The article aims at assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the objections to Habermas’s epistemic conception of democracy raised by Thomas McCarthy in some of his essays. The author defends two ideas. First, he contends that McCarthy is mistaken in believing that democratic debates would not be a matter of consensus. In this regard, two arguments are raised, showing that the search for agreement and consensus by citizens in public forums can hardly be dismissed and that consensus can be invested (...) with many meanings in democratic life. Secondly, however, the author approves McCarthy when challenging Habermas’s epistemic claims regarding his theory of democracy. Not all democratic deliberations can be analysed in epistemic terms, in particular, debates on values. The pitfalls of any epistemic account of this form of deliberation are pointed out in the end of the essay. (shrink)

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...) Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories, and voting. Bayesian Epistemology is an essential tool for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines. (shrink)

The Tragedy of the Commons is often associated with an n-person Prisoner’s Dilemma. But it can also have the structure of an n-person Game of Chicken, an Assurance Game, or of a Voting Games (or a Three-in-a-Boat Game). I present three historical stories that document tragedies of the commons, as presented in Aristotle, Mahanarayan and Hume and argue that the descriptions of these historical cases align better with Voting Games than with any other games.

BackgroundThe purpose of this study is to assess the psychometric properties of the French version of the Positivity scale, a self-report measure of positivity, which is the tendency to view and address life and experience with a positive outlook. Positivity is seen as a latent factor underlying multiple cognitive concepts such as self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism.MethodsWe recruited 666 volunteers. They completed the P scale online, as well as self-report measures of psychological well-being, self-esteem, satisfaction with life, general health, and (...) personality dimensions. The study sample was randomly split into two sub-groups, one used for exploratory factor analysis and the other for confirmatory factor analysis.ResultsWe found conflictual results related to the uni-dimensionality of the French version of the P scale. We found good internal consistency and high concurrent validity.ConclusionThe French version of the P scale demonstrated good psychometric qualities and is a reliable tool that can now be used by French researchers and clinicians to assess positivity. (shrink)

_The VaKE Handbook: Theory and Practice of Values and Knowledge Education_ presents a theoretical model and many examples in various fields of education and training for the realization of the principle "Values without knowledge are blind, while knowledge without values is irresponsible".

We develop a probabilistic criterion for belief expansion that is sensitive to the degree of contextual fit of the new information to our belief set as well as to the reliability of our information source. We contrast our approach with the success postulate in AGM-style belief revision and show how the idealizations in our approach can be relaxed by invoking Bayesian-Network models.

This article proposes a number of models to examine through which mechanisms a population of autonomous agents could arrive at a repertoire of perceptually grounded categories that is sufficiently shared to allow successful communication. The models are inspired by the main approaches to human categorisation being discussed in the literature: nativism, empiricism, and culturalism. Colour is taken as a case study. Although we take no stance on which position is to be accepted as final truth with respect to human categorisation (...) and naming, we do point to theoretical constraints that make each position more or less likely and we make clear suggestions on what the best engineering solution would be. Specifically, we argue that the collective choice of a shared repertoire must integrate multiple constraints, including constraints coming from communication. Key Words: autonomous agents; colour categorisation; colour naming; connectionism; cultural evolution; genetic evolution; memes; origins of language; self-organisation; semiotic dynamics; symbol grounding. (shrink)

Given the current business environment, business managers and accountants are more likely to encounter situations with ethical implications. Hence, business and accounting education should prioritize ethical skills such as critical thinking. However, significant pedagogical challenges await those who wish to venture down this path. Despite new educational tools in business and accounting ethics, we believe that new activities are needed to improve the acquisition of skills in professional ethics among students. Thus, we developed experiential simulations of ethical dilemmas inspired from (...) what business managers and accountants typically encounter in their practice. More specifically, we created online simulations in the form of videos and interactive content. The purpose of these simulations is to help students experience the emotions that can be felt when faced with an ethical dilemma. They also provide a means of understanding the emotions of other characters and of thinking about how their actions affect others. (shrink)

This volume is the direct result of a conference in which a number of leading researchers from the fields of artificial intelligence and biology gathered to ...

There is a tendency in the literature on local digital media use and neighborhood outcomes to conceptualize Social Network Sites as mere transmission channels, thereby ignoring SNSs’ dynamics and limiting the understanding of their role in neighborhood life. Informed by Communication Infrastructure Theory and social media literature, we propose and test a model to investigate the association between the use of SNSs, appropriated as online neighborhood networks, and neighborhood sense of community. We administered a survey to Flemish online neighborhood network (...) users and found that active localized SNS use brings about an online sense of community and community awareness, which both independently lead to a neighborhood sense of community. Based on these findings, we argue that SNSs, appropriated as online neighborhood networks, function simultaneously as neighborhood hotspots in a neighborhood’s communication action context as well as community awareness media in a neighborhood’s storytelling network. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the rich affective texture of racism and (2) the diversity of what makes (...) racial ills morally wrong. Key Words: racism • emotions • implicit bias • psychology • racial ills • pluralism. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans Thérapie familiale, Genève, 2002, Vol. 23, n° 1, p. 21-34. Nous remercions Anne Courtois de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Résumé : Le temps familial, une question de rythmes ? Réflexions épistémologiques et cliniques. – La dimension temporelle a, pendant de longues années, été complètement évacuée par les différentes écoles de thérapie familiale. Aujourd'hui, l'histoire du groupe familial, l'évolution dans le temps de la relation thérapeutique est prise en compte. (...) - (...) Psychanalyse et psychothérapie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Les arts de la ruse constituent un champ exploratoire où se tissent et se recroisent des pratiques tant réflexives que non-réflexives: des tactiques animales de chasse ou de camouflage aux adresses agiles de scientifiques pour construire des théories pertinentes. Michel de Certeau, jésuite érudit, au carrefour des tournants linguistique et pragmatique de la fin du XXe siècle, a travaillé ce tissage insolite de pratiques à travers les sciences humaines, questionnant et braconnant tour à tour les ruses du théoricien et celles (...) de l'objet qu'il convoque : l'historien et le passé, l'ethnologue et la culture, le sociologue et le quotidien, le théologien et la mystique... L'étendue et la diversité des thèmes rigoureusement abordés par cet auteur inclassable lance un jeu d'adresses à ses lecteurs : Michel de Certeau nous demande à notre tour de ruser, autrement dit de saisir l'occasion de transformer le champ du savoir en évitant de tomber de Charybde en Scylla. Pour relever ce défi et y inviter, à leur tour, les lecteurs, cet ouvrage propose un "tango philosophique", danse par excellence d'une ruse permanente entre technique sophistiquée de pas et improvisation envoûtée, à partir des traces de pieds nus, laissés par Michel de Certeau, sur le bord de nos savoirs conquérants. Cette étude développe une expérimentation épistémologique des sciences humaines contemporaines. (shrink)

In this paper the author examines the main features of Jürgen Habermas's cosmopolitan view of the global political order. He specifically examines the importance Habermas accords respectively to individual rights and the nationstate in such an order. After demonstrating that a global political order founded on the defence of individual human rights rather than the nation-state is an assumption that should be taken seriously, the author maintains that it would be undesirable to attribute only a secondary role to the nation-sate. (...) In the second part of the paper, he demonstrates that the nation-state has a positive role to play in the global era, and that those who predict its imminent demise will have to revisit their positions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: The general aim of this paper is to question the idea that hermeneutic and critical social sciences have to be conceived as specific embodiments of the scientific enterprise. This idea is rather implicit in Habermas’s work, but has its grounds in his thesis about the argumentative unity of all sciences, upheld for the first time in 1973. Such a point of view turns out to be untenable for two reasons. First, the indiscriminating inclusion of the hermeneutic and critical social (...) sciences in scientific enterprise raises problems of consistency with regard to the systematic guidelines of The Theory of Communicative Action. Moreover, the thesis of argumentative unity of the sciences itself is incompatible with Habermas’s methodological conception of the role of Verstehen in the social sciences developed in section 1.4 of the book. Finally, the author argues that this conception calls for another understanding of the status and role of the hermeneutic and critical disciplines, which is outlined in some detail. (shrink)

Most current criticisms against the intervention in Iraq have tackled the two justifications articulated by the members of the coalition: that the United States had to neutralize the threats that Iraq generated for their own security and to the political stability in the Middle Eastand that the war in Iraq can be justified as a necessary stage in the war against international terrorism. The principal objection against justification is that it was, and remains, unfounded. Against justification, many have replied that (...) the intervention in Iraq had no connection,or at best had merely an indirect connection, with the fight against terrorism. In a recent text,Fernando Tesón claims that the American intervention in Iraq can nevertheless be morally justified as a case of humanitarian intervention. By “humanitarian intervention”, one must understand a coercive action taken by a state or a group of states inside the sphere of jurisdiction of an independent political community, without the permission of the latter, in order to preventor to end a massive violation of individual rights perpetrated against innocent persons which are not co-nationals inside this political community. I argue in this article that the American intervention in Iraq does not satisfy the conditions of a legitimate humanitarian intervention, as opposed to what Fernando Tesón claims. (shrink)

Il faut saluer, je pense, et avec bonheur, la parution récente de l’ouvrage Patriotisme constitutionnel et nationalisme. Sur Jürgen Habermas de Frédérick-Guillaume Dufour, un jeune auteur québécois qui semble plein de promesses. L’ouvrage s’inscrit à l’intérieur d’une vague de fond observable depuis quelques années déjà chez les chercheurs universitaires, tant au Canada qu’au Québec, qui s’intéressent de plus en plus aux travaux récents du philosophe allemand sur le droit et la démocratie délibérative, et tentent d’en tirer les implications pour l’analyse, (...) la compréhension, voire la mise en question, aussi bien du nationalisme québécois que du nationalisme canadienLe livre est d’autant plus pertinent qu’il n’existe pas, dans la littérature produite jusqu’ici, d’ouvrage systématique en langue française consacré à l’application des réflexions politiques de Habermas à la situation canadienne et québécoise. Il s’agit là, sauf erreur, du premier ouvrage d’une certaine ampleur consacré à la question. (shrink)

The literature on multiculturalism currently splits parties into two camps : those favorable to the uniform treatment of cultural differences and those favorable to their differential treatment. Brian Barry, perhaps of the most influential present supporters of the first camp, has recently developed a severe criticism of the second approach. I intend in this paper to examine the scope and limits of Barry’s own uniform treatment approach. First, I will present the grounds Barry has for supporting it. Second, I will (...) examine one of its most important difficulties, that of excluding the particular treatment of cultural differences on the grounds that they are a matter of choice. (shrink)

Tous inédits, les textes qui composent ce recueil examinent la mondialisation ainsi que les enjeux et les défis qui s'y rattachent, sous l'angle de la philosophie sociale et politique contemporaine. Prolongeant les débats qui ont actuellement cours dans ces disciplines, l'ouvrage traite des différentes facettes de la mondialisation. Les auteurs explorent d'abord les liens qu'elle entretient avec le capitalisme, l'impérialisme, ainsi qu'avec l'idéologie néolibérale. Ils abordent ensuite les questions de justice distributive en contexte international et évaluent la nature des obligations (...) morales qui en découlent du point de vue de l'impartialité, du partage des richesses entre les pays riches et les pays pauvres ainsi que du point de vue de la diversité linguistique des peuples. Puis, sur le plan politique, ils se penchent sur les formes d'organisation sociale adaptées au contexte de la mondialisation, sur l'avenir des villes globales et des nations déterritorialisées, sur l'idée d'un nationalisme cosmopolitique et sur le sort des nations sans Etat, tels le Québec. Enfin, ils soulèvent le problème des relations entre mondialisation et démocratie et examinent les possibilités offertes aux citoyens d'exercer leurs libertés politiques et de participer à des forums démocratiques au plan supranational. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper aims at providing a general assessment of Habermas’s recent positions on the place of religion in the public sphere. After reviewing and contrasting Rawls’s and Habermas’s respective positions on the issue, it argues that Habermas’s contribution raises some difficulties both theoretical and practical. At the theoretical level, it is shown that Habermas’s contribution poses a problem of coherence with respect to his more general conception of deliberative democracy. At the practical level, the soundness of Habermas’s view of (...) the respective roles expected of religious and secular citizens in the public sphere is brought into question. (shrink)

S'agissant du problème lié au statut de la connaissance humaine en général, la querelle du faillibilisme et du fondationnalisme n'est pas neuve. On peut même dire qu'elle parcourt l'histoire de la philosophie depuis ses tout débuts. Dans le contexte des préoccupations propres à la pensée contemporaine, cette querelle semble cependant se cristalliser autour de la question suivante : quel statut devons-nous aujourd'hui accorder à nos énoncés philosophiques? Pouvons-nous et devons-nous encore revendiquer pour ces énoncés, traditionnellement chargés d'établir les fondements et (...) les principes premiers, un statut ontologique, sinon transcendantal? Ou au contraire, le développement des sciences expérimentales modernes, ayant éveillé en nous de manière sans cesse plus aiguë la conscience de la précarité de nos connaissances, ne nous incite-t-il pas désormais à envisager les propositions philosophiques comme n'étant rien de plus, malgre leur prétention et leur visée, que des énoncés faillibles, relatifs à l'expérience ou à l'histoire? (shrink)

Les recherches poursuivies par les membres de l'école de Francfort depuis la seconde moitié des années quatre-vingt se signalent primordialement par l'intérêt porté au problème général des conditions d'application de l'éthique de la discussion au domaine du droit et de la politique. En témoignent les recueils publiés récemment par Karl-Otto Apel, en particulier Diskurs und Verantwortung et Zur Anwendung der Diskursethik in Politik, Recht und Wissenschaft, ainsi que l'ouvrage volumineux de J. Habermas consacré à la théorie du droit, Faktizität und (...) Geltung. Bien que non définitive, cette orientation de recherche n'en est pas moins suffisamment élaborée à l'heure actuelle pour permettre une évaluation. Le but du présent article sera plus spécialement de soumettre à un examen critique la voie de solution propre apportée par Apel à ce problème. Une thèse centrale sera défendue: celle suivant laquelle les difficultés que présente l'application de l'éthique communicationnelle au monde du droit et de la politique ne peuvent être entièrement solutionnées dans le cadre restreint de la théorie morale, mais exigent la transition à une théorie du droit et de la démocratie. (shrink)

The paper surveys the currently available axiomatizations of common belief (CB) and common knowledge (CK) by means of modal propositional logics. (Throughout, knowledge- whether individual or common- is defined as true belief.) Section 1 introduces the formal method of axiomatization followed by epistemic logicians, especially the syntax-semantics distinction, and the notion of a soundness and completeness theorem. Section 2 explains the syntactical concepts, while briefly discussing their motivations. Two standard semantic constructions, Kripke structures and neighbourhood structures, are introduced in Sections (...) 3 and 4, respectively. It is recalled that Aumann's partitional model of CK is a particular case of a definition in terms of Kripke structures. The paper also restates the well-known fact that Kripke structures can be regarded as particular cases of neighbourhood structures. Section 3 reviews the soundness and completeness theorems proved w.r.t. the former structures by Fagin, Halpern, Moses and Vardi, as well as related results by Lismont. Section 4 reviews the corresponding theorems derived w.r.t. the latter structures by Lismont and Mongin. A general conclusion of the paper is that the axiomatization of CB does not require as strong systems of individual belief as was originally thought- only monotonicity has thusfar proved indispensable. Section 5 explains another consequence of general relevance: despite the "infinitary" nature of CB, the axiom systems of this paper admit of effective decision procedures, i.e., they are decidable in the logician's sense. (shrink)

In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What (...) is Nudge? How is it different from social advertisement? Does Nudge induce genuine preference change? Does Nudge build moral character? Is there a moral difference between the use of Nudge as opposed to subliminal images to reach policy objectives? And what are the moral constraints on Nudge? (shrink)

:We address the question, in decision theory, of how the value of risky options should be assessed when they have no finite standard expected value, that is, where the sum of the probability-weighted payoffs is infinite or not well defined. We endorse, combine and extend the proposal of Easwaran to evaluate options on the basis of their weak expected value, and the proposal of Colyvan to rank options on the basis of their relative expected value.

Le but de notre article est de montrer que les écrits politiques récents de Jürgen Habermas permettent de jeter un éclairage neuf sur la situation politique du Québec. Après avoir rappelé les principaux traits de sa conception du nationalisme à la lumière de sa théorie délibérative de la démocratie, nous relevons les forces et les faiblesses de sa position. Nous montrons que ses forces consistent à rendre plausible l'idée que la reconnaissance des identités collectives n'est pas incompatible avec le système (...) des droits individuels et que le recours à des droits collectifs n'est ni utile, ni nécessaire. Ses faiblesses, quant à elles, consistent à sous-évaluer l'État-nation comme idéal politique légitime pour les nations minoritaires et, conséquemment, dans la supposition que leur intégration à des systèmes fédératifs ouverts est l'unique voie raisonnable de solution à leurs problèmes.The aim of our paper is to show that Jürgen Habermas's recent political writings enable us to throw a new light on Quebec's political situation. After having remembered the central features of his conception of nationalism in the light of his deliberative theory of democracy, we call attention to its strengths and weaknesses. Its strengths are to make plausible the compatibility between collective identities and individual rights while collective rights are seen as neither useful nor necessary. Its weaknesses are to underestimate the Nation-State as a legitimate political ideal for national minorities and to consider their integration into open federal systems as the unique reasonable way out of their problems. (shrink)

We show that it is not possible to extend the ranking of one-stage lotteries based on their weak-expectation to a reflexive and transitive relation on the collection of one- and two-stage lotteries that satisfies two basic axioms, the minimal value axiom and the reduction axiom. We propose an extension that satisfies only the first axiom. This ranking takes payoffs, their probabilities, and the tree structure into account.

As soon as we stop talking aloud, we seem to experience a kind of 'inner voice', a steady stream of verbal fragments expressing ongoing thoughts. What kind of information processing structures are required to explain such a phenomenon? Why would an 'inner voice' be useful? How could it have arisen? This paper explores these questions and reports briefly some computational experiments to help elucidate them.

Over the past 20 years business ethics in Europe witnessed a remarkable growth. Today business ethics is faced with two challenges. The first comes from the social sciences and consultants who have both reclaimed the topics of business ethics, regretfully often at the loss of the proper ethical perspective. The second comes from the remarkable rise of corporate social responsibility which has pushed aside the mainstream business ethics methodology with its emphasis on moral deliberation by the individual. These challenges can (...) be tackled by an institutional transformation in business ethics that links up to the long-standing European tradition of institutional analysis of the market. The second remedy is an enlargement of the research agenda in business ethics by coming closer to other parts of applied ethics where the business ethics view is at this moment grossly neglected. (shrink)

In “Judy Benjamin is a Sleeping Beauty” (2010) Bovens recognises a certain similarity between the Sleeping Beauty (SB) and the Judy Benjamin (JB). But he does not recognise the dissimilarity between underlying protocols (as spelled out in Shafer (1985). Protocols are expressed in conditional probability tables that spell out the probability of coming to learn various propositions conditional on the actual state of the world. The principle of total evidence requires that we not update on the content of the proposition (...) learned but rather on the fact that we learn the proposition in question. Now attention to protocols drives a wedge between the SB and the JB. We have shown that the solution to a close variant of the SB which involves a clear protocol is P*(Heads) = 1/3 and since Beauty’s has precisely the same information at her disposal in the original SB at the time that she is asked to state her credence for Heads, the same solution should hold. The solution to the JB, on the other hand, is dependent on Judy’s probability distribution over protocols. One reasonable protocol yields P(Red) = 1/2, but Judy could also defend alternative values or a range of values in the interval [1/3, 1/2] depending on her probability distribution over protocols. (shrink)

We address the question of how finitely additive moral value theories (such as utilitarianism) should rank worlds when there are an infinite number of locations of value (people, times, etc.). In the finite case, finitely additive theories satisfy both Weak Pareto and a strong anonymity condition. In the infinite case, however, these two conditions are incompatible, and thus a question arises as to which of these two conditions should be rejected. In a recent contribution, Hamkins and Montero (2000) have argued (...) in favor of an anonymity-like isomorphism principle and against Weak Pareto. After casting doubt on their criticism of Weak Pareto, we show how it, in combination with certain other plausible principles, generates a plausible and fairly strong principle for the infinite case. We further show that where locations are the same in all worlds, but have no natural order, this principle turns out to be equivalent to a strengthening of a principle defended by Vallentyne and Kagan (1997), and also to a weakened version of the catching-up criterion developed by Atsumi (1965) and by von Weizsäcker (1965). Footnotes1 For valuable comments, we would like to thank Marc Fleurbaey, Bart Capéau, Joel Hamkins, Barbara Montero, Tim Mulgan, and two anonymous referees for this journal. (shrink)