The title led me to expect a somewhat different kind of book. What we are offered is not so much a dossier on Iconoclasm, like André Grabar's, as a dossier on the Dark Age of Byzantium. It falls into two parts: the first and more original is devoted to material culture, while the second is a checklist of written sources, largely overlapping the Prolegomena volume of PmbZ. Aimed at university students, this is essentially a work of reference. A further volume (...) of synthesis is promised. (shrink)

Computers have transformed science and help to extend the boundaries of human knowledge. However, does the validation and diffusion of results of computational inquiries and computer simulations call for a novel epistemological analysis? I discuss how the notion of novelty should be cashed out to investigate this issue meaningfully and argue that a consequentialist framework similar to the one used by Goldman to develop social epistemologySocial epistemology can be helpful at this point. I highlight computational, mathematical, representational, and social stages (...) on which the validity of simulation-based belief-generating processes hinges, and emphasize that their epistemic impact depends on the scientific practices that scientists adopt at these different stages. I further argue that epistemologists cannot ignore these partially novel issues and conclude that the epistemology of computational inquiries needs to go beyond that of models and scientific representations and has cognitive, social, and in the present case computational, dimensions. (shrink)

Bloemlezing van filosofische sleutelteksten uit de 18e-eeuwse Verlichting.

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance (CSP) affects a firm’s capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises (MNEs) need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to (...) compete in foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature – the relationship between R&D investment and a firm’s multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This text expounds and relates the ethical and religious views of a philosopher that are usually discussed in terms of language. (Philosophy).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fabuler la fin du monde: La puissance critique des fictions d’apocalypse by Jean-Paul EngélibertCyril CamusJean-Paul Engélibert. Fabuler la fin du monde: La puissance critique des fictions d’apocalypse [Fabulating the end of the world: The critical power of apocalypse fiction]. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2019. 239 pp. Print. 20€. ISBN 978-2-348-03719-1.Jean-Paul Engélibert is a well-established expert on apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction. His exploration of the genre thus far includes (...) the monograph Apocalypses sans royaume: Politique des fictions de la fin du monde, XX–XXIe siècles (2013), numerous articles, as well as the essay collection L’Apocalypse: Une imagination politique, XIXe–XXIe siècles (2018), which he co-edited. In his latest book, Fabuler la fin du monde, he returns to several texts and aspects of the genre previously covered, delving deeper into what he calls “fictions of the end of the world.” In the ten chapters, gathered in five parts, he approaches his subject as a seasoned scholar in the field of comparative literature, and his analysis draws from comparisons between modern fiction’s representation of apocalypse and biblical literature’s visions of apocalypse and messianism. The book also offers ecocritical insights into the specter of Anthropocenic manifestations in fiction, with reflections on the interrelated genres of utopia and dystopia, theories of cinema, and philosophical writings on the catastrophic history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.The range of fictional works discussed is wide, including Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville’s Le dernier homme (1805); Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); Émile Souvestre’s Le monde tel qu’il sera (1846); Didier de Chousy’s Ignis (1883); Robert Merle’s Malevil (1972); José Saramago’s Blindness (1995); Antoine Volodine’s Minor Angels (1999); Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003); Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006); Céline Minard’s Le dernier monde (2007); Davide [End Page 163] Longo’s The Last Man Standing (2010); and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake [2003], The Year of the Flood [2009], and MaddAddam [2013]). Engélibert also touches on feature-length movies such as Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959), Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012), and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995), as well as on other literary and audiovisual fictions, such as E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909), Edward Bond’s dramatic trilogy The War Plays (1985), and the first season (2014) of Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s TV series The Leftovers (2014–17).Engélibert’s exegeses of the genre build around two aspects of the evolving relationship of apocalyptic narratives to the context of their production. Apocalypse (in the sense of “the end of the world” rather than the etymological sense of “revelation”) is no longer primarily a religious myth: the creation and use of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the theorization of the Anthropocene, and the mainstreaming of concerns over climate change have made the term “apocalypse” a very real, tangible prospect for the future. Engélibert relies on Günther Anders’s Die atomare Drohung (1981) to highlight the importance of the A-bomb in bringing home the reality of potential annihilation to people’s collective consciousness. Yet his second contextual/historical point is that the Anthropocene (albeit unnamed at the time) actually started with the Industrial Revolution, and that thinkers and polemicists such as Charles Fourier or Eugène Huzar, as well as contemporary fiction writers, were already acknowledging the environmental impact of humans and their economic/industrial/technological activity as threats to human and nonhuman life, and to the health of the planetary system itself.1Citing the work of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Christophe Bonneuil on the history of climate science, Engélibert analyzes in detail several nineteenth-century novels (namely Le Dernier homme, Frankenstein, Le monde tel qu’il sera, and Ignis) and one early-twentieth-century story (Forster’s “The Machine Stops”) that denounce the harm that the idol of the time, Progress, was already wreaking on nature and human life... (shrink)

The Ibadis, a religious minority that survived in North Africa and Oman, claim to be the democrats of Islam. The present study highlights their key role in promoting a political alternative to the Caliphate through a collegial model of government. I.

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance affects a firm's capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to compete in (...) foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature - the relationship between R&D investment and a firm's multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

Chez Eisenstein on découvre comment dans le cinéma de prise de vues réelles, il est déjà possible de détourner un élément du représenté pour en faire le moyen d’une représentation qui le dépasse au point de lui être étranger, dans la mesure où il sert un propos tout autre que celui de son contexte d’origine. Dans le stop motion la mise en mouvement fondée sur un type de « montage » image par image permet non seulement de réanimer le monde, (...) mais aussi de transfigurer les objets et leur matérialité même. L’adhésion au contenu profilmique ne concerne donc plus uniquement les contenus généraux et narratifs de la représentation (comme le lieu ou la temporalité), mais aussi la matérialité même des objets. (shrink)

The essays contained in Beyond the Juxtaposition of Nature and Culture represent an attempt by scholars from Canada, Germany, and Mexico to come to grips with the innovative work of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader who has proposed nothing less than a new theory of nature, according to which there are at least three different orders--the material-biotic, the quantum, and the human--which differ from one another according to their different configurations of space-time, and which cannot be reduced the (...) one to the others. Each author takes up Krader's theory in relation to its impact on their own discipline: sociology, anthropology, the study of myth, the theory of labor and value, economics, linguistics, and aesthetics. The question of how nature and culture can be integrated within a theoretical framework which links them in difference and nexus and allows each their non-reductive space leads each of the contributors to move in their thinking beyond the old dualisms of materialism and idealism, fact and value, nature and culture. (shrink)

Social scientists who conduct qualitative research frequently use emotional engagement to gather information about participants’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in relation to a particularly research question. When the subject under investigation is related to trauma, listening to, or being exposed to personal accounts of participants’ traumatic experiences can carry a significant emotional cost for researchers. This may place them at risk of secondary trauma. In this article, I examine these issues from the context of my doctoral field research in South (...) Africa, which focused on intergenerational trauma amongst descendants of victims of apartheid-era gross human rights violations. I reflect on my positionality as both an insider and outsider and feelings of guilt that emanated from my sense of being privileged and an imposter. I also reflect on the emotional turmoil brought about by my engagement with the trauma of participants and their families. I conclude by sharing the lessons I have learnt, and that have enabled me to sustain my scholarly engagement with intergenerational trauma. Ultimately, this article gives insight into, and raises awareness about, the emotional consequences of conducting trauma research. It offers practical suggestions to help researchers navigate the emotional minefield involved in conducting trauma research. (shrink)

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and (...) later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that Marcel’s idea of freedom as participation in being is what constitutes authentic freedom and existence. A “pessimistic” existentialist, Sartre conceives of authentic freedom and existence or life as making free choices and committing oneself to one’s chosen mode of life and taking responsibility for it. However, this stand of absolute freedom of choice, irrespective of the morality and nature of one’ actions with regard to human essence and ontological status as finite (...) and potential being in need of plenitude, could lead to the loss of sense of being and the proliferation of evil in a society. This is because one might freely choose to indulge in an act that negates the essence of humanity and engenders self-destruction as well as the destruction of others, since, for the “pessimistic” existentialist, one only has to be committed to it and accept its accompanying responsibility to qualify as authentic freedom and existence. I will argue that Marcel’s conception of freedom as participation in being leads to an individual’s awareness of their ontological status as a finite being and that their finitude imposes a limitation on their hold on being and generates some self-trepidation that they might lose their sense of being, and consequently propels them to engage in those acts that are consistent and compatible with their essence and are geared towards self-realisation. I will conclude that genuine freedom and authentic life lie in participation in being. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDeliberative and decisional groups play crucial roles in most aspects of social life. But it is not obvious how to organize these groups and various socio-cognitive mechanisms can spoil debates and decisions. In this paper we focus on one such important mechanism: the misrepresentation of views, i.e. when agents express views that are aligned with those already expressed, and which differ from their private opinions. We introduce a model to analyze the extent to which this behavioral pattern can warp deliberations (...) and distort the decisions that are finally taken. We identify types of situations in which misrepresentation can have major effects and investigate how to reduce these effects by adopting appropriate deliberative procedures. We discuss the beneficial effects of holding a sufficient number of rounds of expression of views; choosing an appropriate order of speech, typically a random one; rendering the deliberation dissenter-friendly; having agents express fined-grained views. These applicable procedures help improve deliberations because they dampen conformist behavior, give epistemic minorities more opportunities to be heard, and reduce the number of cases in which an inadequate consensus or majority develops. (shrink)

In 1938 Wittgenstein delivered a short course of lectures on aesthetics to a small group of students at Cambridge. The present volume has been compiled from notes taken down at the time by three of the students: Rush Rhees, Yorick Smythies, and James Taylor. They have been supplemented by notes of conversations on Freud between Wittgenstein and Rush Rhees, and by notes of some lectures on religious belief. As very little is known of Wittgenstein's views on these subjects from his (...) published works, these notes should be of considerable interest to students of contemporary philosophy. Further, their fresh and informal style should recommend Wittgenstein to those who find his _Tractatus_ and _Philosophical Investigations_ a little formidable. (shrink)