Théorie économique élaborée dans les années 1960, l'hypothèse d'instabilité financière postule que le système capitaliste est instable par essence : toute phase d'équilibre apparent ne fait qu'encourager les acteurs du marché à prendre davantage de risques, qui provoquent de nouvelles crises. Décriée à l'époque, cette analyse est aujourd'hui considérée comme l'une des plus à même d'expliquer la crise actuelle. Elle offre une première approche passionnante d’une oeuvre dense, jusqu’à présent méconnue en France.

In their important book, Causation in the Law, H. L. A. Hart and Tony Honore argue that causation in the law is based on causation outside the law, that the causal principles the courts rely on to determine legal responsibility are based on distinctions exercised in ordinary causal judgments. A distinction that particularly concerns them is one that divides factors that are necessary or sine qua non for an effect into those that count as causes for purposes of legal responsibility (...) and those that do not. Hart and Honore claim that this distinction is often one of fact rather than of legal policy, and that the factual basis is to be found in the ordinary distinction we draw between causes and 'mere conditions'. If this claim is correct, we may hope to illuminate the legal distinction by articulating the principles behind the ordinary one. This is a challenging task since, as in the case of most cognitive skills, we are far better at making particular judgments than we are at stating the general principles that underlie them. Hart and Honore devote the first part of their book to this difficult task. We have, then, two large projects. One is to articulate our ordinary notion of causation, especially the distinction between cause and mere condition. This is the project of constructing an 'ordinary model'. The other is to argue for what we may call the 'shared concept claim', the claim that the concept of legal cause is based on the ordinary notion of causation, that 'causal judgments, though the law may have to systematize them, are not specifically legal. They appeal to a notion which is part of everyday life' (1985, p. lv; all references to follow are from this edition). This essay will focus on Hart and Honore's ordinary model, rather than on their shared concept claim. In my judgment, Hart and Honore's case for some version of the shared concept claim is strong, so they are right to maintain that a better understanding of our ordinary notion of.. (shrink)

Thirteen leading contributors offer new essays in honour of the eminent philosopher and Wittgenstein scholar Peter Hacker. They discuss issues in the interpretation of Wittgenstein, investigate central topics in the history of analytic philosophy, and explore and assess Wittgensteinian ideas about language, mind, action, ethics, and religion.

I shall be mainly concerned with the question ‘What is personal propositional knowledge?’. This question is obviously quite narrowly focused, in three respects. In the first place, there is impersonal as well as personal knowledge. Second, a distinction is often drawn between propositional knowledge and practical knowledge. And third, as well as asking what knowledge is, it is also possible to ask whether and how knowledge of various kinds can be acquired: causal knowledge, a priori knowledge, moral knowledge, and so (...) on. I shall dwell briefly on each of these three points. First, there is the distinction between personal and impersonal knowledge – in other words, between the psychological concept of knowledge and the social one.1 We use the concept of knowledge to describe the cognitive condition of individuals; but we also use it to describe the progress of scientific and historical research. So for example we can speak or enquire about the state of knowledge in a particular field of biology or history. And if we do so, we are evidently not concerned with what anyone in particular knows about, say, the genetics of fruit flies or the career of Charlemagne, but rather with what the scientific or academic community knows. Needless to say, there is a close connection between personal and impersonal knowledge. But ‘It is known that p’ does not simply mean ‘Someone or other. (shrink)

In 1931, Wittgenstein listed ten influences on his intellectual development: ‘I don’t believe I have ever invented a line of thinking,’ he wrote, ‘I have always taken one over from someone else. I have simply straightway seized upon it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.’ (CV, 1980, p.19) The order in which these names occur is probably the order in which Wittgenstein encountered them, (...) or their ideas. As we shall see, the title of this article derives from Kraus. But its subject is Loos’s influence on Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This paper argues that we need to distinguish between two different ideas of a reason: first, the idea of a premise or assumption, from which a person’s action or deliberation can proceed; second, the idea of a fact by which a person can be guided, when he modifies his thought or behaviour in some way. It argues further that if we have the first idea in mind, one can act for the reason that p regardless of whether it is the (...) case that p , and regardless of whether one believes that p . But if we have the second idea in mind, one cannot act for the reason that p unless one knows that p . The last part of the paper briefly indicates how the second idea of a reason can contribute to a larger argument, showing that it is better to conceive of knowledge as a kind of ability than as a kind of belief. (shrink)

While Minsky’s work is often identified with the critique of financial speculation, this paper argues that there is a different side to his work. We argue that Minsky can be read as offering a post-foundational perspective on political economy that recognizes the speculative dimension of all economic activity. This post-foundational reading allows for an understanding of neoliberal policymaking in terms of the provision of liquidity to too-big-to-fail constituencies. The article discusses how some segments of Western societies have been (...) able to participate in the inflationary logic of this too-big-to-fail dynamic, whereas others are locked out and face increasingly tight liquidity constraints. This differential access to liquidity is an increasingly central aspect of the stratifying rationality of contemporary capitalism. By connecting Minsky’s insights into the temporal logic of capital to key issues in social theory, the article presents a new theorization of (il)liquid life that advances on extant accounts. (shrink)

The contents of this book were originally published in the September 1966 issue of Scientific American. A more appropriate-but perhaps less "catchy"—title would have been "Computers." The book is all about them and what they can—and cannot—do. Conspicuously missing is a chapter on the underlying mathematical theories of information, control, and computation. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of interesting material between the covers of this book. Of greatest concern to philosophers are the chapters on "Information" by John McCarthy, "Computer (...) Logic and Memory" by David C. Evans, "The Uses of Computers in Science" by Anthony G. Oettinger, "The Uses of Computers in Education" by Patrick Suppes, and "Artificial Intelligence" by Marvin L. Minsky. The first of these consists of a brief history of computing machines, an outline of the general principles of digital computers, and an interesting discussion of some of the moral and social issues which such machines raise. Evans' article is a popular description of binary logics and logic devices. The present reviewer has used some of the material in this chapter as embellishments in an undergraduate course in logic. Oettinger's article describes the novel way in which computers may aid in the formation of scientific theories. The paper by Suppes ought to be required reading for members of the "Teaching machines undermine intellectual development" school of thought. Finally, a philosopher of mind might have a field day with some of the remarkable and outrageous notions in Minsky's article; what, for example, is the difference between "thinking" and "exhibiting intelligence"? In sum, this is a stimulating book about a technological development which, for good or ill, is going to affect all of us.—H. P. K. (shrink)

This introduction explains the logic of bringing together the perspectives of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi to analyze processes of financialization. Although Minsky and Polanyi have very different intellectual trajectories, there are important complementarities in their approaches. The introduction also explains the focus of the three papers in this special section written by Kurtuluş Gemici, Lucas Kirkpatrick, and David Woodruff.

There is a surprising amount of philosophy underlying the way we choose to measure poverty, including in the matter of the seemingly uncomplicated task of specifying an income poverty line. The present essay examines some of these issues of fact, value, and reasoning as they apply to the enterprise of assessing magnitudes of, and trends in, global money-metric poverty.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Hyman (1999, 2006) argues that knowledge is best conceived as a kind of ability: S knows that p iff S can φ for the reason that p. Hyman motivates this thesis by appealing to Gettier cases. I argue that it is counterexampled by a certain kind of Gettier case where the fact that p is a cause of the subject’s belief that p. One can φ for the reason that p even if one does not know that p. (...) So knowledge is not best conceived as an ability of this kind. (shrink)

Numerous U.S. cities suffered immense fiscal strain following the subprime mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2007–8. Diminished revenues, tightened credit, and speculative financing that went bad in the aftermath fueled widespread fiscal distress on the local scale. Although the current moment resembles fiscal crises that crested in cities in the 1970s–90s, two factors distinguish the current period. First, municipal affairs have become thoroughly financialized—dominated by speculative securities and volatile debt arrangements—such that local crisis can no longer be understood apart (...) from financial market instability. Second, local fiscal politics have become increasingly removed from democratic oversight and control. This de-democratization hinders the capacity of political communities to reregulate markets and rebuild urban communities. An analytic model derived from the work of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi emphasizes how cities become ensnared in a “financial instability” cycle and how communities seek to protect themselves by way of the “double movement.”. (shrink)

In this Article I argue that the global credit crunch of 2007-2009 is the result of the multifaceted phenomenon of liquidity illusion. Fundamentally, the problem of liquidity illusion derives from the hollow conceptualization of "liquidity" in mainstream financial theory and practice. Represented most recently by the market completion theory, this paradigm has led to a widespread misunderstanding of the dynamics of the relationship between the process of financial innovation and the liquidity of the financial system. In order to unpack the (...) political economy of liquidity illusion from other factors in the leadup to the global credit crunch, this Article builds upon Hyman Minsky’s vision of financial innovation and crisis. Challenging mainstream views of the liquidity-enhancing process of financial innovation, I identify the three pillars of liquidity illusion in the recent 2002-2007 bout of securitization: a) the paradigm of self-regulating finance; b) the role of Ponzi finance; and c) the function of private authority, namely credit rating agencies. (shrink)

From the Preface: "The majority of the papers contained in this volume was delivered in the fall of 1978 at The Catholic University of America as part of the Machette series of lectures on Aristotle. Although collections of essays on Aristotle are hardly lacking at present, this volume presents new studies which, it is hoped, give some idea of the variety of philosophical perspectives in which Aristotle has held and continues to hold great interest and of the scholarly analysis needed (...) in order to reach a better understanding of a difficult author." • CONTENTS: 1. Categories in Aristotle, Michael Frede • 2. Definitions in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo • 3. Aristotle and Galileo: The Uses of ΥΠΟΘΕΣΙΣ (suppositio) in Scientific Reasoning, William A. Wallace • 4. Aristotle and the History of Greek Scepticism, A. A Long • 5. Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators, Gérard Verbeke • 6. ΕΙΔΗ in Aristotle's Earlier and Later Theories of Substance, John A. Driscol • 7. Averroes as Commentator on Aristotle's Theory of the Intellect, Arthur Hyman • 8. Aristotle's Method of Ethics, Terence Irwin • 9. Goodness and Human Aims in Aristotle's Ethics, Nicholas P. White • 10. Aristotle on the Essence of Happiness, Daniel T Devereux • 11. The ΚΑΛΟΝ in Aristotelian Ethics, Joseph Owens • 12. Telos and Teleology in Aristotelian Ethics, Henry B Veatch. (shrink)

Biomedical science has been remarkably successful in explaining illness by categorizing diseases and then by identifying localizable lesions such as a virus and neoplasm in the body that cause those diseases. Not surprisingly, researchers have aspired to apply this powerful paradigm to addiction. So, for example, in a review of the neuroscience of addiction literature, Hyman and Malenka (2001, p. 695) acknowledge a general consensus among addiction researchers that “[a]ddiction can appropriately be considered as a chronic medical illness.” Like (...) other diseases, “Once addiction has taken hold, it tends to follow a chronic course.” (Koob and La Moal 2006, p. ?). Working from this perspective, much effort has gone into characterizing the symptomology of addiction and the brain changes that underlie them. Evidence for involvement of dopamine transmission changes in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) have received the greatest attention. Kauer and Malenka (2007, p. 844) put it well: “drugs of abuse can co-opt synaptic plasticity mechanisms in brain circuits involved in reinforcement and reward processing”. Our goal in this chapter to provide an explicit description of the assumptions of medical models, the different forms they may take, and the challenges they face in providing explanations with solid evidence of addiction. <br>. (shrink)

Matthew Boyle has defended an account of doxastic self-knowledge which he calls “Reflectivism”. I distinguish two claims within Reflectivism: that believing that p and knowing oneself to believe that p are not two distinct cognitive states, but two aspects of the same cognitive state, and that this is because we are in some sense agents in relation to our beliefs. I find claim compelling, but argue that its tenability depends on how we view the metaphysics of knowledge, something Boyle does (...) not consider. I argue that in the context of the standard account of knowledge as a kind of true belief – what I call the Belief Account of knowledge – the claim faces serious problems, and that these simply disappear if we instead adopt an Ability Account of knowledge, along the lines of that defended by John Hyman. I find claim less compelling, and a secondary aim of the paper is to suggest that once we reject the Belief Account of knowledge, and move over to an Ability Account, there is no explanatory role for left to play. (shrink)

The proceedings of the Seventh Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference at the University of Nottinghamin April 1997. Contents: Material culture abd the question of social continuity in Roman Britain ( M. Grahame ); Motivation and ideologies of Romanization ( R. Haussler ); The Romanization of Italy: global accluaturation or cultural bricolage? ( N. Terrenato ); Social change and architectural diversity in Roman period Britain ( S. Clarke ); Reflections in the archaeological record of social developements of Lepcis Magna, Tripolitania ( F. (...) Condron ); Theoretical influences on two reports of Romano-British land division ( J. W. M. Peterson ); Phenoemological perspectives on roads in the landscape ( P. Rush ); The ancient monument in Romano-British ritual practices ( C. Forcey ); The sequence of ritual in cremation burials of the Roman period ( J. Pearce ); Burial and gender in alte and sub-Roman Britain ( D. Petts ); Brooches and identity in 1st century AD Britain ( S. Jundi and J. D. Hill ); A persional view of archaeology and equal opportunities' ( E. Scott ); Clavus annalis, defixiones and minski ( D. Dungworth ); Pottery and paradigms in the early western empire ( J. W. J. Hawthorne ). (shrink)

The uniform halting problem (UH) can be stated as follows.Give a decision procedure which for any given Turing machine (TM) will decide whether or not it has an immortal instantaneous description (ID).An ID is called immortal if it has no terminal successor. As it is generally the case in the literature (see e.g. Minsky [3, p. 118]) we assume that in an ID the tape must be blank except for some finite numbers of squares. If we remove this restriction (...) the UH becomes the immortality problem (IP). The UH should not be confused with the initialised uniform halting problem (whether or not a TM has an immortal ID when started in a specified state) which can easily be shown to be undecidable (see e.g. Minsky [3, p. 151]). (shrink)

The uniform halting problem (UH) can be stated as follows:Give a decision procedure which for any given Turing machine (TM) will decide whether or not it has an immortal instantaneous description (ID).An ID is called immortal if it has no terminal successor. As it is generally the case in the literature (see e.g. Minsky [4, p. 118]) we assume that in an ID the tape must be blank except for some finite number of squares. If we remove this restriction (...) the UH becomes the immortality problem (IP). (shrink)

Par leurs contributions à ce livre, vingt-trois chercheur.e.s rendent hommage à leur collègue qui souvent fut aussi leur professeure, l’historienne juive Paula Hyman. Comme le rappelle Richard I. Cohen dans son avant-propos, P. Hyman fut une historienne des Juifs de France et les publications qu’elle a consacrées à la vie des Juifs dans la France contemporaine ont constitué un apport considérable à ce champ de recherches. Toutefois le volume dont il est ici question célèbre P. Hyman pour (...) ses... (shrink)

Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theories is equally undermined by presently unconceived alternatives as well-confirmed merely by the existing evidence, so long as this transient predicament recurs for each theory and body (...) of evidence we consider. The historical record supports the claim that this recurrent, transient underdetermination predicament is our own. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the corporate social performance of an organization and three variables: the size of the organization, the financial performance of the organization, and the environmental performance of the organization. By empirically testing data from 1987 to 1992, the results of the study show that a firm's corporate social performance is indeed impacted by the size of the firm, the level of profitability of the firm, and the amount of pollution emissions (...) released by the firm. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the meta-ontology of AI systems with human-level intelligence, with us denoting such AI systems as AI E. Meta-ontology in philosophy is a discourse centered on ontology, ontological commitment, and the truth condition of ontological theories. We therefore discuss how meta-ontology is conceptualized for AI E systems. We posit that the meta-ontology of AI E systems is not concerned with computational representations of reality in the form of structures, data constructs, or computational concepts, while the ontological (...) commitment of AI E systems is directed toward what exists in the outside world. Furthermore, the truth condition of the ontology (which is meta-ontological assumption) of AI E systems does not require consistency with closed conceptual schema or ontological theories but rather with reality, or in other words, “what is the world” (Smith, 2019, p.57). In addition, the truth condition of AI E systems is verified through operational success rather than by coherence with theories. This work builds on ontological postulates about AI systems that were formulated by Brian Cantwell Smith (2019). (shrink)

It is fortunate for my purposes that English has the two words ‘almighty’ and ‘omnipotent’, and that apart from any stipulation by me the words have rather different associations and suggestions. ‘Almighty’ is the familiar word that comes in the creeds of the Church; ‘omnipotent’ is at home rather in formal theological discussions and controversies, e.g. about miracles and about the problem of evil. ‘Almighty’ derives by way of Latin ‘omnipotens’ from the Greek word ‘pantokratōr’; and both this Greek word, (...) like the more classical ‘pankratēs’, and ‘almighty’ itself suggest God's having power over all things. On the other hand the English word ‘omnipotent’ would ordinarily be taken to imply ability to do everything; the Latin word ‘omnipotens’ also predominantly has this meaning in Scholastic writers, even though in origin it is a Latinization of ‘pantocratōr’. So there already is a tendency to distinguish the two words; and in this paper I shall make the distinction a strict one. I shall use the word ‘almighty’ to express God's power over all things, and I shall take ‘omnipotence’ to mean ability to do everything. (shrink)

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)

This fourth and final volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ covers pp 428-693 of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis.

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery.For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between mind or (...) soul and body.This study argues that Plato's analysis of personhood is intended to cohere with his two-world metaphysics as well as a radical separation of knowledge and belief. Gerson demonstrates that Plato's account of persons plays a key role not just in his theory of mind, but in his theory of knowledge, his metaphysics, and his ethics. A proper understanding of Plato's account of persons must therefore place it in the context of his doctrines in these areas. Knowing Persons fills a significant gap by showing the way to such an understanding. (shrink)

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)