Manuscrito brings new contributions to contemporary philosophical discussions

Marco Ruffino, Editor, University of Campinas-UNICAMP, CNPq, Campinas, SP, Brazil

Manuscrito is an international journal of philosophy publishing articles on a wide range of philosophical topics, especially in the history of philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of the formal sciences, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy and philosophy of mind. The journal does not privilege any particular philosophical approach. Its purpose is to reflect the progress of philosophy as a whole and to increase the exchange of ideas and arguments between different contemporary schools of thought.

In “A note on the introduction of Hilbert’s Grundlagen der Geometrie”, Venturi presents and discusses a change in the introduction of Hilbert’s Grundlagen der Geometrie between the first and the subsequent editions: the disappearance of the reference to the independence of the axioms. He briefly outlines the theoretical relevance of the notion of independence in Hilbert’s work and suggests that a possible reason for this disappearance is the discovery that Hilbert’s axioms were not, in fact, independent. He also shows how this change gives textual evidence for the connection between the notions of independence and simplicity.

In “Leibniz on the existence of atoms”, Mena presents and evaluates Leibniz’s two main arguments against the existence of atoms, understood as extended particles that are absolutely hard, homogeneous, indivisible, and indestructible by natural means. He argues that Leibniz’s arguments are flawed in a very instructive way. The first argument is in tension with the claim that God created the best possible world. The second argument overgeneralizes in an undesirable way. However, he claims, even if the arguments are somehow defective, at least the first one contributes valuable insights to contemporary metaphysics.

In “Can we make sense of MacFarlane’s relative truth?”, Gariazzo discusses MacFarlane (2005, 2007, 2014) on truth relativism, which makes use of two notions of propositional truth: a monadic assessment sensitive and a non-monadic one that is meant to account for the assessment sensitivity of the former. Some authors contend that any theory introducing a technical non-monadic truth notion has to make sense of it by defining it in terms of ordinary monadic truth. First, Gariazzo gives some reasons why the relativist should not discard this approach. Second, he argues that a characterization of this notion must provide an answer to a dilemma Paul Boghossian poses to the relativist. Third, he singles out the characterization that can answer this dilemma. Finally, he contends that the relativist still needs to show that this solution works for each case subject to a relativist treatment.

In “Realismo Estructural Óntico y estructuras físicas”, Borge discusses Ontic Structural Realism (OSR). (OSR) states that the ontology of the physical world must be reconceived in order to take pure structures as its basic entities. Its proponents claim that these pure structures are suitable to account for physical reality because they identify the physical world with a mathematical structure or because they maintain that the structures posited by OSR are not abstract structures, but physical structures. Borge critically analyzes both strategies in order to show their limitations. In addition, he proposes a new physcalist framework suitable for structuralist ontologies.

In “Revisitando a Lógica de Dunn-Belnap”, Blasio introduces a semantics based on the cognitive attitudes of acceptation and rejection entertained by a given society of agents for logics inspired on Dunn (1976) and Belnap’s (1977) ‘First Degree Entailment’ (E). Distinctly from the original epistemic situation of E, the cognitive attitudes do not coincide with truth-values and it seems more suitable for logics that intend to consider the informational content of propositions “said to be true” as well as propositions “said to be false” as determinants of the notion of logical validity. After analyzing some logics associated with the proposed semantics, she introduces the logic E B, whose underlying semantic entailment relation – the B-entailment – is able to express several kinds of reasoning towards the cognitive attitudes of acceptance and rejection. A correct and complete sequent calculus for E B is also presented.

In “Book review: GARCÍA-CARPINTERO, Manuel; TORRE, Stephan (Eds.). About oneself: de se thought and communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016”, Valente reviews the book About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication, a compilation of papers on de se thought and its implications for a theory of communication. He critically examines the main themes put forward by the papers and tries to show how, when put together, they point the way for future discussions about the issue of indexical thought and communication.

References

BELNAP, N. How a computer should think, In: RYLE, G. (Ed.). Contemporary aspects of philosophy. Stockfield: Oriel Press, 1977. p. 30- 56.

DUNN, J. M. Intuitive semantics for first-degree entailment and ‘coupled trees’. Philosophical Studies, 1976. v. 29, p. 149-168.

MACFARLANE, J. Making sense of relative truth. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2005. n. 105, p. 321-339.

MACFARLANE, J. Relativism and disagreement. Philosophical Studies, 2007. n. 132, p. 17- 31.

MACFARLANE, J. Assessment sensitivity: relative truth and its applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2014.

To read the articles, access

Manuscrito vol.40 no.2 Campinas Apr./June 2017

External link

Manuscrito – MAN: www.scielo.br/man