Offering a new answer to an age-old problem: the meaning of a just or equitable distribution of resources, Julian Le Grand examines the principal interpretations of equity used by economists and political philosophers. He argues that none captures the essence of the term as well as an alternative conception relating equity to the existence or otherwise of individual choice. Le Grand shows that this conception is not only philosophically well-grounded but is also directly relevant to key areas (...) of distributional policy. His theoretical argument is complemented by detailed discussion of the application of the central idea to specific areas of policy, including the distribution of health and health care, central government grants to local governments and the measurement of income for tax purposes. Equity and Choice is written by an economist, but is intended for political philosophers and social policy analysts as well as economists. Hence the key chapters are written in a non-technical fashion, with specialized material relegated to appendices. This book is a unique combination of philosophical, economic and policy analysis and represents a major contribution in all three areas. (shrink)

Can we rely on the altruism of professionals or the public service ethos to deliver good quality health and education services? How should patients, parents and pupils behave - as grateful recipients or active consumers? The book provides new answers to these questions, and evaluates recent government policies in health services, education, social security and taxation, and puts forward proposals for policy reform: universal capital or 'demogrants', discriminating vouchers, matching grants for pensions and for long-term care and hypothecated taxes.

ABSTRACT Following Rawls' seminal work, political philosophers and economists have recently shown great interest in different conceptions of equity or justice. Apart from Rawls' own principles, these have included utilitarianism, need and desert, horizontal and vertical equity and envy‐free distributions. None of these conceptions, however, seem to command general consensus; and this paper is an attempt to find out why. The conclusion is reached that they all fail because they do not take account of an essential element of equity: its (...) relationship to the existence or otherwise of choice. An alternative conception is offered, based explicitly on that relationship; it is argued that this conception comes closer to capturing the essence of what is generally meant by the term equity than any of the others considered. (shrink)

Publicly funded services such as health care and education often offer their users little by way of choice of provider. Partly in consequence they often create substantial inequities, with the less well off utilizing those services less relative to their needs than the better off. Contrary to popular perception, policies that offer choice of provider within these services can increase equity — provided that those policies are properly designed.

Publicly funded services such as health care and education often offer their users little by way of choice of provider. Partly in consequence they often create substantial inequities, with the less well off utilizing those services less relative to their needs than the better off. Contrary to popular perception, policies that offer choice of provider within these services can increase equity — provided that those policies are properly designed.

Mathias Risse has provided a thoughtful critique of my book, raising serious points about a major part of the argument. I am glad to have the opportunity to reflect further on it.

Etude du phénomène du kitsch à travers les littératures et cultures d'Europe, d'Amérique du Nord et du Sud et du Japon.

How do we teach chemistry as a different science from physics? This paper looks into a fundamental distinguishing property of chemistry as a science. It is characterized in this paper that chemistry, unlike many other sciences that are largely descriptive, is primarily creative. In this sense, the various fields of chemistry may seek to create as an end goal, and not merely to create as a means to an end as commonly seen in allied sciences. This distinction is important as (...) it elevates the importance of chemical synthesis above being a small detail of the field. I argue in this paper that synthesis is a largely defining character of chemistry as a structured science, and must be given importance to when attempting to define chemistry as a separate study from similar fields. Awareness of the importance of synthesis can elucidate on the manner and trends of normal chemical research as well as predict possible circumstances that will arise for the field of chemistry. (shrink)

(1974). Ideas on the composition of muriatic acid and their relevance to the oxygen theory of acidity. Annals of Science: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 213-225.

Seriously engaging with the needs, hardships, and aspirations of future generations is an emotional experience as much as an intellectual endeavor. In this essay we describe a guided visualization exercise used to overcome the emotional barriers that often prevent us from dealing effectively with intergenerational decisions. The meditation and dreaming technique was applied to a diverse group of researchers who engaged in a visualized encounter with future generations. Following the exercise, we concluded that a serious analysis of intergenerational conflict requires (...) us to confront our own mortality. Also, somewhat surprisingly to workshop participants, our desire to become stewards of the planet was driven by our fear of death as well as our egoist yearning for immortality. We posit that imagining the unknown with visioning practices might increase our emotional resilience, and hence improve our ability to confront the burdens of intergenerational responsibility. (shrink)

Les divers lieux et aspects d'un paysage riche et changeant, mais essentiellement connexe, sont, pour le mathématicien, une métaphore de l'intelligence. Les deux conceptions contradictoires, une sorte de fractal et une belle variété, font qu'il est nécessaire de faire appel à une multiplicité de points de vue pour faire sentir la nature des mathématiques. C'est le choix qui a clairement guidé la structure novatrice des Grands courants.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

François Latraverse Profesor Asociado del Departamento de Filosofía de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). PhD. en Filosofía de la Sorbona (Paris I) y DEA en Linguística (Aix-en-Provence). Sus temas de interés son, entre otros, la Filosofía del Lenguaje, la Semiótica Filosófica, Historia de las Teorías del Signo, Pragmatismo, Wittgenstein y Peirce. En el año 1996 constituyó el Grupo de Investigación Peirce-Wittgenstein. Hace parte y dirige el Projet d’édition Peirce (UQAM), responsable de la producción del volumen 7 de los Writings (...) of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition (Indiana University Press), consagrado a los textos que C. S. Peirce elaboró para el Century Dictionary & Cyclopedia. Es autor de varias traducciones como: Fondements de la théorie des signes de Charles Morris (RS-SI), el Tractatus logico-philosophicus de L. Wittgenstein y Correspondance, rencontres, souvenirs de L. Wittgenstein et P. Engelmann (2010). Algunos de sus trabajos publicados son: La pragmatique: histoire et critique, Bruxelles, 1987; Peirce, Wittgenstein et le pragmatisme. Paris: L’Harmattan; «Signe, proposition, situation : éléments pour une lecture du Tractatus logico-philosophicus». Revue internationale de philosophie, vol. 56, no. 219, p. 125-140; (2000) «L’institution du signe: remarques sur la sémiotique de Port-Royal». RS/SI, vol. 20, no. 1-3; (1998) «Locke et le retournement sémantique», Sémiotiques, no. 14, p. 19-30. (shrink)

Marxism’s Unintentional Contributions to the Renewal of Human Rights in Post-1968 France. The years following May 1968 witnessed the end of a certain chapter of French Marxism and a return to the languages of human rights and liberalism. French Marxism itself unintentionally contributed to this development. This article examines three overlapping cases from the 1970s : Maoism and mobilization around prisons, the women’s movement and the law, and the New Philosophers’ undermining of a dialectical view of history.

In the commentaries to this book we try to understand d’Alembert thoughts and how he contrives to translate his ideas on mechanics to the fluid realm with a new and radical point of view; how he arrives at the first two fundamental differential equations among the velocity components; and how he tries to reduce the resistance of a moving body, which is a change of its momentum, to the hydrostatical pressure, which is related to the gravity. All this knowing that (...) his mechanics has no forces and no pressures as well, and that the fluids are aggregates of individual particles. The essay A New Theory of the Resistance of Fluids was a turning point in Fluid Mechanics because clearly, for the first time, the resistance is shown as the results of a fluid subjected to differential equations in a continuous mode instead of a set of impacts of individual particles. This contribution has been recognized by the scholars. However, only partial attention has been p aid to this work, which can be justified due to the difficulty in its reading and also because it was eclipsed by the publication, a few years later, of Euler’s three Memoirs that established modern hydrodynamics. (shrink)

Voici une dition qui contribuera sans doute clairer une activit encore mal connue de Voltaire, celle d' diteur. Car de cette uvre composite qu'est le Discours de l'empereur Julien Voltaire se veut avant tout et reste bien l'organisateur, empruntant l'empereur du IVe si cle le r quisitoire qu'il a dress dans son Contre les Galil ens et au marquis d'Argens, son moderne et premier traducteur, la 'belle infid le' qu'il a donn e lire cinq ans plus t t ceux qui (...) n'entendaient ni le grec ni le latin. Voltaire n'a cependant conserv le joyau que pour le servir dans une monture toute nouvelle: d'Argens avait accompagn sa traduction d'une substantielle pr face et d'une annotation abondante; mais Voltaire a cart la premi re et retenu un tiers seulement de la seconde, encadrant d sormais le Discours de ses propres textes; en pr faces un 'Avis au lecteur' suivi d'un 'Portrait de l'empereur Julien' et d'un 'Examen du Discours'; en postface un virulent 'Suppl ment au Discours'. A quoi l'on ajoutera les quarante-quatre notes r dig es par l' diteur et qui s'adjoignent aux treize notes de d'Argens qu'il a conserv es; ce sont les 'nouvelles notes de divers auteurs' annonc s par la page de titre et dont quatre sont sign es Damilaville, Boulanger, Bolingbroke et 'le th ologien Th ro': sous ces noms d'emprunt, l' diteur ne s'est pas fait scrupule de r utiliser certains de ses textes ant rieurs, pas plus qu'il n'a craint, par de simples coupes habilement op r es dans certaines notes de d'Argens, de d figurer l'occasion la pens e du marquis quand elle se trouve contraire la sienne. Ainsi voit-on clairer sous ses diff rents aspects une activit ditoriale dont il fallait aussi p n trer les motifs. (shrink)

L’article cherche à savoir si une explication neuroscientifique de la conscience est possible et à quoi elle pourrait ressembler. Plus particulièrement, je me pencherai sur l’affirmation qu’à chaque expérience donnée correspond un système de représentation neural qui constitue la base de survenance minimale de cette expérience. J’appellerai cette hypothèse « la thèse de survenance minimale ». Je soutiens que cette thèse peut se lire de deux façons que je nommerai lectures localiste et holiste. Les théories localistes cherchent à définir quelle (...) est la base de survenance minimale des expériences particulières. Elles laissent de côté les questions sur la nature de la conscience des êtres et considèrent la base neurale de leur conscience comme une condition causale circonstancielle nécessaire à l’expérience d’une conscience particulière. Les holistes, d’autre part, donnent la priorité à la conscience des êtres et affirment que nous pouvons rendre compte des états de conscience particuliers seulement dans un contexte d’explication de la conscience des êtres. J’affirme que toute explication scientifique de la conscience doit rendre compte de ce que j’appellerai « une sensation minimale de soi », intrinsèque à tout état conscient. Les théories holistes sont les plus aptes à tenir compte de cet aspect. Enfin, j’affirme que l’explication sensori-motrice dynamique de la conscience peut se combiner avec une approche holiste de la base neurale de la conscience. Une telle combinaison d’approches compense l’opposition à la thèse de survenance minimale de certains défenseurs de l’explication sensori motrice dynamique distingués . Elle offre également un cadre de développement pour une explication neuroscientifique de la sensation minimale de soi. (shrink)

The overall nature of a world congress is a combination of the perennial features of its structure and the particular character given by its host. This was the first congress to be heldin Asia in the gathering’s 108 year history, and in the grand auditorium of Seoul National University, it was as though we were being welcomed to South Korea first, and the congress second.

2007 will be remembered as the year in which the Tour de France died. Race leader and likely eventual winner, Michael Rasmussen, was eliminated near the end on an allegation of doping. Since the 1960s, the idealistic drug crusaders have been on a mission to reverse the course of history, and eliminate drugs from the sport. But this “zero tolerance” strategy to drugs has failed, as 2007's Tour spectacularly showed. Only around 10–15% of professional athletes are drug tested. Currently, it (...) is illegal to use erythropoietin (EPO) or blood doping to move your haematocrit from 48 to 49% even though some people will have a normal level of 49%. A regulated permissive policy would paradoxically reduce risk to athletes. The present system creates an environment of risk to the athlete. A rational policy on doping would allow safe performance‐enhancing interventions which are consistent with the spirit of a particular sport. (shrink)

This compilation of fifty-six articles together with a substantial Introduction and Afterword offers itself as a work for "students and specialists" alike. But, since the majority of articles are less than ten pages long, it is hard to regard the reference to specialists as much more than a sales pitch. The work is, in fact, in all but name, an encyclopedia. Both its length—680 pages—and its scope—Kant to Le Doeuff via, saliently, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Critical Theory, (...) Structuralism, and French Post-Structuralism—indicate the ambition to comprehensiveness characteristic of an encyclopedia. (shrink)

This compilation of fifty-six articles together with a substantial Introduction and Afterword offers itself as a work for "students and specialists" alike. But, since the majority of articles are less than ten pages long, it is hard to regard the reference to specialists as much more than a sales pitch. The work is, in fact, in all but name, an encyclopedia. Both its length—680 pages—and its scope—Kant to Le Doeuff via, saliently, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Critical Theory, (...) Structuralism, and French Post-Structuralism—indicate the ambition to comprehensiveness characteristic of an encyclopedia. (shrink)