Randomized experiments, as developed by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, offer a novel, evidence-based approach to fighting poverty. This approach is original, in that it imports the methodology of clinical trials for application in development economics. This paper examines the analogy between J-PAL’s field experiments in development economics and randomized controlled trials in medicine. RCTs and randomized field experiments are commonly treated as identical, but such treatment neglects some of the major distinguishing (...) features that make each experiment specifically apt for use in its respective field. The central claim of this paper is that the analogy between medicine and development economics is incomplete because the central dimensions of RCTs are not simply different but altogether lacking in J-PAL’s approach. This weakens both the political and the theoretical power of such experiments in development economics. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically and constructively examine the methodology of evidence-based development economics, which deploys randomized field experiments as its main tool. We describe the...

While the history and methodology of laboratory experiments in economics have been extensively studied by philosophers, those of field experiments have not attracted much attention until recently. What is the historical context in which field experiments have been advocated? And what are the methodological rationales for conducting experiments in the field as opposed to in the lab? This article addresses these questions by combining historical and methodological perspectives. In terms of history, we show that the movement toward field experiments in (...) economics has two distinct roots. One is the general orientation of medical and social sciences to evidence-based policy evaluation, which gave rise to randomized field experiments in economics. The other is an awareness of several methodological limitations of lab experiments in economics, which required practitioners to get out of the lab and into the field. In these senses, the movement is a consequence of influences from both outside and inside economics: the general evidence-based trend in policy science and an internal methodological development of experimental economics. In terms of methodology, we show that these two roots resulted in two somewhat different notions of “external validity” as methodological rationales of field experiment. Finally, we suggest that analysis of experiments as exhibits highlights a methodological strategy in which both strands complement each other. (shrink)

Abstract : This introduction to a special issue on "Normes and normativity" emphasizes the difficulties and challenges of distinguishing between a positive approach and a normative approach to norms in economics. Collective life is organized by norms, however the mere fact that they regularly influence behaviours does not imply their desirability. A strict description of norms may require consideration of ethical issues, which may be reported by different methods; choosing among norms however is an activity of a fundamentally normative nature, (...) which questions the legitimacy of decisions and evaluations. The very possibility of a demarcation between is and ought is not straightforward. In welfare economics in particular, the standard approaches that aim to avoid value judgements (welfarism) or to isolate them (axiomatics) can be problematic. To conclude, we present the four articles in the special issue meant to illustrate these issues regarding the nature, knowledge, value of norms and the positive-normative distinction. -/- Résumé : Cette introduction à un dossier thématique sur le thème "Normes et normativité" insiste sur les difficultés et les enjeux de la distinction entre les approches positives et normatives des normes en économie. La vie collective est organisée par des normes, mais qu’elles ordonnent les comportements dans les faits n’impliquent pas qu’elles soient désirables. Une stricte description des normes peut nécessiter de prendre en compte les questions éthiques, lesquelles peuvent être traduites par différentes méthodes ; choisir les normes en revanche est une activité de nature fondamentalement normative, qui interroge la légitimité des décisions et des évaluations. La possibilité même de démarcation entre positif et normatif ne va pas de soi : en particulier en économie du bien-être, les approches standards qui visent à éviter les jugements de valeur (le welfarisme) ou à les isoler (l’axiomatique) peuvent s’avérer problématiques. Pour conclure, nous présentons les quatre articles du numéro qui illustrent ces questionnements relatifs à la nature, la connaissance, la valeur des normes et la distinction entre normatif et positif. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new theoretical framework to analyse socio‐technical epistemic practices and systems on the Web and beyond, and apply it to the topic of web‐based scientific publishing. This framework is informed by social epistemology, science and technology studies (STS) and feminist epistemology. Its core consists of a tripartite classification of socio‐technical epistemic systems based on the mechanisms of closure they employ to terminate socio‐epistemic processes in which multiple agents are involved. In particular I distinguish three mechanisms (...) of closure, integration, aggregation and selection, and argue that they correspond to three different types of epistemic sociality. Different systems can employ different mechanism of closure or combinations thereof. Yet each mechanism has its own epistemic merits, depends on specific social, technical and epistemic prerequisites, has different strengths and weaknesses, and is optimal for different epistemic tasks. The aim of my analysis is twofold. Distinguishing different modes of epistemic sociality is a way for me not only to put forward a more nuanced framework for analysing socio‐epistemic practices, such as web‐based scientific publishing and scholarly communication. It can also serve as the theoretical basis for improving them. (shrink)

Toute oeuvre veut tenir l'attention, la diriger et produire de l'effet. Mais l'attention et l'effet ne sont pas les memes selon que l'oeuvre en dit plus ou en dit moins c'est-a-dire selon sa densite. Le developpe ou le concis, l'emphatique ou l'elude, le riche ou l'austere ne produisent pas les memes intensites. En explorant les variations de la densite litteraire, on retrouve directement des enjeux essentiels. Que vise l'ideal du complet face a l'ideal du pur? Comment la litterature se rapporte-t-elle (...) au langage ordinaire? Quel peut etre le minimum artistique qui subsiste au bord du silence? Comment comprendre l'echec de la lecture, l'interet perdu et l'ennui? (shrink)

Questioning the dominant view that Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty have little of substance in common, Judith Wambacq draws on unpublished primary sources and current scholarship in English and French to bring them into a compelling dialogue to reveal a shared concern with the transcendental conditions of thought.

Diversity is both an unavoidable aspect of twenty-first century living and a powerful challenge to older philosophical traditions that still assume as normatively universal a set of values, ways of thinking, institutions, and habits of living that emerged within earlier eras of more homogeneous cultures, less developed technologies, and more accepted forms of linguistic, legal, religious, economic, political, and military domination. Within recent years, new styles of philosophical discourse, including deconstruction, postmodernism, feminism, post-colonialism, and critical race theory, have persuasively challenged (...) these universalistic assumptions to reveal the important human differences they marginalize. Experience-based appreciation of the mutually educative potential of diverse standpoints as well as sober concern about the perils of our present times have led many thinkers to look for contemporary forms of pragmatism and cosmopolitanism as hospitable intellectual gathering places for urgently needed cross-difference conversations that may reflect and give substance to shared visions of democratic diversity. The eight authors in this volume engage in cross-difference conversations with other thinkers from earlier periods and other philosophical traditions, as well as with each other, in order to reconstruct pragmatism and cosmopolitanism in ways that are more attuned to our lived experience of diversity as well as our hopes for a diversity-appreciating democratic future. (shrink)

Il y a une seconde économie de Keynes, comme il y a une seconde philosophie de Wittgenstein : l'une et l'autre ont été élaborées sur le même campus, dans la même période (1930-1936), avec un même tournant décisif en 1933, par un économiste et un philosophe qui ont eu de nombreuses et importantes discussions. Tous deux entendaient lutter contre de puissantes orthodoxies, dans lesquelles s'inscrivaient leurs premières æuvres, pour faire émerger une nouvelle figure de l'économie comme de la philosophie, enfin (...) lucides sur leur inscription dans le « jeu de langage » de leur communauté académique. L'hypothèse d'une certaine interdépendance entre ces deux découvertes gagne fortement en plausibilité quand on prête attention, dans la rédaction de la Théorie générale, à l'apologie keynésienne du « sens commun » et du « langage ordinaire », face aux dangers des langages formels, qui menacent le discours savant sur l'économie. (shrink)

The philosopher David Lewis is credited by many social scientists, including mainstream economists, with having founded the modern (game-theoretical) approach to conventions, viewed as solutions to recurrent coordination problems. Yet it is generally ignored that he revised his approach, soon after the publication of his well-known book. I suggest that this revision has deep implications (probably not perceived by Lewis himself) on the analytical links between coordination, uncertainty and rationality. Thinking anew about these issues leads me to map out an (...) alternative social scientific research programme. The traditional ontological equipment of methodological individualism should be reinforced in order to admit the existence of an “intersubjective” world beside the two familiar worlds: the “objective” world of observable things, and the “subjective” world of expectations and individual beliefs. In particular, language becomes necessary to understand coordination via conventions, rather than the other way round. That has led a group of institutionalist economists and pragmatist sociologists to develop an enlarged model of rationality, no longer isolated from questions of coordination and values. This model is the basis for the “Economics of Conventions”. (shrink)

This chapter explores the influence of Messianism on modern German thought. It analyzes philosophical and literary works on Messianic nationalism; Messianic suffering; National Socialism as Messianic ideology; and Jewish Messianism. Particular attention is given to the work of Martin Heidegger, who represents the most interesting crossroads between nationalist Messianism, ‘existential’ and deconstructionist anti-Messianism, and a residual religious Messianism.

Examines how the animal/human divide has influenced power dynamics. The division of life into animal and human is one of the fundamental schisms found within political societies. Ironically, given the immense influence of the animal/human divide, especially upon power dynamics, the discipline in charge of theorizing and studying power—political science and theory—has had little to say about the animal/human. This book seeks to amend this vast oversight. Acknowledging the complexity of the changing differences between animals and humans, the contributors explore (...) such topics as Marx, Freud, the animal, and civilization; dog breeding, racism, and democracy; the meaningful silences of animals; how sovereignty reconfigures the animal/human; and the paradoxical struggles against being dehumanized among immigrant workers in a slaughterhouse. Political Theory and the Animal/Human Relationship is necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand how power has been influenced by the animal/human divide, and what we can do about it. (shrink)

Using selections from writers like Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree jr., and many others, this collection shows how the imagined worlds of science fiction create hold experiments for testing feminist hypotheses and for interpreting philosophical questions about humanity, gender, equality and more. Four main themes: Part 1, 'Human nature and reality', concentrates on whether there is an intrinsic difference between males and females. Part 2, 'Dystopias: the worst of all (...) possible worlds', portrays misogynistic societies uncomfortably familiar to the early 21st-century reader. Part 3, 'Separatist utopias: worlds of difference', assembles stories that scrutinize both the virtues and vices of separatism. In Part 4, 'Androgynous utopias: worlds of equality', the authors create worlds that anticipate the consequences, good and bad, of perfect sexual equality in education, intelligence, capability, and reproduction. (shrink)

Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic. This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can be applied with linguistically untrained consultants in the field and the laboratory. These diagnostics are intended to serve as part of a toolkit for exploring projective contents across languages, thus (...) allowing generalizations to be examined and validated crosslinguistically. We apply the diagnostics in two languages, focusing on Paraguayan Guaraní, and comparing the results to those for English. Our study of Paraguayan Guaraní is the first systematic exploration of projective content in a language other than English. Based on the application of our diagnostics to a wide range of constructions, four subclasses of projective contents emerge. The resulting taxonomy of projective content has strong implications for contemporary theories of projection, which were developed for the projective properties of particular subclasses and fail to generalize to the full set of projective contents. (shrink)

Judith Still offers a comprehensive discussion of Derrida's contribution to the long-standing philosophical and political debate which insists on defining 'man' against 'the animal'. She makes extensive reference to the two volumes recently published, in French and English, of Derrida's seminar series The Beast and the Sovereign, with particular attention to his source texts such as Defoe, Hobbes, La Fontaine, Rousseau, Agamben and Heidegger.

This chapter contains sections titled: Catherine Malabou : “Unbind Me” Judith Butler : What Kind of Shape Is Hegel's Body in? Catherine Malabou : What Is Shaping the Body? Judith Butler : A Chiasm between Us, but No Chasm.

Richard J. Bernstein, who has played a leading role in "the pragmatist turn" in contemporary philosophy, replies to twelve younger critics in a lively conversation about pragmatism's past, present, and future as a guiding paradigm for philosophy and related fields.

Proposer une oeuvre nouvelle, developper une idee neuve ou une vision personnelle differente, c'est dire autre chose. Mais c'est aussi dire quelque chose qui n'est pas radicalement inoui et sans connexion. Impacts, emprunts, initiatives, traditions ou ruptures: ces relations d'influence traversent la vie des idees et des oeuvres, leurs rapports entre elles, leurs caracteres de famille, et ce qui les rend chacune distincte. Invention et memoire vont ensemble. Leur liaison et leur ecart organisent ce qu'il y a d'autonome et d'unique (...) dans un point de vue novateur, et ce qu'il y a de commun et de partage. (shrink)

John White is one of the leading philosophers of education currently working in the Anglophone world. Since first joining the London Institute of Education in 1965, he has made significant contributions to the landscape of the discipline through his teaching, research and numerous publications. His academic work encompasses a broad range of rich philosophical issues, ranging from questions surrounding the child's mind, through the moral and pedagogical obligations of teachers and schools, to local and national questions of educational policy. In (...) this volume, international contributors address key issues in the philosophy of education, touching on significant contemporary concerns and demonstrating the breadth and influence of John White's work. Each chapter critically examines, builds on, and pays tribute to John White's unique contribution, considering how his work has impacted on the discipline of education as we know it today. Topics covered include: - policy and the role of philosophy of education - liberal education - the aims of education - moral education - leadership. Education, Philosophy and Wellbeing will appeal to postgraduate students and academics in the fields of history, policy, education studies, and philosophy, as well as to policy-makers, educational administrators and teachers. (shrink)

Studies of affect and emotions have blossomed in recent decades across the humanities, neurosciences, and social sciences. In music scholarship, they have often built on the discipline's attention to what music theorists since the Renaissance have described as music's unique ability to arouse passions in listeners. In this timely volume, the editors seek to combine this 'affective turn' with the 'sound turn' in the humanities, which has profitably shifted attention from the visual to the aural, as well as a more (...) recent 'philosophical turn' in music studies. Accordingly, the volume maps out a new territory for research at the intersection of music, philosophy, and sound studies. The essays in Sound and Affect look at objects and experiences in which correlations of sound and affect reside, in music and beyond: the voice as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or electronic; our sonic environments, whether natural or man-made, and our responses to them. As argued here, far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars including both established as well as a wealth of new voices. The essays are grouped thematically into sections that move from politics and ethics, to reflections on pre-and post-human "musicking," to the notions of affective listening and music temporalities, to are examination of historical understandings of music and affect. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersection with affect and emotions. (shrink)

As nursing and healthcare continue to change, we need nurses who are committed both to a solid understanding of their profession and to caring well for patients and their families. Offering a historically and theologically grounded vision of the nurse's call, this thoroughly revised third edition of a classic text includes practical features for educators, students, and practitioners.