Sur le versant Sud d'une colline appelée Sténokorifi, non loin de Drama, de nombreux filons de marbre dolomitique, gris clair et de petite granulométrie, affleurent sur une étendue d'environ 19 000 m2 entre une végétation dense. Excepté le front de taille vertical d'une exploitation marbrière des années 1950 qui a fait des essais d'extraction en profondeur à l'aide du marteau-piqueur, il n'y a que des fronts de taille obliques (selon la pente) et les extractions sont superficielles. Dès lors que les (...) filons présentent une masse homogène et compacte, des traces d'extraction sont visibles ; certaines d'entre elles (canaux, emboîtures, entailles pour coins, négatifs de blocs extraits) sont conformes à celles des techniques d'extraction de l'époque romaine, alors que d'autres «enfonçures » sont les témoins de la technique d'extraction à l'époque proto-byzantine. Deux fours à chaux ont été identifiés, l'un d'époque byzantine et l'autre contemporain de l'exploitation moderne, d'où la rareté des blocs abandonnés. (shrink)

Yves Grandjean, Tony Kozelj and François Salviat The Zeus Gate on Thasos p. 175-268 The Gate of Zeus and Hera, offered by Pythippos son of Paiestratos, is one of the most remarkable features of the Thasian enceinte: to the sculptured reliefs that adorned it was added a particular architectural embellishment which has never been analysed in its entirety. The numerous blocks preserved in situ make it possible to reconstruct the elevation of the gate, which was in fact a (...) gate tower, and to detail the appearance of the latter with its architectural facing of superimposed orders — Doric and Ionic — on the town side and its Doric frieze integrated into the walls of the tower on the side facing the country. The influences of Macedonian, funerary and palatial architecture are manifest. According to the lists of theoroi and the amphora stamps discovered in the levels preceding its construction, the gate tower was erected in around 300 BC. It replaced an original opening going back to the time when the enceinte visible today was built, in other words after the raid on Thasos by Histiaios of Miletus in 494; the old excavations like the recent investigations confirm the account by Herodotus (VI 46), which there is no reason to doubt. (shrink)

Au Sud-Est du Cynthe, dans un paysage où prédomine le granit, on remarque une lentille de marbre blanc légèrement bleuâtre sur laquelle on peut observer les nombreuses marques d'une exploitation dans l'Antiquité. Les trois secteurs qui constituent cette carrière révèlent les traces du travail des carriers ; leur examen permet d'établir quelques hypothèses sur le fonctionnement de l'installation depuis les travaux préparatoires nécessaires à l'extraction jusqu'au levage et à l'embarquement des blocs prélevés pour leur transport par mer. L'utilisation de ce (...) marbre pour la construction de certains édifices déliens nous aide à préciser les dates de l'exploitation et permet de conclure que la carrière, dont le rendement semble avoir été faible, a connu une activité sporadique entre la première moitié du vie s. et la fin du IVe S. (shrink)

Des recherches récentes dans la chôra thasienne ont apporté une éclatante confirmation du texte d'Hérodote (VI, 46-47) évoquant les ressources minières de Thasos. Sur la côte orientale, entre Potamia et Kinyra, ont été repérées de nombreuses mines réparties en trois secteurs sur le versant de la montagne. L'or est le seul métal contenu en quantité suffisante pour être exploitable dans les prélèvements de minerai. Les autres mines évoquées allusivement par Hérodote sont des mines d'or (Limenas), ou de plomb argentifère, de (...) cuivre et de fer (côté occidental de l'île). (shrink)

Including international contributors from a variety of disciplines - History, English, Information Studies and Archivists – this book does not seek either to applaud or condemn digital technologies, but takes a more conceptual view of how ...

To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...) results for 23 different responses to 14 scenarios . We also conducted a literature search to see if other philosophers or psychologists have tested for gender differences in philosophical intuitions. Based on our findings, we argue that that it is unlikely that gender differences in intuitions play a significant role in driving women from philosophy. (shrink)

Determining who, or indeed what, is to respond to prescriptions for action in cases of international crisis is a critical endeavor. Without such an allocation of responsibilities, calls to action–whether to protect the environment or to rescue distant strangers–lack specified agents, and, therefore, any meaningful indication of how they might be met. A fundamental step in arriving at this distribution of duties is identifying moral agents in international relations, or, in other words, identifying those bodies that can deliberate and act (...) and thereby respond to ethical guidelines. Often, the most effective and relevant moral agents in international relations are not individuals but institutions. However, it is necessary to qualify any claim that institutions can bear duties in international relations. Not only must they possess capacities for decision-making and purposive action, they must also enjoy the conditions under which specific duties can be discharged. The importance of this latter stipulation can be usefully illustrated by examining the disparate circumstances within which states–those that exercise positive sovereignty and those that are sovereign only in name–are expected to act. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview, Tony Lawson discussed his role in, and relationship to, Critical Realism as well as various defences of mathematical modelling in economics. In Part 2 he t...

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Tony Lawson first discusses his role in the formation of IACR and how he relates to the generalized use of the term ‘Critical Realism’. He then provides com...

There is an increasingly widespread belief, both within and outside the discipline, that modern economics is irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Economics and Reality traces this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their methods with their subject, showing that formal, mathematical models are unsuitable to the social realities economists purport to address. Tony Lawson examines the various ways in which mainstream economics is rooted in positivist philosophy and examines the problems this causes. It focuses (...) on human agency, social structure and their interaction and explores how the understanding of this social phenomena can be used to transform the nature of economic practice. Economics and Reality concludes by showing how this newly transformed economics might set about shaping economic policy. (shrink)

This article argues that "gratitude to" and "gratitude that" are fundamentally different concepts. The former (prepositional gratitude) is properly a response to benevolent attitudes, and entails special concern on the part of the beneficiary for a benefactor, while the latter (propositional gratitude) is a response to beneficial states of affairs, and entails no special concern for anyone. Propositional gratitude, it is argued, ultimately amounts to a species of appreciation. The tendency to see prepositional gratitude and propositional “gratitude” as two species (...) of the same genus results from several deep-seated social and psychological factors, but must be resisted if we are to engage in constructive philosophizing about both gratitude and appreciation. (shrink)

In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, _Virality_ does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates. Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way (...) of the rhetoric of fear used in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over _too much connectivity_, such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview. According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological. (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

Gratitude is the proper or called-for response in a beneficiary to benefits or beneficence from a benefactor. It is a topic of interest in normative ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, and may have implications for metaethics as well. Despite its commonness in everyday life, there is substantive disagreement among philosophers over the nature of gratitude and its connection to other philosophical concepts. The sections of this article address five areas of debate about what gratitude is, when it is called (...) for, and what implications it has for other debates in moral philosophy and philosophy generally. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature and argue that this claim is unjustified. I proceed by arguing against the two most plausible lines of reasoning for the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature: 1) that nature is a fitting or appropriate object of our gratitude, and 2) that we ought to be grateful to nature insofar as gratitude to nature enhances, preserves or indicates in us the virtue of (...) gratitude, a character trait we morally ought to have. My arguments against the first line of reasoning show it to be unsound, and my arguments against the second reveal that we actually have reasons to avoid being grateful to nature. If we have reasons to treat nature well, I show, those may be rooted in the appropriateness of attitudes like praise, appreciation or compassion, but not gratitude. I conclude by highlighting several implications my arguments entail about gratitude to entities other than nature and about environmental virtues other than gratitude. (shrink)

This eagerly anticipated new book from Tony Lawson contends that economics can profit from a more explicit concern with ontology than has been its custom. By admitting that economics is not exactly a picture of health at the moment, Lawson hopes that we can move away from the bafflingly intransigent belief that economics is at its core reliant upon mathematical modelling. This maths-envy is the reason why economics is in a state of such disarray. Far from being a polemic (...) against the mainstream, this excellent new book is concerned that if economics is to be saved from itself then there must be a realistic dialogue between the classical heterodox fields. Of interest to philosophers, sociologists and social scientists as well as economists, this comprehensive, logical book is a vital contribution to an important debate. (shrink)

The social sciences often fail to examine in any systematic way the nature of their subject matter. Demonstrating that this is a central explanation of the widely acknowledged failings of the social sciences, not least of modern economics, this book sets about rectifying matters. Providing an account of the nature of social material in general, as well as of the specific natures of central components of the modern world, such as money and the corporation, Lawson also considers the implications of (...) this theory regarding possibilities for social change. Readers will gain an understanding of how social phenomena, from tables and chairs, to money and firms, and nurses and Presidents are constituted. Fundamental to Lawson's conception is a theory of community-based social positioning, whereby people and things within a community become constituted as components of emergent totalities, with actions governed by the rights and obligations of relevant members of the community. This theory isolates a set of basic principles that will offer the reader an understanding of the natures of all social phenomena. The Nature of Social Realityis for all those, academics and non-academics alike, who wish to gain a grasp on the nature of social phenomena that goes beyond the superficial. isolates a set of basic principles that will offer the reader an understanding of the natures of all social phenomena. The Nature of Social Realityis for all those, academics and non-academics alike, who wish to gain a grasp on the nature of social phenomena that goes beyond the superficial. (shrink)

“Coalition of the willing” is a phrase that we hear invoked with frequency in world politics. Significantly, it is generally accompanied by claims to moral responsibility. Yet the label commonly used to connote a temporary, purpose-driven, self-selected collection of states sits uneasily alongside these assertions of moral responsibility.This article explores how the informal nature of such associations should inform judgments of moral responsibility. I begin by briefly recounting what I call a model of institutional moral agency in order to explain (...) why it seems theoretically and practically problematic to talk about the moral responsibilities of informal associations. I then focus on coalitions of the willing as prominent, and challenging, examples of such associations, before raising misgivings about my own rather stark distinction if it means that accounts of moral responsibility must be reduced to the members—or potential members—of such coalitions in a way that neglects the moral significance of their acting together. Prompted by these concerns, I explore arguments by Virginia Held and Larry May about moral responsibility in relation to informal associations and identify insights that can be taken from these positions to refine our expectations and evaluations of the actions associated with such collectivities. Finally, I consider the particular implications of these insights in relation to the widely espoused duty to intervene to rescue vulnerable populations. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

Slavoj Zizek is no ordinary philosopher. Approaching critical theory and psychoanalysis in a recklessly entertaining fashion, Zizek's critical eye alights upon a bewildering and exhilarating range of subjects, from the political apathy of contemporary life, to a joke about the man who thinks he's a chicken, from the ethicial heroism of Keanu Reeves in speed , to what toilet designs reveal about the national psyche. Tony Myers provides a clear and engaging guide to Zizek's key ideas, explaining the main (...) influences on Zizek's thought, most crucially his engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis, using examples drawn from popular culture and everyday life. Myers outlines the key issues that Zizek's work has tackled, including: * What is a Subject and why is it so important? * The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real * What is so terrible about Postmodernity? * How can we distinguish reality from ideology? * What is the relationship between men and women? * Why is Racism always a fantasy? Slavoj Zizek is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the thought of the critic whom Terry Eagleton has described as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades.". (shrink)

Institutions can be assigned duties, and thus can also be blamed for failing to discharge them. But how can we respond to this type of failure? Punishment is a prominent and problematic response to institutional delinquency.