Moral purism is a commonly held view on moral worthiness and how to identify it in concrete cases. Moral purists long for a moral world in which (business) people—at least sometimes—act morally worthy, but in concrete cases they systematically discount good deeds as grounded in self-interest. Moral purism evokes moral cynicism. Moral cynicism is a problem, both in society at large and the business world. Moral cynicism can be fought by refuting moral purism. This article takes issue with moral purism. (...) The common strategy to tackle moral purism is to reject the exclusion thesis which states that self-interest and the ‘pure’ moral motive (and thus moral worthiness) exclude each other. We develop a different strategy. We argue that moral purists are mistaken in the way they judge moral worthiness in concrete cases. They employ the wrongprocedureand the wrongcriteria.We develop a proper procedure and proper criteria. We build on Kant, who we argue is unfairly regarded as the champion of moral purism. In order to see how Kant can develop a consistent (non-purist) philosophy, the exclusion thesis must be embedded in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Properly embedded, Kant turns out to be both anti-purist and anti-cynical. (shrink)

This collection of writings by Jean-Luc Nancy, the renowned French critic and poet, delves into the history of philosophy to locate a fundamentally poetic modus operandi there. The book represents a daring mixture of Nancy’s philosophical essays, writings about artworks, and artwork of his own. With theoretical rigor, Nancy elaborates on the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “making,” and outlines the tensions inherent in the faire, the “making” that characterizes the very process of production and thereby the (...) structure of poetry in all its forms. Nancy shows that this multiplication that belongs to the notion of art makes every single work communicate with every other, all material in the artwork appeal to some other material, and art the singular plural of a praxis of the finite imparting of an infinity which is actually there in every utterance. In the collection, Nancy engages with the work of, among others, François Martin, Maurice Blanchot, and On Kawara. (shrink)

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features suggest principles that (...) tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the ego and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpus--an interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's own history (...) of philosophy. This interpretation complicates and deepens the Heideggerian concept of metaphysics, a concept that has dominated twentieth-century philosophy. Examinations of Descartes' predecessors (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Suarez) and his successors (Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hegel) clarify the meaning of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. Expertly translated by Jeffrey Kosky, this work will appeal to historians of philosophy, students of religion, and anyone interested in the genealogy of contemporary thought and its contradictions. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s Philosophy of the Will is reexamined here both as a source of motivation for his project of dialoguing with the analytic theory of action and as an explanation for the lack of response on the part of his Anglo-American interlocutors. Keywords: Actions, Language, Body, Idealism. Résumé La Philosophie de la volonté de Ricœur est revisitée ici comme source de motivation de son entreprise de dialogue avec la théorie analytique de l’action et comme explication du défaut de réponse de ses (...) interlocuteurs anglo-américains. Mots-clés: Actions, Langage, Corps, Idéalisme. (shrink)

Suppose that we acquire various items of information from various sources and that our degree of confidence in the content of the information set is sufficiently high to believe the information. Now a new item of information is being presented by a new information source. Are we justified to add this new item of information to what we already believe? Consider the following parable: “I go to a lecture about wildlife in Greenland which was supposed to be delivered by an (...) expert in the field. When I arrive I notice that the expert has excused himself and that the biology department has sent a newcomer to fill in for him. I have no beliefs about wildlife in Greenland, but I do have some beliefs about Greenland’s climate and about the kinds of climate conditions that various types of wildlife favor. Suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of elk roam in a particular valley on the southern tip of Greenland. Then I would certainly be willing to accept this item of information. But suppose that he proclaims that large colonies of armadillos roam in the same valley. Then I would not be willing to accept this item of information. Why do I accept the former but not the latter item of information? Let us suppose that neither item of information is logically inconsistent with what I already believe. Clearly, the former item of information is not inconsistent. But also the latter item is not: after all, there may be small pockets of Greenland with special climatological conditions and some Texan sailors may have set loose a pair of armadillos as a practical joke. But whereas the former item of information is quite plausible given my previous beliefs, the latter item of information is not. And this is what makes for the difference. Now suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of wild boars roam this valley in Greenland. I am not that sure anymore. Given everything I believe, I find wild boars in Greenland more plausible than armadillos in Greenland, but certainly less plausible than elk in Greenland. Had our expert presented the lecture and provided precisely the 2 same information, then I would have been willing to adopt the belief that there are wild boars in Greenland, but, with our newcomer delivering the lecture, I am not willing to do so. It is not that I would believe anything out of the expert’s mouth: also he could not have convinced me that there are armadillos in Greenland. But when it comes to wild boars, the difference between the expert’s and the newcomer’s credentials simply makes for the difference.” What we learn from this story is that the question of belief expansion has something to do with the reliability of the information source as well as with the plausibility of the new information, given what I already believe. The more reliable the information source is, the less plausible the new information needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to our belief set. The more plausible the new information is given what I already believe, the less reliable the information source needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to my belief set. The challenge is: can a precise account of this relationship be provided? (shrink)

Le présent article se donne pour fin d’explorer la question des rapports entre foi, croyance et connaissance à la lumière de leur théorisation médiévale. En posant la question de la compossibilité de la connaissance et de la foi, il interroge le rôle que jouent croyance et foi dans notre acceptation quotidienne de vérités plus ou moins évidentes. Il s’agit donc ici en définitive de voir comment certains outils conceptuels empruntés à Thomas d’Aquin et Augustin d’Hippone peuvent nous aider à penser (...) la confusion et l’effritement contemporains de l’idée de vérité en comprenant comment notre rapport affectif aux institutions contribue à ce phénomène. (shrink)

Créativité et mathématiques ne font pas bon ménage dans l'inconscient collectif. Pourtant à l'heure d'Internet, il existe bien une manière de revisiter la géométrie, l'algèbre ou même la logique. Il suffit de prendre un peu de distance par rapport aux calculs, de se donner quelques libertés par rapport à l'histoire, de changer de point de vue... En vagabondant à travers l'histoire et l'application des mathématiques, les auteurs se livrent ici à un jeu de vulgarisation d'une saveur et d'une subtilité inédites. (...) [4e de couv.]. (shrink)

The position of the Belgian prime minister is hardly mentioned in the Belgian Constitution. lt was only after almost 140 years, in 1970 he was mentioned for the first time. lts power is rather a matter of common law. Since 1831 through the years, the position and power of the PM changed strongly. This often happened together with changes concerning the power of the King: the weaker the King, the stronger the PM.The existence of coalition governments puts forward bis role (...) as coordinator and even as arbitrator, whereas the federalisation process since the seventies places him as a conciliator between Regions and Communities. The growing importance of the European Council of Head of States have made him the most important decision-maker among the national politicians in the European integration process. The PM's skills concerning timing and agendasetting are very important because it is one of his most important power instruments. Other key skills are bis profound knowledge in certain issues but mostly as a generalist, his insisting on good minister nominations by the party leaders, the way he can motivate his cabinet members, a good team spirit among the government members and the existence of a clear government contract. In order to avoid a strongdependency on or tutelage from the political parties of the majority it is important to have their top politicians in the government. (shrink)

What influences people’s appreciation of works of art? In this paper, we provide a new cognitive approach to this big question, and the first empirical results in support of it. As a work of art typically does not activate intuitive cognition for functional artefacts, it is represented as an instance of non-verbal symbolic communication. By application of Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory of communication, we hypothesize that understanding the artist’s intention plays a crucial role in intuitive art appreciation judgements. About (...) 60 works of fine art, representing a wide range of periods, genres and styles, were selected in the permanent exhibitions at Tate Britain in London, and rated by more than 500 visitors for goodness and understanding of the artist’s intention. Results suggest that works of art whose artist’s intention is easy to understand tend to be preferred over those with more obscure intentions, even when controlling for familiarity effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.2 (2001) 3-8 [Access article in PDF] The Two Secrets of the Fetish Jean-Luc Nancy "Commodity fetishism": Marx's formula has been imprinted on the largest and most resistant of cultural memories. It has become almost anonymous, or rather synonymous with Marx's very name, as is the case with certain coined terms(cogito, categorical imperative...). This privilege could only be due to a very particular virtue. Such a virtue is (...) that which not only consists in characterizing, in the strict sense of the word (to typify a property or an essence), but even in characterizing in such a way that the character (the stamp, the seal) is somehow inscribed on the thing itself and can no longer be detached from it, or at least without some loss in the substance of the thing.In Kantian terms: the intuition presented under the word "fetishism" is printed or traced indelibly onto the concept of "commodity," giving rise to a schema "commodity," from which a new image, and thus a new idea, ensues. Not just the commodity as the fetish—as if this were one of its traits or one approach among others—but rather the essence of the commodity revealed as fetish, so that the fetish character would remain once the approach was shifted or the "secret" of its "mystical character" was revealed. (As we know, these are all Marx's own terms.)As is also known, the secret consists in that the commodity value (or exchange value) of the object (or product), which seems to be its intrinsic or immanent property (parallel in this way to its use value, which is extrinsic and completely relative to its utilization in a given sociotechnical context) only covers, masks or represses the origin of its pure or absolute value—this last value being nothing other than the living human labor of the producer, which the act of production incorporates into the product. But the commodity value deflects this incorporated creative life toward equivalence within an exchange, where the producer (the worker) finds himself surreptitiously stripped of the part of the value that the mercantile calculation does not exchange for the maintenance of its labor force, but rather sets to the account of capital. * * * Here we are not concerned with addressing the problems associated with the evaluation or the appreciation of living work as it is related to the intensification or the very creation of value ("the surplus-value"), nor with respect to the extortion suffered by the creator of value (the valuable and value-making man, the living man as maker, as giver of prices in an absolute fashion) to the benefit of the one who accumulates value in the form of general equivalence, creating mercantile prices through a common currency. Currency is the fetish, where fetishism is fixed: belief in the value of the market price itself. The critique of political economy—that is, the critique of the economy as politics—reveals the inanity of this belief, and if this critique cannot measure the hidden and mysticized or mystified value in monetary terms, the principle of this critique remains [End Page 3] no less, but even more so, the incommensurability of the value creator and the marketed product.Alienation is not measurable. It is at the same time the principle of the critique and its impasse from the moment that we would like to, and indeed that we should, oppose one measure to another: the critical measure of the fetish against the mercantile measure through the fetish.In contrast, what we would like to sketch out here would have the following hypothesis as a point of departure: does not the strength of Marx's formula derive from a power other than that of the only critique thus broached? Is there not another energy, and another enigma, slipped into the first, adding itself to the revelation of the secret, even exceeding this revelation and perhaps in this fashion displacing just a bit the secret itself (precisely because it is not measurable)?This other power would derive from "fetishism" itself. That is to say... (shrink)

Maître Eckhart affirme dans son oeuvre latine (Commentaire au saint Évangile selon Jean) et dans sa prédication vernaculaire (Sermon allemand 08) son désir d’exposer par les outils de la physique les vérités révélées auxquelles il convient d’adhérer par la foi. Un tel programme exégétique a de quoi surprendre autant le lecteur des traités et sermons allemands qui, pour des raisons que rend évidentes l’histoire de sa réception, s’attend à trouver sous la plume du Thuringien une mystique, pensée aussi spéculative que (...) supra-rationnelle ; que le lecteur de l’oeuvre latine, qui pourrait s’attendre à trouver chez un dominicain du tournant des xiiie et xive siècles une forme de thomisme se refusant à toute tentative de rendre connaissables par la raison les mystères que révèlent les Écritures. Envisagée sérieusement, cette ambition d’expliquer la Révélation par les outils de la physique, science théorétique philosophique, pose donc au lecteur de Maître Eckhart un réel problème herméneutique dans la mesure où elle appelle une réflexion approfondie sur les limites de la connaissance humaine et sur la nature du savoir scientifique. En proposant une reconstruction de l’épistémologie procurant son cadre à la pensée eckhartienne, cette étude se veut l’occasion d’un nouvel éclairage de thèses bien connues de sa « mystique », qui permette de comprendre de quelle manière la conceptualité (méta-)physique de l’aristotélisme s’articule à la Révélation biblique pour rendre intelligible la nature et la surnature, ainsi que les rapports causaux les unissant l’une à l’autre. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru le 21/12/2018 sur le site EspacesTemps.net. Nous remercions les auteurs et la revue EspacesTemps de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Sans rythme pas de vie Bernard Millet La ville? « Ne pas essayer trop vite de trouver une définition de la ville ; c'est beaucoup trop gros, on a toutes les chances de se tromper ». Le rythme? Comment réussir « à définir un seul et même signifiant qui véhicule tant de signifiés différents? (...) ». Et - Géographie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Several lines of evidence indicate that rapid target-aiming movements, involving both the eyes and hand, can be biased by the visual context in which the movements are performed. Some of these contextual influences carry-over from trial to trial. This research indicates that dissociation between the dorsal and ventral systems based on speed, conscious awareness, and frame of reference is far from clear.

In a sequence of aphorisms, Jean-Luc Nancy interrogates the speculative suture between the sacred and truth. The sacred is indexed to an encounter or a point of intensity via which the subject approaches what cannot be grasped in itself, but solely in and as this unfinishable approach. The chance of this encounter is accorded to every subject and no longer confiscated by a religion or an exclusive regime of thought. In parallel, the sacred enters into a novel matrix with the (...) ordinary wherein neither supersedes the other. These aphorisms demonstrate that the ordinary supplies a point of access to the sacred because the sacred is itself one of the nomadic folds of the ordinary. (shrink)

In this interview, Jean-Luc Marion recalls the intellectual world of Paris in 1970s, reflecting on how his engagement with the ubiquitous “death of God” question led to the sketches of God without Being first presented at this 1979 Colloquium, and discusses the criticism it provoked not only from Heideggerians but also from Thomists. He discusses the reception history of phenomenology in France the reasons for the particular power it gained among thinkers of his generation. Finally, he recounts how his work (...) has led from the 1979 Colloquium through the “Theological Turn” and up to his forthcoming D’ ailleurs, la révélation, which he briefly previews here. Marion closes with words on originality, criticism, and the particular challenges of the contemporary world that await philosophical thinking today. (shrink)

L’importance de Ludwik Fleck pour l’épistémologie historique est maintenant reconnue. Mais nul ne semble encore avoir mis en évidence que ses conceptions, au-delà de leur champ d’origine, s’appliquent aussi très naturellement, et avec profit, à l’histoire des idées. C’est ce que l’on se propose de faire ici, en présentant leurs concepts fondamentaux, ceux de style de pensée et de collectif de pensée.

It is the economic buzz-word of the 1990s, it destroys our jobs, it hollows out the decision-making power of governments, it even threatens the nation-state as the central institution of western type democracies — `it' is globalization and we are only at the beginning of it. Whether all of this is for good or ill is a topic of heated debate. One positive view is that globalization is an unmixed blessing, with the potential to boost productivity and living standards everywhere.This (...) is because a globally integrated economy can lead to a better division of labour between countries, allowing low-wage countries to specialize in labour-intensive tasks while high-wage countries use workers in more productive ways. It will allow firms to exploit bigger economies of scale. And with globalization, capital can be shifted to whatever country offers the most productive investment opportunities, not trapped at home financing projects with poor returns. In fact, the arguments in favour of globalization differ little from the arguments in favour of a free market in a closed economy.Critics of globalization take a gloomier view. They predict that increased competition from low-wage developing countries will destroy jobs and push down wages in today's rich economies. There will be a `race to the bottom' as countries reduce wage taxes, welfare benefits and environmental controls to make themselves more `competitive'. Pressure to compete will erode the ability of governments to set their own economic policies. The critics also worry about the increased power of financial markets to cause economic havoc, as in the European currency crises of 1992-93, Mexico in 1994-95 and South-East Asia in 1997-98. And “chaos theorists” have even predicted a clash of civilizations, as Western norms and values attempt to impose themselves on other societies through the medium of globalization.But despite all the buzz about globalization, or rather because of it, globalization has turned into a notoriously difficult concept to define. It is an inflated term that is employed so loosely that almost anything can be used to illustrate its operation. This limits the analytical usefulness of the concept. In what follows, we shall introduce a more precise definition and point out the political consequences of this type of globalization. (shrink)

Mathematics and the Divine seem to correspond to diametrically opposed tendencies of the human mind. Does the mathematician not seek what is precisely defined, and do the objects intended by the mystic and the theologian not lie beyond definition? Is mathematics not Man's search for a measure, and isn’t the Divine that which is immeasurable? The present book shows that the domains of mathematics and the Divine, which may seem so radically separated, have throughout history and across cultures, proved to (...) be intimately related. Religious activities such as the building of temples, the telling of ritual stories or the drawing of enigmatic figures all display distinct mathematical features. Major philosophical systems dealing with the Absolute and theological speculations focussing on our knowledge of the Ultimate have been based on or inspired by mathematics. A series of chapters by an international team of experts highlighting key figures, schools and trains of thought is presented here. Chinese number mysticism, the views of Pythagoras and Plato and their followers, Nicholas of Cusa's theological geometry, Spinozism and intuitionism as a philosophy of mathematics are treated side by side among many other themes in an attempt at creating a global view on the relation of mathematics and Man’s quest for the Absolute in the course of history. (Elsevier). (shrink)

In many real-life situations, we are interested in the value of a physical quantity y that is difficult or impossible to measure directly. To estimate y, we find some easier-to-measure quantities x1, … , xn which are related to y by a known relation y = f. Measurements are never 100% accurate; hence, the measured values equation image are different from xi, and the resulting estimate equation image is different from the desired value y = f. How different can it (...) be? Traditional engineering approach to error estimation in data processing assumes that we know the probabilities of different measurement errors equation image. In many practical situations, we only know the upper bound Δi for this error; hence, after the measurement, the only information that we have about xi is that it belongs to the interval equation image. In this case, it is important to find the range y of all possible values of y = f when xi ∈ xi. We start the paper with a brief overview of the computational complexity of the corresponding interval computation problems: Most of the related problems turn out to be, in general, at least NP-hard. In this paper, we show how the use of quantum computing can speed up some computations related to interval and probabilistic uncertainty. We end the paper with speculations on whether “hypothetic” physical devices can compute NP-hard problems faster than in exponential time. Most of the paper's results were first presented at NAFIPS'2003 [30]. (shrink)

Résumé En Russie, un monothéisme – le christianisme orthodoxe – et l’athéisme dans sa version marxiste ont successivement été des systèmes de rites et de représentations d’État. Plutôt que de les opposer terme à terme, cet article propose de faire intervenir un troisième terme : les systèmes religieux locaux des minorités animistes de Russie. On examine comment le christianisme et l’athéisme ont l’un après l’autre tenté de s’implanter sur ces terrains, tout en prenant également en compte les réactions qu’ils ont (...) suscitées. L’analyse envisagée se déploie sur deux niveaux : au niveau global sont évoquées les stratégies et les objectifs de l’État et de ses représentants, et au niveau local – illustré par l’exemple précis des Nénètses – sont présentés des mécanismes concrets, toujours particuliers, que l’application de la politique générale a activés sur le terrain. (shrink)