PRAGMATISM AND PROBABILITY: RE-EXAMINING KEYNES’S THINKING ON PROBABILITY

As we celebrate the centenary of John Maynard Keynes’s Treatise on Probability (1921), we are still faced with unresolved, fundamental questions about his foray into the philosophy of probability. One of these unresolved questions concerns whether Keynes (1931) later changed his mind in response to intense criticism from Frank Ramsey (1922, 1931) and abandoned the logical theory of probability. This essay draws from Cheryl Misak’s recent biography of Frank Ramsey (2020) to argue that Ramsey had an even wider influence on Keynes’s work than has been recognized, and that this influence was not just on his philosophy of probability but also on his economics. Understood in this fuller context, it seems even more clear that Keynes embraced and built upon Ramsey’s subjective theory of probability in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).

The Origins of Cyberspace

‘Cyberspace’ is a romantic term, introduced in the elegant science-fiction writing of William Gibson, but the concepts that make up the environment called ‘cyberspace’ are the stuff of real science, with origins that can be traced to ancient Greece. Much has been written about the origins of cyberspace, including a comprehensive sourcebook by Hook and Norman. This chapter tries to take a rather conceptual view of what constitutes cyberspace, tracing the origins of the ideas from fourth-century BCE Greece to the modern Internet-supported interaction space—throughout the discussion, the chapter will seek to elucidate the concept of ‘space’ and how it helps us to think about the cyber-world. On the way, the chapter considers the literary origin of the word, and the mathematical and logical theory that is required to build models of cyberspace.

Sociologia del Dissenso

The theme of this article is epistemological: Defining the logical and epistemological statute of Dissent as a sociological act ofinnovation and change in international law by social groups in opposition to the establishment, sovereign states and theirgeopolitical alliances. The sociological theory of the loop as an object of study and ontological unity is, therefore, applied to thecase of Dissent, to try to explain the paradox of this social function that makes its way, every day, in a world originally dominatedby the Force (of military, police, hooliganism, terrorist, antisocial nature, etc.). We try to answer the problem of how Dissent(political-democratic, human rights, civil disobedience, etc.) can be a practice of peaceful contrast to violence and the Force,which can even create such beautiful and fragile buildings as state law, international law, human rights and peace itself. In doingso, it is assumed that international human rights regimes cooperate with Dissent (operating within them, and viceversa) toimpose international legal obligations, in the field of human rights, which are fully effective and sanctioned, even in the absenceof a police and/or centralized jurisdiction and/or a deterrent system of military sanctions. This concurrent, complementary andquasi-collaborative activity with the States, on the one hand, challenges the "local and nationalized" Force, on the other, "tosome extent", follows a "loop" logic making use of them.The conjecture formulated by this article is that the sociological theory of the loop, applied to the case of dissent, can explainthe paradox of dissent (political-democratic, in human rights, in civil disobedience, etc.). Indeed, it is aporetic how peacefulpractice can contribute to establishing international law, human rights and peace itself without being Force and violence itself.The aporia would be resolved, by conjecture, by arguing that Dissent "is" Strength to a certain extent, that is, that it is logicallyand ontologically "vague" related to the practice of States and by asserting that the International Regimes of Human Rights aresketches of the future international law (or the future legal systems of the Sovereign States or their, for now, unknown successor).Such an outcome, however, requires a reformulation of the implicit presuppositions of the sociology of Dissent, affecting itslogical and ontological foundations, with a new thesis of deontic logic, which resorts to an attenuation of the principle of non contradiction,in the particular field of praxis of Dissent. This allows us to conceptualize the ontological and logical theory thatDissent would be "almost" an act of Force.

Logical theory revision through data underdetermination: an anti-exceptionalist exercise

The anti-exceptionalist debate brought into play the problem of what are the relevant data for logical theories and how such data affects the validities accepted by a logical theory. In the present paper, I depart from Laudan's reticulated model of science to analyze one aspect of this problem, namely of the role of logical data within the process of revision of logical theories. For this, I argue that the ubiquitous nature of logical data is responsible for the proliferation of several distinct methodologies for logical theories. The resulting picture is coherent with the Laudanean view that agreement and disagreement between scientific theories take place at different levels. From this perspective, one is able to articulate other kinds of divergence that considers not only the inferential aspects of a given logical theory, but also the epistemic aims and the methodological choices that drive its development.

Neuropsychology of the frontal lobe and III functional brain unit: A Luria’s studies and perspectives for the clinic approach

The russian Alexander Romanovich Luria, commonly credited as the father of modern neuropsychology, was responsible for the greater understanding of human psychic and behavioral processes. Through studies on brain injuries, Luria tried to generate an integrative and logical theory for brain functions, in other words, to develop further technical studies on mental functions. To this end, he divides the general brain activities into three units, the first having the function of maintaining surveillance, the second being responsible for obtaining, processing, integrating and storing the information provided by the environment, and the third unit is responsible to plan, execute and direct the pattern of human behavior. Thus, the aim of this study is to review the frontal lobe (FL) neuropsychology and to associate it with the third functional unit of Luria. The references of the book "The Working Brain" were used. In the end, it was possible to conclude from Luria's conceptions that the third functional unit is responsible for the stimuli synthesis, preparation for action, program constructions, verification of the activity’s ways, generation of activation process linked to the most complex conscious actions and a speech collaboration.

Logic Oughtn't be Normative

Presumably, the exponent of logical normativity believes it to be the case that rational agents ought to reason logically. If the converse holds, and the exponent of logical normativity believes either (a) that it is false that rational agents ought to reason logically or (b) that the claim that rational agents ought to reason logically is not truth–functional, then any attempt to formulate sound arguments in support of their position will be either question–begging or self–contradictory. To argue in favour of the normative status of logic involves the assumption that the issue is substantive. I draw a distinction between deontic and axiological normativity as applied to logical theory and demonstrate that because deontic sentences are not truth–functional, logic cannot be normative in the deontic sense. I conclude that the only sense in which logical theory may be thought of as normative is axiologically.

Intuiciones en lógica: una propuesta moderada

Intuitions play a significant role in debates about logic. In this paper, I analyze how legitimate is that practice. In the first part of the paper, I distinguish between theoretical and pretheoretical intuitions, and argue that some pretheoretical intuitions are not to be taken into account in logic. Particularly, our pretheoretical intuitions about the concept of validity are not of much importance, since we don’t have a uniform or clear concept of validity in the natural language to be elucidated. Nevertheless, I argue that, since logical connectives are more homogeneously used in our ordinary speech, we can appeal to pretheoretical intuitions to establish their meaning in a logical theory. In the second part of the paper, I consider and reply to four objections to this moderate proposal. Two of them try to show that, if this position is adopted, then the pretheoretical intuitions about the connectives are completely unreliable and useless. One of them argues that this mixed position is unstable: pretheoretical intuitions about the connectives are also pretheoretical intuitions about validity. The last problem is related to the definition of validity and the possibility of revising it.