In the last few decades, the emergence of mid-scale, intermediated marketing channels that fall between commodity and direct markets has attracted growing interest from scholars for their potential to preserve small and mid-sized farms while scaling up alternative agrifood sourcing. When such mid-scale supply chains are formed among multiple business partners with shared ethics or values related to the qualities of the food and the business relationships along the supply chain, they may be termed “values-based supply chains (VBSCs).” Most of (...) the research on VBSCs to date has relied primarily on a case study approach that investigates the performance of VBSCs from the perspective of VBSC founders or leaders. In contrast, this research seeks out the perspectives of farmers who participate in VBSCs. A nationwide farmer survey conducted in 2017 offers original insights on farmer motivations for participating in VBSCs and how they are being used by farmers relative to other marketing channels. We find that VBSCs serve farms of all sizes. Overall, smaller farms were more likely to market a higher percentage of overall sales through their VBSC and more likely to rank their VBSC as one of the top three marketing channels in their portfolio. But it was the larger farms that were more likely to perceive VBSC-specific benefits. Our findings confirm that while there is a limited volume of product that such regional supply chains can currently handle, farmers view VBSCs as a valuable marketing option that aligns with their own values and preserves their product’s identity. (shrink)

It is shown that the expressive power of second-order propositional modal logic whose modalities are S4.2 or weaker is the same as that of second-order predicate logic.

Cet article illustre de façon concrète et détournée les relations villes-campagnes. Les circuits courts alimentaires sont considérés comme vertueux (réduction des intermédiaires et des distances, « locavorisme »), mais qu’en est-il vraiment de leur durabilité, compte-tenu de leur complexité logistique? Pour le producteur, premier maillon de la chaîne, la commercialisation et le transport représentent travail et coûts supplémentaires. Les circuits courts ne sont pas moins énergivores : flux entre fermes et points de vente fragmentés en une multitude de petits volumes. (...) L’auteur propose plusieurs formes d’organisation pour pallier à ces inconvénients : mutualiser le transport entre producteurs partenaires et promouvoir une coopération logistique territoriale, consolider le transfert de flux en le déléguant à un prestataire extérieur. L’enjeu de la logistique et le rôle des intermédiaires non commerciaux sont clé. (shrink)

Les prostituées n’échappent pas à la répression et à l’enfermement généralisés organisés par la Monarchie Absolue à la fin du XVIIe siècle. Des institutions nommées « Dames Blanches », « Bon Pasteur » ou « Pénitentes » apparaissent dans la plupart des capitales diocésaines. Afin de ramener ces femmes sur le chemin de la vertu, les autorités font rapidement appel à des religieuses pour diriger ces communautés. Le fonctionnement de deux de ces « couvents », ceux, ceux de Poitiers et (...) La Rochelle, au « siècle des Lumières » est ici étudié. (shrink)

Interroger la diversité des lectures antiques du Parménide pour dégager l’unité et la singularité du néoplatonisme, telle est l’ambition, pleinement tenue, du beau livre de Frédéric Fauquier. Celui-ci se donne comme une passionnante enquête méta-exégétique, qui ne se contente pas de retracer l’histoire des interprétations mais en dégage les stratégies et la visée. « Dès son origine, écrit F. Fauquier, le néoplatonisme est tradition, puisqu’il projette son origine dans l’œuvre de Platon » (p....

Despite the growing autonomy of schools in the school systems of developed countries and the increase in the educational prerogatives of head teachers, the latter, particularly in France, have a relatively weak legitimacy to regulate and transform the teaching practices of teachers. Faced with this difficulty, they are regularly obliged to implement detour strategies in order to create the conditions for pedagogical change within the institution. In this article, we will show, through a qualitative study carried out in a French (...) secondary school, how the management team took advantage of the margin of maneuver left by the institution to experiment an innovative evaluation device without note. This experiment gave the school principal the opportunity to enroll, interest and temporarily stabilize a network of school actors (teachers and other staff) around local issues and mobilize them Transform teaching practices. The data collected were analyzed from the characteristics of the translation process theorized by Callon (1986). (shrink)

Le devenir des religieuses, lors de la Révolution française, est encore mal connu. L’historiographie, lorsqu’elle les aborde, insiste sur leurs complaisances supposées à l’égard des prêtres réfractaires et les montre volontiers en victimes de la Terreur (exemple des Carmélites de Compiègne). Ces éclairages successifs masquent la majorité des ex-religieuses qui s’adaptent et consentent à la sécularisation. Dans le cas étudié (le diocèse de Poitiers) les religieuses qui souhaitent le rester, souvent au risque de leur vie, sont une minorité. Le regard (...) porté sur ces femmes, prises dans le tourbillon de la Révolution, demeure trop attaché à leur voile. Il convient de lever celui-ci pour analyser, de plus près, les bouleversements provoqués par l’événement révolutionnaire, dans les trajectoires collectives et individuelles de ces religieuses. (shrink)

The acceptance of the concept of necessary linguistic cate­gories has given renewed prominence to the subject of ontology in contemporary discussions of language and logic. Jack Kaminsky, Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton, here contributes an important expo­sition of this school of thought. He examines the views of many philosophers who either admit or deny that ontological com­mitments are necessary, and he raises broad questions and shows why there is a compelling interest in the (...) relation of a formal language to the issue of ontological inquiry. (shrink)

We present a number of equivalent calculi for many-valued logics and prove soundness and strong completeness theorems. The calculi are obtained from the truth tables of the logic under consideration in a straightforward manner and there is a natural duality among these calculi. We also prove the cut elimination theorems for the sequent-like systems.

Here we studied how participants steer to intercept uniformly moving targets in a virtual driving task. We tested the hypothesis that locomotor interception behavior cannot fully be explained by a strategy of nulling rate of change in pertinent agent-target relations such as the target-heading angle or target’s bearing angle. In line with a previously reported observation and model simulations, we found that, under specific combinations of initial target eccentricity and target motion direction, locomotor paths revealed reversals in movement direction. This (...) phenomenon is not compatible with unique reliance on first-order information in the case of uniformly moving targets. We also found that, as expected, such reversals in movement direction were not observed consistently over all trials of the same experimental condition: their presence depended on the timing of the first steering action effected by the participant, with only early steering actions leading to reversals in movement direction. These particular characteristics of the direction-reversal phenomenon demonstrated here for a locomotor interception-by-steering task correspond to those reported for lateral manual interception. Together, these findings suggest that control strategies operating in manual and locomotor interception may at least share certain characteristics. (shrink)

Formal pragmatics plays an important, though secondary, role in modern analytical philosophy of language: its aim is to explain how context can affect the meaning of certain special kinds of utterances. During recent years, the adequacy of formal tools has come under attack, often leading to one or another form of relativism or antirealism. Our aim will be to extend the critique to formal pragmatics while showing that sceptical conclusions can be avoided by developing a different approach to the issues. (...) In particular, we will show that formal pragmatics cannot provide a complete account of how context affects the meaning of utterances, both on its own terms and when faced with evidence of important aspects of natural languages. The focal issue is the relevant kind of context in which pragmatics should examine utterances. Our contention will be that the relevant context of an utterance is determined by the function of that utterance, this function being dependent upon the primary function of language – to convey information. We will argue that the functions of utterances and of language are too broad to be caught by the tools of formal pragmatics of the sort advocated by Montague (1968, 1974), which are an extension the methods of traditional model-theoretic semantics. The particular formal approach we will use as the main example is David Kaplan’s position (1979, 1989), an extension of Montague’s program. (shrink)

Blumenberg has sometimes described his work as a phenomenology of history. The connection between history and phenomenology is particularly striking in the context of Blumenberg’s contributions to the philosophy of technology. In the course of his analysis of Husserl’s Krisis, Blumenberg develops, as my contribution aims to show, a conception of history in which complete technologization leads to a perfected lifeworld. Blumenberg formulates this partly explicitly within the framework of a three-stage model of history, but there are also implicit insights (...) in Blumenberg’s texts that seem to work with such a structuring of history. (shrink)

Les Eléments de théologie de Proclus constituent un monument philosophique radicalement singulier tant par son architecture propre que par la façon dont la tradition l'a revisité. Ordonnant, sous une forme géométrique, les principes de la métaphysique néoplatonicienne, ils ont à la fois constitué celle-ci en système et opéré comme le principal relais de sa transmission aux pensées byzantine, arabe et occidentale. Ce sont ces effets d'héritage et d'adaptation que les textes ici réunis visent à évaluer. Du Liber de causis à (...) Hegel en passant par Thomas d'Aquin, Dietrich de Freiberg, Giordano Bruno, les Platoniciens de Cambridge et Leibniz, se reconstitue ainsi une a grande chaîne des "êtres", réarticulée par la chaîne des raisons, et à chaque fois revivifiée par celle de la transmission. (shrink)

Plotinus' formulation of the problem of the individual should not be reduced to the question of whether or not one can accept Forms of Individuals. First, if Plotinus does indeed posit an intelligible foundation of individuality, there are no grounds to identify this foundation with a Form: it must rather be considered a logos. Second, we must, in addition to this intelligible "principle of distinction", allow for a sensible "principle of individuation": the living body. Finally, we have to distinguish a (...) third level: that of the hêmeis, the individual as a person, capable of freedom and consciousness. This latter's compatibility with the other two seems problematic, so that the real difficulty may lie in this tension, in Plotinus' thought, between an ontological and an ethical concept of the individual. (shrink)

Religious beliefs, it has been noted, are often hard to disprove. While this would be a shortcoming for beliefs whose utility was connected to their accuracy, it is actually necessary in the case of beliefs whose function bears no connection to how accurate they are. In the case of religions and other ideologies that serve to promote prosocial behaviour this leads to the need to protect belief systems against potentially disruptive counterevidence while maintaining their relevance. Religions turn out to be (...) particularly adept at this because of the use they make of existing cognitive by-products to make them plausible without exposingthem overly to investigation. (shrink)

Both science and religion are human endeavours that recruit and modify pre-existing human capacity to engage in epistemic vigilance. However, while science relies upon a focus on content vigilance, religion focusses on source vigilance. This difference is due, in turn, to the function of religious claims not being connected to their accuracy – unlike the function of scientific claims. Understanding this difference helps to understand many aspects of scientific and religious institutions.

"Konrad Talmont-Kaminski offers a very thoughtful and thought-provoking critique of the field and an alternative approach to magic, religion, and science that should spark some debate and further research Talmont-Kaminski has thrown down a challenge to the mainstream of anthropological thought about religion, and it is a challenge that we necessarily and gladly pick up." -- Anthropology Review Database "A philosophical naturalist's delight, this book - crisply written and carefully argued - weaves together insights about evolution, mind, and (...) society to explain how religions work and how secularisation threatens them." - Robert N. McCauley, Emory University Is religious belief a product of the mind? This book brings to light the multifaceted relationship between reason and religion. Religion as Magical Ideology examines the relationship between rationality and supernatural beliefs arguing that such beliefs are products of evolution, cognition and culture. The book does not offer a false rapprochement between reason and religion; instead, it explores their interrelationship as a series of complex adaptations between cognitive and cultural processes. Exploring the nature of the tension between religious traditions and reason, Religion as Magical Ideology develops a dual inheritance theory of religion - which combines the cognitive byproduct and prosocial adaptation accounts - and analyses the connection between the function of a belief and the degree of protection it gets from potential counter-evidence. With discussion ranging from individual cognitive mechanisms, general functional considerations, to the limits of evolutionary and cognitive processes, the book offers readers a systematic account of how cognition shapes religious beliefs and practices. (shrink)

We present an embedding of the Lambek–Grishin calculus into an extension of the nonassociative Lambek calculus with negation. The embedding is based on the De Morgan interpretation of the dual Grishin connectives.

Les lectures plotinienne et proclusienne de Métaphysique Λ ne se résolvent pas dans ces résultats doctrinaux que sont la hiérarchisation de l’Intellect et de l’Un-Bien et l’harmonisation des causalités efficiente et finale. Pour les saisir tant dans leur différence que dans celle qui les oppose toutes deux aux lectures concordistes, il faut déplacer l’analyse du plan des doctrines à celui des concepts. Plus précisément, il faut demander comment Plotin et Proclus intègrent le concept qui, en Métaphysique Λ, condense la charge (...) polémique portée par Aristote contre Platon, à savoir le concept d’energeia. Ce dernier engage en effet une conception radicalement antiplatonicienne du principe premier, dont on montre qu’elle s’articule en quatre critiques fondamentales. On analyse dès lors les stratégies de lecture de Λ mises en oeuvre par Plotin et Proclus de façon à évaluer les angles de contreattaque qu’elles déterminent. Plutôt qu’à une harmonisation ou à une simple hiérarchisation, on a affaire, dans les deux cas quoique sous des modalités différentes, à une intégration dialectique qui en passe par la neutralisation de la charge polémique du concept d’energeia ainsi que par sa réélaboration, elle-même solidaire de modèles causaux distincts tant de celui de Platon que de celui d’Aristote. (shrink)

On propose ici une lecture de la Métaphysique inspirée de Ε, 2, 1026a33-b2, prenant la dunamis et l’energeia comme principal sens de l’être. Le couple conceptuel de l’en-puissance et de l’acte fournit ainsi à la fois le principe d’une réponse possible à la question disputée de la « science recherchée », et le fondement d’une ontologie singulière, que l’on caractérise comme une ontologie axiologique. On commence par analyser la signification de ces notions telle qu’elle se déploie en Métaphysique Δ et (...) Θ : au terme de cette analyse, l’acte apparaît comme nommant l’identité réelle, ou réalisée, de l’être et du bien, et l’en-puissance, cette identité comme à réaliser. On montre ensuite, en suivant Ζ et Η, comment le couple de la dunamis et de l’energeia, et non celui de la matière et de la forme, est au principe de la substance sensi­ble, puis, à partir de Λ (en particulier Λ, 5, 1071a3-6), comment la dunamis et l’energeia valent, par-delà les substances sensibles, comme les principes communs à toutes les substances, sous la modalité spécifique de l’analogie. Le couple de l’en-puissance et de l’acte assure ainsi à la fois la généralité du dis­cours ousiologique, et le primat réel du principe théologique (qu’Aristote désigne toujours comme acte, et jamais comme forme). On montre enfin com­ment dunamis et energeia fondent non seulement une ousiologie unitaire, mais aussi une ontologie générale, en ce qu’elles s’appliquent, sous certaines conditions, aux êtres mathématiques. On s’interroge, pour finir, sur la signi­fication de l’inversion, par Plotin, de la dunamis aristotélicienne, et de la désignation du Premier Principe non plus comme acte pur, mais comme « puissance de tout (δύναμις πάντων) ». En ce geste plotinien, on reconnaît l’origine d’un mouvement d’identification du divin non plus au bien, comme le faisait Aristote à travers la notion d’acte pur, mais à la puissance - à une puissance qui, ultimement, pourra être pensée comme excédentaire au bien. Comme la théologie de l’acte pur, cette ontologie axiologique de l’en-puissance et de l’acte est victime d’un oubli dont, en conclusion, est brièvement esquis­sée l’histoire. (shrink)