Davide Dalla Rosa

Immanuel Kant considers hypotheses as decisive for the assessment and development of scientific enquiry. Hypotheses guide the acquisition of data and the constructing of experiments. Yet, hypotheses are not reliable sources of knowledge since they can be mistaken for other forms of assumptions that may be unproductive for scientific discovery. Hypotheses are not reliable for two main reasons: either they prevent one starting a proper enquiry or lead one astray from it. The involvement of imagination within the process of hypothesis formation appears to be the source of mistakes since possible causes of observed phenomena may be merely feigned. This paper argues that Kant theorises a method of forming hypotheses that distinguishes hypotheses from other kinds of assumptions, especially fancies, at the moment of their formation. This method warrants that hypotheses are not feigned, according to Isaac Newton’s dictum, while preserving the fallible status of hypotheses. A hypothesis can turn out to be false on empirical testing, but this does not imply it was a fancy.

This paper offers a comprehensive reconstruction of the only example of contraposition of a negative particular judgement that Kant provides in his writings on logic, in Reflexion 3187. The interpretation focuses on the two main consequences of applying contraposition to a judgement for Kant: the generation of negative terms and the shift of the logical modality of a judgement from assertoric to apodictic. The paper provides a reconstruction that excludes the presence of infinite judgements and makes sense of the entire course of reasoning in Reflexion 3187 from the perspective of Kant’s pure general logic. It shows on what grounds the course of reasoning in said note on logic contains an instance of contraposition of a negative particular judgement for Kant. This is the case even if the sequence of judgements does not fully respect the modal constraints set out by Kant, since the conclusion can still be validly derived within Kant’s pure general logic.

This paper addresses the relatively overlooked field of rehabilitation and physical medicine, offering an epistemological perspective on clinical reasoning in these disciplines, focusing on three different domains: diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Rehabilitation sciences, often overshadowed by medicine and nursing, present unique challenges in terms of clinical reasoning. We explore these challenges, highlighting the distinctive features that set rehabilitation apart from clinical medicine. Notably, rehabilitation focuses on functions, aiming to improve an individual’s quality of life, setting it apart from disease-centered medicine. Drawing also from philosophical insights in nursing literature, we offer a multidisciplinary perspective on the epistemological dimensions of rehabilitation and physical medicine, shedding light on their placement within healthcare disciplines.

The paper provides a reconstruction of proof by contradiction in Kant’s pure general logic. A seemingly less-explored point of view on this topic is how apagogical proof can account for the formal truth of a judgement. Integrating the argument held by Kjosavik (2019), I intend to highlight how one can use proof by contradiction, conceived as a modus tollens, to establish the logical actuality (logical or formal truth) of a cognition. Although one might agree on the capacity of the proof to prove formal falsity, the logical actuality of a judgement is assessable based on a logically grounded judgement and, as for transcendental logic, this cognitive operation has to presuppose the real possibility of an object.

In this paper, we contend that there are two ways of arguing, namely sincere and insincere arguing. We draw such a distinction, based on the felicity conditions of the complex speech act of arguing as modelled in van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s pragma-dialectical approach. We introduce a conversa-tional setting, which contains a speech act of arguing that does not count as in-sincere arguing, while being a sui gene-ris form of sincere arguing. We desig-nate it as “cooperative inquiry”. Finally, we show that argument evaluation plays a key role in determining whether an in-stance of arguing counts as either argu-ing sincerely or insincerely. Résumé: Dans cet article, nous affir-mons qu’il existe deux manières d’argu-menter, à savoir l’argumentation sincère et l’argumentation non sincère. Nous établissons une telle distinction, basée sur les conditions de félicité de l’acte de parole complexe consistant à argu-menter, tel que modélisé dans l’ap-proche pragma-dialectique de van Eemeren et Grootendorst. Nous intro-duisons un cadre conversationnel, qui contient un acte de parole d'argumenta-tion qui n'est pas considéré comme une argumentation non sincère, tout en étant une forme sui generis d'argumentation sincère. Nous la désignons comme « enquête coopérative ». Enfin, nous montrons que l’évaluation des argu-ments joue un rôle clé pour déterminer si un cas d’argumentation compte comme une argumentation sincère ou non.