2008

This discussion tries to explicate some epistemological problems in connection with negation and the so-called godelian sentences. The paper examines some methods of generating negative formulas from positive bases, an proposes alternative methods which with some antinomic formula could be eliminated. The discussion tries to show, that some epistemological antinomies arise from the natural language, and most formal languages inherit the natural (and maybe false) way of indicating negations.

Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook

Kierkegaard and his pseudonym Climacus apparently defend an either-or as an expression of traditional Aristotelian logic against Hegel and Hegelian logic: One must recognize the principle of contradiction. In his way, Climacus radiacalizes dialectics into existential or passionate dialectics. His articulation of subjectivity has an affinity with the ontological and semantic questions in the logic of Hegel, and resembles the tradition of negative theology. Contradiction-difference, negativity-is fundamental in understanding and articulating subjectivity.

Dialogue: Official Journal of Phi Sigma Tau, 2014

In this paper, I refute Giuseppe Ferraro’s attack against the Semantic Interpretation of emptiness not by considering each of his (numerous!) objections in turn, but instead by arguing against what I consider to be elementary misunderstandings of both Madhyamaka philosophy and methodology that consistently underpin all of his objections. First, I argue that Ferraro has misapplied the Semantic Interpretation to the two-truths rather than to its intended target, emptiness. From here, I proceed to illustrate that Nāgārjuna is not concerned with questioning the existence of objects per se, but in questioning how we perceive these objects to exist when we uncritically engage with and erroneously assign essential intrinsic existence to them. I then attempt to explain how the Mādhyamika can account for the existence of empirical objects Conventionally without referring to any Ultimate grounding and without clinging to any metaphysical views: emptiness and its relation to the Ultimate Truth is thus discussed as a principle to be of use to the unenlightened mind, but abandoned by the awakened. I conclude that the Semantic Interpretation subsequently has emptiness as a means to calm mental propensities to attachment rather than a metaphysical doctrine concerned with ontological possibilities, and that as a consequence, any idea of Ultimate Truths are to be jettisoned as views that propagate attachment.

Introduction The nature of presupposition projection from the scope of quantificational sentences , particularly negative quantificational sentences such as (1), continues to be both theoretically and empirically controversial. Standard candidates for the readings of (1) are the following:

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2003

This essay in the comparative metaphysic of nothingness begins by ponder-11 ing why Leibniz thought of the converse question as the preeminent one. In Eastern 12 philosophical thought, like the numeral 'zero' (śūnya) that Indian mathematicians first 13 discovered, nothingness as non-being looms large and serves as the first quiver on the 14 imponderables they seem to have encountered (e.g., 'In the beginning was neither 15 non-being nor being: what was there, bottomless deep?' RgVeda X.129). The concept 16 of non-being and its permutations of nothing, negation, nullity, etc., receive more 17 sophisticated treatment in the works of grammarians, ritual hermeneuticians, logi-18 cians, and their dialectical adversaries variously across Jaina and Buddhist schools.

2021

The main result of present paper is that the definition of negation has to be referred to the totality of a theory and at last to what is defined as the organization of a scientific theory; in other words, negation’s definition is of a structural kind, rather than of an objective kind or a subjective kind. The paper starts by remarking that the ancient Greek word for truth was “aletheia”, which is a double negation, i.e. “unveiling”. But, after Plato and Romans the affirmative meaning of the idea of truth prevailed. Not before the 1968 the double negation law was re-evaluated, since it was recognized that its failure represents more appropriately than the failure of of excluded middle law the borderline between classical logic and almost all non-classical kinds of logic. Moreover, the failure of this law is easily recognized within a (scientific) text; this fact allows a new kind of logical analysis of a text. As an example, the analysis of Kolmogorov’s 1932 paper is summarized. It ...