The sun -- The silence of art : Bataille's babbling sacrifice -- A map, of sorts -- Life's grave traces -- The clarity of method and its demands -- Truths of displacement -- Aristotle and the trace of phenomenology -- Encompassing flow or receding deformation ... a first tracing -- The formal force of presence -- The creative force of form -- The force of an impotent demand -- Limitation and light : creatures of the possible -- The intellect moves (...) as the necessity of exchange -- The trace as the force of the absent -- The trace and the gravity of words -- The trace as the absence and the motion of the intelligible -- Affirmation and absence -- The sense of a gesture -- Deformation of one hand rather than another -- The difficulty of gestures -- The subject as the site of the representation of possibility -- The unity of the place of a doubled reflection -- The displacing and transcending logic -- Of the power of representation -- On the place of the subject -- The beginning of the subjective -- Movement and method -- Belonging to the necessity of the element -- The divine task of beginning -- The necessity of the hand -- The difficult gesture of abandon -- The presence of an object, the force of a gesture -- The black box -- The vanishing compulsion -- The philosophical stakes of aesthetic form -- The dark gestures of the hand -- The presence of the frame ... and its gestures -- The originality of trust -- The silence evoked. (shrink)

A philosophical questioning of reading and writing that focuses on metaphors of women and women's roles in our cultural and intellectual heritage.

Buddhism, the Internet and Digital Media: The Pixel in the Lotus explores Buddhist practice and teachings in an increasingly networked and digital era. Contributors consider the ways Buddhism plays a role and is present in digital media through a variety of methods including concrete case studies, ethnographic research, and content analysis, as well as interviews with practitioners and cyber-communities. In addition to considering Buddhism in the context of technologies such as virtual worlds, social media, and mobile devices, authors ask how (...) the Internet affects identity, authority and community, and what effect this might have on the development, proliferation, and perception of Buddhism in an online environment. Together, these essays make the case that studying contemporary online Buddhist practice can provide valuable insights into the shifting role religion plays in our constantly changing, mediated, hurried, and uncertain culture. (shrink)

Intravenous drug abusers may incur bloodstream infections, in particular those involving the heart valves, that often require extended courses of antibiotics, commonly on the order of six weeks.Conventional wisdom has dictated that even when patients are sufficiently well to not need ongoing hospitalization, it is unsafe to complete their antibiotic course in any setting other than in a closely supervised facility, even if this is contrary to their wishes. The assumption has been that such patients would be at risk of (...) using their indwelling intravenous catheter for illicit purposes. Recent advances in the care of patients who suffer from addiction disorders suggest that when patients receive state-of-the-art addiction treatment, many may be able to continue their intravenous antibiotic course unsupervised, at home. This represents a departure from the parentalistic model of care of impaired patients who are prone to self-harm, moving towards a model that respects autonomy and trusts patients who are in recovery to continue their care in a manner that is self-beneficial. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in alternative agrifood initiatives that attempt to use the market to curtail the negative social and environmental effects of production and trade in a globalized food system. These alternatives pose a challenge to capital accumulation and the externalization of environmental costs by large agribusiness, trading and retail firms. Yet the success of these alternatives also makes them an inviting target for corporate participation. This article examines these dynamics through a case study of the (...) two most significant such food system alternatives—organics and fair trade—focusing on corporate involvement in establishing and renegotiating the standards undergirding these initiatives. We compare the development of and contestation over the standards for both certified organic and certified fair trade, with particular attention to the U.S. context. We provide a brief history of their parallel processes of rapid growth and market mainstreaming. We examine claims of cooptation by movement participants, as well as the divergences and similarities between the organic and fair trade cases. Analyzing these two cases provides useful insights into the strategic approaches that corporate firms have deployed to further capital accumulation and to defuse threats to their profit margins and to status quo production, pricing, labor, trading and retailing practices. It can also offer valuable lessons regarding the most effective means of responding to such counter-reforms and of protecting or reasserting the more transformative elements at the heart of these alternative systems. (shrink)

The article presents an agent-based model of scientific interaction aimed at examining how different degrees of connectedness of scientists impact their efficiency in knowledge acquisition. The model is built on the basis of Zollman’s ABM by changing some of its idealizing assumptions that concern the representation of the central notions underlying the model: epistemic success of the rivalling scientific theories, scientific interaction and the assessment in view of which scientists choose theories to work on. Our results suggest that whether and (...) to what extent the degree of connectedness of a scientific community impacts its efficiency is a highly context-dependent matter since different conditions deem strikingly different results. More generally, we argue that simplicity of ABMs may come at a price: the requirement to run extensive robustness analysis before we can specify the adequate target phenomenon of the model.1 1Introduction2Zollman's 2010 Model3Static versus Dynamic Epistemic Success 3.1Introducing the notion of dynamic epistemic success3.2Implementation and results for the basic setup4Critical Interaction 4.1Introducing critique4.2Implementation and results5Inertia of Inquiry 5.1Introducing rational inertia5.2Implementation and results6Threshold Below Which Theories Are Equally Promising 6.1An inquiry that is even more difficult6.2Implementation and results7Discussion8Conclusion. (shrink)

In the modern debate in metaethics and moral psychology, moral rationalism is often presented as a view that cannot account for the intimate relation between moral behaviour on one hand and feelings, emotions, or desires on the other. Although there is no lack of references to the classic rationalists of the 18th century in the relevant discussions, the works of these writers are rarely ever examined detail. Yet, as the debate in Kant scholarship between “intellectualists” and “affectivists” impressively shows, a (...) more thorough analysis of what the classic rationalists actually have to say about moral motivation is suited to cast serious doubts on the idea that moral rationalism must crucially neglect the affective–conative side of human psychology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the conceptions of moral motivation that were embraced by Kant's rationalist predecessors—Clarke, Wolff, Burnet, Balguy, and Price—which have not attracted a similar amount of attention by specialists so far. The claim I will defend is that none of those early rationalists actually embraces the motivational thesis that is often taken to be characteristic of moral rationalism, a thesis I shall refer to as strong rationalism about (moral) motivation. (shrink)

This study explores the legal and ethical issues associated with contract pricing. In particular, it focuses on a set of legal precedents which have addressed the enforceability of allegedly unfair contract prices. Traditionally, the common law has emphasized the consent of the parties. If the parties consented to a given price; it is presumptively fair and enforceable. The cases reviewed in this study, however, seem to draw upon alternative moral conceptions of fairness not normally associated with the common law. (...) The analysis begins by distinguishing the traditional legal conception of fairness from alternative moral conceptions. The cases are then read with a critical eye so as to tease out the underlying principles which best explain them. The analysis illustrates that, notwithstanding judicial rhetoric to the contrary, the courts continue to employ the traditional legal notion of fairness, to the exclusion of alternative moral concerns. The study clarifies an otherwise murky area of the law and illustrates that the legal meaning of fairness differs greatly from the moral one. (shrink)

In this paper I shall adopt a possible reading of the notions of ‘explanatory indispensability’ and ‘genuine mathematical explanation in science’ on which the Enhanced Indispensability Argument proposed by Alan Baker is based. Furthermore, I shall propose two examples of mathematical explanation in science and I shall show that, whether the EIA-partisans accept the reading I suggest, they are easily caught in a dilemma. To escape this dilemma they need to adopt some account of explanation and offer a plausible answer (...) to the following ‘question of evidence’: What is a genuine mathematical explanation in empirical science and on what basis do we consider it as such? Finally, I shall suggest how a possible answer to the question of evidence might be given through a specific account of mathematical explanation in science. Nevertheless, the price of adopting this standpoint is that the genuineness of mathematical explanations of scientific facts turns out to be dependent on pragmatic constraints and therefore cannot be plugged in EIA and used to establish existential claims about mathematical objects. (shrink)

This paper motivates taking seriously the possibility that brains are basically protean: that they make use of neural structures in inventive, on-the-fly improvisations to suit circumstance and context. Accordingly, we should not always expect cognition to divide into functionally stable neural parts and pieces. We begin by reviewing recent work in cognitive ontology that highlights the inadequacy of traditional neuroscientific approaches when it comes to divining the function and structure of cognition. Cathy J. Price and Karl J. Friston, and (...) Colin Klein identify the limitations of relying on forward and reverse inferences to cast light on the relation between cognitive functions and neural structures. There is reason to prefer Klein’s approach to that of Price and Friston’s. But Klein’s approach is neurocentric - it assumes that we ought to look solely at neural contexts to fix cognitive ontology. Using recent work on mindreading as a case study, we motivate adopting a radically different approach to cognitive ontology. Promoting the Protean Brain Hypothesis, we posit the possibility that we may need to look beyond the brain when deciding which functions are being performed in acts of cognition and in understanding how the brain contributes to such acts by adapting to circumstance. (shrink)

In public health, the issue of pharmaceutical pricing is a perennial problem. Recent high-profile examples, such as the September 2015 debacle involving Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals, are indicative of larger, systemic difficulties that plague the pharmaceutical industry in regards to drug pricing and the impact it yields on their reputation in the eyes of the public. For public health ethics, the issue of pharmaceutical pricing is rather crucial. Simply, individuals within a population require pharmaceuticals for disease prevention and management. (...) In order to be effective, these pharmaceuticals must be accessibly priced. This analysis will explore the notion of corporate social responsibility in regards to pharmaceutical pricing with an aim of restoring a positive reputation upon the pharmaceutical industry in the public eye. The analysis will utilize the 2005 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights to establish implications regarding the societal responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies in a global context. To accomplish this, Article 14 of the UDBHR—social responsibility and health—will be articulated in order to advocate a viewpoint of socially responsible capitalism in which pharmaceutical companies continue as profit-making ventures, yet establish moral concern for the welfare of all their stakeholders, including the healthcare consumer. (shrink)

Nietzsche values intellectual honesty, but is dubious about what he calls the will to truth. This is puzzling since intellectual honesty is a component of the will to truth. In this paper, I show that this puzzle tells us something important about how Nietzsche conceives of our pursuit of truth. For Nietzsche, those who pursue truth occupy unstable ground, since being honest about the ultimate reasons for that pursuit would mean that truth could no longer satisfy the important human needs (...) it satisfies at present. We can pursue truth, or be honest about what in us is served by such a pursuit, but not both. Nietzsche aims to show that understanding and owning up to this instability is the sort of affirmation of human life to which we ought to aspire, and is the price we pay for being free from otherworldly morality. (shrink)

[Newspaper opinion] If you’re like most people, you’ve been taught that climate action is a sacrifice. Cutting emissions from fossil fuels, you’ve probably been told, is the economy-squeezing price we must pay for a livable planet. But our research explains why we should look at this issue through a different frame. -/- Frames help us think about complex issues. They suggest starting assumptions, problems to be solved and point towards possible solutions. Sacrifice frames begin with the assumption that climate (...) action is a burdensome cost. Given that assumption, it naturally follows that climate action is all about convincing people to make sacrifices. But scholars have criticized sacrifice frames for being bad at motivating action. Tell a person to sacrifice, and they’re likely to give you a list of reasons why they shouldn’t have to do it. -/- We suggest a different approach. Instead of explaining why you should sacrifice for the climate, we explain why climate action isn’t a sacrifice. We also suggest an alternative, more hopeful frame that fits with current science. [Open access]. (shrink)

Over the last 25 years, evolutionary game theory has grown with theoretical contributions from the disciplines of mathematics, economics, computer science and biology. It is now ripe for applications. In this book, Daniel Friedman---an economist trained in mathematics---and Barry Sinervo---a biologist trained in mathematics---offer the first unified account of evolutionary game theory aimed at applied researchers. They show how to use a single set of tools to build useful models for three different worlds: the natural world studied by biologists; (...) the social world studied by anthropologists, economists, political scientists and others; and the virtual world built by computer scientists and engineers. The first six chapters offer an accessible introduction to core concepts of evolutionary game theory. These include fitness, replicator dynamics, sexual dynamics, memes and genes, single and multiple population games, Nash equilibrium and evolutionarily stable states, noisy best response and other adaptive processes, the Price equation, and cellular automata. The material connects evolutionary game theory with classic population genetic models, and also with classical game theory. Notably, these chapters also show how to estimate payoff and choice parameters from the data. The last eight chapters present exemplary game theory applications. These include a new coevolutionary predator-prey learning model extending rock-paper-scissors; models that use human subject laboratory data to estimate learning dynamics; new approaches to plastic strategies and life cycle strategies, including estimates for male elephant seals; a comparison of machine learning techniques for preserving diversity to those seen in the natural world; analyses of congestion in traffic networks and the. (shrink)

_A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window__ “With impressive detail and wide-ranging erudition, Jütte charts the history of a single material, glass, as a product of human ingenuity developed across centuries.”—James Gleick, _New York Review of Books__ Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such (...) a powerful—and global—idea? From ancient glass to Apple’s corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window. Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly “pure” material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency—its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change. (shrink)

Adam Podgórecki, a sociologist, author of brilliant Chinese-styled parables and a compulsory immigrant, is merely acknowledged in certain circles of sociologists in the world. The present article offers, first, a sketch of Podgórecki’s biography. As his life divided into two separate parts after he left communist Poland in 1977, he uniquely experienced dissimilar academic milieus, oppressive in Poland, then competitive abroad. What is emphasized both generated some problems for him as an old-fashioned “disobedient in thinking” thinker. Secondly, the text offers (...) a brief analysis of selected papers of Adam Podgórecki and outlines the factors influencing the reception of his work in Western sociology. An explanation of his career path is grounded in some concepts of the sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

Almost seventy years after the seminal decision of the House of Lords in Donoghue v. Stevenson, the boundaries of negligence are still as blurred as ever. Some of the vagueness surrounding this tort is inescapable. It is an unavoidable price paid for the reliance on abstract, open-ended, amorphous, and incoherent notions. Indeed, there is no universal agreement even as to the meanings to be attached to the various components of this tort, such as the "reasonable person," proximity, and reliance. (...) The boundaries of negligence are determined particularly through the filter of the duty of care. This article discusses the development of the concept of duty of care and the nature of negligence as analyzed through the prism of this duty. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned their attention to how the rise of digital technologies is reshaping political life in contemporary society. Here, we analyze this issue by distinguishing between two classification technologies typical of pre-digital and digital eras that differently constitute the relationship between individuals and groups. In class-based systems, characteristic of the pre-digital era, one’s status as an individual is gained through membership in a group in which salient social identities are shared (...) in common with other group members. In attribute-based systems, characteristic of the digital era, one’s status as an individual is determined by virtue of possession of a set of attributes that need not be shared with others. We argue that differences between these two types of classification technologies have important implications for how persons attach (or fail to attach) to groups, and therefore what kinds of political mobilization are possible. We illustrate this argument by examining contention over the use of gender as a variable in the pricing of risk in insurance and credit – two markets in which individuals directly encounter class-based and attribute-based systems of classification, respectively. (shrink)

Andy Egan has presented a dilemma for decision theory. As is well known, Newcomb cases appear to undermine the case for evidential decision theory. However, Egan has come up with a new scenario which poses difficulties for causal decision theory. I offer a simple solution to this dilemma in terms of a modified EDT. I propose an epistemological test: take some feature which is relevant to your evaluation of the scenarios under consideration, evidentially correlated with the actions under consideration albeit, (...) causally independent of them. Hold this feature fixed as a hypothesis. The test shows that, in Newcomb cases, EDT would mislead the agent. Where the test shows EDT to be misleading, I propose to use fictive conditional credences in the EDT-formula under the constraint that they are set to equal values. I then discuss Huw Price’s defence of EDT as an alternative to my diagnosis. I argue that my solution also applies if one accepts the main premisses of Price’s argument. I close with applying my solution to Nozick’s original Newcomb problem. (shrink)

At lunch one day a colleague and I had a friendly argument over occupational licensing. I attacked it for being anticompetitive, arguing that licensing boards raise occupational incomes by restricting entry, advertising, and commercialization. My colleague, while acknowledging anticompetitive aspects, affirmed the need for licensing on the grounds of protecting the consumer from frauds and quacks. In many areas of infrequent and specialized dealing, consumers are not able, ex ante or even ex post, to evaluate competence. I countered by suggesting (...) voluntary means by which reputational problems might be handled and by returning to the offensive. I said that in fact the impetus for licensing usually comes from the practitioners, not their customers, and that licensing boards seldom devote their time to ferreting out incompetence but rather simply to prosecuting unlicensed practitioners. I mentioned cross-sectional findings, such as those on state licensure, prices, and occupational incomes. Overall, I characterized the professional establishment as a group of dastardly operators, who set the standards, write the codes, and enforce behavior to enhance their own material wellbeing - in brief, as venal rent-seekers. (shrink)

Summary This article argues that commerce and the language of finance had an important influence over the interpretation of curiosities in the early modern period. It traces how learned travellers in the years around 1700 were constantly reminded to watch their purses and to limit their expenses while on the road. As a result, monetary matters also influenced their appreciation of artificialia and naturalia. They judged and compared the aesthetic value of curiosities by mentioning their price. Money offered an (...) easy, telegraphic manner of signalling intrinsic worth. Visitors of cabinets paid attention to the financial value of the collector's books, paintings, and natural specimens, and kept mentioning it in their diaries and correspondence. The keen attention of students, scholars and amateur gentlemen to money suggests that, even if the Republic of Letters operated in a gift economy, its members were much aware of their gifts’ prices. Commercial values deeply infiltrated the erudite discourse of the period. (shrink)

There are varying opinions about whether or not the field of business ethics has a history or is a development of more modern times. It is suggested that a book by a Dominican Friar, Johannes Nider, De Contractibus Mercatorum, written ca. 1430 and published ca. 1468 provides a basis for a history of over 500 years. Business ethics grew out of attempts to reconcile Biblical precepts, canon law, civil law, the teachings of the Church Fathers, and the writings of early (...) philosophers with the realities of expanding economic activity. Nider's background is discussed as well as his book as an example of incunabula.Nider was one of the Scholastics who provided a link between Aristotle and later Reformation thinkers. In Nider we find caveat venditor as his moral guide to merchants as well as other surprisingly modern ideas such as justice in exchange; restitution for defective goods; the market as the final arbiter of value; and the importance of creating utility in products. (shrink)

This article explores the consequences of falling costs of solar and wind power for the ethics of climate change mitigation. We suggest that price competitiveness of renewables reveals a divergence of interest between fossil fuel consumers and producers: cheap renewables strengthen precautionary arguments for aggressive mitigation for consumers but threaten the economic base of producers. As existing applications of the precautionary principle to climate change do not address this issue, we develop a novel approach based on lexical utilities. Given (...) the premise that climate catastrophe entails economic catastrophe but not vice versa, we argue that both producers and consumers should favor mitigation. (shrink)

The law of contracts, at least in its orthodox expression, concerns voluntary, or chosen, legal obligations. When Brody accepts Susan’s offer to sell him a canoe for a set price, the parties’ choices alter their legal rights and duties. Their success at changing the legal landscape depends on a background system of rules that specify when and how contractual acts have legal effects, rules that give the offer and acceptance of a bargain-exchange a central role in generating obligations. Contract (...) law conceived as a body of rules empowering individuals to shape their own rights and responsibilities presents an object of philosophical study. The philosophy of contract includes two broad sets of projects. One set, the focus of the first part of this entry, targets the basic structure and normative justification of the law of contracts. The aim is to subsume a salient body of contract law rules under general principles in order to clarify contract law’s conceptual categories, distinguish it from other areas of law, and specify criteria relevant to its normative appraisal. This kind of philosophical work presupposes detailed knowledge of the law in existing legal regimes, and the entry begins by outlining the common law of contracts. A second set of projects draws on resources from the philosophy of language, philosophy of action, and moral and political philosophy to address debates within contract law. Questions about the nature of meaning and interpretation, intentionality, freedom in contract, and distributive justice drive contemporary legal debates concerning contract formation, interpretation, and enforcement. Philosophical work on these topics has attracted significant commentary which serves as the focus of the second part of this entry. (shrink)

Il est toujours tentant de diviser l'histoire de la recherche en époques, surtout lorsqu'un groupe ou une tendance s'en fait le repère avec la « troi­sième quête », fût-ce au prix de pratiques exégétiques et de présupposés méthodologiques pour le moins discutables . Divers modèles et figures du Christ surgissent de cette quête multi­forme Jésus philosophe cynique itinérant, sapiential, homme de l'Esprit, prophète de la restauration d'Israêl, militant du changement social...), ce qui ne suffit pourtant pas à jeter le soupçon (...) sur tous les auteurs ou sur la totalité de leurs travaux dont certains, par leur connaissance du milieu juif contemporain et des mouvements histori­ques, éclairent singulièrement le contexte politique dans lequel s'inscrit le destin du Christ. Témoignant d'une « relative cohérence », la « troisième quête », par l'usage des sources , la question de l'eschatologie et la valorisation de la judéité de Jésus, ravive la question de l'enjeu théologiquement fort de la quête du Jésus historique.It is always temping to divide historical research into periods, especially when a group or a tendency makes the division with a “ third quest », even at the price of exegetical practices and methodological presuppositions at the least debatable . Diverse models and figures of Christ arise from this multiform quest . This does not suffice, however, to throw suspicion on all the authors or on all theïr works , some of whom, by their knowledge of the contemporaneous Jewish milieu and historical movements hed singular light on the political context in which the destiny of Christ was written. Giving witness to a “relative coherenc”, the « third quest “ by using sources , the question of eschatology, and the valorization of the jewishness of Jesus, gives new life to the question of the strong theological stakes involved with the quest of the historical Jesus. (shrink)

Regret is a slippery phenomenon. Fundamental questions about its fittingness conditions and functions have yet to be settled. Here, I offer a diagnosis of regret’s slippery character. Extending a suggestion made by Daniel Kahneman, I argue that regret comes in a range of emotional flavours, distinguished in the first instance by their phenomenology. While regret has received some attention from philosophers, its varied phenomenology has not been investigated. Yet the varied phenomenology of regret is significant: it reflects further variations (...) in its cognitive and motivational effects. As a result, I argue, different flavours of regret have different fittingness conditions and contribute to our lives in different ways. In Section I, I offer a preliminary sketch of regret and introduce the questions that drive my discussion. In Section II, I introduce regret’s different flavours. In Section III, I investigate their contrasting cognitive and motivational effects, with a view to determining their functions. In Section IV, I investigate what this implies concerning regret’s fittingness conditions—and, in particular, what constitutes a regrettable action. (shrink)

In the industrial context, steel is a broadly-used raw material with applications in many different fields. Due to its high impact in the activity of many industries all over the world, forecasting its price is of utmost importance for a huge amount of companies. In this work, non-linear neural models are applied for the first time to different datasets in order to validate their suitability when predicting the price of this commodity. In particular, the NAR, NIO and NARX (...) neural network models are innovatively applied for the first time to forecast the price of hot rolled steel in Spain. Besides these variety of models, different datasets consisting of a set of heterogenous variables from the last seven years and related to the price of this commodity are benchmarked and analyzed. The results showed that NARX is the best performing model when the price of raw materials used to produce steel and the stock market prices of three major global steel producing companies are employed as input to this predictive model. Consequently, this result may boost the application of Machine Learning in companies, in order to schedule the supplying operations according to the price forecasting. (shrink)

The context of the target article is delimited again, underlining the intended locationof the argument in the bottomup hierarchy of brain study. The central message is that collective delay activity distributions (reverberations) in cortical modules extend the role of a spike (a potentialinformation carrier across long distances) to an active memory of structured, learned information that can be carried across long time intervals. Moreover, the population code of the reverberations makes them readable down the cortical processing stream. Most of the (...) critical comments are then interpreted and addressed in relation to misreading of the proper context. The price for the limitation of the context (in cognitive, behavioral, and computational terms) is compared with the advantages of a clear, direct contact with experiment on the one hand and with a well controlled body of modeling and analysis on the other. (shrink)

The article addresses the role of scarcity in negotiating the relationship between intellectual property, particularly from a legal-economic perspective, and property rights, as understood by transaction cost economics, to shed light on the deadlock faced by those suffering from neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The consistency of the law and economics fundamentals that support the trade on knowledge goods, namely patents on essential medicines, is put under check by Scott Veitch’s scholarship on legal irresponsibility. The damages that emerge from the operations (...) of the intellectual property system are registered in the novel concept of negative public domain, and are due mainly to the lack of access to treatments that end up being unaffordable, or to innovation that leads to new drugs that is not sufficiently incentivised though price signals. The accountability for such damages is taken into consideration by arguing that the disavowal of responsibility is made possible by the negative public domain, which is balanced by the construction of a positive response through the language of rights. As such, responsibility per se is preserved, evading one instantiation of Teubner’s legal paradoxes, but rendered ineffective by design. In other words, even if the harms endured by those affected by the NTDs can be traced back to the operations of the intellectual property system, there is no one to hold accountable. The main goal pursued through the article is to make such an arrangement explicit, by giving centrality to the notion of scarcity and its interplay between legal and economic theory, alongside the novel concept of negative public domain as a site where the actual consequences of irresponsibility lie, to hopefully inform further critique in subsequent works. (shrink)

Hussain claims that ethical consumers are subject to democratic requirements of morality, whereas ordinary price/quality consumers are exempt from these requirements. In this paper, we demonstrate that Hussain’s position is incoherent, does not follow from the arguments he offers for it, and entails a number of counterintuitive consequences.

Although, according to the Austrian school, economic competition, since it pushes entrepreneurs to innovations that benefit not only themselves but consumers as well, is supposed to lead to the public good, it is essential to consider also the possibility of cartel formation. In this case a mechanism is set up whereby the prices of goods and services are kept artificially high. The article shows that it is the same entrepreneurial spirit celebrated by the Austrian school that makes that in certain (...) situations, whose logic can be analyzed according to the model of the prisoner’s dilemma, companies agree to keep prices high. The conclusion is that the public good can only be realized through institutional interventions with both legal and ethical dimensions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Quest for the Historical Abstract ExpressionismDaniel A. SiedellAbstract Expressionism:The International Context, by Joan Marter and David Anfam. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007, 320 pp. $26.95, paper.Abstract Expressionism, by Debra Bricker Balken. London: Tate, 2005, 80 pp. $9.60, paper.Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique, by Ellen Landau. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005, 768 pp. $45.00, paper.What makes any definition of a movement in art dubious is (...) that it never fits the deepest artists in the movement—certainly not as well as, if successful, it does the others.—Harold Rosenberg, 1952From the moment of its inception in the 1940s, "Abstract Expressionism" has been the subject of reframings, redefinitions, and revisions. This is because it is more than the sum total of artworks and artists traditionally recognized as part of the movement. It is a constitutive part of postwar American cultural life, and it has shaped how we understand art and the role of the artist. It has also shaped the practice of art criticism and defined the role of the art critic. Because it is part of the United States' creation myth of a distinctive postwar "American identity," it also possesses significant symbolic value. And this symbolic value is why it has been such a popular subject for art museum exhibitions for nearly half a century. The fact that in the last ten to fifteen years, major art museums have mounted major exhibitions of the work of key figures in the movement, like Jackson Pollock (including a feature film starring Ed Harris), Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Barnett Newman, and that auction prices for these artists reach tens of millions of dollars, suggest that, no matter how contested and complicated the concept of "Abstract Expressionism" is, the artists associated with the movement remain relevant.1Abstract Expressionism is not merely big business for museums, collectors, and auction houses. It has also been big business for scholars. The symbolic power of Abstract Expressionism and its influence on shaping and [End Page 107] forming contemporary artistic and critical practice has made the movement an important subject for historical and critical scrutiny. The publication of Irving Sandler's The Triumph of American Painting in 1970 was the first book-length study on Abstract Expressionism, and it marked the gradual beginning of the movement's transformation from a living entity to a more reified subject palatable for academic inquiry. Blending Alfred H. Barr's formalism with an historian's interest in subject matter and iconography and a critic's access to the artists, The Triumph of American Painting provided a taxonomy of sources and influences. Sandler's book, in part, provoked the publication of Serge Guilbaut's How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art in 1983 (written in 1978 as a doctoral dissertation), which initiated nearly fifteen years of serious and provocative scholarship on Abstract Expressionism. Guilbaut's radical revisionist approach to the subject—which sought to reinterpret the entire development of Abstract Expressionism as an aesthetic weapon of the Cold War—provoked a slew of responses from art historians eager to either jump on the careening bandwagon of Marxist social histories of modern art or hunker down in the trenches to protect hard-won scholarly turf. The latter was the response of a loose federation of art historians eager to forge a scholarly orthodoxy. This emergent paradigm is revealed in a 1988 special issue of Art Journal called "Abstract Expressionism: New and Improved," coedited by Stephen Polcari and Ann Gibson. This issue included essays by those art historians who understood themselves as part of a "new generation" of scholars characterized by their collective desire to transcend the polemics and limitations of those critics and curators whose distorted picture of the movement would be restored to clarity through scholarly distance, a distance that a "new synthesis" of Abstract Expressionist "art, culture, history, and society together, not separately" would produce.2 Sandler and Guilbaut were swiftly dismissed by these art historians of the "new and improved," the former because of his formalism and close proximity to the artists—many of whom he knew personally—the latter because of his Marxism... (shrink)

This article examines valuation and payment practices of psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Psychoanalysts do not use explicit sliding scales but rather reach an agreement about fees in conversation with the patient. This negotiation is conducted with some principles of gift-giving, where parties try to give more, rather than through competitive bargaining (an inverted bazaar). Drawing on the sociology of money, morals and markets, and valuation studies literatures, I distinguish four factors to explain this: 1) Some formally produced prices as (...) well as market mechanisms shape benchmarks for fees, but the peculiar service psychologists offer (which makes quality judgments hard), the way patients and therapists are matched, and the lack of public information about prices allow for high flexibility in price-setting; these are structural factors that remain unsaid in the conversation on fees. 2) A professional narrative that highlights a responsibility towards patients that should not be contaminated by economic interest. 3) Psychoanalysts’ elaborations on the meanings of the payment, which should reflect the uniqueness of each patient and the bond analyst-patient and symbolize the patient’s commitment to treatment, involving a cost and a loss beyond the economic. 4) The prevalence of cash, face-to-face payment without intermediaries, which helps desacralize the analyst and disentangle the session from the rest of the economic life of the analyst, but impedes evading moralization of the transaction. Payments in psychoanalysis are delicate arrangements, and analysts often stress about valuation and payments. They have to be careful to ensure this flexibility results in morally acceptable transactions. (shrink)

This article offers a combined reading of Karl Löwith’s and Leo Strauss’s critique of social theory from the point of view of the natural law tradition broadly understood. Within the context of a growing interest in revisiting social theory’s debt to natural law, the piece seeks to unfold the connections between the two traditions without searching to restore any kind of natural law. Rather, it looks at their relationships as one of Aufhebung — the suspension and carrying forward — of (...) natural law premises within modern social theory. The works of these two writers point against conventional wisdom within social theory: Löwith’s secularization thesis calls into question the view of the irreligious nature of modernity’s historical break as well as its faith in immanent progress; Strauss’s reconstruction of natural law (right) gives due credit to the non-religious origins of modernity but at the price of withdrawing even more autonomy from any modern claim to self-assertion. Although some compatibility is recognizable in their critiques, I shall also be arguing that their substantive results point to opposite directions. A critical distance must also be maintained from their interpretations in the spirit of reinvigorating the project of modern social theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Confessions of an American PsychoJames Hogg’s and Bret Easton Ellis’s Anti-Heroes’ Journey from Vulnerability to ViolenceDaniel Cojocaru (bio)My vitals have all been torn, and every faculty and feeling of my soul racked, and tormented into callous insensibility.... I could perceive no bottom, and then—not till then, did I repeat the tremendous prayer!—I was instantly at liberty; and what I now am, the Almighty knows! Amen.—James Hogg, The Private Memoirs (...) and Confessions of a Justified Sinner1My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist.... My pain is constant and sharp.... But even after admitting this... and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself.... This confession has meant nothing.—Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho2A hundred and sixty-seven years lie between the publication of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) (henceforth referred to as Confessions) and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991). Yet one cannot but be amazed at the striking similarities of the main [End Page 185] protagonists’s insights at the end of these two novels. Although connections between works of Gothic Romanticism and postmodern narratives have been duly noted, the possible reasons for the analogies remain largely unexplored.3It will be argued here that both novels are representations of worlds immersed in what René Girard, in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (henceforth referred to as Deceit), has termed “deviated transcendency,” resulting in similar stages of narrative progression, which in turn can be analyzed in terms of Girard’s mimetic cycle of violence.At a first glance, the two pieces seem to be concerned with themes that to a secularized age must appear most disparate. But as Girard has noted: “The very idea of mediation encourages literary comparisons at a level which is no longer that of genre criticism or thematic criticism.... It may illuminate the works through each other.”4 Hogg’s narrative deals with the problem of antinomianism and the resulting spiritual pride. The anti-hero of the narrative, Robert Wringhim, relies on his belief that he is one of the elect and cannot fall from grace and consequently is convinced by his elusive friend Gil-Martin to become a murderer without having to fear punishment. American Psycho on the other hand is concerned with the consequences of the crass materialism of the U.S. yuppie generation, culminating at the end of the 1980s, as experienced by the serial-killing first-person narrator Patrick Bateman. However, one could argue that in its very first pages, American Psycho presents the reader with a secularized version of antinomianism. Michael Steig has fleetingly noted that the egocentric doctrines of antinomianism psychologically resemble the “I’m alright tenets” of yuppie pseudo-psychology.5 Timothy Price, one of Bateman’s colleagues on Wall Street, expresses this in the following words: “In essence what I’m saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I’m an asset.”6 Translated into antinomian terms, one could say that he is one of the elect, one of the privileged enjoying a capitalist heaven on earth; and by saying that society cannot afford to lose him, he, like Robert Wringhim, is showing that he believes he cannot fall from grace—or at least he tries to believe it.“I was well aware that the devilish powers of his mother would finally prevail; and either the dread of this, or the inward consciousness of having wronged him, certainly unnerved my arm.”7 If, in this reference to a quarrel with a fellow pupil at school, Robert gives away the fact that he doubts his own words, through the rhetorical device of correctio, so does Timothy Price by his choice of words. In fact, it is exactly because he is an asset that society can afford to lose him. As he is literally transformed into a commodity, society can discard him and in the novel indeed does so. It is one of the many ironies of the narrative that Price disappears soon after the above... (shrink)

This article examines life assurance and the politics of ‘big data’ in mid-19th-century Britain. The datasets generated by life assurance companies were vast archives of information about human longevity. Actuaries distilled these archives into mortality tables – immensely valuable tools for predicting mortality and so pricing risk. The status of the mortality table was ambiguous, being both a public and a private object: often computed from company records they could also be extrapolated from public projects such as the census, or (...) clerical records. Life assurance more generally straddled the line between private enterprise and collective endeavour, though its advocates stressed the public interest in its success. Reforming actuaries such as Thomas Rowe Edmonds wanted the data on which mortality tables were based to be made publicly available, but faced resistance. Such resistance undermined insurers’ claims to be scientific in spirit and hindered Edmonds’s personal quest for a law of mortality. Edmonds pushed instead for an open actuarial science alongside fellow travellers at the Statistical Society of London, which was populated by statisticians such as William Farr as well as by radical mathematicians such as Charles Babbage. The article explores Babbage’s little-known foray into the world of insurance, both as a budding actuary but also as a fierce critic of the industry. These debates over the construction, ownership, and accessibility of insurance datasets show that concern about the politics of big data did not begin in the 21st century. (shrink)