Abstract The arguments are exhibited in favour of the necessity to modify the history of the genesis and advancement of general relativity (GR). I demonstrate that the dynamic creation of GR had been continually governed by internal tensions between two research traditions, that of special relativity and Newton’s gravity. The encounter of the traditions and their interpenetration entailed construction of the hybrid domain at first with an irregular set of theoretical models. Step by step, on eliminating the contradictions between the models contrived, the hybrid set was put into order. It is contended that the main reason of the GR victory over the rival programmes of Abraham and Nordström was a synthetic character of Einstein’s programme. Einstein had put forward as a basic synthetic principle the principle of equivalence that radically differed from that of rival approaches by its open, flexible and contra-ontological character.

Abstract In this paper, I examine an evolutionary approach to the action selection problem and illustrate how it helps raise an objection to the predictive processing account. Clark examines the predictive processing account as a theory of brain function that aims to unify perception, action, and cognition, but - despite this aim - fails to consider action selection overtly. He off ers an account of action control with the implication that minimizing prediction error is an imperative of living organisms because, according to the predictive processing account, action is employed to fulfill expectations and reduce prediction error. One way in which this can be achieved is by seeking out the least stimulating environment and staying there (Friston et al. 2012: 2). Bayesian, neuroscientific, and machine learning approaches into a single framework whose overarching principle is the minimization of surprise (or, equivalently, the maximization of expectation. But, most living organisms do not find, and stay in, surprise free environments. This paper explores this objection, also called the “dark room problem”, and examines Clark’s response to the problem. Finally, I recommend that if supplemented with an account of action selection, Clark’s account will avoid the dark room problem.

Scientific Realism (SR) has three crucial aspects: 1) the centrality of the concept of truth, 2) the idea that success is a reliable indicator of truth, and 3) the idea that the Inference to the Best Explanation is a reliable inference rule. It will be outlined how some realists try to overcome the difficulties which arise in justifying such crucial aspects relying on an adaptationist view of evolutionism, and why such attempts are inadequate. Finally, we will briefly sketch some of the main difficulties the realist has to face in defending those crucial aspects, and how such difficulties are deeply related: they derive from the inability of SR to satisfyingly avoid the sceptical challenge of the criterion of truth. Indeed, SR seems not to be able to fill the so-called ‘epistemic gap’ (Sankey 2008). In fact, the epistemic gap cannot be filled in no way other than obtaining a criterion of truth, but such a criterion cannot be obtained if the epistemic gap obtains.

The book Poincaré, Philosopher of Science – Problems and Perspectives, edited by María de Paz and Robert DiSalle, is the result of various colloquia and conferences organized by the Portuguese project bearing the same name. The project, initiated by University of Lisbon, brought together scholars of many different countries to speak about the three main philosophical facets of Henri Poincaré: as a philosopher of science in general, as a philosopher of mathematics, and as a philosopher of physics.

In the trolley case, our commonsense moral intuition is supposed to be that they bystander should flip the switch, diverting the trolley, killing one person and saving the other five. In the fat man case, though, we’re supposed to have the opposite intuition, that killing one person to save five people would be morally abhorrent. How do we explain these competing moral intuitions? Perhaps the simplest solution is to conclude that one of these intuitions is wrong. Don Marquis once told me something that has, against all odds, stuck – that we cannot trust our moral intuitions in strange cases. Of the two, the fat man case strikes me as quite strange indeed, if only because it’s hard to imagine a sufficiently fat man perched so precariously on a bridge that a bystander could successfully push him off and derail a trolley. As such, we

Rawls' Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgement is an ambitious book.It combines themes from Rawls' moral philosophy with cognitive science along Chomskian lines.Instead of bickering about Mikhail's reading of Rawls or the Chomskian framework in general, I start by assuming that Mikhail's exegeses are correct and that the Chomskian framework can in principle be used to study moral and legal intuition.1 Based on this, I shall draw attention to a 1 Mikhail does, as far as I can see, not distinguish between the terms 'judgement', 'intuition' and 'sentiment'.I shall prefer the term 'intuition'.Whatever else one might mean by the term, I shall use 'intuition' here to refer to dispositions to make moral or legal judgements.

Understanding the forms is crude and confused, and only by analogies; nor is it true that our mind can grasp the likeness of a substantial form, four our senses have never done so." (Scaliger, Exoticarum exercitationem liber quintus decimus 'De Subtilitate ad H. Cardannus') "Il semble que la Nature se soi plu a varier le même mécanisme d'une infinité de manières différentes."(Diderot, Pensées sur l'Interprétation sur la nature) "O tempo é ele próprio um elemento.""Queda e choque: querer explicar através disso o movimento dos corpos físicos é autenticamente antropomorfismo (…)" (Goethe, Máximas e Reflexões) "Seule un métaphysicien peut formuler, sans risque d'absurdité initiale, encore que finalement décelée, les principes d'une biologie mécaniste."(G.

disposição melancólica foi sujeita em textos filosóficos, médicos, historiográficos e literários e à multiplicidade de sentidos que daí adveio, encontramos uma tradição iconográfica, isto é,

The similarity between the Aristotelian apagoge and the Peircean abduction is not a matter of chance.In fact, Peirce himself admits the borrowing of concepts from Aristotle.But for Peirce, abduction is not only a kind of reasoning among others.Peirce thinks that abduction is the most interesting kind of inference because it is the only way of introducing new ideas (EP 2:216, 1903).Thanks to the Peircean works, abductive reasoning has become a central topic not only in Logic, but also in other disciplines as Linguistics, Epistemology, Artificial Intelligence and, of course, Philosophy of Science. Is abduction the logic of discovery?Philosophy of Science is, exactly, the discipline in which the importance of abduction is more discussed.It is usual the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification.The former is understood as the set of processes which lead to the formulation of a new theory, while the latter refers to the methods used in science to confront the hypothesis with the empirical evidence.P. Lipton (1991) defends that scientific discovery is achieved as an inference to the best explanation, so explanatory reasoning, and hence abduction, play a central role in the context of discovery.But other authors are critical with these ideas.S. Paavola (2004) collects the arguments that are commonly given against the characterisation of abduction as a logic of (scientific) discovery.The first of them is that in the Peircean formulation of abduction -given above -the only requirement for H is that it would make F true. Authors like P. Achinstein argue that this is too permissive, because it does not exclude some improbable or wild hypotheses if they would explain F. Other criticisms insist in the idea that abduction cannot be understood as a logic of discovery because the explanatory hypothesis H is already included in the premises, because prior to infer H we need to know that H would explain F.Then, as scientific discovery introduces new ideas in science, it cannot be the result of an abductive inference.To defend abduction as a logic of discovery, S. Paavola follows a distinction borrowed by J. Hintikka from game theory.It is the distinction between definitory and strategic rules.The former settle the legal moves in a game, whereas the latter are used to decide which is the most suitable rule among all the possible.Logic has been traditionally devoted to definitory rules of the calculi and has barely paid attention to the strategic rules which are able to lead to a good proof, in a strategic sense that goes beyond classical soundness.In line with this, J. Hintikka (1998) takes from T. Kapitan four theses which sum up the main characteristics of abduction:

A passage in the early pages of the Treatise on Argumentation by Perelman-Tyteca is of particular interest for my purposes.Perelman in fact talks about the need, not only as a pre-condition for the launching of an argumentation in the strict sense, to set up a «contact between minds» 1 ( §2), adding that «It is not enough to talk or write, one must also be listened to and read» 2 and that «knowing the audience can be seen independently from knowing the ways to influence it, in fact the issue of the kind of audience is linked to that of its conditioning» 3 .In §10 he also recalls that: «argumentation is successful if it can increase this intensity of identification so as to cause the desired action among the listeners» 4 .These words of Perelman's remind us of the words used in Rhetoric by Aristotle to introduce the question of the style of argumentation: «it is not enough to know the arguments one is to expound, but one must expound them appropriately» 5 .What type of component are these passages from Aristotle and Perelman referring to?When looked at more closely, they give rise to the emphasis on a component related not just to the rational aspect of the "content" of the process of argumentation, but rather to the emotional component.It is a necessary and sufficient condition for the augured contact of minds and therefore for argumentation tout court, as Perelman himself points out: «The contact between the speaker and his audience does not just involve the pre-conditions for argumentation, but is essential for its whole development» 6 .Therefore, along with the structure and type of argumentation, we must envisage a further level, not subordinate to the first, 1 Perelman-Tyteca, 1982, 16.