L'article s'attache à dégager le fil rouge qui relie les réflexions de Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz sur les jeux de société à la théorie des jeux, telle qu'on la trouve dans l'ouvrage de John Von Neumann et Oskar Morgenstern. L'itinéraire décrit passe par les travaux de plusieurs mathématiciens du XVIIIe siècle sur différents jeux de hasard, pour aboutir aux recherches de quelques-uns des fondateurs des mathématiques modernes, comme Ernst Zermelo pour la théorie des ensembles et Émile Borel pour la théorie (...) des probabilités. Il montre comment une analyse mathématique des jeux de société a débouché sur l'élaboration d'une grille générale d'analyse des phénomènes sociaux. Son cheminement révèle, en outre, la longue parenthèse du XIXe siècle où ce programme s'est trouvé abandonné et esquisse, en conclusion, quelques hypothèses pour l'expliquer. (shrink)

The paradigm for modelling decision-making under uncertainty has undoubtedly been the theory of Expected Utility, which was first developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944) and later extended by Savage (1954) to the case of subjective uncertainty. The inadequacy of the theory of Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) as a descriptive theory was soon pointed out in experiments, most famously by Allais (1953) and Ellsberg (1961). The observed departures from SEU noticed by Allais and Ellsberg became known as “paradoxes”. The (...) Ellsberg paradox gave rise, several years later, to a new literature on decision-making under ambiguity. The theoretical side of this literature was pioneered by Schmeidler (1989). This literature views the departures from SEU in situations similar to those discussed by Ellsberg as rational responses to ambiguity. The rationality is “recovered” by relaxing Savage's Sure-Thing principle and adding an ambiguity-aversion postulate. Thus the ambiguity-aversion literature takes a normative point of view and does consider Ellsberg-type choices as behavioural “anomalies”. (shrink)

We began with the observation that language is often held to enact the world. We have examined several instances of this notion, beginning with a discussion of the folk etymology of certain words, moving through an example of Freud, to Morgenstern, Lettvin, and Stevens. The method shared by these examples assumes that words are literally saturated with meaning; that what appears arbitrary or senseless in them can be made to render up its sense and its motivation through a kind (...) of inspired analysis. Our intent has been to show how this principle of folk etymology lies behind some sophisticated creative thinking. In Freud, it is hypothesized to be a psychological mechanism of some depth. In Morgenstern and Lettvin, it forms the basis for a resonant poetic joke, while in Stevens it appears to have the same major status as the mythic principle of creation-through-language illustrated in our first examples from Egyptian mythology and from Genesis. Stevens, of course, uses the principle to create poetry, not religion; for as he says in section 5 of "The Man with the Blue Guitar": Poetry Exceeding music must take the placeOf empty heaven and its hymns . . . Samuel Jay Keyser, head of the department of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and editor of Linguistic Inquiry, is the coauthor of English Stress: Its Form, Its Growth and Its Role in Verse and of Beginning English Grammar. Alan Prince, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has written on stress and linguistic rhythm and is currently working, with Keyser, on the poetry of Wallace Stevens. (shrink)

Das Anliegen der Metaphysik, die Welt aus wenigen Grundprinzipien zu begreifen, ist seit Hume und Kant häufig als illusionär kritisiert worden. Dennoch hat die 'totgesagte' Metaphysik immer wieder 'Auferstehungen' erlebt. Auch in der Moderne werden die alten Fragen nach Welt, Mensch und Gott gestellt, doch geschieht dies vor einem veränderten wissenschaftlichen Hintergrund und auch häufig mit anderen Methoden. Insgesamt zeigt sich in der Moderne ein allmählicher Übergang von einer apriorischen zu einer hypothetischen, wissenschaftsorientierten Metaphysik. Die vorliegende Abhandlung thematisiert acht zentrale (...) Strömungen der Metaphysik seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Im Zentrum stehen dabei die philosophischen Weltbilder ihrer Hauptvertreter sowie ihre Standpunkte zum Leib-Seele-Problem und zum Problem der Willensfreiheit, aber auch ihre Stellungnahmen zu den Fragen nach Gott, Unsterblichkeit und dem Sinn des Lebens. (shrink)

Systematisch aufgebaute und am Alltagsleben orientierte Einführung in die philosophischen Einzeldisziplinen. Im Anhang ein Abriss der Philosophiegeschichte und ein Lexikon philosophischer Begriffe und Personen.

This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific (...) inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences. (shrink)

This article analyses the evolution of penalties from Michel Foucault’s philosophy, verifying the departure of torture and giving rise to a disciplinary model. The aim is to find out the forms of power that society has exerted over the 19th century and the transition to ‘biopower’, where the purpose is to control all of society. In Brazil, the shift towards a punitive model becomes evident with the redemocratization that followed the National Constitution of 1988, which recognized the dignity of the (...) human person as the right to be upheld. In this context, the following question arises: Does the common Brazilian penitentiary system serve its corrective purpose? Is there a more effective way to deal with convicts, in terms of reducing recidivism rates? Mario Ottoboni founded the Association for the Protection and Assistance of Convicts (APAC). The present study proposes a study by APAC to answer these questions. APAC is an innovative institution that aims to fulfill the resocializing function of a sentence. This is a possible path for social reintegration. This study employed a deductive approach and was conducted using bibliographical research. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objetiva geral descrever a linguagem musical sob a perspectiva da teoria histórico-cultural, conforme Vygotsky, seu principal representante. Neste sentido, procura-se também entender o conceito de mediação, como elemento articulador entre linguagem musical e o fenômeno pedagógico, produzido nos enredos intersubjetivos de professores e alunos. Nessa perspectiva, e com as contribuições da Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), que integra a música no ensino de Arte, identifica-se a relevância da linguagem musical na formação cidadã de estudantes da Educação (...) Básica. O presente estudo se caracteriza como uma pesquisa bibliográfica, amparada em obras originais de Vygotsky e de outros autores que escrevem a respeito da temática em questão, para embasamento aprofundado. Constatou-se que a música, enquanto linguagem, é dinâmica cujas habilidades e ações, construídas socialmente, são mediadas na interação professor-aluno. Portanto, a leitura que se faz da música, enquanto linguagem, não pode prescindir do caráter histórico-cultural, subjacente a toda e qualquer manifestação cultural. (shrink)

This article presents a first edition of three Mandaic lamellae from the Schøyen Collection, MS 2087/10, 2087/11, and 2087/18, which are the product of the same scribe and probably constituted a single amulet. The language of the amulet differs from that of other Mandaic texts, and demonstrates unknown or rare phonetic and morphological features. In addition, several lexemes that were hitherto unattested in Mandaic have been identified. Some of the amulet’s formulae are familiar from previously published texts, but in several (...) cases the new textual evidence allows us to improve upon their readings. (shrink)

Kants Musikästhetik wird weithin unterschätzt. Dabei bietet sie die entscheidenden Ansätze zur Befreiung der Musik aus den Fängen der Nachahmungsästhetik, wie sie vor allem E.T.A.Hoffman kongenial umgesetzt hat.

in Handbook of Knowledge representation, Elsevier, 2008.

Les disciplines historiques, littéraires et philosophiques font un emploi abondant des catégories historiographiques. Parmi celles-ci, les termes en ismes sont très fréquents pour référer à une doctrine, un courant artistique, une idéologie ou des événements spécifiques. On fait cependant remarquer que ces désignations posent de nombreux problèmes d’interprétation. En particulier, que l’origine exacte d’une catégorie est souvent méconnue et que sa signification est plus équivoque qu’on ne le croit habituellement. La formation d’un terme en isme s’explique souvent dans un contexte (...) polémique et sert à condamner ou critiquer plutôt qu’à comprendre une pensée, un mouvement ou des faits historiques. Les catégories d’athéisme, de classicisme ou de féminisme en sont de bons exemples. Le présent volume vise à contribuer à l’étude critique des catégories historiographiques et des notions en isme en s’attardant à l’époque moderne (XVI e XVIII e siècles). Il s’agit d’un moment clef de l’histoire européenne pendant laquelle nombre de ces notions apparaissent ou pour laquelle l’historiographie en a fait un emploi abondant. Les chapitres en examinent la valeur théorique par rapport à une origine ou des usages, et déterminent de quelles manières elles contribuent à l’interprétation de l’histoire, de la littérature ou de la philosophie, de la Renaissance jusqu’à la Révolution française. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the (...) vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)

We present an axiomatization of a problem in commonsense reasoning, characterizing the proper procedure for cracking an egg and transferring its contents to a bowl. The axiomatization is mid-sized, larger than toy problems such as the Yale Shooting Problem or the Suitcase Problem, but much smaller than the comprehensive axiomatizations associated with CYC and HPKB. This size of axiomatization permits the development of non-trivial, reusable core theories of commonsense reasoning, acts as a testbed for existing theories of commonsense reasoning, and (...) encourages the discovery of new problems in commonsense reasoning.We present portions of core theories of containment, falling, and pouring, integrated into Shanahan's circumscriptive event calculus, and show how these can serve as the basis of an axiomatization that partly characterizes egg cracking. We discuss several commonsense reasoning problems encountered during this research, such as the Initial Specification Problem (a relative of the frame problem that occurs in theories in which fluents can trigger actions), and the Unobtainable State Problem (the problem of determining whether or not a theorem stating that one cannot get from one state to another is meaningful). (shrink)

La transcription de corpus de langage oral est un art difficile car c’est une activité langagière. En particulier, elle inclut le processus d’interprétation des propos d’autrui que l’on trouve dans toute interaction langagière. Or ce qu’attend le scientifique est une description des données de langage qui s’affranchirait de cette interprétation, ce qui est impossible. On doit donc chercher à générer un processus d’interprétation simple, consensuel, qui puisse être compris par tout utilisateur d’un corpus. Pour cela, on utilise des normes de (...) codage précises, claires, aussi peu ambiguës que possible, ainsi qu’un alignement sur du matériel sonore ou audiovisuel. On peut aussi accompagner les transcriptions d’un contexte très riche, soit langagier (phonologique, syntaxique, sémantique, pragmatique), soit extra-langagier (situation, actions, description de scène). Ces difficultés techniques sont présentées dans le cas de corpus de jeunes enfants (projet Léonard) qui exemplifie les problèmes de transcription de langage oral. Les outils et formats utilisés sont ceux du projet CHILDES avec des évolutions spécifiques qui reflètent les difficultés que nous avons relevées dans notre travail de corpus et les solutions adoptées. (shrink)

La transcription de corpus de langage oral est un art difficile car c’est une activité langagière. En particulier, elle inclut le processus d’interprétation des propos d’autrui que l’on trouve dans toute interaction langagière. Or ce qu’attend le scientifique est une description des données de langage qui s’affranchirait de cette interprétation, ce qui est impossible. On doit donc chercher à générer un processus d’interprétation simple, consensuel, qui puisse être compris par tout utilisateur d’un corpus. Pour cela, on utilise des normes de (...) codage précises, claires, aussi peu ambiguës que possible, ainsi qu’un alignement sur du matériel sonore ou audiovisuel. On peut aussi accompagner les transcriptions d’un contexte très riche, soit langagier (phonologique, syntaxique, sémantique, pragmatique), soit extra-langagier (situation, actions, description de scène). Ces difficultés techniques sont présentées dans le cas de corpus de jeunes enfants (projet Léonard) qui exemplifie les problèmes de transcription de langage oral. Les outils et formats utilisés sont ceux du projet CHILDES avec des évolutions spécifiques qui reflètent les difficultés que nous avons relevées dans notre travail de corpus et les solutions adoptées. (shrink)

Der Band wagt eine Deutung von Arendts Gesamtwerk: Im Zentrum stehen dabei die Kategorien Raum und Zeit für eine Neuinterpretation des Politischen. Erst so gewinnt Arendts Rehabilitierung des politischen Denkens ihre produktive Dynamik und geschichtseröffnende Perspektive. Herausgelöst aus den Vereinnahmungen durch Neoaristotelismus und Republikanismus erscheint Arendt als kritische und postmoderne Denkerin.

Based on electrophysiological and anatomical studies, a prevalent conception is that the visual system recovers features of the world from retinal images to generate perceptions and guide behavior. This paradigm, however, is unable to explain why visual perceptions differ from physical measurements, or how behavior could routinely succeed on this basis. An alternative is that vision does not recover features of the world, but assigns perceptual qualities empirically by associating frequently occurring stimulus patterns with useful responses on the basis of (...) survival and reproductive success. The purpose of the present article is to briefly describe this strategy of vision and the evidence for it. (shrink)

This new reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenges traditional views of the eighteenth-century political philosopher's attitudes toward women and his perceived pessimism about human experience. Mira Morgenstern finds in Rousseau an appreciation of the complexities and multidimensionality of life that allowed him to criticize various easy dualisms promoted by his fellow liberal thinkers and point to the crucial mediating role that women fulfill between the private and public spheres. Morgenstern sees Rousseau as an important contributor to the feminist thoughts (...) and concerns that animate so much of our public and private discourse today. While Rousseau is commonly seen as a patriarchal misogynist, Morgenstern finds evidence in his writing that belies much of this claim. Rousseau was very much a man of his time, but he also believed that women were the key to transmitting his ideals of personal and political authenticity, thereby transforming his theory from ephemeral ideas into practical reality. A careful evaluation of Rousseau's writings on women reveals his highly complex sense of reality, especially his awareness that the solutions to life's complex problems are often temporary and must be renegotiated over time. Rousseau is more persistent than most in highlighting the weaknesses and pitfalls of liberal political thought, whose fundamental characteristic is its categorization of life on the basis of dualistic categories: public and private, outside and inside, male and female. Ultimately, what makes Rousseau worth reading today, argues Morgenstern, is his ability to illuminate critical weaknesses in the dualisms of liberal political theory and his pointing out, if only by implication, alternative ways of reaching the full measure of our individual and communal humanity. In honoring the traditional liberal emphasis on individual liberty and self-development, Rousseau’s meditations on the proper aim of political life are especially helpful to those today who seek ways to expand liberalism's promise of freedom and authenticity, while not losing sight of the common threads of meaning and community that continue to bind us together. (shrink)

In this article, some issues related to learning difficulties are addressed based on the question: how does the field of psychopedagogy conceive learning difficulties and what strategies does it propose to reduce them? With the study, we sought to understand how the field of psychopedagogy can contribute to reducing the learning difficulties of children who attend the initial years of basic education. To this end, a qualitative and descriptive study was carried out, with a bibliographic review. It was made a (...) bibliographic review on this field’s current knowledge on several electronic platforms. The focus was on the productions found in the CAPES Catalog of Theses and Dissertations and in the Journal of the Brazilian Psychopedagogy Association. Despite presenting relevant productions, it was not identified any text that answered the question raised, which made it necessary to expand the search for books in the area. Two works were then selected, which comprised the materiality of the research. From some selected excerpts, it was possible to understand and conceptualize what learning is and to identify the main difficulties faced by children in the early years. The most frequent ones are those related to reading and writing. Finally, we reflected on the feasibility of helping children in the learning process, through interventions aimed at children’s specific learning difficulties, providing them with better development both in school activities and beyond. (shrink)

Suppose you perform two actions. The first imposes a risk of harm that, on its own, would be excessive; but the second reduces the risk of harm by a corresponding amount. By pairing the two actions together to form a set of actions that is risk-neutral, can you thereby make your overall course of conduct permissible? This question is theoretically interesting, because the answer is apparently: sometimes Yes, sometimes No. It is also practically important, because it bears on the moral (...) status of practices such as offsetting personal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this article we propose a criterion for distinguishing between cases where pairing risk-increasing and risk-reducing actions makes each action permissible, and those where it does not: the Principle of Aggregate Risk-Imposition. We work towards this by considering a range of examples that illustrate various illegitimate ways of pairing risk-increasing actions with risk-reducing ones, and asking what goes wrong in each case. We then use this criterion to evaluate GHG offsetting. Is offsetting a legitimate way of removing the risk-imposition associated with GHG emissions, or not? Controversially, we argue that this turns out to depend on the form that the offsetting takes. (shrink)

This new reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenges traditional views of the eighteenth-century political philosopher's attitudes toward women and his perceived pessimism about human experience. Mira Morgenstern finds in Rousseau an appreciation of the complexities and multidimensionality of life that allowed him to criticize various easy dualisms promoted by his fellow liberal thinkers and point to the crucial mediating role that women fulfill between the private and public spheres. Morgenstern sees Rousseau as an important contributor to the feminist thoughts (...) and concerns that animate so much of our public and private discourse today. While Rousseau is commonly seen as a patriarchal misogynist, Morgenstern finds evidence in his writing that belies much of this claim. Rousseau was very much a man of his time, but he also believed that women were the key to transmitting his ideals of personal and political authenticity, thereby transforming his theory from ephemeral ideas into practical reality. A careful evaluation of Rousseau's writings on women reveals his highly complex sense of reality, especially his awareness that the solutions to life's complex problems are often temporary and must be renegotiated over time. Rousseau is more persistent than most in highlighting the weaknesses and pitfalls of liberal political thought, whose fundamental characteristic is its categorization of life on the basis of dualistic categories: public and private, outside and inside, male and female. Ultimately, what makes Rousseau worth reading today, argues Morgenstern, is his ability to illuminate critical weaknesses in the dualisms of liberal political theory and his pointing out, if only by implication, alternative ways of reaching the full measure of our individual and communal humanity. In honoring the traditional liberal emphasis on individual liberty and self-development, Rousseau’s meditations on the proper aim of political life are especially helpful to those today who seek ways to expand liberalism's promise of freedom and authenticity, while not losing sight of the common threads of meaning and community that continue to bind us together. (shrink)

Inspired by the Enlightenment readings of Hebrew biblical texts generated in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Mira Morgenstern's _Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible_ goes beyond the pioneering interpretations of various biblical texts penned by such noted Bible students as Spinoza, Rousseau, and Angelina Grimké to present an introduction to the Hebrew Bible as a whole from the perspective of a modern-day political theorist. In doing so, it offers a brilliant thematic guide to the Hebrew Bible's most politically (...) salient passages, complete with text and commentary. Morgenstern's account of the significance of these ancient yet strangely modern texts will fascinate students of both ancient and modern political theory—as well as all readers of the Hebrew Bible itself. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread belief, this book establishes that ontological and epistemological reductionism stand or fall together.

O artigo discute a centralidade da inovação na gramática discursiva da educação contemporânea a fim de refletir sobre as possibilidades de inovar nas Humanidades. Para tanto, realizou-se uma historicização do campo das Humanidades mapeando a rede de sentidos em que o termo Humanidades emergiu e da qual provêm. Analisou-se que a primeira referência de “humanidade” remonta aos autores da Antiguidade Latina, quando o termo grego Paidéia é traduzido por Humanitas significando “filantropia”, “cultura geral” ou “amor à humanidade”. Já na tradição (...) cristã, a expressão littera humaniores passa a ser utilizada para se referir aos textos laicos e distinguir-se dos textos de caráter sagrado. Nessa variação, destaca-se o uso do termo Humanidades pela Ordem dos Jesuítas, que o toma como campo de saber a ser ensinado. O uso do termo com esse sentido e a possibilidade de falar em ensino de Humanidades parece emergir com o modelo jesuíta e seu método escolástico. Tal modelo de ensino impactou as colônias espanholas nos séculos XVI ao XVIII e se coloca como uma das condições de possibilidade para a compreensão de ensino em Humanidades no presente. Diante do imperativo da inovação para o ensino de Humanidades na contemporaneidade, atentamos para o âmbito da formação. Formar pessoas não está desvinculado do ensino, mas o extrapola. As Humanidades constituem o campo do saber que assume, como condição básica, além da tarefa de instruir, a de formar pessoas para transformar o ser. Conclui-se, portanto, que a inovação nas Humanidades tem um papel mais fundamental que em outras áreas pois a produção do novo é mais radical e extrapola uma utilidade imediata. A inovação nas Humanidades requer o cultivo de um pensamento crítico, que ultrapassa o imediatismo, a padronização, a superficialidade, a banalização e a exclusão. Em sua finalidade, a formação em Humanidades pode encontrar meios para seu devir nas inovações tecnológicas, porém, tais inovações não são condições necessárias tampouco suficientes para inovar nas Humanidades. (shrink)