Dramatic advances in 3D Web technologies have recently led to widespread development of virtual world Web browsers and 3D content. A natural question is whether 3D thumbnails can be used to find one’s way about such 3D content the way that text and 2D thumbnail images are used to navigate 2D Web content. We have conducted an empirical experiment that shows interactive 3D thumbnails, which we call worldlets, improve travelers’ landmark knowledge and expedite wayfinding in virtual environments.

This paper proposes several concepts of efficient solutions for multicriteria decision problems under uncertainty. We show how alternative notions of efficiency may be grounded on different decision ‘contexts’, depending on what is known about the Decision Maker's (DM) preference structure and probabilistic anticipations. We define efficient sets arising naturally from polar decision contexts. We investigate these sets from the points of view of their relative inclusions and point out some particular subsets which may be especially relevant to some decision situations.

Розкрито сутність поняття «рейтинг». Доведено значущість рейтингової оцінки для суб’єктів фінансового ринку, зокрема для страхових компаній, потенційних страхувальників, інвесторів та кредиторів.

In this article, I wish to show the importance of the consequentialist method for the realisation of the ideal of non-domination. If, as stated by Philip Pettit, consequentialist ethics helps to better conceive republican political institutions, we then have to see how the fundamental principles of republican liberty can meet the norms traditionally associated with consequentialism. After a brief presentation of consequentialism and republican liberty (as Pettit defines it), I criticize the idea that liberty as non-domination could be included in (...) a bundle of goods that we seek to maximize. Next, I argue that we should reject the maximization of liberty as non-domination when this concept is considered as an absolute. Finally, I explore the idea of liberty as a condition for other goods, where liberty is still taken in the republican sense. These three theses are all rejected by demonstrating that the maximization of republican liberty is not really the maximization of liberty itself, but the maximization of protections granted to the individuals with the aim of defending their liberty. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

This book offers a critical introduction to the work of American philosopher D. G. Leahy (1937-2014). Leahy's fundamental thinking can be characterized as an absolute creativity in which all creating is 'live' -- a happening occurring now that manifests a supersaturated polyontological actuality that is essentially created by the logic that characterizes it. Leahy leaves behind the categorial presuppositions of modern thought, eclipsing both Cartesian and Hegelian subjectivities and introducing instead an essentially new form of thinking founded in a nondual (...) logic of creation. The new thinking delineates the absolute unicity of existence as a creative interactivity beyond all traditional dichotomies (such as one vs. many, unity vs. plurality, identity vs. change): a fully "digitized" actuality that is nothing but newness, which inherently implies nothing but change. Through this new form of thinking, change itself is revealed to be the very essence of reality and mind. Any reader looking for a quantum leap beyond the thrall of modern and postmodern fixations is invited to hear and apprehend this new thinking that refuses to be conditioned by paradigms, categories, species, genera, walls, bridges, boundaries, or abstractions: an essentially free thinking that embodies creative novelty itself. (shrink)

Virtual environment landmarks are essential in wayfinding: they anchor routes through a region and provide memorable destinations to return to later. Current virtual environment browsers provide user interface menus that characterize available travel destinations via landmark textual descriptions or thumbnail images. Such characterizations lack the depth cues and context needed to reliably recognize 3D landmarks. This paper introduces a new user interface affordance that captures a 3D representation of a virtual environment landmark into a 3D thumbnail, called a worldlet. Each (...) worldlet is a miniature virtual world fragment that may be interactively viewed in 3D, enabling a traveler to gain first-person experience with a travel destination. In a pilot student conducted to compare textual, image, and worldlet landmark representations within a wayfinding task, worldlet use significantly reduced the overall travel time and distance traversed, virtually eliminating unnecessary backtracking. (shrink)

'Nadeau and Kafatos supply plenty of food for thought: the apparently recondite concept of non-locality, they suggest, has consequences everywhere.'--Publisher's Weekly.

Alice Le Goff ,Christian Nadeau | : Ce texte constitue une introduction au dossier. Il introduit les différentes contributions en mettant en relief leurs principales orientations. Ce faisant, il propose donc une cartographie conceptuelle, forcément partielle, des enjeux associés à la notion de démocratie épistémique et des enjeux du croisement de cette notion avec celle de démocratie de contestation. En un premier temps, nous revenons sur l’apport du procéduralisme épistémique et sur les questions qu’il soulève. Ensuite, nous revenons sur (...) le néo-pragmatisme et la façon dont il permet d’envisager une justification épistémique de la démocratie. Puis nous mettons l’accent sur les enjeux d’un dialogue entre modèle républicain de la démocratie contestataire et modèle épistémique. Enfin, le texte propose un résumé du parcours proposé dans le cadre de ce dossier. | : This introduction brings out the main lines of the articles collected in the present issue. Our aim is to provide the reader with a conceptual overview of the main stakes of epistemic democracy and of its intersections with the model of contestatory democracy. First, we focus on epistemic proceduralism, its contributions and the questions it raises. Second, we emphasize the way neo-pragmatism deals with the epistemic justification of democracy. Then, we insist on the interest of a dialogue between epistemic democracy and the neo-republican model of contestatory democracy. Finally, the text sums up the path followed in that issue. (shrink)

Quelle est la responsabilité des intellectuels en temps de guerre? Cet article entend offrir une analyse de la pensée de Michael Walzer afin de répondre à cette question. Il s’agira d’abord de revenir sur la distinction classique, au sein des théories de la guerre juste, entre combattants et non combattants. Par la suite, il sera possible d’examiner de manière plus exacte la responsabilité des citoyens en temps de guerre, et plus particulièrement des intellectuels.

In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and ...

Many methodologists are firmly convinced that Popper's arguments concerning the status of the rationality principle (RP) are incoherent or incompatible with the essentials of falsificationism. The present essay first shows that the accusation of incompatibility of situational logic with falsificationism does not hold up to scrutiny but then shows that Popper's arguments are nonetheless flimsy if not indefensible. For it seems that one can distinguish between two different versions of the RP in Popper's writings. If the first version is plainly (...) "objectivist" and can be characterized with Popper as empirically false, the second one is rather "subjectivist" and is not falsifiable as such. The essay shows that this second reading of the RP is the one that Popper finally adopts but that, unfortunately enough, this formulation of the RP looks more like a metaphysical statement than like an empirical law. It could then be held to be a priori valid as such, by analogy with Popper's line of argument concerning the principle of causality. If this is correct, then Popper's thesis on the empirical status of the RP is confuted. (shrink)

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for (...) deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

"I believe," André Breton said, "in the future resolution of the states of dream and reality--in appearance so contradictory--in a sort of absolute reality, or surréalité." The Surrealist movement, born in the 1920s out of the ferment of Dada, committed to revolution against bourgeois rationalism, and inspired by Freudian exploration of the unconscious, has reverberated more widely and deeply than perhaps any other art movement in our century. Its automatism, biomorphic shapes, visionary mode, and manipulation of found objects mark the (...) work of artists as different as Ernst, Miró, Magritte, and Dali. Maurice Nadeau's History of Surrealism, first published in French in 1944 and in English in 1965, has become a classic. It is both lucid and authoritative--by far the best overall account of this complex movement. Nadeau traces the evolution of Surrealism, bringing to life its many internal debates about politics and art. He relates the movement to its intellectual and artistic environment. And he provides the statements and manifestos of Breton, Aragon, Tzara, and others. (shrink)

Locke is the first English philosopher to be considered in this series, and that fact of itself is worthy of attention. Philosophy, of course, like science, knows no frontiers and no national boundaries. Yet it is true to say that Locke’s contribution to philosophy is typically and peculiarly English. His moderation, his emphasis upon experience, his tolerant spirit of compromise, his dislike of mystical extravagance and of metaphysical speculation, even that elusive quality of his which people call his “common sense”, (...) are English traits. His very defects, illogicality leading to inconsistency and an awkward disorderliness of thought so abhorrent to the. (shrink)

Throughout his writings, Hayek has emphasized that a "scientistic prejudice" is working as a bad steering factor in the research for sound theories in the general field of social sciences, and especially in economics. Notwithstanding Hayek's criticism, most contemporary economists still think that they must imitate methods of physical and biological sciences in order to do good and valid science. While Hayek was first vehemently reproving this methodological choice in his early writings (for example, Hayek 1952), he was afterwards convinced (...) by Popper, as he himself acknowledges (see Hayek 1967) that the scientific method social scientists sought to transpose into their own research field was mere illusion. Consequently, Hayek rejected the confirmationist approach to economic theories and adopted a strict falsificationist one (this is very clear in the Nobel Memorial Lecture: see Hayek 1974). (shrink)

Cet article défend la thèse suivant laquelle le républicanisme de Machiavel doit être pensé dans le cadre théorique des tumulti, c’est-à-dire des conflits entre les grands — qui veulent dominer— et le peuple — qui veut être libre. Cela signifie d’abord que le républicanisme de Machiavel ne présuppose aucune conception compréhensive de la liberté politique ni de quelque vision du bien que ce soit. La valeur normative de la thèse du conflit tient en ce que les dissensions entre les groupes (...) sociaux sont garants de la liberté politique et de la neutralité axiologique des institutions qui favoriseront cette liberté. Cela signifie ensuite, mais il s’agit en réalité de la même affirmation, que la pensée politique de Machiavel ne doit pas être interprétée en fonction des paramètres de l’humanisme civique, qui est une forme de néo-aristotélisme sur le plan politique et éthique et dont on associe trop souvent et trop facilement les thèses au républicanisme sous prétexte qu’il en est une des origines.This article defends the claim that Machiavelli’s republicanism should be approached via the theoretical framework of tumulti, that is, the conflicts among the powerful “who want to dominate” and the people “who wants to be free”. It means that Machiavelli’s republicanism presupposes neither a comprehensive conception of political freedom, nor any vision of what the good is. The normative value of the conflict thesis lies in the fact that social dissent between the social groups secures the political freedom and the axiological neutrality of the institutions that promote this freedom. It means therefore — and it is in reality the same assertion — that Machiavelli’s political thought should not be interpreted as related to some form of civic humanism, that is, a neo-Aristotelian conception of ethics and politics, and which we too easily associate with republicanism. (shrink)

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.

1.- Introduction: articulating Hayek’s evolutionary argument with his socialist calculation dispute I completely agree with Bruce Caldwell (Caldwell 1988b: 74-75; Caldwell 1988a) that it is precisely within the conceptual and theoretical framework of the debate on the possibility of socialist calculation that Hayek definitively breaks with the standard static equilibrium approach to the market economy and finds out that the central problem of economics is related to the complex question of social coordination. From the Hayekian standpoint, this problem cannot be (...) solved without articulating a genuine theory about the role and the use of knowledge in society.1 This forms the hard core of what I will call the Hayekian theoretical argument. But one can find a much different kind of argument in Hayek, i.e. an evolutionary argument. I will characterize this argument as the Hayekian empirical argument. Hayek first exposed the essential elements of this genuine argument systematically in Law, Legislation and Liberty (see especially Hayek 1973). But in Hayek’s last book (Hayek 1988), socialism is still analyzed from this evolutionary standpoint , and as such socialism is considered by Hayek to be the major problem not only of economic theory but also, more globally, of Western civilization itself. In that book, published the year before the Soviet Union collapsed, Hayek showed himself to be absolutely confident that economic analysis could prove that socialism was not only a social blunder and a political failure, but above all a formidable scientific error. My reading of Hayek’s work is that this evolutionary argument has to be linked to the first one, which is of a more theoretical nature as far as economics is concerned. Indeed, while the evolutionary argument puts forward a completely different conceptual framework tightening the theoretical argument, it first of all displaces the gist of Hayek’s claim against socialism.. (shrink)

André Couture ,Claudia Nadeau-Morissette.