Google Books Ngram Viewer

From The New York Times:

In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture

A Google-backed project allows the frequency of specific words and phrases to be tracked in centuries of books, equipping the humanities with a new method of cultural analysis.

http://nyti.ms/eMacup

Risorse per studenti

Se sei uno studente di filosofia alle prime armi o, più semplicemente, una persona curiosa che vuole sapere come funziona la filosofia contemporanea, dai un occhio qui.

Troverai delle brevi descrizioni dei settori centrali della filosofia (logica; metafisica; filosofia del linguaggio; epistemologia; etica; ecc.), con annesse delle bibliografie molto utili. Inoltre, troverai dei consigli su come scrivere e leggere un paper di filosofia.

Seminario a Milano

Venerdì 10 dicembre, ore 15:30 Aula Seminari del Dipartimento di Filosofia (3° piano) Università degli Studi di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7

Juha Räikkä (University of Turku, Finland)
On forgiveness

I will consider the question why demands for forgiveness sound typically if not always incongruous and disturbing. When an offender demands forgiveness, he does not merely ask or beg that the victim would consider once again the excuses and explanations he has offered. Instead, he blames the victim.

Forgiveness can refer to a variety of things. The understanding of forgiveness adopted in my presentation is closely related to Joseph Butler’s (1692-1752) classical definition, based on the idea that forgiveness is connected to moderation of resentment. For the purposes of my argument it is enough to assume that when a victim forgives the offender, she typically makes a commitment to work toward a frame of mind in which resentment has gone. When a victim has made a commitment, she personally thinks that resentment is not an appropriate emotion anymore – whether or not she still feels it. A victim has not forgiven if she feels resentment and thinks that her feelings are appropriate in this respect.

It seems clear that in some circumstances it would be cruel not to forgive the offender, i.e. if the crime committed was not serious and happened a long time ago, if the offender has felt remorse because of it and explained why he was so stupid to have done it, and so on. But if this is so, then it seems to follow that in some circumstances demands for forgiveness may be perfectly acceptable and morally unproblematic. Surely we are free to demand not to be treated cruelly and wrongly. We can blame those who treat us so.

I aim to explain why demands for forgiveness sound typically incongruous and disturbing. I will introduce two explanations that have been defended, and criticize both of them. I will then present my own explanation and argue that it satisfies all the main conditions which the acceptable explanation should meet. The conditions I have in mind are the following. (1) The explanation should tell us why demands for forgiveness are morally and not merely practically incongruous. (2) The explanation should clarify why such demands are typically but not always morally incongruous. (3) The explanation should explain why demands presented by offenders are typically more disturbing than demands presented by third parties.

Job Vacancies at ILLC

(New) 3 open PhD positions at ILLC

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation has two four-year PhD positions available at the Faculty of Humanities (FGw) and one at the Faculty of Science (FNWI) starting September 2011.

Deadline for project proposal submissions is 15 March 2011 (for the FNWI position) or February 1, 2011 (for the FGw positions). Candidates who wish to be considered for all three positions should follow the FGw deadline. For more information, see the full joboffer announcement or the project proposal guidelines (PDF), or contact the ILLC's scientific director, Dr. Leen Torenvliet, at L.Torenvlietuva.nl.

Lo scrittore e il giudice

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) dà consigli su come scrivere un articolo e su come referarlo. Lo fai qui.

Conferenza Logica e Filosofia delle Scienze

Dal 15 al 17 dicembre 2010, si terrà a Bergamo la conferenza della Società Italiana di Logica e Filosofia delle Scienze. Gli invited speakers sono:

Samson Abramsky, Wolfson College - Oxford
Amit Hagar, Indiana University
Peter Janich, Philipps Universitaet - Marburg
Samir Okasha, University of Bristol
Stathis Psillos, University of Athens

Per la vostra gioia, vi informo che ben tre dottorandi in filosofia della nostra università (ossia, io, Matteo Bianchetti e Chiara Brozzo) daranno un talk alla conferenza.

Tutte le info qui.

SCEPTICISM AND JUSTIFICATION CONFERENCE

Bologna December 17-18 2010

Scuola Superiore Studi Umanistici
Via Marsala 26, Bologna

*17-12-2010*

9.30-11.00 Ernest Sosa (Rutgers) "Why competences matter in
epistemology and elsewhere"
Discussant Andrea Sereni (San Raffaele)

11.30-13.00 Alan Millar (Stirling) "Scepticism and doxastic responsability"
Discussant Sara Neva (Bologna) & Wolfgang Huemer (Parma)

-Lunch-

15.00-16.30 Gianfranco Soldati (Fribourg) "On the justification of
demonstrative judgments"
Discussant Clotilde Calabi (Milan)

17.00-18.30 Ralph Wedgwood (Oxford) "A priori bootstrapping"
Discussant Giorgio Volpe (Bologna)

-Dinner at 20.00-

**18-12-2010**

9.30-11.00 Pascal Engel (Geneve) "Scepticism, assent and acceptance"
Discussant Delia Belleri (Bologna)

11.30-13.00 Annalisa Coliva (Modena& Reggio Emilia) "Varieties of
failure (of warrant transmission--what else?!)
Discussant Filippo Ferrari (Aberdeen)

-Lunch-

15.00-17.00 Jim Pryor (NYU) "Problems for credulism"
Discussant Eugenio Orlandelli (Bologna)

-Dinner at 20.00-

***Registration***

Attendance: free, but please register here:

Registration:
http://cogito.lagado.org/SkepticismJustification2010Registration

What?

Master Course Computational Logic‏

We are glad to announce to you the possibility to join our
European Master's Program of Computational Logic. This
program is offered jointly at the Free-University of Bozen-
Bolzano in Italy, the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal and the Technische Universität Wien inAustria.

Within this program you have the choice to study at two
/three of the four European universities. In addition you
can do your project work at the National ICT of Australia
(NICTA).

You will graduate with a MSc in Computer Science and obtain a double/multiple degree. Information on the universities and the program including the application form are provided here:

http://www.emcl-study.eu/home.html

Language of instruction is English. Tuition fees are 3.000
EUR (for non-European students) and 1.000 (for European
students) per year. In addition, we would like to draw your attention to the ERASMUS-MUNDUS scholarship program.The ERASMUS-MUNDUS consortium offers 2-year scholarships upto 48.000 EUR for non-EU students and upto 23.000 EUR for EU students of our European Master's Program in Computational Logic.

More information on the application procedure is available from:

http://www.emcl-study.eu/application.html

Prof. Dr. Steffen Hoelldobler
International Center for Computational Logic
Technische Universität Dresden
01062 Dresden, Germany
phone: [+49](351)46 33 83 40
fax: [+49](351)46 33 83 42

email: sh@iccl.tu-dresden.de

Ciao,

sono andato a leggere la pagina di Wikipedia dedicata al paradosso di Curry: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradosso_di_Curry . Non ho tempo di imparare a modificare le voci di Wikipedia, ma questa ha bisogno di revisione. Questa frase è esilarante: "Per la legge dell’implicazione materiale, l’unica possibilità ammessa è che l’antecedente di questa [sic] condizionale (“Se A è vero”) assuma il valore di verità, mentre il conseguente (“Allora Babbo Natale esiste”) assuma quello di falsità [!!!]". Non male inventarsi i "valori di falsità".

Vi sono vari altri errori (come, per esempio, parlare di logica del primo ordine, quando è sufficiente la logica proposizionale) e alcune sezioni, in particolare l'ultima, sono inintelligibili.

Se qualcuno sapesse come intervenire e ne avesse tempo e voglia, farebbe una cosa buona.

Ciao,

Matteo

Workshop sulla conseguenza logica a Padova

Seminario di Logica e Filosofia Analitica - Universita' di Padova

Cogito/Philosophy of Mathematics and Philosophy of Logic (http://cogito.lagado.org/node/520)

Workshop: Nuove ricerche sulla conseguenza logica

(programma aggiornato)

Lunedi’ 29 Novembre 2010, Aula Seminari, ore 10-17.45

Dipartimento di Filosofia, Universita' di Padova

P.zza Capitaniato 3 - Padova

10 -11: Marcello D’Agostino (Ferrara), Conseguenza Logica e informazione

11-12: Pierdaniele Giaretta (Padova) Cosa segue da una convenzione?

12-12.15: Pausa caffé

12.15 - 13.15: Massimiliano Carrara e Enrico Martino (Padova),Conseguenza logica, dialeteismo e paradosso di Curry

14.30-15.30: Julien Murzi (Munich, D) Due aspetti del paradosso di Curry

15.30-16.30: Roberto Ciuni (Delft, NL), Asserzione e conseguenza logica nelle discussive logics e logiche affini.

16.30-16.45: Pausa caffé

16.45-17.45: Vittorio Morato (Padova), Attualità e validità

Per informazioni contattare:

Massimiliano Carrara: massimiliano.carrara@unipd.it

Chronos 10: 10th international conference on tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality

CHRONOS is a series of conferences devoted to current research on the morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of markers of tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality (TAME).

Jacob in Statale

Martedì 23 novembre, ore 16:30, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Festa del Perdono 7 - Aula435

Pierre Jacob (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris) "Ascribing goals"

Abstract
This paper is devoted to the experimental investigation of the fundamental mechanisms enabling preverbal human infants to represent and reason about an agent’s action as goal-directed and to ascribe a goal to an agent. I examine the scope and limits of what I call the “shared intentionality” model of goal-ascription. According to two basic assumptions of this model, (i) the process of goal-ascription consists in sharing the agent’s goal and (ii) preverbal human infants share goals only with familiar (i.e. perceptually human-like) agents who perform familiar (i.e. executable) actions. This model derives much of its appeal to its ability to integrate behavioral developmental evidence together with cognitive neuroscientific evidence about mirror neuron (MN) activity based on single-cell recording in the brain of non-human primates. Furthermore, recent developmental behavioral evidence showing that human infants’ motor experience enhances their ability to represent others’ actions as goal-directed has been interpreted as evidence for the role of MN activity (or mirroring) in early goal-ascription by human infants. I offer a different interpretation

L'estate sta arrivando

Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information.
Slovenia, 1-12 Agosto 2011

Tutti gli studenti interessati al rapporto tra linguaggi formali e lingue naturali dovrebbero dare un occhio qui

Philosophy Podcast

Ciao,

qui si possono trovare interessanti registrazioni su argomenti filosofici:

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/news_events/podcasts.html .

Ciao,

Matteo

Hughes a Genova

Università degli Studi di Genova
Dipartimento di Filosofia
9 e 10 novembre 2010

Christopher Hughes (King's College, London) -
"Verità e contingenza"

- Martedì 9 novembre, h. 15.00-17.00, Aula N, via Balbi 4
- Mercoledì 10 novembre, h. 10.00-12.00, Aula 5, via Balbi 2

Andy Clark a Milano

Lunedì 8 Novembre- h 14.30
Università degli Studi di Milano - Via Festa del Perdono 7 - aula 435

Andy Clark (Edimburgo)
Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science

Abstract
Brains, according to an increasingly influential research program in computational neuroscience, are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells whose evolved role is to enable the right action to occur at the right time, and this is achieved by minimizing prediction error (thus minimizing informational surprise) within a hierarchy of cortical processing regions. This ‘hierarchical prediction machine’ approach yields a unifying model of perception and action, and may neatly capture the special contribution of neural processing to adaptive success. In this talk, I first lay out the key elements of this approach, while noting some potentially problematic elements along the way. Putting the problems aside, I then ask what such a model would imply for our general vision of brains, minds, and situated agents.

Nuovi articoli

Questo mi sembra un buon sito dove tenere d'occhio i nuovi articoli in uscita

Morality and Cog Sci

7th International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication
MORALITY AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES
6-8 May 2011, Riga, Latvia.

INVITED ORGANIZERS: Michael Bishop (Florida State University), Stephen Stich (Rutgers University)

INVITED SPEAKERS include:

• Michael Bishop (Florida State University)
• Luc Faucher (Université du Québec a Montréal)
• Joshua Knobe (Yale University)
• Edouard Machery (University of Pittsburgh)
• Dominic Murphy (University of Sydney)
• Shaun Nichols (University of Arizona)
• Jesse Prinz (City University of New York)
• Adina Roskies (Dartmouth College)
• Don Ross (University of Cape Town)
• Stephen Stich (Rutgers University)
• Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota)

There has been considerable interest recently in empirical approaches to the study of morality: What are the biological, cultural and psychological factors that explain the shape of our moral judgments, norms and practices? This conference will focus on current research into these facts – particularly findings from cognitive science – and their relevance to a philosophical theory of morality.

The symposium is co-hosted by the Center for Cognitive Sciences and Semantics of the University of Latvia and the Department of Philosophy at Kansas State University

Call for Submitted papers:

A limited number of papers will be selected for presentation at the symposium and considered for inclusion in the proceedings in the Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication.

Time allowed for presentations is 40 minutes including discussion. Submitted papers should have a maximum of 3000 words and should be accompanied by a 200 words abstract.

All submitted papers should be PREPARED FOR BLIND REVIEW, and should be sent electronically to:

bolzano (at) ksu.edu

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS 15 JANUARY 2011. Authors will be notified in FEBRUARY 2011.

Symposium proposal:

In addition to individual papers, the scientific committee will be considering proposals for symposia. Time allowed for symposia is 2 hours (including discussion). Symposia should include a minimum of three and a maximum of four contributions. Submissions should be clearly identified as “Symposium proposal” and include:

1) The title of the symposium
2) A brief description of the topic and its relevance to the conference (200 words)
3) The name, affiliation and academic status (student, lecturer, assistant professor, etc.) of each participant
4) The title of each contribution as well as an extended 500-1000 word abstract.
5) The name, affiliation and academic status of the person who will be chairing the symposium

Symposium proposals should be sent electronically to:

bolzano (at) ksu.edu

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS 15 JANUARY 2011. Authors will be notified in FEBRUARY 2011.

Jobs and Ph.D.

Ho aggiunto una sezione JOBS, in basso a destra, dove trovate alcuni links a siti che segnalano posizioni aperte in università. Se conoscete altri siti, comunicatemeli.

Se ne conoscete, aggiungo anche dei links di siti che segnalano posti di dottorato.

Intorno alla x-phi

Al dipartimento di filosofia di Otago (Nuova Zelanda) hanno un gruppo di ricerca che lavora sul rapporto tra experimental philosophy (x-phi) ed empirismo classico. Ne parlano in questo blog.

In questo blog di St.Andrews, invece, si discute di x-phi e, più in generale, di metodologia filosofica.

p.s.: questa spilla anti x-phi è splendida!

p.p.s: se non sapete cos'è la x-phi e cos'è l'opposizione x-phi vs. armchair philosophy, e quindi vivete in una caverna, allora vi conviene leggere qui.

Il potere normativo delle intuizioni morali

Molti filosofi condividono l'idea che una teoria morale si debba fondare sulle nostre intuizioni morali, ossia sulle nostre credenze morali più forti, stabili e immediate.

In anni recenti, psicologi e neuroscienziati hanno studiato i meccanismi cognitivi alla base delle intuizioni morali. Secondo Peter Singer (qui), i risultati di questi studi empirici mettono seriamente in dicussione l'idea che le intuizioni morali abbiano un genuino potere normativo.

Ne parla Sandro Zucchi giovedì 7 e giovedì 14 Ottobre, ore 16:45, Aula Seminari del Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Festa del Perdono.

La coscienza di Chalmers

E' uscito il nuovo libro di Chalmers sulla coscienza, "The Character of Consciousness". Molte delle cose contenute in esso sono già presenti in papers pubblicati da Chalmers negli ultimi dieci anni. Ad ogni modo, per chi lavora sulla coscienza, suppongo che questa sia una lettura obbligatoria.

Ecco come Chalmers presenta il libro:

The Character of Consciousness

My new book, The Character of Consciousness, has just been published. The official publication date is October 14, but I've now received copies and it is listed as in stock at Amazon and OUP.

The book is based around 14 papers of mine on consciousness from the last 15 years or so. I have reworked the papers in some places to avoid repetition and create more of a narrative flow. It is quite possible to read it from the beginning, although at 600 pages I don't know how many people will read it from beginning to end. The first five and last two chapters are fairly accessible to nonphilosophers, with some technical material in between.

The OUP website has a table of contents. The early chapters concern the problem of consciousness, the science of consciousness, and the metaphysics of consciousness. My own view is that these chapters provide a better entry point to the my nonreductive view of consciousness than do the early chapters of The Conscious Mind (for both philosophers and nonphilosophers); we'll see how widely that view is shared. The later chapters concern concepts of consciousness, the contents of consciousness, and the unity of consciousness.

There is also plenty of new material, e.g. in a substantial new introduction, afterwords to some of the papers (e.g. a substantial afterword on "First-Person Data and First-Person Science"), an unpublished much-longer version of "The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism" (with an afterword on "Other Anti-Materialist Arguments"), and new footnotes marked with asterisks throughout the book, responding to objections in the literature and pushing things forward in other ways.

CFP: EPSA 2011

Call for papers

3rd Conference of the EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ASSOCIATION Athens, Greece, 5-8 October 2011 http://epsa11.phs.uoa.gr Submission deadline: 28 February 2011 The Third Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA) will take place at the University of Athens, Greece, 5-8 October 2011. We invite contributed papers and proposals for symposia. The conference has eight sections: 1. General philosophy of science 2. Philosophy of the physical sciences 3. Philosophy of the life sciences 4. Philosophy of the cognitive sciences 5. Philosophy of the social sciences 6. Philosophy of technology and applied research 7. Formal philosophy of science 8. Historical, social and cultural studies in philosophy of science CONTRIBUTED PAPERS: Please submit an extended abstract of 1000-1500 words. Abstracts should start with the number and title of the relevant section, followed by the title of the paper, the author’s name, address, and email address. For example: Contributed paper Section 8. Historical, Social and Cultural Studies in Philosophy of Science CARNAP’S AUFBAU IN CONTEXT Otto Neurath St Moritz University 1928 Positivismusstrasse, Coherence, Neverland. o.neurath@st-moritz.edu The allocated time for delivering contributed papers at the conference will be 30 minutes, including discussion. SYMPOSIUM PROPOSALS: Please submit a full proposal. This includes a general description of the topic of the proposed symposium and its significance (up to 1500 words), a 500-word abstract of each paper, and short CVs of all participants (up to 500 words each). Proposals should start with the number and title of the relevant section, followed by the title of the symposium, the organizer’s name, address and email address, and the names and addresses of all other speakers. Accepted symposia will be allocated 120 minutes. They can have any format but the maximum number of speakers is 5. All submissions have to be made electronically through the easychair system at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=epsa11 IMPORTANT DATES 28 February 2011: Submission deadline (contributed papers and symposia) 15 May 2011: Notification of acceptance 30 June 2011: Early registration deadline 5-8 October 2011: Conference

Non contraddizione a Bologna

The Principle of Non-Contradiction. History and Theory

Bologna, September 30th-October 1st, 2010
Rodolfo Mondolfo Hall
Via Zamboni, 38 – Third Floor


September 30th

9:30 Graham Priest, ‘Plato’s Parmenides’


11:15 Jonathan Barnes, ‘Against Aristotle?’


15:30 Mauro Nasti De Vincentis, ‘Forme della Contraddizione e Sillogistica Aristotelica’


17:15 Walter Cavini, ‘Truth and (Non-)Contradiction: Some Ancient Reflections’



October 1st

9:15 Mirella Capozzi, ‘Kant e il Principio di Non Contraddizione’


11 Enrico Berti, ‘Hegel e il Principio di Non Contraddizione’


14:00 Franca D’Agostini, ‘What Kind of Law Is the Law of Non-Contradiction?’


15:45 Gerhard Seel, ‘What is Pragmatic Self-Contradiction? Some Semantical Considerations’


17:30 Annalisa Coliva/Sebastiano Moruzzi, ‘Relativism in Contradiction?’

CFP AISC 2010

Settimo Convegno Nazionale dell' Associazione Italiana di Scienze Cognitive *AISC2010

Trento il 2 e 3 dicembre 2010.

CFP. Deadline: 27 settembre 2010

L’interesse del convegno è rivolto a tutti i settori delle scienze cognitive. I contributi dovranno essere sufficientemente comprensibili per un’audience interdisciplinare.

I contributi dovranno essere redatti in italiano o inglese e sottomessi usando il sistema Easychair
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aisc20101.

La dimensione di ogni contributo non dovrà eccedere le 5 pagine nel formato scaricabile dal sito del convegno
(http://events.unitn.it/aisc2010).

Al fine di rendere possibile la blind review, gli autori devono omettere i loro nomi ed affiliazioni dalla versione inviata per la revisione.

Per informazioni

www.aisc-net.it

segreteria(at)aisc-net.it

cruciani(at)disi.unitn.it

Barcelona: papers o discussants

XIII TALLER D'INVESTIGACIO' EN FILOSOFIA
UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA, 12-13-14 JANUARY 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS
This call for papers is addressed to graduate
students and doctors in philosophy who finished
their PhDs during the last 3 years. Accepted
papers will be presented at the workshop (45
minutes) followed by a commentary (15 minutes)
and an open discussion (30 minutes).

There are two ways of participating in the workshop, as a speaker or as a commentator.

CONTRIBUTED PAPERS
Authors should send their papers (preferred) or,
alternatively, a summary in between 1000 and
1500 words to xiiitif@gmail.com. Papers and
summaries should be arranged for blind
refereeing. On a separate sheet of paper the
authors will include their full name, e-mail
address, title of their contribution and
university or institution to which they belong.

COMMENTATORS
Those interested in participating as
commentators should send their data (name,
e-mail address, institution and a short CV) to
xiiitif@gmail.com. A description of the main
areas of philosophy they are interested in will also be required.

DEADLINES
Submitted papers will be accepted until the 26th
September 2010. The result of the selection

process will be communicated to the authors by
the end of October 2010. Speakers must send the
final version of their papers before the 21th of November 2010.

MORE INFORMATION

http://www.ub.es/tif, www.ub.edu/tif or writing to xiiitif@gmail.com