Third generation prospect theory is a theory of choices and of judgments of highest buying and lowest selling prices of risky prospects, i.e., of willingness to pay and willingness to accept. The gap between WTP and WTA is sometimes called the “endowment effect” and was previously called the “point of view” effect. Third generation prospect theory combines cumulative prospect theory for risky prospects with the theory that judged values are based on the integration of price paid or price received with (...) the consequences of gambles. In TGPT, the discrepancy between WTP and WTA is due to loss aversion-losses have greater absolute utility than gains of the same value. TGPT was developed independently of similar developments by Birnbaum and Zimmermann :145–187, 1998) and Luce. This paper reviews theoretical and empirical findings, to show that TGPT fails as a descriptive model of both choices and judgments. Evidence refutes three implications of TGPT, but they are consistent with configural weight models in which loss aversion is not needed to describe the results. In the configural weight models, buyers place greater weight on lower consequences, attributes or estimates of value compared to sellers, who place greater configural weight on higher aspects of an object or prospect. (shrink)

Le mouvement ouvrier et étudiant de 68 a fissuré l'assise savante du pouvoir. Jacques Rancière, qui en prend acte, instaure un renversement fondamental : il ne saisit plus l'égalité comme but, mais comme point de départ. C'est d'une déconnexion avec l'ordre hiérarchique qu'elle procède. Sont ainsi mises en avant les capacités des opprimés à inventer des pratiques indociles. Pourtant, depuis une vingtaine d'années, Rancière tend à rétrécir la portée de ce geste : en le déplaçant vers le champ esthétique, il (...) le limite à des "redistributions polémiques du dicible et du visible". Ce livre rompt avec une telle orientation. Il élucide l'égalité dans des luttes impliquant la violence, réintroduit une rationalité du désir et de l'antagonisme. L'aspiration à abolir le rapport capitaliste fait pleinement partie de l'obstination lucide qui anime la confiance égalitaire. Ainsi radicalisée, l'égalité noue l'antagonisme, qui combat un ennemi à détruire, au litige, qui s'inclut dans le monde de l'adversaire par polémique. Elle rencontre les questions que le féminisme pose à l'universel, et s'empare de la défaite comme d'un moment immanent à sa pratique, tirant ses ressources de possibles déjà accomplis, mais aussi des chances manquées d'une lutte."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Pierre Birnbaum est l’auteur de travaux importants en science politique, en sociologie et en histoire. Il est professeur de sociologie politique à l’université Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne ; il a en outre enseigné dans plusieurs universités américaines. Il a subi l’influence de Raymond Aron, avec lequel il a travaillé dans les années 1960. Par la suite, il a principalement travaillé dans le domaine de la sociologie politique, sur l’État, les élites et le pouvoir. Le champ de l’histoire juive s’e...

Après le succès du Courage de la nuance, Jean Birnbaum poursuit son enquête sur l''héroïsme du doute' avec une réflexion personnelle et politique sur l'enfance. Dans ce nouveau livre, il montre comment la naissance d'un enfant fait vaciller toute certitude. Ce qui l'intéresse, c'est une expérience banale mais qui a peu attiré l'attention des penseurs: devenir le parent d'un enfant, c'est constater ses effets sur notre rapport aux autres et sur notre vision politique des choses. Si, depuis Socrate, le (...) philosophe est celui qui dynamite nos préjugés, alors le bébé s'impose comme le plus subversif des philosophes. Cette fois encore, Jean Birnbaum mêle réflexions et émotions. Il se tourne vers des auteurs aimés (Hannah Arendt, Georges Bernanos, Roland Barthes, Rosa Luxemburg...) et puise dans sa propre expérience. À l'heure où le mouvement 'No kids' dénonce la procréation comme une catastrophe intime et écologique, ce livre proclame la solidarité essentielle entre espoir d'une société meilleure et promesse de la vie donnée, transmise, sauvée ; il n'y a pas d'émancipation sans générations, pas d'avenir sans enfants, pas de fraternité sans bébés."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

On the Life of Abraham displays Philo's philosophical, exegetical, and literary genius at its best. Philo begins by introducing the biblical figures Enos, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as unwritten laws. Then, interweaving literal, ethical, and allegorical interpretations, Philo presents the life and achievements of Abraham, founder of the Jewish nation, in the form of a Greco-Roman bios, or biography. Ellen Birnbaum and John Dillon explain why and how this work is important within the context of Philo's own (...) oeuvre, early Jewish and Christian exegesis, and ancient philosophy. They also offer a new English translation and detailed analyses, in which they elucidate the meaning of Philo's thought, including his perplexing notion that Israel's ancestors were laws in themselves. (shrink)

Avec l’espace, disait Emmanuel Kant, le temps constitue la « forme a priori » de notre sensibilité. Autrement dit, le temps est l’horizon à travers lequel nous faisons l’expérience du monde, il structure notre façon d'aller à la rencontre de ce qui est. Or la modernité semble désormais compromettre les conditions de cette rencontre. Tout va de plus en plus vite : entre « fast-food », « speed dating » et haut débit, notre époque se distingue par la toute-puissance de (...) la vitesse. Ce qui est en jeu, ici, ce n’est plus seulement l’emballement de l’innovation technique, mais l’accélération du réel lui-même. Voilà l’une des désillusions du progrès : plus nous sommes équipés de machines, d’appareils censés nous faire gagner du temps, et plus nous avons le sentiment d’en manquer. Dans les relations sociales comme dans la vie intime, en politique comme en amour, notre quotidien est marqué par l’urgence, la peur de ne pouvoir suivre. La tyrannie du court terme comprime l’espace. Le triomphe de l’immédiat rend impossible toute vie au présent. Le règne de l’instantanéité enterre la mémoire et dynamite l’avenir. Bref, l’accélération des choses rétrécit le champ de l’expérience, à commencer par cette condition de toute vie humaine qu’on nomme confiance : « La confiance ne saurait être de l'ordre de l'instantané, écrit le philosophe Paul Virilio. Elle doit se construire, se mériter, dans le temps. La confiance instantanée, la foi instantanée, cela ne marche pas. Il faut du temps pour avoir confiance ». Reconstruire un espace de discussion, d’amitié et de justice, c’est donc ralentir le rythme, repartir à la conquête du temps long. Artistes, philosophes, géographes ou historiens, hommes d’images ou femmes de lettres, les intervenants tenteront de répondre ensemble à cette question : « Où est passé le temps? ». Trois jours durant, fidèle à sa tradition d'échanges et de dialogue, le Forum a confronté leurs réponses aux interrogations et aux objections du public. (shrink)

In response to recent policy trends towards linking social rights more tightly to work requirements, this article argues that those sharing Rawlsian commitments have good reasons to prefer a radical‐liberal policy agenda with a universal basic income at its core. Compared to its main rivals in present policy debates, the politics of basic income has greater potential to promote the economic life prospects of the least advantaged in a way that provides a robust protection for the bases of social recognition (...) and non‐subservience. The argument seeks to establish that these concerns should be ascribed priority in the most plausible balancing of Rawlsian objectives and that doing so generates a strong case for basic income. As recent arguments for basic income have suggested that Rawls’ theory is insufficient to make the case for such a reform, this analysis also demonstrates that a powerful argument for basic income can be built on Rawlsian foundations alone. (shrink)

The Politics of Belonging represents an innovative collaboration between political theorists and political scientists for the purposes of investigating the liberal and pluralistic traditions of nationalism. Alain Dieckhoff introduces an indispensable collection of work for anyone dealing with questions of identity, ethnicity, and nationalism.

Neutralists have argued that there is something illiberal about linking access to gift-like resources to work requirements. The central liberal motivation for basic income is to provide greater freedom to choose between different ways of life, including options attaching great importance to non-market activities and disposable time. As argued by Philippe Van Parijs, even those spending their days surfing should be fed. This article examines Van Parijs' dual commitment to a ‘real libertarian’ justification of basic income and the public enforcement (...) of a strong work ethos, which serves to boost the volume of work at a given rate of taxation. It is argued (contra Van Parijs) that this alliance faces the neutrality objection: the work ethos will largely offset the liberal gains of unconditionality by radically restricting the set of permissible options available. A relaxed, non-obligatory ethos might avoid this implication. This view, however, is vulnerable to the structural exploitation objection: feasibility is achieved only because some choose to do necessary tasks to which most people have the same aversion. In light of these objections, the article examines whether there is a morally untainted feasibility path consistent with liberal objectives. (shrink)

This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

How can we equalize opportunities while respecting people’s freedom? According to a view that I call libertarian resourcism, people’s fair shares of resources should normally take the form of unconditional, individual cash endowments, thereby supporting the freedom to do whatever they might want to do. This view, of which Van Parijs’ philosophy of ‘real freedom for all’ is the clearest and most well-known example, has become a powerful weapon to criticize work conditionality as unfair and perfectionistic (or illiberal), and to (...) motivate political struggles for the emancipation of the precariat. However, similar views are also expressed in many other justifications of basic income that stress the strategic importance of exit-based empowerment. This article argues that the reliance of these theories on concepts and assumptions of libertarianism makes them ill-equipped to justify core requirements of social empowerment, and to identify the forms of agency needed to sustainably advance the radical objectives they favour. The implication of this is not to reject the link between social justice and unconditional resource endowments but to dissociate the justification and design of such measures from libertarian ways of thinking. (shrink)

The human genome consists of more than 3 billion base pairs built from four different nucleotides that hold the genetic information for the entire organism. The genome is commonly divided into coding and noncoding DNA sequences, with coding DNA sequences defined as those that can be transcribed into mRNA and translated into proteins, or genes. The genetic code determines the impact of a nucleotide change in a gene on the protein sequence and function, and it is essential to understanding the (...) genetic basis of many congenital diseases. The Human Genome Project has accelerated our understanding about the genome function. We now know that our genome consists of 20,000–25,000 genes that occupy only.. (shrink)

Recently proposed models of risky choice imply systematic violations of transitivity of preference. This study explored whether people show the predicted intransitivity of the two models proposed to account for the certainty effect in Allais paradoxes. In order to distinguish “true” violations from those produced by “error,” a model was fit in which each choice can have a different error rate and each person can have a different pattern of preferences that need not be transitive. Error rate for a choice (...) is estimated from preference reversals between repeated presentations of the same choice. Results showed that few people repeated intransitive patterns. We can retain the hypothesis that all participants were transitive. (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

In the moral vacuum and world of shifting values following World War I, Aldous Huxley was both a sensitive reflector and an articulate catalyst. This work provides a highly illuminating analysis of Huxley's evolution from skeptic to mystic. As Milton Birnbaum shows, in a perceptive interpretation of Huxley's poetry, fiction, essays and biographies--what evolved in Huxley's moral and intellectual pilgrimage was not so much a change in direction as a shift in emphasis. Even in the sardonic Huxley of the (...) 1920s and 1930s, there is a moral concern. In the later Huxley, there are traces of the satirical skepticism which delighted his readers in the decades preceding World War II.A man of letters, a keen observer, seeker of new ways while profoundly knowledgeable in the truths of ancient wisdom, Huxley tried to achieve a symbiotic synthesis of the best of all worlds. In clarifying and interpreting Huxley's intellectual, moral, and philosophical development, Birnbaum touches upon all the subjects that came under the scrutiny of a singularly encyclopedic mind.This book is of great worth to those interested both in Huxley the brilliant satirist and in Huxley the seeker of salvation. In his search, Huxley typified the modern quest for values. Milton Birnbaum's study is an invaluable guide in that journey. His new introduction takes account of research and analysis of Huxley that has occurred since this book's original publication. (shrink)

Self-Ownership, Liberal Neutrality and the Realm of Freedom: New Reflections on the Justification of Basic Income. A review of Axel Gosseries and Yannick Vanderborght (eds), Arguing about Justice: Essays for Philippe Van Parijs.

What insight is there to gain when Adorno is put “beside himself”? The humoristic tendency of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s famous essay on the culture industry highlights the non-categorical modalities borrowed from the avant-gardes and psychoanalysis that disorganize Kant’s supposedly invariant concepts a priori: partialities of the driven montage, allegorisation. This tendency opens on the decentering consequences for the thinking of another subject, beyond the logic of suspicion and the melancolic jouissance that block it.