1 Le present article constitue la refonte d'une communication présentée par les auteurs lors du colloque ‘Malthus, hier et aujourd'hui’, qui s'est tenu à l'Unesco du 27 au 29 mai 1980, à Paris. sous I'égide de la Société de démographie historique. Les auteurs tiennent à remercier Madame Michelle Perrot de sa bienveillante hospitalité à leur égard. Notre reconnaissance va également au professeur Theodore Zeldin et au St Anthony's College qui, en accueillant généreusement les auteurs durant I'autonne 1981, leur ont permis (...) d'approfondir leur matière dans ‘I'enfer tonique’ des bihliothèques oxoniennes. (shrink)

“Logic and Agon” is the text of a lecture given in Rome in 1958 by the German philosopher and mathematician Paul Lorenzen. In this inaugural text are laid the foundations of the dialogic logic, which represents an alternative approach to the question of meaning and logical truth, based on a dynamic formalism. Through the enrichment of the standard approach to logic with original tools, it allows a philosophical explanation of the foundations of the concept of formal validity. Clément Lion proposes (...) an unpublished French translation of this text as well as a presentation, in which he tries to show that the initial ambition of Paul Lorenzen was not so much to propose a new logical formalism as to question in principle any enterprise based on the use of such a formalism. (shrink)

Economic growth and development remain embedded in the very core of our current international economic system and the so called “material economy”. However, depleting natural resources and environmental degradation, which now threaten the well-being of future generations, has challenged this premise, and placed sustainable development as a necessary objective of business activity and expansion. Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) have emerged as a key tool for governments, businesses, and NGOs to manage the negative impact of their activities on the environment. Businesses (...) in particular play a key role in averting or mitigating current environmental trends given that the economic growth they have stimulated has serious consequences for both the environment and social well-being. However, research on the use of EIAs has been conducted mostly from a governmental perspective producing a clear gap between research development and business (corporate) practice. To bridge this gap in knowledge, we develop a new EIA process tailored to real world business constraints and provide a range of propositions which we hope will stimulate future research efforts toward understanding and guiding how businesses integrate environmental issues into their decision-making processes. (shrink)

Avec l’article « Aristotle’s natural deduction system », publié en 1974, J. Corcoran a contribué à diffuser une nouvelle perspective sur les écrits logiques d’Aristote et sur la théorie du syllogisme en particulier. Dans cet article, Corcoran affirme que, dans les premiers chapitres des Premiers Analytiques, Aristote ne propose pas un système axiomatique, qui supposerait une logique sous-jacente, ainsi que le pensait Łukasiewicz, mais plutôt un système de déduction naturelle, avec des dimensions métalogiques. Notre propos est ici basé sur une (...) courte monographie de Kurt Ebbinghaus, intitulée Ein formales Model der Syllogistik des Aristoteles (1964), où est fixé le canon de cette nouvelle perspective mentionnée plus haut et qui a été développé dans le cadre conceptuel de la « logique opérative » de Paul Lorenzen. Ebbinghaus développe une reconstruction formelle montrant que l’approche d’Aristote relève de la « théorie de la preuve », non seulement pour ce qui concerne le système d’inférence sous-jacent, mais aussi pour ce qui concerne les éléments métalogiques. C’est notamment à travers ce dernier aspect que se manifeste une différence majeure par rapport à la reconstruction de Corcoran. Alors que celui-ci pose que le système d’inférence d’Aristote est enraciné dans une sémantique de théorie des modèles (élaborée par Corcoran lui-même), Ebbinghaus comprend que la théorie du syllogisme a été développée à partir d’une approche de la signification par des règles (« rule based »), semblables aux règles d’un jeu. En fait, la reconstruction d’Ebbinghaus offre une lecture pragmatiste de la syllogistique d’Aristote, qui, tel est notre propos, paraît non seulement beaucoup plus proche du point de vue d’Aristote que ne l’est la sémantique de théorie des modèles proposée par Corcoran, mais qui, de plus, permet de saisir l’unité systématique de la théorie du syllogisme. (shrink)

Coordonné par C. Trémeaud, ce volume porte sur la question du genre abordé à partir des données matérielles que livre l’archéologie. Il rassemble neuf contributions, toutes dues... à des auteures, ce qui semble – malheureusement – refléter l’absence d’intérêt de la plupart des chercheurs masculins pour ce type de problématique. L’avant-propos de Violaine Sebillotte Cuchet oppose aux textes la culture matérielle, les objets issus des sources archéologiques : ces deux aspects se retrouvent dans...

We consider a family of differential algebras of real functions on real euclidean spaces, stable under right composition by affine maps. We prove that under a weak finiteness property, there is an o-minimal expansion of the ordered field of real numbers in which all these functions are definable.

L’objet de ce texte est de montrer que des fonctions qui appartiennent à une famille vérifiant une propriété de finitude a priori non uniforme sont en fait définissables dans une structure o-minimale.

We argue that no attempt of reducing meaning to a systematic set of rules, according to which the role of linguistic expressions is to be normatively defined, can be abstracted from an irreducibly decisional compound. By comparing Lorenzen ’s project of building an Ortho-language and Brandom ’s inferentialist take on meaning, we distinguish two ways of acknowledging this fact, while claiming that Lorenzen ’s take is more genuinely constructive, insofar as choices be thought of as genuine features of constructions. It (...) brings into a new perspective the relation between dialogical constructivism and Brouwer ’s intuitionism. Finally we bring up a philosophical argument for the claim that interaction rules should be indexed on players and on their choices, when providing deontic bases to semantics. (shrink)

We argue that no attempt of reducing meaning to a systematic set of rules, according to which the role of linguistic expressions is to be normatively defined, can be abstracted from an irreducibly decisional compound. By comparing Lorenzen’s project of building an Ortho-languageand Brandom’s inferentialist take on meaning, we distinguish two ways of acknowledging this fact, while claiming that Lorenzen’s take is more genuinely constructive, insofar as choices be thought of as genuine features of constructions. It brings into a new (...) perspective the relation between dialogical constructivism and Brouwer’s intuitionism. Finally we bring up a philosophical argument for the claim that interaction rules should be indexed on players and on their choices, when providing deontic bases to semantics. (shrink)

El artículo presenta los principales resultados de una investigación orientada a relevar aquellas prácticas educativas que tuvieron lugar, durante 2020, en una red de escuelas de gestión privada de distintos niveles de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina, en el marco del aislamiento social preventivo y obligatorio. Este trabajo se enmarca en uno más amplio que estudia el rediseño de prácticas de la enseñanza en escenarios de alta disposición tecnológica y en el marco de colectivos, comunidades e instituciones. Desde (...) el punto de vista metodológico la investigación adopta un abordaje crítico-interpretativo que en este caso aborda puntualmente las condiciones institucionales y las prácticas de la enseñanza a través de entrevistas en profundidad llevadas a cabo en el mismo transcurso del aislamiento. En el análisis releva elementos recurrentes que, además, dan cuenta de dimensiones institucionales, pedagógicas y didácticas que se transformaron en el contexto de crisis. (shrink)

“Logic and Agon” is the text of a lecture given in Rome in 1958 by the German philosopher and mathematician Paul Lorenzen. In this inaugural text are laid the foundations of the dialogic logic, which represents an alternative approach to the question of meaning and logical truth, based on a dynamic formalism. Through the enrichment of the standard approach to logic with original tools, it allows a philosophical explanation of the foundations of the concept of formal validity. Clément Lion proposes (...) an unpublished French translation of this text as well as a presentation, in which he tries to show that the initial ambition of Paul Lorenzen was not so much to propose a new logical formalism as to question in principle any enterprise based on the use of such a formalism. (shrink)

Historical scientists frequently face incomplete data, and lack direct experimental access to their targets. This has led some philosophers and scientists to be pessimistic about the epistemic potential of the historical sciences. And yet, historical science often produces plausible, sophisticated hypotheses. I explain this capacity to generate knowledge in the face of apparent evidential scarcity by examining recent work on Thylacoleo carnifex, the ‘marsupial lion’. Here, we see two important methodological features. First, historical scientists are methodological omnivores, that is, they (...) construct purpose-built epistemic tools tailored to generate evidence about highly specific targets. This allows them to produce multiple streams of independent evidence and thus maximize their epistemic reach. Second, investigative scaffolding: research proceeds in a piece-meal fashion, information only gaining evidential relevance once certain hypotheses are well supported. I illustrate scaffolding in a discussion of the nature of functional ascription in paleobiology. Frequently, different senses of ‘function’ are not discriminated during paleobiological investigation—something which can mar adaptationist investigations of extant organisms. However, I argue that, due to scaffolding, conflating senses of ‘function’ can be the right thing to do. Coarse-grained functional hypotheses are required before it is clear what evidence could discriminate between more fine-grained ones. I draw on omnivory and scaffolding to argue that pessimists make a bad empirical bet. It is a bad idea to bet against the epistemic fortunes of such opportunistic and resourceful scientists, especially when we have reason to think we will systematically underestimate the amount of evidence ultimately available to them. (shrink)