is therefore possible to have Dewey’s aesthetics and Pareyson’s dialogue with each other, highlighting their affinities. This operation can strengthen the idea that the aesthetic experience is a way to fulfil human (...) existence. Thus, the hermeneutic character of Pareyson’s aesthetics in combination with Deweyan pragmatist aesthetic theory not only have great importance for the artistic experience, but also considerable value for human beings’ everyday lives. -/- Starting from some Deweyan resonances in Pareyson’s aesthetics, the discourse focuses on his aesthetics in its educational and hermeneutic significance within the dialogue between the two philosophers, coming, finally, to Dewey’s and Pareyson’s aesthetics in connection with so-called “everyday aesthetics.” Although a Deweyan influence on Pareyson is ascertained, and the similarities between them are not superficial at all, it is worth bearing in mind the different backgrounds of the two philosophers in order to accurately situate their reflections. (shrink)

Tarski asked whether the arithmetic identities taught in high school are complete for showing all arithmetic equations valid for the natural numbers. The answer to this question for the language of arithmetic expressions using a constant for the number one and the operations of product and exponentiation is affirmative, and the complete equational theory also characterises isomorphism in the typed lambda calculus, where the constant for one and the operations of product and exponentiation respectively correspond to the unit type and (...) the product and arrow type constructors. This paper studies isomorphisms in typed lambda calculi with empty and sum types from this viewpoint. Our main contribution is to show that a family of so-called Wilkie–Gurevič identities, that plays a pivotal role in the study of Tarski’s high school algebra problem, arises from type-theoretic isomorphisms. We thus close an open problem by establishing that the theory of type isomorphisms in the presence of product, arrow, and sum types is not finitely axiomatisable. Further, we observe that for type theories with arrow, empty and sum types the correspondence between isomorphism and arithmetic equality generally breaks down, but that it still holds in some particular cases including that of type isomorphism with the empty type and equality with zero. (shrink)

The infinitary function of the truth predicate consists in its ability to express infinite conjunctions and disjunctions. A transparency principle for truth states the equivalence between a sentence and its truth predication; it requires an introduction principle—which allows the inference from “snow is white” to “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true”—and an elimination principle—which allows the inference from “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true” to “snow is white”. It is commonly assumed that a theory of truth needs to (...) satisfy a transparency principle to fulfil the infinitary function. Picollo and Schindler (Erkenntnis 83:899–928, 2017) argue against this idea. They prove that, given certain assumptions, an elimination principle is sufficient for the purpose. Then, they pose a challenge: to show why we should incorporate introduction principles to our theory of truth. In this essay I take on the challenge. I show that, given the authors’ assumptions, an introduction principle is also sufficient to perform the infinitary function. (shrink)

L’articolo riprende la famosa querelle che vide confrontarsi Benedetto Croce e John Dewey. Si tratta di una riflessione retrospettiva che ha un duplice scopo: da un lato, intende ripercorrere lo scambio tra i due filosofi evidenziando le differenze tra le rispettive posizioni e le ragioni che preclusero un confronto proficuo; dall’altro, si propone di fare il punto su ciò che dopo settant’anni quella polemica ha ancora da dirci intorno all’estetica, campo d’indagine oggi mutato e assai più ramificato rispetto ad allora. (...) Sotto questo aspetto, dato che Dewey è ritenuto un autore fondamentale per il contributo offerto alla ridefinizione della portata e del significato dell’estetica contemporanea, sembra lecito chiedersi se da una discussione meno spigolosa tra i due pensatori sarebbe potuta sortire una diversa influenza sull’estetica posteriore, con ricadute anche su quella italiana. È questa la domanda che ha ispirato il presente contributo, in cui si provano a fornire, da una prospettiva attuale, spunti per possibili risposte. (shrink)

This contribution explores the relationship between familiarity and habit employing Dewey’s and Merleau-Ponty’s insights as theoretical tools. Although the two notions are closely related to each other, their relationship seems to have been overlooked by research. Therefore, in the attempt to start filling the gap, the article shows some aspects (and problems) of the functioning of their mutual interweaving. The argument focuses on habit in the first section, then moves to familiarity in the second, finally coming to the relation between (...) the two, developing some key points and ideas which have emerged along the way. Dewey’s and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies offer many helpful pointers to accomplish the task. Particularly, the notion of knowledge of familiarity introduced by the French philosopher seems to be significantly relevant. (shrink)

This article details the variety of critical strategies in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, finding strong connections with her writing as a reviewer for the Analytical Review, the literary review published by the reformer and Dissenter Joseph Johnson. In Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft employed textual analyses and an evolving set of theoretical positions that had been introduced in the course of her career at the Analytical Review. By elucidating the importance of the reviews and the specificity (...) of Wollstonecraft’s procedures, this article contributes to a growing consensus that Rights of Woman initiated feminist literary criticism. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of the relationship between technology and art in human existence from a Deweyan perspective. The central idea is that Dewey’s aesthetics is a useful instrument for critically reflecting on that issue. Starting from the tenets of Dewey’s aesthetics, the discourse focuses on “imaginative recovery” and “inhabiting,” two key notions for interpreting and managing technology from an aesthetic perspective. The article seeks an answer to the question of whether new technology (particularly ai) is a useful tool (...) or not in art and, ultimately, for the fulfilment of human life. (shrink)

A pandemia da Covid-19 transformou realidades e exigiu comportamentos sociais jamais experienciados que, na dimensão eclesial, vêm revelando compreensões e posturas inadequadas à mistagogia evangélica, mas que também podem provocar um discipulado missionário ad extra, na concepção de Igreja Povo de Deus. Portanto, o presente artigo objetivou, a partir de uma hermenêutica de Mc 4,35-41, refletir sobre o protagonismo laical em tempos de pandemia, sua autocompreensão eclesial e seu posicionamento diante da crise sanitária. Para tanto, estruturou-se em três pontos: teceu (...) uma compreensão da perícope marcana à luz da pandemia; refletiu sobre a postura do laicato em meio a crise sanitária e, por fim, teceu pistas para um agir missionário coerente ao discipulado, concluindo que mesmo em meio a posturas inadequadas o laicato é fortemente chamado ao protagonismo eclesial contribuindo para a superação da crise sanitária provocada pelo novo coronavírus. (shrink)

In the words of Catharine MacKinnon, 'a woman is not yet a name for a way of being human.' In other words, women are still excluded, as authors and agents, from identifying what it is to be human and what therefore violates the dignity and integrity of humans. Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights is written in response to that failure. This collection of essays by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral landscape by developing theory that (...) acknowledges the diversity of women. This book is the first volume in a new series of edited collections showcasing the best new work in feminist theory that has emerged from the group Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST). FEAST advances the goal of a feminist ethico-politics by creating an organization and a body of work in which feminist ethicists and feminist social theorists join forces to produce a politically effective feminist ethics. In this first volume, essayists address that goal by analyzing gender with respect to three key ethical concepts: recognition, responsibility, and rights. (shrink)

The effects of striatal dopamine (DA) on behavior have been widely investigated over the past decades, with “phasic” burst firings considered as the key expression of a reward prediction error responsible for reinforcement learning. Less well studied is “tonic” DA, where putative functions include the idea that it is a regulator of vigor, incentive salience, disposition to exert an effort and a modulator of approach strategies. We present a model combining tonic and phasic DA to show how different outflows triggered (...) by either intrinsically or extrinsically motivating stimuli dynamically affect the basal ganglia by impacting on a selection process this system performs on its cortical input. The model, which has been tested on the simulated humanoid robot iCub interacting with a mechatronic board, shows the putative functions ascribed to DA emerging from the combination of a standard computational mechanism coupled to a differential sensitivity to the presence of DA across the striatum. (shrink)

By stating that "only one died for all," "so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died and was raised for them" Paul precedes the following expression: " the love of Christ compels us ". As Christ left his example, Christians should love and assign themselves tasks on community service, be dedicated and taking responsibility for others. This article aims to reflect on the pastoral implications concerning the concept of "new creatures" with a (...) focus on self-giving and responsibility for others. Therefore, at first, it reflects on the concept of "new creatures", emphasizing the love of Christ as motivation for the practice on Christian life. Then presents discipleship in self-giving, a result of the new life in Christ, elements that allow us to present the concept of responsibility for others from the community service. It concludes that "living for Christ" implies a pastoral practice in which: a) the redeeming love of Christ compels a person to a new life and requires attitudes according to this love; b) Serving the community in self-giving is consequence of this new life; c) Community dimension leads to participation in building the Kingdom of God and takes to the responsibility for others. (shrink)

O presente artigo vem refletir sobre a crise do sacramento da penitência. Nesse contexto, apresenta-a como originária no relativismo e na distorção da noção de pecado presentes na sociedade atual. Por fim, apresenta os desafios atuais provenientes dessa reflexão, abrindo possibilidades para futuras reflexões e maior aprofundamento sobre o tema.

Intorno alla problematica del vuoto e alla sua dialettica col "pieno" si è giocata anche l'incerta, secolare partita tra libertà e senso. La questione riguarda non solo l'ambito filosofico, interessando la fisica innanzitutto, la psicoanalisi, le arte e l'estetica. Nel ricapitolare la storia culturale della questione, il volume vuol dar conto sinteticamente del tema del vuoto quindi nella tradizione kenotica cristiana, nell'attuale antropologia filosofica e in architettura, senza tralasciare la dimensione intrapsichica, sia nelle tradizioni della meditazione taoista e zen, sia (...) nella psicologia del profondo. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 42-43, September 2011.