À partir d’une étude de cas portant sur le « scandale des fiches », qui mit en cause les pratiques de surveillance de la police politique suisse, nous montrons que, contrairement à ce qu’affirment nombre de travaux, l’ampleur du scandale ne peut-être déduite de celle de l’indignation pas plus que cette dernière ne peut être rapportée à la gravité supposée de transgressions. Un scandale n’émerge que si des acteurs, à partir de leur évaluation de la situation et de leurs perceptions (...) du possible, s’autorisent à exprimer publiquement une indignation, qu’elle soit feinte ou sincère, et parviennent à imposer une qualification déviante des pratiques concernées entraînant des mobilisations dans plusieurs espaces sociaux. En déplaçant la focale sur la dynamique émergente de mobilisations multisectorielles, nous plaidons pour une approche relationnelle et processuelle de la dimension émotionnelle du scandale, inséparable de sa dimension cognitive. (shrink)

Philosophy should not try to assimilate itself to the aims of the sciences. Scientism stems from the false assumption that a representation of the world minimally based on local perspectives is what best serves self-understanding. Philosophy must concern itself with the history of our conceptions, and we must overcome the need to think that this history should ideally be vindicatory. There is no basic conflict between arguing within the framework of our ideas, reflectively making better sense of them, and understanding (...) their highly contingent history. The third of these activities is an inescapable part of the second. (shrink)

A computable structure $\mathcal {A}$ is $\mathbf {x}$-computably categorical for some Turing degree $\mathbf {x}$ if for every computable structure $\mathcal {B}\cong\mathcal {A}$ there is an isomorphism $f:\mathcal {B}\to\mathcal {A}$ with $f\leq_{T}\mathbf {x}$. A degree $\mathbf {x}$ is a degree of categoricity if there is a computable structure $\mathcal {A}$ such that $\mathcal {A}$ is $\mathbf {x}$-computably categorical, and for all $\mathbf {y}$, if $\mathcal {A}$ is $\mathbf {y}$-computably categorical, then $\mathbf {x}\leq_{T}\mathbf {y}$. We construct a $\Sigma^{0}_{2}$ set whose degree (...) is not a degree of categoricity. We also demonstrate a large class of degrees that are not degrees of categoricity by showing that every degree of a set which is 2-generic relative to some perfect tree is not a degree of categoricity. Finally, we prove that every noncomputable hyperimmune-free degree is not a degree of categoricity. (shrink)

This essay asks why Aristotle, certainly no friend to unlimited democracy, seems so much more comfortable with unconstrained rhetoric in political deliberation than current defenders of deliberative democracy. It answers this question by reconstructing and defending a distinctly Aristotelian understanding of political deliberation, one that can be pieced together out of a series of separate arguments made in the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics.

Abstract The idea of a purely civic nationalism has attracted Western scholars, most of whom rightly disdain the myths that sustain ethnonationalist theories of political community. Civic nationalism is particularly attractive to many Americans, whose peculiar national heritage encourages the delusion that their mutual association is based solely on consciously chosen principles. But this idea misrepresents political reality as surely as the ethnonationalist myths it is designed to combat. And propagating a new political myth is an especially inappropriate way of (...) defending the legacy of Enlightenment liberalism from the dangers posed by the growth of nationalist political passions. (shrink)

No understanding of morality has more zealous or influential defenders among academic philosophers than Kant’s. Yet as Michael Rosen demonstrates in The Shadow of God, there is a sense in which Kant’s critics take his conception of freedom more seriously nowadays than his defenders. As a result, contemporary versions of “Kantian ethics” often end up challenging what Rosen calls “the ethics of Kant,” not just the claims of rival moral theories. Rosen supports this surprising conclusion with some powerful arguments, showing (...) that we cannot make sense of Kantian moral philosophy or its extraordinary impact on modern philosophy while detaching it from Kant’s conception of transcendental freedom. But Rosen overstates the continuity between Kant and the Idealist philosophers that he inspired. Thinkers like Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel took Kant’s concept of transcendental freedom far more seriously than defenders of Kantian ethics do today. But precisely because they did so, they felt compelled to address a whole new set of problems, which could be solved only by radically transforming the conception of freedom that they received from Kant. (shrink)

An old question, still much discussed in moral philosophy, is whether there is any ethical knowledge. It is closely related, by simple etymology, to the question of cognitivism in ethics. Despite the fact that the terms ‘cognitivism’ and ‘objectivism’ seem sometimes to be used interchangeably, I take it that the question whether there can be ethical knowledge is not the same as the question whether ethical outlooks can be objective. A sufficient reason for this is that an ethical outlook might (...) be taken to consist of rules or principles, which do not admit of truth or falsehood and so cannot be objects of knowledge, but which can be seen as having an objective basis. (shrink)

The Prague Philosopher Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) has long been admired for his groundbreaking work in mathematics: his rigorous proofs of fundamental theorems in analysis, his construction of a continuous, nowhere-differentiable function, his investigations of the infinite, and his anticipations of Cantor's set theory. He made equally outstanding contributions in philosophy, most notably in logic and methodology. One of the greatest mathematician-philosophers since Leibniz, Bolzano is now widely recognised as a major figure of nineteenth-century philosophy. Praised by Husserl as “one (...) of the greatest logicians of all times,” he has also been recognised by Michael Dummett as one of the first modern analytic philosophers and by Alberto Coffa as the founder of the “semantic tradition.” This volume contains English translations of the essay “On the Mathematical Method,” a concise introduction to Bolzano’s logic and philosophy of mathematics, as well as substantial selections from his correspondence with Franz Exner, Professor of Philosophy at the Charles University in Prague in the 1830s and 40s. It will be of interest to students of Austrian philosophy, the development of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of language, and the history and philosophy of logic and mathematics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reconsiders the arguments of my book, The Longing for Total Revolution, in response to the thoughtful analyses collected in this symposium. It restates the book’s main genealogical and critical arguments about the philosophical sources of uniquely modern forms of social discontent, while distinguishing those arguments from recent attempts to uncover the deeper, theological sources of discontent. It focuses, in particular, on the role played in modern social discontent by the group of thinkers I describe as the “Kantian (...) left”: a long line of social critics who sought to “realize” Kant’s understanding of human autonomy in society, thereby gaining what Marx called “control and conscious mastery” over our social world, not just over our wills. (shrink)

This paper uses E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End to help articulate what I describe as a moral pluralist approach to moral conflict. Moral pluralism, I argue here, represents a way of responding to the moral conflicts we encounter in our lives, rather than the mere acknowledgment of their inevitability, as suggested by value pluralists like Isaiah Berlin. The tragic view of moral conflict epitomized by Sophocles’ Antigone and endorsed by most theories of value pluralism, tells us that we must (...) choose between moral commitments and reconcile ourselves to the moral regrets that inevitably follow from moral choice. The moral pluralist view, in contrast, suggests that we should seek means, however imperfect, of satisfying conflicting moral commitments and minimizing causes for moral regret. That view, I argue, drives the words and actions of Forster’s heroine in Howards End, Margaret Schlegel. Confronted with a battle between a willful patriarch and a self-righteous sister, a conflict that maps neatly onto the central conflict in Sophocles’ tragedy, Margaret refuses to take sides without refusing to make moral choices. And in doing so, she comes to exemplify an unexpected kind of moral heroism. (shrink)

The justification of Bayes' rule by cognitive rationality principles is undertaken by extending the propositional axiom systems usually proposed in two contexts of belief change: revising and updating. Probabilistic belief change axioms are introduced, either by direct transcription of the set-theoretic ones, or in a stronger way but nevertheless in the spirit of the underlying propositional principles. Weak revising axioms are shown to be satisfied by a General Conditioning rule, extending Bayes' rule but also compatible with others, and weak updating (...) axioms by a General Imaging rule, extending Lewis' rule. Strong axioms (equivalent to the Miller–Popper axiom system) are necessary to justify Bayes' rule in a revising context, and justify in fact an extended Bayes' rule which applies, even if the message has zero probability. (shrink)

The scholastic philosopher is interested in definition for a different reason than the lexicographer and linguist. The philosopher is trying to learn things. Fe defines, after investigating reality, in an attempt to describe reality clearly and to sum up some aspect of his understanding of reality. Hence, we find our scholastic philosophers adopting as a main feature of their method this insistence on defining, on precise and detailed explanation of their definitions, and on proving that their definitions da correctly express (...) what a nature or activity is. A dictionary of the language of scholastic philosophy fitted to the needs of beginners and of undergraduate students of the subject is not available in English. (shrink)

We define the bounded jump of $A$ by $A^{b}=\{x\in \omega \mid \exists i\leq x[\varphi_{i}\downarrow \wedge\Phi_{x}^{A\upharpoonright \!\!\!\upharpoonright \varphi_{i}}\downarrow ]\}$ and let $A^{nb}$ denote the $n$th bounded jump. We demonstrate several properties of the bounded jump, including the fact that it is strictly increasing and order-preserving on the bounded Turing degrees. We show that the bounded jump is related to the Ershov hierarchy. Indeed, for $n\geq2$ we have $X\leq_{bT}\emptyset ^{nb}\iff X$ is $\omega^{n}$-c.e. $\iff X\leq_{1}\emptyset ^{nb}$, extending the classical result that $X\leq_{bT}\emptyset '\iff (...) X$ is $\omega$-c.e. Finally, we prove that the analogue of Shoenfield inversion holds for the bounded jump on the bounded Turing degrees. That is, for every $X$ such that $\emptyset ^{b}\leq_{bT}X\leq_{bT}\emptyset ^{2b}$, there is a $Y\leq_{bT}\emptyset ^{b}$ such that $Y^{b}\equiv_{bT}X$. (shrink)

It has long been believed that if man had a special function appropriate to him, and that if we could discover what it was, then we would be in a perfect position to solve all of the basic problems of ethics. For if we were, for example, shovels, and knew ourselves to be shovels, then we would also know that to spend our lives in digging would best serve our fundamental interests, realize our highest aspirations, and be in every respect (...) the correct thing to do. Or so the theory goes; a theory which is shared, interestingly enough, by Aristotle and Sartre, even though they share little else, and even though one of them believes that man has a function and the other does not. (shrink)

Cet article étudie les principales classifications grecques anciennes des sciences mathématiques. Je souligne le rôle joué par Platon dans cette topique.

The scholastic philosopher is interested in definition for a different reason than the lexicographer and linguist. The philosopher is trying to learn things. Fe defines, after investigating reality, in an attempt to describe reality clearly and to sum up some aspect of his understanding of reality. Hence, we find our scholastic philosophers adopting as a main feature of their method this insistence on defining, on precise and detailed explanation of their definitions, and on proving that their definitions da correctly express (...) what a nature or activity is. A dictionary of the language of scholastic philosophy fitted to the needs of beginners and of undergraduate students of the subject is not available in English. (shrink)

Abduction was first introduced in the epistemological context of scientific discovery. It was more recently analyzed in artificial intelligence, especially with respect to diagnosis analysis or ordinary reasoning. These two fields share a common view of abduction as a general process of hypotheses formation. More precisely, abduction is conceived as a kind of reverse explanation where a hypothesis H can be abduced from events E if H is a good explanation of E. The paper surveys four known schemes for abduction (...) that can be used in both fields. Its first contribution is a taxonomy of these schemes according to a common semantic framework based on belief revision. Its second contribution is to produce, for each non-trivial scheme, a representation theorem linking its semantic framework to a set of postulates. Its third contribution is to present semantic and axiomatic arguments in favor of one of these schemes, ordered abduction, which has never been vindicated in the literature. (shrink)

Anderson and Csima :245–264, 2014) defined a jump operator, the bounded jump, with respect to bounded Turing reducibility. They showed that the bounded jump is closely related to the Ershov hierarchy and that it satisfies an analogue of Shoenfield jump inversion. We show that there are high bounded low sets and low bounded high sets. Thus, the information coded in the bounded jump is quite different from that of the standard jump. We also consider whether the analogue of the Jump (...) Theorem holds for the bounded jump: do we have A≤bTB\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$A \le _{bT}B$$\end{document} if and only if Ab≤1Bb\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$A^b \le _1 B^b$$\end{document}? We show the forward direction holds but not the reverse. (shrink)

Two main schemes explain how a system adapts to its environment. Evolutionary models are grounded on three usual processes (variation, transmission, selection) acting at the population level. Learning models are concerned with the endogenous search for a better performance at the individual level. The first ones were initially favored by biology and the second well illustrated by game theory. The article examines first how game theory went to evolution and how biology later considered learning. It shows some examples of a (...) hybrid use of models of each type. It finally proposes a common framework for both types of models. (shrink)

The common ancestor of modern humans and the great apes is estimated to have lived between 5 and 8 Myrs ago, but the earliest evidence in the human, or hominid, fossil record is Ardipithecus ramidus, from a 4.5 Myr Ethiopian site. This genus was succeeded by Australopithecus, within which four species are presently recognised. All combine a relatively primitive postcranial skeleton, a dentition with expanded chewing teeth and a small brain. The most primitive species in our own genus, Homo habilis (...) and Homo rudolfensis, are little advanced over the australopithecines and with hindsight their inclusion in Homo may not be appropriate. The first species to share a substantial number of features with later Homo is Homo ergaster, or ‘early African Homo erectus’, which appears in the fossil record around 2.0 Myr. Outside Africa, fossil hominids appear as Homo erectus‐like hominids, in mainland Asia and in Indonesia close to 2 Myr ago; the earliest good evidence of ‘archaic Homo’ in Europe is dated at between 600–700 Kyr before the present. Anatomically modern human, or Homo sapiens, fossils are seen first in the fossil record in Africa around 150 Kyr ago. Taken together with molecular evidence on the extent of DNA variation, this suggests that the transition from ‘archiac’ to ‘modern’ Homo may have taken place in Africa. (shrink)

The paper presents semantics for a subset of generics, so-called “characterizing sentences”. It is argued that claims about the relationship between the truth of characterizing sentences and claims about the distribution of properties among individuals can be viewed independently of considerations about logical form. Some extant approaches are presented and criticized, and a positive analysis of characterizing sentences in terms of normality is introduced and defended. The main innovation is that a notion of normality enters into the analysis in two (...) separate but connected places, not just one as competing accounts suggest. (shrink)

'A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.' This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Levy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned (...) from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre's complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Levy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century's catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings. (shrink)

Let $D_{tt} $ denote the set of truth-table degrees. A bijection π: $D_{tt} \to \,D_{tt} $ is an automorphism if for all truth-table degrees x and y we have $ \leqslant _{tt} \,y\, \Leftrightarrow \,\pi (x)\, \leqslant _{tt} \,\pi (y)$ . We say an automorphism π is fixed on a cone if there is a degree b such that for all $x \geqslant _{tt} b$ we have π(x) = x. We first prove that for every 2-generic real X we have (...) X' $X' \le _{tt} \,X\, \oplus \,0'$ . We next prove that for every real $X \ge _{tt} \,0'$ there is a real Y such that $Y \oplus 0{\text{'}}\, \equiv _{tt} \,Y{\text{'}} \equiv _{tt} \,X$ . Finally, we use this to demonstrate that every automorphism of the truth-table degrees is fixed on a cone. (shrink)

Pope Francis’s decision to establish a Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women in August 2016 reemphasizes the question : what do we know about women deacons? We know they existed. There is ample literary, epigraphical, and historical evidence that women deacons ministered in the West at least to the 12th century, and longer in the East. That they existed presents three questions : What do we know about the liturgical ceremonies bishops used to create women deacons? What (...) do we know about their tasks and duties? What do we know about the theology of the diaconate that would admit or restrict women from diaconal ordination? (shrink)

In 1921 Bertrand Russell delivered two lectures on mathematical logic at Peking University. Manuscripts for the lectures have not been found, but two sets of Chinese notes, which were based on a simultaneous oral translation of Russell’s lecturing, were published. The notes are translated into English based on the best readings of both sets. An introduc­tion and notes with a glossary discuss the background and content of the lectures as well as the linguistic difficulties in translating logical terms.