Successful trust-relations exist if the trustee reciprocates in accordance with his/her promises to the trustor’s unilateral cooperation. Using a parametric rational choice approach, Coleman shows that an egoist without a moral conscience may place trust in another unmoral egoist. Consequently, successful trust-relations between those actors are possible if strategic considerations play no role for individual decision-making. This paper focusses on such considerations for the emergence of those relations, given complete information (in the sense of common knowledge) of the players. Generally, (...) trust-relations are hard to establish if unmoral egoists take into account their strategic interdependence. It is shown that two different motivations of the trustee, viz., altruism and morality, may suffice to overcome the characteristic conflict between individual rationality and social efficiency in situations with strategically deciding actors. (shrink)

Catalogue of Cambodian and Burmese Pali Manuscripts. C.E. Godakumbura, assisted by U Tin Lwin, with contributions by Heinz Bechert and Heinz Braun. Catalogue of oriental manuscripts, xylographs, etc., in Danish collections, Vol. II part 1. The Royal Library, Copenhagen 1983. xxi + 153 pp. 12 plates. D.kr.350.

Chapter I: The Geometry of Visibles 1 . The N on- Euclidean Geometry of Visibles In the chapter "The Geometry of Visibles" in Inquiry into the Human Mind, ...

Since archaeology is fundamentally the study of the human past, which is what the word “archaeology” connotes according to its Greek etymology, it is part of the humanities. However, archaeologists work in teams with scientists and employ quantitative techniques and comparative methods of the social sciences; archaeologists are thus an academic hybrid and are pleased to live in the interstices of many disciplines. In this article we review the history of archaeology in the humanities and explore some new directions in (...) archaeological research. We discuss the enduring questions of origins of the antiquity of humanity, religion and art, the first agricultural villages, and the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. We also consider new agendas in archaeology: historical archaeology, landscapes in the past and present, material studies of the present, and how archaeologists are engaged in modern politics. (shrink)

Since the l960s, archaeology has become increasingly taught in universities and practiced on a growing scale by national and local heritage agencies throughout the world. This book addresses the criticisms of postmodernist writers about archaeology's social role, and asserts its intellectual importance and achievements in discovering real facts about the human past. It looks forward to the creation of a truly global consciousness of the origins of human societies and civilizations.

Many competent speakers initially judge that (i) is true and (ii) isfalse, though they know that (iii) is true. (i) Superman leaps more tallbuildings than Clark Kent. (ii) Superman leaps more tall buildings thanSuperman. (iii) Superman is identical with Clark Kent. Semanticexplanations of these intuitions say that (i) and (ii) really can differin truth-value. Pragmatic explanations deny this, and say that theintuitions are due to misleading implicatures. This paper argues thatboth explanations are incorrect. (i) and (ii) cannot differ intruth-value, yet (...) the intuitions are not due to implicatures, but ratherto mistakes in evaluating (i) and (ii). (shrink)

This book uses an incidence approach to look at the economic repercussions of birth defects. The authors investigate eighteen of the most clinically significant birth defects affecting 35,000 newborns each year in our country. Their assessments suggest that the annual cost of these eighteen birth defects, together, is more than eight billion dollars . The authors describe in detail their methodology and data sources while providing thorough accounts of each of the eighteen birth defects. Waitzman, Scheffler, and Romano break new (...) ground by using reports from the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program in order to provide cost estimates. They illustrate to the reader how cost estimates of specific birth defects can be used to justify prevention interventions and strategies. In chapter seven, they provide an important example, showing cost-benefit analysis of a program of folate supplementation of food to prevent neutral tube defects. Contents: List of Tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; The Application of Cost-of-Illness Methodology To Birth Defects; The Direct Medical Costs of Birth Defects; Nonmedical Direct Costs of Birth Defects: Developmental Services and Special Education; The Indirect Costs of Birth Defects; Premature Mortality and Heightened Morbidity; An Assessment of Total Costs and Policy Implications; Description of Birth Defects; Description of Major Data Sources; Index. (shrink)

When reproductive and genetic technologies spurred an extended German policy debate, the issues at stake went beyond the technologies to include the very meaning of “ethics” and the respective roles of ethicists and of the public in thinking about ethical questions.

Schopenhauer is famously abusive toward his philosophical contemporary and rival, Friedrich William Joseph von Schelling. This chapter examines the motivations for Schopenhauer’s immoderate attitude and the substance behind the insults. It looks carefully at both the nature of the insults and substantive critical objections Schopenhauer had to Schelling’s philosophy, both to Schelling’s metaphysical description of the thing-in-itself and Schelling’s epistemic mechanism of intellectual intuition. It concludes that Schopenhauer’s substantive criticism is reasonable and that Schopenhauer does in fact avoid Schelling’s errors: (...) still, the vehemence of the abuse is best perhaps explained by the proximity of their philosophies, not the distance. Indeed, both are developing metaphysics of will with full and conflicted awareness of the Kantian epistemic strictures against metaphysics. In view of this, Schopenhauer is particularly concerned to mark his own project as legitimate by highlighting the manner in which he avoids Schelling’s errors. (shrink)

Alexis Anne-Braun Dans cet article, je présente quelques-uns des enjeux du débat en philosophie contemporaine sur la photographie. Ce débat, comme cela a déjà été noté dans un certain nombre de publications récentes, est en fait hanté par une question sceptique, qui fut posée à la photographie dès son invention : si l’image photographique s’excepte du régime traditionnel de la représentation et si elle est bien le résultat d’une prise de vue automatique, en quel sens pouvons-nous encore dire qu’elle (...) est artistique? Il me semble que le concept goodmanien d’exemplification permet de répondre au défi lancé par le sceptique. J’essaie de montrer pourquoi. Plus encore, je m’emploie à montrer comment le concept goodmanien d’exemplification pourrait s’accommoder assez bien de la spécificité du médium photographique. (shrink)

Que ce soit à l’occasion d’un exercice académique obligé, dans les marges de l’activité théorique, ou bien qu’il s’agisse d’un exercice philosophique destiné à tester la cohérence et la solidité d’un « système », la philosophie produit du biographique, selon les modalités et les régimes discursifs les plus divers. Depuis l’Antiquité, des philosophes compilent discours et anecdotes, et font l’exégèse d’une doctrine dans une perspective tantôt apologétique, tantôt critique – que l’on songe, par...

Cet article porte sur les pratiques contemporaines d’écriture qui mêlent récit de soi et théorie. Je m’emploie à montrer qu’une intelligence du monde social (des rapports de classe, de genre, de race et d’autres formes de domination) s’exerce à l’étage des vécus singuliers. Ce n’est pas seulement que les gens sont différents les unes des autres – encore que j’insiste sur la vérité et la force d’une affirmation à première vue si banale –, mais aussi qu’un sens renouvelé de l’objectivité (...) s’obtient lorsque la production d’un savoir est réfléchie depuis la position particulière de celui qui l’énonce. Sans doute est-ce l’une des leçons fondamentales des épistémologies féministes. (shrink)

L’article de Nelson Goodman que nous traduisons ici, « Seven Strictures on Similarity», a été publié dans le recueil Problems and Projects [Goodman 1972]. Ce dernier ouvrage n’a pas fait l’objet d’une traduction exhaustive en français, sans doute parce qu’il contient nombre d’articles fort techniques, qui demandent une connaissance préalable des travaux de Goodman en logique, en épistémologie et en philosophie du langage. Cependant, plusieurs textes de ce recueil revêtent un intérêt majeur ta...

L’article de Nelson Goodman que nous traduisons ici, « Seven Strictures on Similarity», a été publié dans le recueil Problems and Projects [Goodman 1972]. Ce dernier ouvrage n’a pas fait l’objet d’une traduction exhaustive en français, sans doute parce qu’il contient nombre d’articles fort techniques, qui demandent une connaissance préalable des travaux de Goodman en logique, en épistémologie et en philosophie du langage. Cependant, plusieurs textes de ce recueil revêtent un intérêt majeur ta...

Vor allem die philosophische Religionskritik fokussiert sich zu oft auf die Kritik an der Annahme der Existenz Gottes. Dabei gerät aus dem Blick, dass Religionen nicht allein in Überzeugungen bestehen, sondern komplexe soziale Praktiken darstellen, die das Leben ihrer Gläubigen strukturieren, orientieren, stabilisieren und/oder irritieren. Die hier versammelten Beiträge thematisieren diesen Aspekt von Religion in Auseinandersetzung mit dem von Rahel Jaeggi konzipierten Modell einer "Kritik von Lebensformen". Dieser Band liefert damit einen Beitrag sowohl zur Religions-, als auch zur Sozialphilosophie."-- Back (...) cover. (shrink)

Die Studie untersucht die Entstehung der modernen Philosophiegeschichte, wie sie sich im Übergang vom Barock zur Aufklärung als philosophische Disziplin innerhalb des gelehrten Diskurses der historia literaria konstituierte. Die Auffassung, daß Philosophie ein Produkt menschlicher Verstandestätigkeit sei und mit dem Denken der Griechen beginne, erweist sich dabei als Resultat eines Traditionsbruchs, mit dem die entstehende Aufklärung sich vom christlichen Aristotelismus der Schulphilosophie sowie von den platonisch-hermetischen Spekulationen der Schwärmer und Pansophen absetzte. In der Umbruchphase zwischen Barock und Aufklärung entsteht so (...) der moderne philosophiegeschichtliche Kanon, der sich fundamental von der zuvor gültigen historischen Logik der Wissenschaftsgeschichte unterscheidet. Die Geschichte der Philosophie wird nun nicht länger als Sammelbecken unterschiedlich perfekter Ausformulierungen einer archetypischen Weisheit verstanden, sondern im Kontext der 'Entdeckung der geschichtlichen Welt' als ein kontingenter temporaler Prozeß menschlicher Wissenschaftsentwicklung begriffen. Wie es zu dieser Entdeckung der Philosophiegeschichte kam und worin ihre wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Implikationen bestehen, ist Gegenstand der Darstellung, die gegenüber der bisherigen Forschung verstärkt die Interdependenzen zwischen theologischem, philosophischem, rechts- und literärgeschichtlichem Diskurs berücksichtigt. (shrink)

L’interactivité est communément perçue comme la marque caractéristique des technologies digitales et, par extension, de différentes formes de fictions, de médias ou d’œuvres numériques – de la littérature hypertextuelle et des jeux vidéo au net art. On peut toutefois s’interroger sur le sens précis qu’il convient de donner à cette notion, ainsi que sur les promesses auxquelles elle est souvent associée. À défaut de pouvoir cerner un concept unique et maxi-englobant d’interactivité, nous suggérons qu’il est plus profitable de tenter d’identifier (...) des types et des degrés d’interactivité. Nous tentons de montrer pourquoi cette théorie pluraliste et gradualiste est plus attrayante que d’autres approches développées dans la littérature récente. Nous mettons enfin cette conception à l’épreuve du jeu vidéo, en montrant qu’elle permet de réévaluer le rôle que joue l’interactivité dans ce médium, mais qu’elle met aussi au jour les limitations inhérentes des fictions interactives que l’on y trouve. (shrink)

A powerful work of moral and political philosophy.The idea which I shall present here came to me more or less out of the blue. I was on a train some five years ago, on my way to spend a day at Headingley and I was reading a book about the death camp at Sobibor... The particular, not very appropriate, conjunction involved for me in this train journey... had the effect of fixing my thoughts on one of the more dreadful features (...) of human coexistence, when in the shape of a simple five-word phrase the idea occurred to me. In The Contract of Mutual Indifference, Norman Geras discusses a central aspect of the experience of the Holocaust with a view to exploring its most important contemporary implications. In a bold and powerful synthesis of memorial, literary record, historical reflection and political theory, he focuses on the figure of the bystander -- the bystander to the destruction of the Jews of Europe and the bystander to more recent atrocities -- to consider the moral consequences of looking on without active response at persecution and great suffering. Geras argues that the tragedy of European Jewry, so widely pondered by historians, social scientists, psychologists, theologians and others, has not yet found its proper reflection within political philosophy. Attempting to fill the gap, he adapts an old idea from within that tradition of enquiry, the idea of the social contract, to the task of thinking about the triangular relation between perpetrators, victims and bystanders, and draws a somber conclusion from it. Geras goes on to ask how far this conclusion may be offset by the hypothesis of a universal duty to bring aid. The Contract of Mutual Indifference is an original and challenging work, aimed at the complacent abstraction of much contemporary theory. It is supplemented by three shorter essays on the implications of the Jewish catastrophe for conceptions of human nature and progress and for certain types of Marxist explanation. (shrink)

Historian Dmitry Peretolchin quotes several of my publications on the creation and application of political technologies in the United States in his program about Saul Alinsky on the House of Cards podcast on the Den TV channel. An advertisement for the conference "Russian World Against the Global Reich" was inserted into this broadcast. This article: analyzes the statements of the podcast about Alinsky and his main ideas; showes that the main source of Alinsky's political technologies is the experience of professional (...) revolutionaries in Russia and that they in no way confirm the idea of a global Reich; describes the political technology that Alexander Prokhanov and his media complex uses to implement the Fifth Empire project, which is currently merged with the ideology of the Russian World; analyzes the ideological orientation of the House of Cards podcast and the Picture of the World club on the Den channel. The articles illustrates how the authors of the podcast are working to substantiate the propaganda direction of the media complex. The article also aims to show that political technologies, in particular, technologies of co-organization continue to develop and be implemented in countries with different political systems and can be applied to various types of social movements. (shrink)

Être vu, nu, par un chat ; essayer de savoir quel effet cela fait d’être une chauve-souris ; penser les modes de cohabitation et de compagnonnage que nous formons avec les animaux, en dépit de toutes les violences que nous leur faisons subir, constituent autant d’expériences de pensée limites qui ont ponctué le discours philosophique sur l’animalité au xxe siècle. Il n’est pas étonnant que Cora Diamond fasse un cas de toutes ces expériences : ce qu’elle nomme « une difficulté (...) de la réalité », c’est-à-dire un point d’achoppement entre la pensée et ce qu’elle essaye de saisir, le réel, qui est susceptible de nous faire perdre nos concepts. Je me propose dans ce texte d’explorer les voies de cette difficulté, qui sont souvent des voies contournées ou des déviations. L’idée est aussi de réfléchir aux moyens dont la philosophie dispose pour affronter cette difficulté, sans dénégation et sans déviation. (shrink)

Millian theories of proper names say that the meaning of a proper name is just its referent. These theories have an appealing kind of simplicity to them, but they also have an apparently serious problem with names that fail to refer. Consider, for example, sentence.

The fortunes and misfortunes of Shylock and Antonio are pervaded with economic and legal ideas. Both characters tend to overlap and confuse in several dimensions–the most celebrated one is to believe that the Jew is the merchant–and are alternatively victim and victimizer. The analysis of the play focusing in money and contract, economics and the law, market and morality, allows us to delve into the nuances of one of the most engaging characters in the history of literature and to ponder (...) the classical liberal message of justice and charity. (shrink)

This book presents an entirely new answer to the question: “What is fair?” In their radical approach to ethics, Frohlich and Oppenheimer argue that much of the empirical methodology of the natural sciences should be applied to the ethical questions of fairness and justice.

Kripke's objections to descriptivism may be modified to apply to Scott Soames's pragmatic account from his book Beyond Rigidity. Further, intuitions about argument-validity threaten any theory in the vicinity of Soames's.

“Marx did not reject the idea of a human nature. He was right not to do so.” That is the conclusion of this passionate and polemical new work by Norman Geras. In it, he places the sixth of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach under rigorous scrutiny. He argues that this ambiguous statement—widely cited as evidence that Marx broke with all conceptions of human nature in 1845—must be read in the context of Marx’s work as a whole. His later writings are (...) informed by an idea of a specifically human nature that fulfills both explanatory and normative functions. The belief that Marx’s historical materialism entailed a denial of the conception of human nature is, Geras writes, “an old fixation, which the Althusserian influence in this matter has fed upon … Because this fixation still exists and is misguided, it is still necessary to challenge it.” One hundred years after Marx’s death, this timely essay—combining the strengths of analytical philosophy and classical Marxism—rediscovers a central part of his heritage. (shrink)