This paper argues that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection offers the tools to break free from the present impasse in order to rebuild philosophy and regain the love of wisdom. Indeed, I want to suggest that evolutionary theory provides the basis for a new, demythologized rationality, and opens the door to the wonder of human imagination.

This paper argues that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection offers the tools to break free from the present impasse in order to rebuild philosophy and regain the love of wisdom. Indeed, I want to suggest that evolutionary theory provides the basis for a new, demythologized rationality, and opens the door to the wonder of human imagination.

Over the years Hegel’s social and political theory has often been measured against the more overtly revolutionary views of Karl Marx. More often than not, Hegel has been judged conservative, his ideas deemed lacking in critical force. Just what is meant by “critical” and “revolutionary” has not always been made conceptually clear; but nonetheless, despite the deep influence of Hegelian dialectics on Marx’s conception of history and on the methodology of his analysis of capital, it has been generally acknowledged that (...) Marx was a more profound critic of the organization and inner dynamic of modern bourgeois society. Hegel’s supposed conservatism, traced back of course to those infamous comments in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, is by now a well rehearsed story. Yet even for many of those commentators who have tried to reconstruct the view of Hegel as a conservative political theorist, Hegel’s analysis of civil society falls short of providing the critical tools necessary to overcome the emerging problems of nineteenth century bourgeois society, let alone those of today. It is at this point that so many have turned to Marx for a more radical critique of the values and structures of capitalist society. Certainly among the many commentators in the tradition of Lukács and Marcuse, the revolutionary impetus toward liberation is to be found in the work of Marx and not Hegel. (shrink)

Development is concerned with the fulfillment of people's needs and wants. Most governments, corporations and international organizations use an economic model of development to make decisions about the fulfillment of people's needs and wants. As world problems mount in severity and the carrying capacity of the earth is approached, the costs, consequences and dangers of using the economic model of development are great. A new model of development is required to tackle problems as difficult and demanding as the environmental crisis, (...) rapid consumption of the world's renewable and non?renewable resources, the gap between rich and poor nations and rich and poor people, and the potential collapse of the global eco?system. The model that is proposed is the cultural model of development. Based on a holistic and equitable rather than dualistic and partisan approach to development, the cultural model makes it possible to take the natural environment fully and forcefully into account in all developmental planning and decision?making, as well as to focus attention on the whole rather than a part of the whole. This necessitates new understandings and measurements of production, productivity, living standards and indicators of developmental performance. It also necessitates significant changes in the policies and practices of international organizations, governments, corporations and citizens. (shrink)

The present system of politics is based on the centrality of economics. This system is not capable of coming to grips with the problems confronting humanity. A culture-based system of politics is required to do this and prevent ecological disaster. This system would make it possible to reduce the demands human beings are making on the natural environment and situate human welfare, environmental well-being, and the public interest at the core of the political process. The risks of such a system (...) could be reduced through cultural education and improved cultural understanding. (shrink)

Worldviews affect everything people do, see, create and think. As a result, much more attention will have to be focused on worldviews if human survival and well?being are to be assured in the future. Making the transition from an economic worldview to a cultural worldview could prove timely as humanity prepares to confront one of the most difficult and demanding challenges in its history. Making this transition is necessary in order to shift the focus of attention from economics, economies, commodities, (...) competition, specialization and the marketplace to culture, cultures, people, cooperation, holism, caring and sharing. Placing more emphasis on a cultural interpretation of history, cultural values, creation of a global federation of ?world cultures,? collective sharing of the cultural heritage of humankind and cultivation of culture's capacity for links and synthesis is the key to this. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about mechanisms in the philosophy of science raise the question about the relation between constitutive and causal relations. These discussions so far have not received Ernest Sosa’s “Varieties of Causation‘, which addresses similar questions from a metaphysical point of view. The present paper reconstructs and evaluates Sosa’s arguments from the perspective of the contemporary debates. We argue that while Sosa’s arguments are probably not suited to advance the current debate, his claim that there are different varieties of causation (...) might be an interesting idea to consider for those who assume that there are interlevel causal relations. (shrink)

Has the Internet changed the pattern of social relations? More specifically, have social relations undergone any systematic change during the recent widespread diffusion of new communications technology? This question is addressed using a unique longitudinal survey that bookends the entire period of Internet diffusion in two African nations and one Indian state. We analyze data on nine professional linkages reported by a population of agricultural and environmental scientists in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala over a sixteen-year period. Factor analysis reveals two (...) clusters of relationships, one interpretable as traditional scientific exchange, the other indicating mediated forms of collaboration. While collaboration increases in frequency, friendship declines. We interpret this shift as a consequence of communications technology that facilitates formal projects, reducing the affective dimension of professional association. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering (...) a wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

Why, then, do we huddle in the dark around the campfires of our flickering narratives? There are obviously many different reasons for doing so. Yet, having heard various récits—whether "stories" or "accounts"—during the narrative conference, I am more inclined than ever to see self-assertive entertainment and self-transcending commitment as two kinds of ultimate motivation for our countless narratives. Stories and histories and other narrative or descriptive accounts help us to escape boredom and indifference—ours as well as that of other people. (...) Those nearly vacant states of mind at the zero degree of entertainment and commitment bring us frightfully close to the experience of nonexistence. Hence our desire to replace boredom by thrilling or gratifying entertainment and to replace indifference by the social or cosmic commitment either to change the world or to change ourselves. In a world of unmixed colors and pure literary genres, tragedy, comedy, satire, and romance might answer distinct needs for thrill, gratification, indignation, and admiration. But, as Roy Schafer and Victor Turner have reminded us, the private and social dramas underlying psychoanalytical and anthropological accounts are even less pure than most works of literature. Couldn't we conclude that life's internal and external dramas stem from a compound desire for self-assertion and self-transcendence—a desire which, in the realm of literary entertainment and commitment, motivates the emergence and appreciation of tragicomedy? Paul Hernadi teaches English and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification and the editor of What is Literature? and What is Criticism? His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Literary Theory: A Compass for Critics," appeared in the Winter 1976 issue. (shrink)

No discussion of academic freedom, research integrity, and patient safety could begin with a more disquieting pair of case studies than those of Nancy Olivieri and David Healy. The cumulative impact of the Olivieri and Healy affairs has caused serious self examination within the biomedical research community. The first part of the essay analyses these recent academic scandals. The two case studies are then placed in their historical context—that context being the transformation of the norms of science through increasingly close (...) ties between research universities and the corporate world. After a literature survey of the ways in which corporate sponsorship has biased the results of clinical drug trials, two different strategies to mitigate this problem are identified and assessed: a regulatory approach, which focuses on managing risks associated with industry funding of university research, and a more radical approach, the sequestration thesis, which counsels the outright elimination of corporate sponsorship. The reformist approach is criticised and the radical approach defended. (shrink)

Motivated by accounts of concept use in autistic spectrum disorder and a computational model of weak central coherence we examined comprehension and production vocabulary in typically‐developing children and those with ASD and Down syndrome. Controlling for frequency, familiarity, length and imageability, Colorado Meaningfulness played a hitherto unremarked role in the vocabularies of children with ASD. High Colorado Meaningful words were underrepresented in the comprehension vocabularies of 2‐ to 12‐year‐olds with ASD. The Colorado Meaningfulness of a word is a measure of (...) how many words can be associated with it. Situations in which high Colorado Meaningfulness words are encountered are typically highly variable, and words with High Colorado Meaningfulness often involve extensive use of context. Our data suggest that the number of contexts in which a particular word can appear has a role in determining vocabulary in ASD. This suggestion is consistent with the weak central coherence theory of autism. (shrink)

The options in a decision problem generally have outcomes with common features. Putting aside the common features simplifies deliberations, but the simplification requires a philosophical justification that this book provides.

Schelling und Hegel benutzen in ihren philosophischen Texten mathematische und naturwissenschaftliche Modelle wie Unendlichkeit oder Gleichgewicht. Die Strukturen dieser Begriffe liefern einen Massstab fur den Vergleich der Positionen Schellings und Hegels, der fur Schellings Identitatsphilosophie und Hegels erste Jenaer Schriften durchgefuhrt wird. Als wichtigstes Resultat kann eine grundlegende Differenz zwischen beiden Positionen bereits um 1801 nachgewiesen und gezeigt werden, dass diese auf einer unterschiedlichen Auffassung der Rolle des Absoluten beruht.

International Commentary on Evidence, 2006 Vol. 4, Issue 2, 1-47 . [link to online version posted].

This paper offers an economic analysis of one aspect of the possible liability for incorrect information traded on information markets: expert liability for incorrect asset valuation. The article does not address the questions of whether and under what circumstances an expert should bear contractual liability for an incorrect valuation. Rather, it assumes such contractual liability towards the person who has solicited the opinion and focuses instead on analyzing the circumstances under which the expert’s liability should be extended to third parties (...) as well. (shrink)

The first book-length study of a leading tenth-century Ismaili theoretician Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani.

Zusammenfassungen der Referate in französischer Sprache.

An agent often does not have precise probabilities or utilities to guide resolution of a decision problem. I advance a principle of rationality for making decisions in such cases. To begin, I represent the doxastic and conative state of an agent with a set of pairs of a probability assignment and a utility assignment. Then I support a decision principle that allows any act that maximizes expected utility according to some pair of assignments in the set. Assuming that computation of (...) an option's expected utility uses comprehensive possible outcomes that include the option's risk, no consideration supports a stricter requirement. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und (...) Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the epistemic position of psychiatry between the science of general laws in relation to frequently encountered generality and the science of specific events which is directed towards the particular. In this respect the development of the dichotomy of nomothetic and idiographic methodology from its generally forgotten neo-Kantian origins is delineated within the context of a historical-philosophical analysis and then its incorporation into psychology and psychopathology is reconstructed. In the course of this analysis (...) and also in the discussion of the currently accepted theories of analytical philosophy and critical rationalism it becomes clear that, in spite of widespread current opinions to the contrary, individualizing concept formation is an indispensable element in the methodological inventory of psychiatric science. (shrink)

This study analyzes the ideals of responsibility and accountability, asking such questions as when it is legitimate to blame top officials of an organization for mistakes made by personnel below them in the bureaucratic hierarchy; when things go wrong in a large and complex organization like the Canadian Forces, who is responsible and accountable; and whether a plea of ignorance is a good excuse. The study also analyzes the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in both the British and Canadian parliamentary traditions, (...) asking whether it is realistic to expect that a government minister should be held responsible for everything that goes wrong in his/her department. Finally, traditional military values are examined, considering the kinds of attitudes and values expected from Canada's armed forces and the differences between the military and civilian sectors. (shrink)