It is shown how to identify potential signatures of noncommutative geometry within the decay spectrum of a muon in orbit near the event horizon of a microscopic Schwarzschild black hole. This possibility follows from a re-interpretation of Moffat’s nonsymmetric theory of gravity, first published in Phys. Rev. D 19:3554, 1979, where the antisymmetric part of the metric tensor manifests the hypothesized noncommutative geometric structure throughout the manifold. It is further shown that for a given sign convention, the predicted signatures counteract (...) the effects of curvature-induced muon stabilization predicted by Singh and Mobed in Phys. Rev. D 79:024026, 2009. While it is unclear whether evidence for noncommutative geometry may become observable anytime soon, this approach at least provides a useful direction for future quantum gravity research based on the ideas presented here. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy discusses his life's work with Pierre-Philippe Jandin. As Nancy looks back on his philosophical texts, he thinks anew about democracy, community, jouissance, love, Christianity, and the arts.

“African thinking,” “African thought,” and “African philosophy.” These phrases are often used indiscriminately to refer to intellectual activities in and/or about Africa. This large field, which sits at the crossroads between analytic philosophy, continental thought, political philosophy and even linguistics is apparently limitless in its ability to submit the object “Africa” to a multiplicity of disciplinary approaches. This absence of limits has far-reaching historical origins. Indeed it needs to be understood as a legacy of the period leading to African independence (...) and to the context in which African philosophy emerged not so much as a discipline as a point of departure to think colonial strictures and the constraints of colonial modes of thinking. That the first exponents of African philosophy were Westerners speaks volumes. Placide Tempels but also some of his predecessors such as Paul Radin and Vernon Brelsford were the first scholars to envisage this extension of philosophy into the realm of the African “primitive.” The material explored in this article – Statues Also Die, Bantu Philosophy, The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa, and It For Others - resonates with this initial gesture but also with the ambition on part of African philosophers such as VY Mudimbe to challenge the limits of a discipline shaped by late colonialism and then subsequently recaptured by ethnophilosophers. Statues Also Die is thus used here as a text to appraise the limitations of African philosophy at an early stage. The term “stage,” however, is purely arbitrary and the work of African philosophers has since the 1950s often been absorbed by an effort to retrieve African philosophizing practices before, or away from, the colonial matrix. This activity has gained momentum and has been characterized by an ambition to excavate and identify figures and traditions that had hitherto remained unacknowledged: from Ptah-hotep in ancient Egypt and North-African Church fathers such as Saint Augustine, Tertullian and Arnobius of Sicca, to “falsafa”-practising Islamic thinkers, from the Ethiopian tradition of Zera Yacob and Walda Heywat, to Anton-Wilhelm Arno, the Germany-trained but Ghana-born Enlightenment philosopher. (shrink)

Economic Geography is the most complete, up-to-date textbook available on the important new field of spatial economics. This book fills a gap by providing advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the latest research and methodologies in an accessible and comprehensive way. It is an indispensable reference for researchers in economic geography, regional and urban economics, international trade, and applied econometrics, and can serve as a resource for economists in government. Economic Geography presents advances in economic theory that explain why, despite (...) the increasing mobility of commodities, ideas, and people, the diffusion of economic activity is very unequal and remains agglomerated in a limited number of spatial entities. The book complements theoretical analysis with detailed discussions of the empirics of the economics of agglomeration, offering a mix of theoretical and empirical research that gives a unique perspective on spatial disparities. It reveals how location continues to matter for trade and economic development, yet how economic integration is transforming the global economy into an economic space in which activities are performed within large metropolitan areas exchanging goods, skills, and information. Economic Geography examines the future implications of this evolution in the spatial economy and relates them to other major social and economic trends.Provides a complete introduction to economic geography Explains the latest theory and methodologies Covers the empirics of agglomeration, from spatial concentration measurement to structural estimations of economic geography models Includes history and background of the field Serves as a textbook for students and a resource for professionals. (shrink)

O presente texto apareceu pela primeira vez, sob o título de L'«Anstoss» fichtéen: essai d'élucidation d'une métaphore. In: Revue Philosophique de Louvain. Quatrième série, Tome 70, N°7, 1972. pp. 384-392.

L’article 1266-1 du projet de réforme du droit de la responsabilité civile présenté par la Chancellerie le 13 mars 2017 s’emploie à enrichir les « effets » de la responsabilité extracontractuelle d’une fonction répressive. Celle-ci se traduit par l’instauration d’une amende civile sanctionnant les fautes dites lucratives, affectée à un fonds public et non assurable. Cette proposition mérite assurément le débat, la nature juridique de cette amende l’inscrivant dans la matière pénale sans que le régime prévu par l’article 1266-1 tire (...) toutes les conséquences de cette inscription. L’efficacité de cette nouvelle sanction prête également à discussion, tant du point de vue du débiteur que du créancier de l’amende civile. (shrink)

According to one productive and influential approach to cognition, categorization, object recognition, and higher level cognitive processes operate on a set of fixed features, which are the output of lower level perceptual processes. In many situations, however, it is the higher level cognitive process being executed that influences the lower level features that are created. Rather than viewing the repertoire of features as being fixed by low-level processes, we present a theory in which people create features to subserve the representation (...) and categorization of objects. Two types of category learning should be distinguished. Fixed space category learning occurs when new categorizations are representable with the available feature set. Flexible space category learning occurs when new categorizations cannot be represented with the features available. Whether fixed or flexible, learning depends on the featural contrasts and similarities between the new category to be represented and the individual's existing concepts. Fixed feature approaches face one of two problems with tasks that call for new features: If the fixed features are fairly high level and directly useful for categorization, then they will not be flexible enough to represent all objects that might be relevant for a new task. If the fixed features are small, subsymbolic fragments (such as pixels), then regularities at the level of the functional features required to accomplish categorizations will not be captured by these primitives. We present evidence of flexible perceptual changes arising from category learning and theoretical arguments for the importance of this flexibility. We describe conditions that promote feature creation and argue against interpreting them in terms of fixed features. Finally, we discuss the implications of functional features for object categorization, conceptual development, chunking, constructive induction, and formal models of dimensionality reduction. Key Words: concept learning; conceptual development; features; perceptual learning; stimulus encoding. (shrink)

Pierre Maquet1,2,6, Steven Laureys1,2, Philippe Peigneux1,2,3, Sonia Fuchs1, Christophe Petiau1, Christophe Phillips1,6, Joel Aerts1, Guy Del Fiore1, Christian Degueldre1, Thierry Meulemans3, André Luxen1, Georges Franck1,2, Martial Van Der Linden3, Carlyle Smith4 and Axel Cleeremans5.