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Some years ago the authors of the present paper found in the Fondo Padoa lying in the Mathematical Library of Genoa University a manuscript of 11 pages by Alessandro Padoa with the title A proposito di un nuovo sistema fondamentale della geometria elementare. It seems to be ready for publication and contains also typographical instruction for printing. Other investigations on Padoa and his rôle in Peano's school led in a series of recent papers to a probably complete list of Padoa's publications where, however, the above mentioned manuscript is not present and, therefore, is likely to be considered an unpublished paper. It's a matter of fact that the whole of Padoa's scientific production has to be integrated by some works that he didn't publish. The unpublished paper under examination deals with the axiomatization of elementary geometry given by Mario Pieri in 1899 in "Della geometria elementare come sistema ipotetico deduttivo. Monografia del punto e del moto", where, as it is well-known, elementary geometry is based on the primitive notions of point and movement and on 20 postulates. Padoa agrees with Pieri's proposal to define segment starting from point and movement; he suggests, however, some modification to the original set of postulates and gives a (partial) proof of their independence. The unpublished paper reveals the interest of Padoa in this subject-matter and, in some sense, his idea of participating in the already consolidated field of research represented by Pieri's results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Why are there so few women in philosophy? Do women dislikes rigorous argumentation? Recently, Wesley Buckwalter e Stephen Stich have argued that women and men tend to have different philosophical intuitions and that these differences might play a role in explaining the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. To the contrary, in this paper, I defend the view that intuitions are in part socially constructed and product of stereotypical behaviours. The paper is divided in two parts. In the first, I present Buckwalter and Stich's view as characterized by the two following theses: (i) there are significant differences between men and women in intuitive responses to some philosophically important thought experiments; (ii) women intuitions do not accord with those of professional philosophers insist are correct. In my analysis, particular attention is given on their hypothesis about the gender gap in academia as, in part, the result of a selection effect: women, because of the fact they do not have standard intuitions, become convinced they are not good in philosophy or are discouraged from continuing in philosophy. In the second part of the paper, I show why Buckwalter and Stich's approach is inadequate, by showing that the data in the works they reported are too low to support their conclusion (i.e. in many important thought experiments are no significant gender differences) and their thesis does not match with the idea the intelligence is not a fixed entity and the view that gender as social construction differs from one society to another. Gender differences in responses to thought experiments, I conclude, are not differences in intuitions per se, but in how women and men interpret the cases at issue, and are not an important part of the explanation for the gender gap in philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alessandro Padoa was born on October 14, 1868, in Venice and died on October 25, 1937, in Genoa. He was a mathematician of the so-called Peano's school and is well-known to logicians mainly for his investigations on the independence, understood as mutual undefinability, of primitive concepts of an axiomatic theory. In this framework he formulated in 1900 (at the International Congress of Philosophy in Paris) a technique, to be later known as "Padoa's method", to prove the independence of primitive concepts. In spite of his involvement in the world of research, the main job of Padoa was teaching mathematics in the secondary schools (and this is also the case for many other members of Peano's school). In 1932, however, he got the university teaching degree ("libera docenza") in mathematical logic and in the following years he delivered courses of mathematical logic at the University of Genoa. This paper aims to sketch a short biography of Padoa and to give a list of his publications (more than hundred items, mainly devoted to mathematical logic or to elementary mathematics). In a more general sense the paper deals with some historical data on mathematical logic in Italy in that period and could contribute to a deeper understanding of the role played by Peano's school and of the reasons of its decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the sequel of "Quantificatori generalizzati e logica del primo ordine - I". In that paper I argued that from the point of view of Generalized Quantifier theory one can single out some classes of quantifiers that cannot be identified by first order logic. The discovery of these classes is important because it allows to explain some regularities observed in natural language: in some contexts, only the quantifiers of one of these classes may appear. In this paper I examine existential and partitive contexts in particular. Existential contexts are those in which a NP follows the expression "there is/are...". I show that only one of the three types of quantifiers singled out in the first part of this work is allowed in these contexts, while the other two are not. I try to explain why this happens on the basis of the characterization of those classes I gave in the first paper. Partitive contexts are those of the type "NP1 of NP2". Only the NPs determined by one of identified classes of quantifiers are allowed in NP2 position. Again I try to explain why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of a couple of papers in which the problematic relation between quantum ontology and spatio-temporal representation and experience is analyzed. The first paper deals with the deep implications that the discovery of the quantum of action (Planck 1900) and the consequent formulation of quantum theory had on the notion of physical process and the relation part-whole. These implications amount to an ontological degradation of the concept of physical object when processes involving few quanta of action are taken into account. The ontological degradation of the object follows directly from the atomization of processes and entails a dramatic empirical falsification of the worldview of historical atomism (which I call in this paper the spatio-temporal atomism of things). On the other hand, historically, an ontological correlation between the notions of object and process, on the one hand, and those of space and time, on the other, has always been present. Every time there has been a change in the conception of "thing", it has been accompanied, sooner or later, by a corresponding change in the conception of space and time, or vice versa. However, after more than a century since the discovery of process atomization, the ontological degradation of the concept of micro-object does not appear to have affected explicitly the conceptions of space and time. The thesis of the necessity of a deep restructuring of these notions for the solution of the open problems of quantum theory as well as for the synthesis of this theory with general relativity will be defended in the second paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process and the entity concepts in chemistry and in physics (with a few words to the same concepts in biology) have been analysed. A first aspect underlined in this paper is the relativity of these two concepts and their relations to the time-scales and to the measurement devises. In mechanics "an object in transformation" can be studied by the help of a differentiation between the "system variables", that they identify the system, and "configuration (or state) variables", that they describe the dynamical state of the system. Instead, in chemistry an entity is an object with characteristic properties (static and dynamical) so particular than it has a proper name. There are entities in both the macroscopic (chemical substances) and the microscopic world (molecules and atoms). A fundamental point underlined in the paper is that in the chemistry picture they exist million of these different objects. It is this complex world the material of the chemical explication of both inanimate and animate things. Also the process concept is different in chemistry and in physics. In the paper we analyse the different interpretation of the substance transformation (reactivity) in these two disciplines: in physics this is considered a modification of the equilibrium condition of a system, due to a perturbation; in chemistry a modification of the system, due to the "death" and the "birth" of different substances. The couple transformation/ transition can identify the point of view of the physics and the chemistry about the substance modification. An important point underlined in the paper is that in the conceptual movement from the physics to the chemistry (and, finally, to the biology) the importance of the entity concept increases and that of the process concept decreases. The entity and process concepts generate in physics and in chemistry two different explanations: the first based on the law and the second on the presence in the system of individual entity and on their properties. In the paper we underline that this implies two different approaches to the material world: that of the physics and that of the chemistry. Two general consequences are shown in the paper: the first about the relation between the chemistry and the physics and the second on the reductionism and about the inanimate-animate and animal-man dichotomies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Immanuel Kant's conception of the synthetic apriori shows an important gap: how do we know that "it cannot be otherwise", being the only Kantian explanation of synthetic a priori knowledge as "strictly general and necessary"? With respect to the Euclidean axiom of parallels, empiricists of the 19th and 20th century offered counterexamples which are supposed to show "that it can be otherwise" and are commonly taken to refute Kants apriorism. The paper presents an alternative form of knowledge about our actions of everyday routines under the perspective of means and ends rationality: it is neither a logical nor an empirical knowledge that we trust in certain consequences of our poietic ("handycrafting") actions. Cases of missing the purpose of those actions is not at all accepted as being an empirical refutation of a general hypothesis (in the Popperian or in the Logico-Empiricist sense), but uses to be explained by a wrong performance of the respective actions. In this model exposed by the means of a methodical theory of action synthetic-a priory knowledge is knowledge about consequences of our cultural practice in everyday life. Whereas the "poietic" actions allow of a foundation of some axioms of Euclidean geometry as being fundamental for physics, "practical" actions like linguistic communication under the perspective of symmetry among the communicating persons open a way to everyday understanding of the time tenses "past", "present" and "future" as synthetic a priori fundamental for natural history in evolutionary biology. Accordingly, the apriori of knowledge can be understood as an aposterori of cultural history (as opposed to the empiristic thesis that the apriori of knowledge is an aposteriori of natural evolution), and the scientific rationality of physics and biology turns out to be achieved of by methodically starting from the rationality of everyday practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally acknowledged that Mario Pieri gave some very important contributions to the foundations of geometry. This is true, in particular, for his most celebrated result, finally obtained in 1908 (but in a sense foreseen since 1899-1900), that is, the axiomatic development of elementary geometry assuming only the primitive notions of point and a ternary relation between points which is intended to mean that two of them are equidistant from the third. This is one of the most outstanding foundational results obtained by the Peano's School. The search for the smallest and simplest set of primitive notions for an axiomatic theory was, in fact, a sort of leitmotiv of Peano School's foundational efforts. Although this kind of foundational activity may nowadays be not so much appreciated, it did undoubtedly possess a considerable epistemological value at the turn between XIX and XX century, and the Peano's School gave on this subject-matter valuable contributions indeed. Alessandro Padoa, another of the most active members of the Peano's School, is well known to logicians for his work on the definability and undefinability of concepts (in an axiomatic theory). Padoa devoted also some attention to the specific field of primitive notions of geometry. If one looks at the announced aim of a paper he delivered at the second International Congress of Mathematicians (Paris, 1900), a comparison between his achievements and what Pieri finally obtained in 1908 ("Point and Sphere" monography) is a rather involved matter which, however, seems to be worth considering for a better understanding of that period of foundational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Metaphysics Delta 25 Aristotle reports two mereological characterizations of the concept of species. According to the first one, a species is a part of its genus; according to the second one, a species is a whole for its genus. This paper analyzes the relationship between the two approaches. It argues that the expression "being a (logical) part of", which is at stake in the two characterizations, is ambiguous and denotes two different relationships. It further investigates whether these relationships are two species of a general relationship of logical part, and tries to establish which of the two approaches offers the more informative characterization of species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss whether in the Wason selection task, where subjects are asked to select evidence for evaluating a conditional, the most common response is indeed as irrational as many psychologists have maintained. My account of subjects' performances focuses on (i) how the task is understood by the subjects and (ii) whether their performances can be seen as cases not so much of conditional reasoning, as of hypothesis testing. On this basis and in accordance with Grice's account of indicative conditionals, I suppose that normally people understand the conditional as involving a "strong" connection between the antecedent and the consequent. Whenever the inference to such a connection is not blocked, subjects will inductively test whether it holds, as they do in ordinary life with reference to wider domains than the narrow one provided by the experimental context. Thus, relative to their goals, their performance could be considered as rational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary neurobiology claims its essential "fundamentality" and seems not to leave room for an autonomous level of description of the mind, such as that of psychoanalysis. Genetics and neuropharmacology have found the way to explain many types of human behaviors and, recently, to heal many psychological disorders by means of new molecules. All these theories are based on a reductionist approach derived from physics. Any other approach to the mind would be deprived of legitimacy as not being appropriately scientific. Against this background, the paper maintains that the conceptualization of the mind underlying the talking cure has its own legitimacy linked with the uniqueness of every mind/brain and the so called "meaning response". By using analogies drawn from the most "fundamental" science, namely physics, it is maintained that, epistemologically, psychoanalysis moves on a so called "coarse grain" level which is not intercepted either by neurobiology or by cognitive psychology, while the "fine grain" level is more suitable to account for the material basis of mind. This occurs without exiting the naturalistic framework and implies a fruitful exchange between disciplines; each discipline preserves its own character yet one might shed new light on how the mind/brain works in another field by operating on different, albeit not increasingly "fundamental", levels. This view finds a persuasive example in the Effective Quantum Field Theory, which is briefly described. In addition the, Neural Darwinism proposed by G. Edelman is considered in order to put forward a neurobiological theory of mental individuality, while a more refined form of placebo effect is proposed to clarify the role of meaning without exiting the boundaries of science. Drawing on these features one can say that psychoanalysis is the domain in which individuality and meaning response have got a peculiar role. This role gives psychoanalysis an epistemological legitimacy also within the "physical causal closure" model, a legitimacy not to be (as usual) rejected but to be assessed in its efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If it is possible to maintain that on one hand the Quinean critique of analyticity does not concern epistemology (for example, it is possible to maintain that it does not concern a priori knowledge), on the other hand the critique has surely robust epistemological repercussions. In the present paper, I try to explore some epistemological consequences of a specific definition of an analytical true sentence, because this definition could be embraced by Quine. In order to bring out those consequences, I use an interpretation of the Wittgenstenian slogan "meaning is use" that appeals to foundationalism. After having made clear that Wittgenstenian foundationalism is a type of strong foundationalism, i.e., a foundationalism that aims for certainty, I underline some details of the Quinean critique of strong foundationalism and I show how it leads Quine to ask for a radically naturalized epistemology. In my concluding remarks, I will pay some attention to the following question: either in order to save normative epistemology, or in order to save the definition of analytical true sentence employed here, is it necessary to abandon any type of foundationalism, or it is sufficient to abandon just the type of foundationalism that aims to certainty? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I reply to John Perry's response to Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument (KA). The KA aims to prove, by means of a thought experiment concerning the hypothetical scientist Mary, that conscious experiences have non-physical properties. Mary has complete scientific knowledge of colours and colour vision without having had any colour experience. The central intuition in KA is that by seeing colours Mary will learn what it is like to have colour experiences. Perry has argued that what Mary learns is just a new way of thinking about facts described by her scientific knowledge. Particularly, he maintains that she will acquire just indexical knowledge of certain physical properties of her experiences. This knowledge involves a demonstrative way of thinking about these properties by means of demonstrative concepts. My reply proceeds in two stages. Firstly, I attack Perry's model of introspective knowledge of colour experiences. Secondly, I argue that adapting his type of response to a more promising model of introspection does not succeed. Mary's knowledge of what it is like to have colour experiences involves concepts of colours that are not indexical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the traditional connection between the truth of analytic sentences and their sense, one can ask what happens to analyticity in Dummett's model for a theory of meaning. Dummett claims, against Quine, the legitimacy and necessity of the talk of sense: sense is in fact, according to his model, the object of one part of a theory of meaning (theory of sense and theory of reference form its first part, the second part being the theory of force), for no description of how language works can do without an account of what a speaker knows when he speaks competently. Now Dummett's defence of the notion of sense can be understood as a defence, at the same time, of the notion of analyticity: the traditional connection between sense and analyticity is so kept, just like Quine did, the other way round, in criticizing those notions. The traditional definition of analytic sentences as the ones which are true in virtue of their sense turns out nevertheless to be misleading, first of all because Quine's criticism does score a point: some analytic sentences are susceptible to turn out not to be true, if nor to be actually false. Their truth is contingent, for they presuppose other sentences that can possibly be false; now, presupposition being not identical to implication, analyticity does warrant against falsehood, but it does not guarantee truth. Moreover, the link between analyticity and sense fits only one class of intuitively analytic sentences; now, while letting programmatically aside the 'extensionally' analytic sentences (namely those whose truth does not follow from the mere sense of their components, demanding instead logical and/or mathematical axioms having substantial implications), this paper proposes, within a Dumettian framework, a theory of analyticity for the sentences which are true in virtue of their sense and for the sentences of the theory of sense themselves, where the analyticity of the former is strictly tied to that of the latter. A sentence describing the use of an expression is analytic because it makes it explicit how such an expression is used, while some sentences (viz. 'no bachelor is married') are analytic just because of this use, although they do not themselves describe it. Since descriptions are in general informative, for each trivial analytic sentence one can find a nontrivial one describing the use of one expression occurring in it ('bachelor'); and therefore the use of at least one nontrivial and nonanalytic sentence ('x is bachelor'), i.e. the canonical procedure for establishing it (by verification or by resistance to falsification). Now, in describing the use of other sentences, the sentences of a theory of sense do quite a peculiar metalinguistic performance: they strive to say what the latter simply show, although without mentioning, even less reifying, their sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper and in its sequel, "Quantificatori generalizzati e logica del primo ordine II", I try to show that General Quantifiers (QG) are a much better formalization of natural language quantifiers than quantifiers of First order logic. First of all, general and natural language quantifiers have properties in common that first order quantifiers do not have. In the second place, there are some quantifiers in natural language that cannot be formalized in First order logic while they can be through QG theory. Furthermore, the logic form of QG is much more similar to the one of natural language quantifiers than that of first order quantifiers: QG make a clear distinction between noun phrases and predicates and do not introduce connectives which are not present in natural language sentences. Finally, some classes of quantifiers can be singled out from the point of view of QG theory that we cannot be singled out from the one of First order logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point of this paper is an apparent contradiction, often pointed out by commentators of the Poetics: in his treatise on poetry, whose object is human action, why does Aristotle assign a major role to necessity, while in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics he clearly states that in the field of human action there is no place for necessity but only for probability? One answer has been, that in the Poetics Aristotle refers to a weaker type of necessity, which in the end is more or less the same as probability. The fact that Aristotle (the argument continues) speaks almost always not only of necessity but also of probability, is proof of this weakening of necessity. I argue, on the contrary, that in the Poetics necessity and probability are two distinct principles, which concern different aspects of tragedy (i.e. the most accomplished poetical work according to Aristotle), and which therefore should not be blurred. The first step is to make clear that the alleged contradiction is only apparent. It is in fact true that in the world of action, according to Aristotle, there can be no necessity, but action is only the object of poetry and not poetry itself. Poetry as such is a technique, which differs from other techniques (like medicine) on account of its ends, and, consequently, also on account of its object. In the world of technique, as is clearly stated both in the Metaphysics and in the Posterior Analytics, there is necessity, in the sense that to reach this or that end you have -- necessarily -- to do this or that. But then -- this is the second step -- what is the relation between technical necessity and the principle of probability? Evidently probability concerns the world of action, the object of poetry. This brings me to the following conclusion: When Aristotle tells us that the aim of the poet is to say what is possible according to probability and necessity, he means that the poet should take probable actions as objects and use them as necessary means to reach a particular end. This end, in the case of tragedy, is the tragic plot. The two principles are then strictly connected (every moment of a tragedy has to be considered from both points of view), but nonetheless distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second order logic has been always considered by modern logicians quite problematic: so problematic that some of them don't even want to call it logic at all. The main features of second order logic is its high expressive power but, on the other hand, second order logic lacks of completeness, and this seems to be a 'shame' for a formal language who wants to be labelled as logic. Therefore the mainstream, following the idea of Quine, in the logical community has been that when we do second order logic we actually cross the border between logic and mathematics. However, is this line so sharp?, and are we sure that second order logic doesn't deserve a better place in logic? After all, although it is not complete, it can provide cathegorical characterizations for infinite structures, and this is not a bad point. In this paper I show some of the main attempts to "rescue" second order logic: the main points I deal with are both technical and more philosophical. On the one hand a big question is about the semantics: what is the right semantic for second order logic? On the other hand it arises the problem of the ontology: is it possible to accept at least a bit of the ontological entailments coming from second order logic, implications that look so similar to that ones coming from mathematics itself? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patrick Suppes' views on probability are discussed focusing particularly on the issues of invariance and pluralism. The claim argued in this paper is twofold: (1) this dualism allows us to understand Suppes' theory of probability and (2) Suppes' strategy intended to solve this dualism contains the key to shed light upon other parts of his thought. In the first section the dualism is discussed. The second, third and fourth sections deal with the formal theory of probability and with Suppes' analysis of the classic philosophical views on probability. In the fifth section I present the probabilistic empiricism as Suppes' peculiar philosophical position on indeterminacy and randomness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a philosopher and as an experimental scientist, analysing knowledge and its transmission "from within" and with reference to specific contexts, Patrick Suppes evaluated very early the great potential of computer technology in the field of education and gave innovative contributions. The instructional uses of computers at Stanford University, promoted and developed by him and his team, around forty years ago, belong to the history of e-learning, having influenced the practice and the theory of education. During my stay from 1979 at the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS), an outstanding intellectual environment, created and directed by Suppes, I had access to computer facilities exceptional for the time and could take the course on Axiomatic Set Theory, one of the two computerassisted courses (the other one was Introduction to Logic) offered by Suppes since 1974 (and 1972). Constructing proofs of given theorems at one's own pace, through an intense interaction with the computer (selecting axioms, inferential rules, prior relevant definitions and theorems) is a very valuable experience: its outcome is not only learning specific contents, but also understanding at a deeper level the use of a formal language, the structure of an axiomatic system and the very notion of "proof". Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is not a question of pure technology, but it requires -- in order to be suitably developed -- an inquiry on the psychological and empirical aspects of learning, its difficulties and goals, supported by the capability of abandoning rigid schemata and of foreseeing future possibilities. Suppes was very soon aware that the large quantity of information made accessible at high speed by computers could be structured and directed toward educational uses, characterized by individualization of curricula and high quality learning. Nevertheless, the development of programs adapting to the individual student, i.e. taking into account initial competence and ability, and selecting each learning level on the basis of the evaluation of previous successes and failures, has been more difficult than expected. Many complex problems relevant for the integration of education and technology are still open. In order to situate Suppes' contributions in a more adequate perspective, the paper briefly recalls the evolution of modern technologies applied to educative systems. In the 60's, when the first powerful computers, the so called "mainframes", became available to advanced academic institutions, Suppes started his research on computer-aided teaching and learning, on the basis of a scientific analysis of various aspects and problems of education. He then developed CAI programs better equipped to offer a more "natural" and "intelligent" interaction with the students, evaluating their individual progresses and selecting the difficulty of the subsequent problems on the basis of statistical data about previous answers. The transition from mainframes to personal computer and the diffusion of Internet have deeply changed the scenario: not only knowledge contents, in an enormous amount, are easily reached and updated, but the communication among learners is favoured. The present and close future of e-learning is characterized by tools allowing the cooperative construction of knowledge objects, of which Wikipedia, the on line encyclopaedia, is an example. Computer aided instruction, in its various forms, can consequently be recognized, following Suppes' historical perspective, as one of the great educational innovations, after the introduction of written records and the founding of libraries in ancient times, the development of printing, the (still in progress) diffusion of mass schooling and the contemporary scientific study of testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a puzzle about Moore's Proof: how can the current resurgence of interest in the Proof co-exist with the obvious reaction of irritation and dismay readers are bound to have at first encounter with it? Wouldn't it be wiser simply to discard that reaction, or else to stop worrying about the Proof? After defending the puzzle from two opposite ways of deflating it, I turn to presenting and assessing two influential interpretations of the Proof-that is, Wright's and Pryor's. I claim that in the dispute, Pryor's party is certainly wrong, but, in my view, this doesn't show that Wright's is right yet. For there is room for a third -- intermediate -- position, of Wittgensteinian descent, which I present and discuss in some detail. Turning to the original puzzle, I then provide a simple explanation of the Proof's failure which easily explains our reaction in first hearing it. Moreover, such an explanation has another pay-off. Namely, it allows bringing into focus two kinds of sceptical challenge. With such a result in hand, I then provide a solution to our initial puzzle. The solution consists in claiming that our reaction to the Proof and the resurgence of interest in it can peacefully co-exist once it is acknowledged that they are perfectly appropriate responses to these two different kinds of sceptical concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normativity of meaning is a widely discussed topic in the philosophy of language and mind. A widespread view is that no explanation of semantic properties in terms of natural properties could ever succeed in accounting for the intuitive distinction between correct and incorrect uses of a word or concept, that is, normativity and semantic naturalism are incompatible. Such a view traces back to Kripke's discussion of the topic in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The aim of this paper is to argue in favour of the compatibility of naturalism and the normativity claim, by showing that Kripke's argument contains several questionable assumptions. In particular, internalism is taken for granted both in its semantic and in its epistemic version. Once internalism is abandoned, we can make room for the idea that semantic relations can be explained in terms of the relations between a human organism and its environment, and in particular, for the claim that norms about meaning derive from natural facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational and information-theoretic research in philosophy has become increasingly fertile and pervasive, giving rise to a wealth of interesting results. Consequently, a new and vitally important field has emerged, the philosophy of information (PI). This paper introduces PI as the philosophical field concerned with (i) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences, and with (ii) the elaboration and application of information- theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. It is argued that PI is a mature discipline for three reasons: it represents an autonomous field of research; it provides an innovative approach to both traditional and new philosophical topics; and it can stand beside other branches of philosophy, offering a systematic treatment of the conceptual foundations of the world of information and the information society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a family of multivalued logics originally proposed by Matthew Ginsberg as a uniform approach to inference in Artificial Intelligence. Ginsberg generalizes Belnap's four-valued logic introducing the notion of bilattices, which are algebraic structures that contain two partial orders simultaneously. Using bilattice-based logics it is possible to unify a variety of existing inference systems, such as McCarthy's Circumscription, De Kleer's ATMS, Reiter's Default Logic, Moore's Autoepistemic Logic, and others. Moreover, it has been shown that Ginsberg's system, when implemented, is at least as computationally efficient as the original ones, in many cases even more. We begin with a brief survey of the applications of multivalued logics to Artificial Intelligence and computer science developed during the last decades (§ 1); afterwards we focus on Ginsberg's system, considering its basic principles and some of the advantages it offers, both from the theoretical and the practical points of view (§ 2). Then we describe in greater detail the structure of bilattices (§ 3) and of the bilattice-based inference systems (§ 4); we present two examples, showing how Ginsberg's formalism deals respectively with classical logic (§ 5) and with Reiter's Default Logic (§ 6). Finally, we consider some further applications which bilattices have found in recent years, both inside and outside the field of Artificial Intelligence, and discuss future perspectives (§ 7). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The axiom of foundation is a principle asserting the non existence, in the domain of set theory, of what T. Skolem called "infinite descending ∈ sequences", that is those infinite chains of sets of the form ... xn ∈ xn-1 ∈ ... ∈ x1 ∈ x0, constituted from a set, an element of the set, an element of the element, and so on. In particular, the axiom of foundation excludes, in the universe of the theory, the existence of circular sets of the kind x ∈ x and x0 ∈ x1 ∈ ... ∈ x1 ∈ x0 After the discovery of the Burali-Forti and of the Russell paradoxes, E. Zermelo solved the Russell paradox (in 1908) without denying the possibility of the existence of sets x such that x ∈ x, while B. Russell, with his theory of types (1908), rejects explicitly circularity and non-well-foundedness and proposes a universe structured in a hierarchy of levels, built up by iterating an infinite number of times the operations of set formation starting from a given collection of objects (iterative conception). Between 1917 and 1920 D. Mirimanoff proposed an axiomatic system in which one can solve the Burali-Forti paradox and at the same time classify rigorously some distinct kind of non-well-founded sets. However, from 1920 on Russell's view became paradigmatic, and all except P. Finsler accepted it: the axiom of foundation, introduced by von Neumann in 1925 and then investigated in depth by Zermelo, is the formal counterpart of the intuition on which the theory of types and the iterative conception are based. The aim of the present paper is to explain the emergence and the almost universal acceptance of the axiom of foundation in the early years of Zermelo-Skolem-Fraenkel axiomatic set theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]