Theoria: An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science

This paper explores some of the philosophical difficulties involved in the task of clarifying the idea of an irreducible statistical law, by means of an analysis of the paradigmatic example of such a law in the Quantum theory.These are two alternative strategies that can be pursued in clarifying this question. One is to understand this irreductibility by means of one or another interpretation of the Quantum theory. But, as will be shown, the different interpretations of Quantum mechanics lead to radically different and fundamentally incompatible answers to the problem. The second strategy is to try to caracterize this irreducibility “directly”, via a proof of the impossibility of a hidden-variable extension of the statistical formalism of the theory. This strategy culminates with Bell’s theorem which indeed establishes the impossibility of constructing “Iocal” theories of hidden variables. This impossibility result, however, fails to provide us with a satisfying interpretation of the quantum irreductibility, rather, it merely shows how far we are from a solution to the problem.

Genetic studies of present human populations are very useful to understand the history of modern Human migrations throughout the world, especially when the results are compared with the information provided by historical linguistics and archaelogy. However, an inaccurate methodology is commonly applied to the analysis of the most recent molecular data and may lead to some erroneous conclusions on our first origins.

The aim of this article is to show that the scholastic commentaries on the Predicables or Categorems (in Porphiry Eisagoge) constituted a style of treatises on the philosophy of language and philosophy of logic. In such studies, called afterwards “Material Logic”, is considered, for instance, the theme of the domain of logic and the possibility of its construction; furthermore, logic is relates to ontology through the problem of universals. Here is explored to logical being (ens rationis) which is the objectum (subject) of this discipline, and is analized the structure of proposition and the nature of the main constitutives of inference. In the side of Philosophy of Language are located the study of the meaning of subjects and predicates (or predicables), that of the proposition formed by them, also a hierarchy of logical types (and semantical ones), and the principles of the ordained disposition of natural kinds and other classifications. They are things that now attract the interest of philosophers of logic and philosophers of languagewithin the analytic tradition.

In this paper I offer an interpretation of those paragraphs of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in which Wittgenstein talks about negative facts. In my opinion we cannot conclude that Wittgenstein held that negative facts have actual existence, as RusselI, for example, did.By means of a kind of journey through several possible interpretations, I arrive to the conclusion that negative facts are nothing but non-effective possibilities; they are in the logical space, in the field of possible worlds, but they have no actual existence, they are not inhabitants of the world. Finally, it is suggested that, insofar as pictures are facts, the only negative facts were, for Wittgenstein, the negative pictures and not what those pictures depict.

In this article I propose a new explanation of the relationship between Russell and ther first Wittgenstein. There are five main novelties in my interpretation; (i) the use of all relevant unpublished manuscripts of Russell; (ii) the discovery of the first apparition of the “multiple theory of judgment” in a purely logical and unpublished context; (iii) the role of the Bradleian objection against relations in the evolution of the nation of form in both Russell and Wittgenstein; (iv) a general point of view to obtain a common explanation of all the criticisms of Wittgenstein against Russell and of the abandonment to Theory of Knowledge; and (v) the first account of the contribution of Whitehead to the progressive Russellian evolution from atomism to holism.

Self-reference suffices to define performative sentences. “I say (or its variants) that” is communicatively functional. By it, speaker shows he is aware of how he is being seen by hearers. Therefore “I order” and “I do not order” are equally performative, though the latter does not perform any activity. This is our first proposal. In the subdivision (criterion of activity can do nothing but a subdivision), “I do not permit” isactive. Our second proposal explains that anomaly attending to synonymy between “I do not permit” and “I forbid”, but without using it as a premature escape.

Katz (1981, 1985) has denied the psychological import of Linguistics on the grounds of alleged inconsistencies that arise when Linguistics is conceived as a psychological enterprise, and proposed an alternative Platonistic conception. The paper discards the plausibility of this latter approach to the study of natural language but recognizes the difficulties Katz has pointed out. It is claimed that these difficulties appear if the “strong competence hypothesis” (Bresnan & Kaplan, 1982) is assumed, that is, if it is assumed that the form of the speaker’s knowledge of language is that of a grammar. A weaker conception of the psychological relevance of linguisitic theories is proposed-one that avoids Katz’s difficulties, is more congenial to Chomsky, and clears the way for a fruitful cooperation between Linguistics and Psycholinguistics.

In this paper, I assume that speech act theory should be based on a theory of action. I will try to show that a pragmatic theory of speech acts (Gazdar, 1981) can be easily based on a certain theory of action (a model combining Searle’s and Von Wright’s proposals).