Depuis la fin des années 1990, la « complexité » a le vent en poupe. Ce texte présente une réflexion menée à l’Institut rhône-alpin des systèmes complexes sur le rôle que peuvent avoir les instituts pour promouvoir une étude réflexive des systèmes complexes. Il s’appuie également sur une étude empirique du domaine des systèmes complexes perçu à travers le prisme d’une base d’articles de sciences dures. Nous concluons sur la nécessité de permettre la maturation de projets interdisciplinaires.Since the late 1990s, (...) the "complexity" has the wind in its sails. This paper presents a discussion conducted at the Institute Rhône-Alpes complex systems on the role that institutions may have to promote a reflexive study of complex systems. It is also based on an empirical study of the field of complex systems seen through the prism of a base articles sciences. We conclude on the need to allow the maturation of interdisciplinary projects. (shrink)

Beauchamp and Childress (1994) elaborated an approach to bioethical deliberations based on four universalistic principles. This framework of ‘principlism’ has been criticized from within biomedical ethics as insufficient and problematic. However, this article considers a more radical sociological critique by John Evans (2002) that rejects the entire approach of defining ‘principles’ a priori. This sociological critique is based on classical sociologist Max Weber's (1925) distinction between instrumental (‘thin’) and substantive (‘thick’) rationality. As an exploratory assessment of Evans' critique, his conceptualization (...) of ‘thin’ versus ‘thick’ rationalization is applied to a large sample of Anglo-American press coverage (n = 5126) of the bioethical controversy surrounding therapeutic cloning. Given the role of mainstream news media as a key arena for the discursive framing of biomedical research and its ethical implications, the findings raise important questions about principlism and the mediation of bioethical debates on issues such as therapeutic cloning. (shrink)

Milton Friedman’s famous comment on Corporate Social Responsibility is that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.” I reply to Friedman, Michael Jensen, and others, in argument that accepts their implicit premise—that business can be a virtuous mechanism of free society—but that denies their delimitation of responsibility. The reply hinges upon precisely the virtue of (...) “freedom” these authors clearly value. In the extreme case where maximizing profits would place government under threat, such activity will not coincide with maximizing social value and would undermine the freedoms these authors claim to value. Responsibilities will also apply in less extreme cases, if we develop Amartya Sen’s argument showing that, “we have to see individual freedom as a social commitment.”. (shrink)

The article begins with a response to a recent contribution by Jensen, in which he has criticized several aspects of the use of triads of elements, including Döbereiner’s original introduction of the concept and the modern use of atomic number triads by some authors including myself. Such triads are groups of three elements, one of which has approximately the average atomic weight of the other two elements, as well as having intermediate chemical reactivity. I also examine Jensen’s attempted (...) reconstruction Mendeleev’s use of triads in predicting the atomic weights of three hitherto unknown elements, that were subsequently named gallium, germanium and scandium. The present article then considers the use of atomic number triads, in conjunction with the phenomenon of first member anomaly, in order to offer support for Janet’s left-step periodic table, in which helium is relocated into group 2 of the table. Such a table features triads in which the 2nd and third elements of each group, without fail, fall into periods of equal length, a feature that is absent in the conventional 18-column or the conventional 32-column table. The dual sense of the term element, which is the source of much discussion in the philosophy of chemistry, is alluded to in further support of such a relocation of helium that may at first appear to contradict chemical intuition. (shrink)

(Unpublished writing, 2007) This article briefly introduces a new argument concerning corporate social responsibility, based in an analysis of values expressed by the recent and contemporary liberal economists Milton Friedman and Michael Jensen. I will provide the gist of the argument by considering implications of Friedman’s very familiar view, that “…there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities to increase its profits so long as it stays within the (...) rules of the game.” Harvard professor Michael Jensen has argued from slightly different premises to a similar conclusion, that “social welfare is maximized when all firms in an economy attempt to maximize their own total firm value.” Vestiges of such influential argument are also easily spotted in American corporate culture (See Palmer, 2007). I suggest that these authors’ positions allow for possibilities that undermine their broader fundamental values, however. I will concentate especially on Friedman’s classic treatment of liberal politics and capitalist economics, Capitalism and Freedom, in which he alludes to the importance of accepting and promoting individual freedom. Such values demand governmental and social stability, and so, in some cases, particularly where business activity may destabilize society, it would appear that freedom may be seriously threatened by corporate activity that follows Friedman’s narrow prescription. Nowhere is this more evident, at present, than in the Niger River Delta, where the promise and profits of oil have produced a society in great disarray. A case study of the delta situation indicates the problems of the narrow view of business goals and business responsibility, and this article will go on to consider possible solutions to those problems that delineate general sorts of responsibilities. The solutions require corporations to take a much broader view of their activity: I suggest that Friedman’s flaw reflects a general weakness of liberal individualism, nicely exposed in Amartya Sen’s arguments that lead to the conclusion that, “we have to see individual freedom as a social commitment.” That social commitment includes the goal of promoting individual freedom, but reaching for the goal may proceed along lines that are not so narrowly economic as Friedman would have, indicating new roles for business and government cooperation even in less extreme cases than that of the Niger Delta. (shrink)

Introduction -- Sanctioning models : theories and their scope -- Methodology for a virtual world -- A tale of two methods -- When theories shake hands -- Models of climate : values and uncertainties -- Reliability without truth -- Conclusion.

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)

The problem -- The text -- Inclinations -- Good -- Nature -- The will -- Ought -- Obligation -- Principles -- Action.

Concepts: Core Readings traces the develoment of one of the most active areas of investigation in cognitive science. This comprehensive volume brings together the essential background readings on concepts from philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, while providing a broad sampling of contemporary research. The first part of the book centers around the fall of the Classical Theory of Concepts in the face of attacks by W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eleanor Rosch, and others, emphasizing the emergence and development of the Prototype Theory (...) and the controversies it spurred. The second part surveys a broad range of contemporary theories—Neoclassical Theories, the Prototype Theory, the Theory-Theory, and Conceptual Atomism. (shrink)

Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical thought of philosophers and moral psychologists is (...) also pervaded by rationalization. Moreover, although rationalization has some benefits, overall it would be epistemically better if the moral and philosophical reasoning of people, including professional academics, were not as heavily influenced by rationalization as it likely is. We discuss the significance of our arguments for cognitive management and epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

I argue that to have an attitude is, primarily, (1.) to have a dispositional profile that matches, to an appropriate degree and in appropriate respects, a stereotype for that attitude, typically grounded in folk psychology, and secondarily, (2.) in some cases also to meet further stereotypical attitude-specific conditions. To have an attitude, on the account I will recommend here, is mainly a matter of being apt to interact with the world in patterns that ordinary people would regard as characteristic of (...) having that attitude. I contrast this view with alternative views that treat having an attitude as a matter of possessing some particular internally stored representational content or some other "deep" structural feature. (shrink)

This introduction to the history, philosophy and methodology of human geography explores complex ideas in an intelligible and accessible style. It takes into account the new developments in geographical thought and methods.

This volume celebrates the remarkable career of Dr. Preston King, an African American political philosopher with an international reputation. King's first degree was from Fisk University (1956). He moved directly to the London School of Economics (LSE), completing his M.Sc. (Econ) in 1958 with a Mark of Distinction. He taught at LSE for the next two years. A scrap with Jim Crow America kept him in exile for the next 40 years. Major friends and influences at LSE were Professors Sir (...) Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, and Dr Bernard Crick. King took up subsequent lectureships at the Universities of Keele, Ghana, and Sheffield. He was Senior Research Assistant at the Acton Society Trust (London), then professor at the Universities of Nairobi, New South Wales (Sydney), Lancaster, returning at last to the USA as joint Woodruff Professor at Emory and Distinguished Professor at Morehouse. The essays comprising this volume are by internationally renowned figures. They creatively explore History, Toleration, and Friendship, as three seminal themes running through Preston King's sizeable oeuvre. This book's first third consists of essays on Time and History, with brilliant contributions by Professors Browning, Lawson, Moore, and Cherribi. The second third consists of essays on Time and Toleration, with memorable and penetrating analyses by Professors Jones, Read, Modood/Dobbernak, and Brown. The third part consists of essays on Time and Friendship, with offerings - both charming and insightful - by Professors Devere, Smith, and Coleman. The book concludes with a novel and captivating chapter by King himself, on the philosophy of time, which constitutes the substratum of so much of his work and reflection. (shrink)

Sensation -- Skepticism -- Internal senses -- The emotions -- Mechanism -- Materialism and dualism -- Hylomorphism -- The problem of universal knowledge -- Reason -- Immortality -- Freedom -- The will -- Free decision -- Purpose.

This volume outlines a Deleuzian approach to analyzing science, culture and politics.

Ethical decision making is of concern to researchers across all fields. However, researchers typically focus on the biases that may act to undermine ethical decision making. Taking a new approach, this study focused on identifying the most common compensatory strategies that counteract those biases. These strategies were identified using a series of interviews with university researchers in a variety of areas, including biological, physical, social, and health as well as scholarship and the performing arts. Interview transcripts were assessed with two (...) scoring procedures, an expert rating system and computer-assisted qualitative analysis. Although the expert rating system identified Understanding Guidelines, Recognition of Insufficient Information, and Recognizing Boundaries as the most frequently used compensatory strategies across fields, other strategies, Striving for Transparency, Value/norm Assessment, and Following Appropriate Role Models, were identified as most common by the computer-assisted qualitative analyses. Potential reasons for these findings and implications for training and practice are identified and discussed. (shrink)

The increasing interconnectedness of academic research and external industry has left research vulnerable to conflicts of interest. These conflicts have the potential to undermine the integrity of scientific research as well as to threaten public trust in scientific findings. The present effort sought to identify themes in the perspectives of faculty researchers regarding conflicts of interest. Think-aloud interview responses were qualitatively analyzed in an effort to provide insights with regard to appropriate ways to address the threat of conflicts of interest (...) in research. Themes in participant responses included disclosure of conflicts of interest, self-removal from situations where conflict exists, accommodation of conflict, denial of the existence of conflict, and recognition of complexity of situations involving conflicts of interest. Moral disengagement operations are suggested to explain the appearance of each identified theme. In addition, suggestions for best practices regarding addressing conflicts of interest given these themes in faculty perspectives are provided. (shrink)

We present evidence that mainstream Anglophone philosophy is insular in the sense that participants in this academic tradition tend mostly to cite or interact with other participants in this academic tradition, while having little academic interaction with philosophers writing in other languages. Among our evidence: In a sample of articles from elite Anglophone philosophy journals, 97% of citations are citations of work originally written in English; 96% of members of editorial boards of elite Anglophone philosophy journals are housed in majority-Anglophone (...) countries; and only one of the 100 most-cited recent authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy spent most of his career in non-Anglophone countries writing primarily in a language other than English. In contrast, philosophy articles published in elite Chinese-language and Spanish-language journals cite from a range of linguistic traditions, as do non-English-language articles in a convenience sample of established European-language journals. We also find evidence that work in English has more influence on work in other languages than vice versa and that when non-Anglophone philosophers cite recent work outside of their own linguistic tradition it tends to be work in English. (shrink)

Unconscious logical inference seems to rely on the syntactic structures of mental representations (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum 2018). Other transitions, such as transitions using iconic representations and associative transitions, are harder to assimilate to syntax-based theories. Here we tackle these difficulties head on in the interest of a fuller taxonomy of mental transitions. Along the way we discuss how icons can be compositional without having constituent structure, and expand and defend the “symmetry condition” on Associationism (the idea that associative links and (...) transitions are perfectly symmetric). In the end, we show how a BIT (“bare inferential transition”) theory can cohabitate with these other non-inferential mental transitions. (shrink)

Introduction to modelling and validation -- Non-hierarchical coloured petri nets -- CPN ML programming -- Formal definition of non-hierarchical coloured petri nets -- Hierarchical coloured petri nets -- Formal defintion of hierarchical coloured petri nets -- State spaces and behavioural properties -- Advanced state space methods -- Formal definition of state spaces and behavioural properties -- Timed coloured petri nets -- Formal definition of timed coloured petri nets -- Simulation-based performance analysis -- Behavioural visualisation -- Examples of industrial applications -- (...) Teaching coloured petri nets. (shrink)

efining Documents in American History: Business Ethics offers an in-depth analysis of 67 primary source documents at the foundation of the study of business ethics. These include letters, newspaper accounts, book excerpts, speeches, political debates, testimony, firsthand accounts, memoirs, court rulings, legal texts, legislative acts, excerpts from both fiction and nonfiction books, and dialogues from dramatic works. More and more, the specific ethics policies that have many businesses and corporations developed in the 1970s and 80s are not enough today. Transparency (...) related to sources and materials, pricing strategies, and the public good are crucial for the success of any business. The material in this two-volume reference work is organized into five sections, and each section begins with a brief introduction that defines questions and problems underlying the subjects addressed in the historical documents. These documents provide an overview of business ethics and how it affects all of society, from the heads of corporations in industries like oil, energy, social media, food, and transportation to the workers that produce the goods and services to the consumers of those goods and services. They present a wide array of legal and moral opinions, descriptions of the effects that business ethics can play in the national and global economy, and they take a closer look at the way that business ethics relates to politics. Each historical document is supported by a critical essay, written by historians and teachers, that includes a Summary Overview, Defining Moment, Author Biography, Document Analysis, and Essential Themes. An important feature of each essay is a close reading of the primary source that develops broader themes, such as the author s rhetorical purpose, social or class position, point of view, and other relevant issues. Each essay also includes a Bibliography and Additional Reading section for further research. The detailed document analysis begins with early essays instrumental in the creation and development of the field of business ethics and continues to 2019 by examining issues relevant right now, from harassment and discrimination to technology and privacy. This two-volume set includes in-depth chapters that provide a thorough commentary of significant primary source documents. -- Amazon.com. (shrink)

Philosophers tend to be pretty impressed by human self-knowledge. Descartes (1641/1984) thought our knowledge of our own stream of experience was the secure and indubitable foundation upon which to build our knowledge of the rest of the world. Hume – who was capable of being skeptical about almost anything – said that the only existences we can be certain of are our own sensory and imagistic experiences (1739/1978, p. 212). Perhaps the most prominent writer on self-knowledge in contemporary philosophy is (...) Sydney Shoemaker. The central aim of much of his work has been to show that certain sorts of error are impossible (1963, 1988, 1994). David Chalmers has likewise attempted to show that, for a suitably constrained class of beliefs about one’s own consciousness, error is impossible (2003, sec. 4.1). Even philosophers most of the community thinks of as pessimistic about self-knowledge of consciousness seem to me, really, to be fairly optimistic. Paul Churchland, famous for his disdain of ordinary people’s knowledge about the mind, compares the accuracy of introspection to the accuracy of sense perception – pretty good, presumably, about medium-sized, nearby matters (1985, 1988). Dan Dennett, often cited as a pessimist about introspective report, actually says that we can come close to infallibility when charitably interpreted (2002). The above references concern knowledge of the stream of conscious experience, but philosophers have also tended to be impressed with our self-knowledge of our attitudes, such as our beliefs and desires. Consider this: Although I can be wrong about its being sunny outside, I can’t in the same way be wrong, it seems, about the fact that I think it’s sunny outside. Some.. (shrink)

Research misconduct is of growing concern within the scientific community. As a result, organizations must identify effective approaches to training for ethics in research. Previous research has suggested that biases and compensatory strategies may represent important influences on the ethical decision-making process. The present effort investigated a training intervention targeting these variables. The results of the intervention are presented, as well as a description of accompanying exercises tapping self-reflection, sensemaking, and forecasting and their differential effectiveness on transfer to an ethical (...) decision-making task. (shrink)

In On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World from 1975, Quine formulated a thesis of underdetermination roughly to the effect that every scientific theory has an empirically equivalent but logically incompatible rival, one that cannot be discarded merely as a terminological variant of the former. For Quine, the truth of this thesis was an open question. If true, some would argue that it undermines any belief in scientific theories that is based purely on their empirical success. But despite its potential (...) significance, surprisingly little has been done by way of establishing or refuting it. My aim is to establish the thesis for as large a class of theories as possible. Under various precisifications of the concepts involved, I show that it holds for all consistent and recursively axiomatizable theories that postulate infinitely many theoretical entities. (shrink)

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as “The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid”) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also “walk the walk.” This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking (...) about belief. (shrink)

Eric Martin and Daniel N. Osherson present a theory of inductive logic built on model theory. Their aim is to extend the mathematics of Formal Learning Theory to a more general setting and to provide a more accurate image of empirical inquiry. The formal results of their study illuminate aspects of scientific inquiry that are not covered by the commonly applied Bayesian approach.

Can large language models produce expert‐quality philosophical texts? To investigate this, we fine‐tuned GPT‐3 with the works of philosopher Daniel Dennett. To evaluate the model, we asked the real Dennett 10 philosophical questions and then posed the same questions to the language model, collecting four responses for each question without cherry‐picking. Experts on Dennett's work succeeded at distinguishing the Dennett‐generated and machine‐generated answers above chance but substantially short of our expectations. Philosophy blog readers performed similarly to the experts, while ordinary (...) research participants were near chance distinguishing GPT‐3's responses from those of an “actual human philosopher”. (shrink)

Den daarlige Darwinisme.--Om kommunisme.--Udviklingen og kunsten.--Ungdomsevangeliet.--Darwinismen defineret.--Opdragelsen.--Overbefolkningen.--Race og udvælgelse.--Slægtsarkivet.

The enigma of an evil will -- The order of actions to the ultimate end -- The satisfaction of desire -- Venial sin -- The first moral act -- The shared good -- Sins of passion -- Weakness of will -- Sins from an evil will -- Sins of ignorance -- Omissions -- The first cause of moral evil -- Compatibilism or libertarianism -- Free decision -- Choose life.

Once again available in paperback, Plato is the first half of Eric Voegelin's Plato and Aristotle, the third volume of his five-volume Order and History, which ...

In this book, Eric Havelock presents a challenging account of the development of the idea of justice in early Greece, and particularly of the way justice changed as Greek oral tradition gradually gave way to the written word in a literate society. He begins by examining the educational functions of poets in preliterate Greece, showing how they conserved and transmitted the traditions of society, a thesis adumbrated in his earlier book Preface to Plato. Homer, he demonstrates, has much to (...) say about justice, but since that idea is nowhere in the epics directly stated or expressed, it must be deduced from the speech and actions of the characters. Havelock's careful reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey is original and revealing; it sheds light both on Homeric notions of justice and on the Archaic Greek society depicted in the poems. As Havelock continues his inquiry from Hesiod to Aeschylus, his findings become more complex. The oral Greek world shades into a literate one. Words lose some kinds of meanings, gain others, and steadily become more suited to the conceptualization that Plato strove for and achieved. This evolution of language itself, Havelock shows, was one of the principal accomplishments of the Greek world. Lucidly written and forcefully argued, this book is a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient Greece--its politics, philosophy, and literature, from Homer to Plato. (shrink)

One big question in biology is what life is, but another is how life divides into living things. This is the problem of biological individuality. Proposed statements of the problem have been vague and incomplete. And proposed theories of biological individuality are not detailed enough to solve the problem even if they are correct. The root of these troubles is that their authors have not recognized the metaphysical claims presupposed in their statement of the problem. Making these claims explicit will (...) enable us to see better what the problem is and what form a solution to it would need to have. (shrink)

Agent Relative Ethics asks what the world would look like if we adopted agent relativity wholeheartedly, clinging to no shred of absolute morality. Alastair MacIntyre's haunting image of a post-apocalyptic world, in which our knowledge of ethics has been fragmented, poses a contrast between modern morality and ancient ethics. The two stand divided along the fault line of the nature of the good. Modern ethics has placed its stake in the absolute good, while ancient ethics rests upon the foundation of (...) the relative good. Following the lead of Bernard Williams, Agent Relative Ethics identifies alienation as a disturbing symptom of the present focus upon absolute goods. It then completes the diagnosis of the malady afflicting modern moral theory by clarifying the difference between absolute and relative goods. The remainder of the book explores how agent relativity can overcome the modern fragmentation of our ethical knowledge. Not just any relative goods can rectify the modern disorder. Only shared goods, belonging to a union of individuals, are sufficiently robust to overthrow the contemporary despotism of neutral goods. These shared goods exhibit many parallels with common sense morality, including partiality, impartiality, punishment, and an antagonism toward harmfully using others together with a more lenient attitude toward foreseeing harm. The final chapters probe the conditions, often unpalatable to the modern mind, by which ethics might be restored. Agent Relative Ethics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics and moral theory, ancient ethics, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Ecosystems, the human brain, ant colonies, and economic networks are all complex systems displaying collective behaviour, or emergence, beyond the sum of their parts. Complexity science is the systematic investigation of these emergent phenomena, and stretches across disciplines, from physics and mathematics, to biological and social sciences. This introductory textbook provides detailed coverage of this rapidly growing field, accommodating readers from a variety of backgrounds, and with varying levels of mathematical skill. Part I presents the underlying principles of complexity science, (...) to ensure students have a solid understanding of the conceptual framework. The second part introduces the key mathematical tools central to complexity science, gradually developing the mathematical formalism, with more advanced material provided in boxes. A broad range of end of chapter problems and extended projects offer opportunities for homework assignments and student research projects, with solutions available to instructors online. Key terms are highlighted in bold and listed in a glossary for easy reference, while annotated reading lists offer the option for extended reading and research. (shrink)