A stimulating introduction to central issues of political theory, including liberty, rights and the state, and the claims of need and politics.

Raymond Geuss is a critic of liberalism, a politics so pervasive in the West that it goes unnoticed. His attention sharpened by his own unorthodox intellectual journey, Geuss locates what we fail to see in the status quo: its shallowness and futility. Rejecting both authoritarian horror and liberal complacency, Geuss looks to genuinely new ideas.

Daydreaming appears to have a complex relationship with life satisfaction and happiness. Here we demonstrate that the facets of daydreaming that predict life satisfaction differ between men and women , that the content of daydreams tends to be social others , and that who we daydream about influences the relation between daydreaming and happiness variables like life satisfaction, loneliness, and perceived social support . Specifically, daydreaming about people not close to us predicts more loneliness and less perceived social support, whereas (...) daydreaming about close others predicts greater life satisfaction. Importantly, these patterns hold even when actual social network depth and breadth are statistically controlled, although these associations tend to be small in magnitude. Individual differences and the content of daydreams are thus important to consider when examining how happiness relates to spontaneous thoughts. (shrink)

Irreplicability is framed as crisis, blamed on sloppy science motivated by perverse stimuli in research. Structural changes to the organization of science, targeting sloppy science (e.g., open data, pre‐registration), are proposed to prevent irreplicability. While there is an unquestionable link between sloppy science and failures to replicate/reproduce scientific studies, they are currently conflated. This position can be understood as a result of the erosion of the role of theory in science. The history, sociology, and philosophy of science reveal alternative explanations (...) for irreplicability to show it is part of proper, informative and valuable science. Irreplicability need not equate research waste. Sloppy science is the problem, also when results do replicate. Hence, the solution should focus on opposing sloppy research. (shrink)

A travers les Dimensions de la conscience historique, Raymond Aron s'impose comme l'un des penseurs majeurs de l'histoire au XXe siecle. Apres les bouleversements issus du second conflit mondial, Raymond Aron pense le monde a l'aune de l'installation durable du communisme a l'Est de l'Europe, de la fin de la colonisation, des mutations que signale une phase de progres technique encore inconnue dans les societes developpees. Il prend acte du changement radical que marque pour la condition humaine l'avenement (...) de l'ere nucleaire. Face a ces mutations, le philosophe a plus que jamais le devoir de penser l'histoire et la liberte de l'homme face a l'evenement. Dialoguant avec Thucydide, combattant l'idee d'une fin de l'histoire avancee par Spengler et Toynbee et plus encore par la teleologie marxiste, il poursuit la reflexion sur les limites de l'objectivite historique engagee au cours des annees 1930.Les Dimensions de la conscience historique n'ont cesse de nourrir les debats sur l'histoire. Il demeure aujourd'hui un ouvrage indispensable pour reflechir a notre condition historique. (shrink)

While not ignored, the question of the role of mothers in the schema of political rule in Hobbes is not often taken up. Distinct from his contemporaries, Hobbes acknowledges only minimal differences between men and women, and argues that, because maternal protection and nourishment are necessary for its survival, the mother dominates the infant in the state of nature. How to explain that the mother loses this power of domination in the social or political order? Hobbes does not explicitly say. (...) However, some possibilities can be extracted from his texts. -/- Here, I will attempt to explain the loss of maternal power by examining Hobbes's discourse on the different modes of dominion and political rule in "De Cive" and "Leviathan." I will concentrate on their differences, drawing from Yves Charles Zarka's reading of them. Then I will approach the question of the mother and her position in the hierarchy of servitude in each of these texts, appealing to Carole Pateman's analyses as well as Zarka's. Finally, I will present what role the mother's dominion over her children plays in Hobbes's schema. (shrink)

How do people decide what to say in context? Many theories of pragmatics assume that people have specialized knowledge that drives them to utter certain words in different situations. But these theories are mostly unable to explain both the regularity and variability in people’s speech behaviors. Our purpose in this article is to advance a view of pragmatics based on complexity theory, which specifically explains the pragmatic choices speakers make in conversations. The concept of self-organized criticality sheds light on how (...) a history of utterances and subtle details of a situation surrounding a conversation may directly specify language behavior. Under this view, pragmatic choice in discourse does not reflect the output of any dedicated pragmatic module but arises from a complex coordination or coupling between speakers and their varying communicative tasks. (shrink)

At the turn of the century, there appeared two comprehensive mathematical systems, which were indeed so vast that it was taken for granted that all mathematics could be decided on the basis of them. However, in 1931, Kurt Gödel surprised the entire mathematical world with his epoch‐making paper which begins with the following startling words: The development of mathematics in the direction of greater precision has led to large areas of it being formalized, so that proofs can be carried out (...) according to a few mechanical rules. The most comprehensive formal systems to date are, on the one hand, the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell, and, on the other hand the Zermelo‐Fraenkel system of axiomatic set theory. Both systems are so extensive that all methods of proof used in mathematics today can be formalized in them‐i.e., can be reduced to a few axioms and rules of inference. It would seem reasonable, therefore, to surmise that these axioms and rules of inference are sufficient to decide all mathematical questions which can be formulated in the system concerned. In what follows it will be shown that this is not the case, but rather that, in both of the cited systems, there exist relatively simple problems of the theory of ordinary whole numbers which cannot be decided on the basis of the axioms. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on affective structures and the main adaptive functions of shared narratives to fill the gaps of the Conviction Narrative Theory. The transmission of narratives among individuals in highly uncertain situations is irrevocably tainted by affects and anchored in collective memory. Narratives have important evolutionary functions for human beings under threat and act as the social glue that creates and strengthens social bonds among individuals.

First published in 1973 this volume demonstrates the interconnection between Hegel's political and metaphysical writings. This book provides a point of entry into Hegel's system of ideas. Condemned unread, and when read far too often misunderstood, Hegel's thought has once more begun to make its impact on contemporary ideas with many of today's most important social and political thinkers.

We live in an era where our health is linked to that of others across the globe, and nothing brings this home better than the specter of a pandemic. This paper explores the findings of town hall meetings associated with the Canadian Program of Research on Ethics in a Pandemic , in which focus groups met to discuss issues related to the global governance of an influenza pandemic. Two competing discourses were found to be at work: the first was based (...) upon an economic rationality and the second upon a humanitarian rationality. The implications for public support and the long-term sustainability of new global norms, networks, and regulations in global public health are discussed. (shrink)

What really matters fundamentally in survival? That question—the one on which I focus—is not about what should matter or about metaphysics. Rather, it is a factual question the answer to which can be determined, if at all, only empirically. I argue that the answer to it is that in the case of many people it is not one’s own persistence, but continuing in ways that may involve one’s own cessation that really matters fundamentally in survival. Call this the surprising result. (...) What are we to make of it? According to several philosophers, not much. I argue that these philosophers are wrong. What best explains the surprising result is that in the case of many people one’s special concern for oneself in the future is not fundamental, but derived. I explain what this means. Finally I explain why the task of explaining empirically what matters fundamentally in survival is in some ways more like a meditative quest than a traditional inquiry in western philosophy or social science and, as such, is best answered not by psychologists, but by philosophers. (shrink)