This book analyzes emergency legislations formed in response to terrorism. In recognition that different countries, with different legal traditions, have different solutions, it adopts a comparative point of view. The countries profiled include America, France, Israel, Poland, Germany and United Kingdom. The goal is not to offer judgment on one response or the other. Rather, the contributors offer a comprehensive and thoughtful examination of the entire concept. In the process, they draw attention to the inadaptability of traditional legal and philosophical (...) categories in a new and changing political world. The contributors first criticize the idea of these legislations. They then go on to develop different models to respond to these crises. They build a general analytical framework by answering such questions as: What is an emergency legislation? What kinds of emergencies justify laws of this nature? Why is contemporary terrorism such a specific emergency justifying new laws? Using legal and philosophical reflections, this study looks at how we are changing society. Coverage also provides historical experiences of emergency legislations to further illustrate this point. In the end, readers will gain insight into the long-term consequences of these legislations and how they modify the very work of the rule of law. (shrink)

Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Synthesizing forty years' work by France's leading sociologist, this book exemplifies Bourdieu's unique ability to link sociological theory, historical information, and philosophical thought. It makes explicit the presuppositions of a state of 'scholasticism', a certain leisure liberated from the urgencies of the world. Philosophers have brought these presuppositions into the order of discourse, more to legitimate than analyze them, and this is the primary systematic, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic error that Bourdieu subjects to methodological critique. Pascalian because he, too, (...) was concerned with symbolic power, he refused the temptation of foundationalist thinking, attended to 'ordinary people', and was determined to seek the reason for seemingly illogical behavior rather than simply condemning it. Bourdieu charts a negative philosophy, whose intellectual debt to such other 'heretical' philosophers as Wittgenstein, Austin, Dewey, and Peirce, renews traditional questioning of concepts of violence, power, time, history, the universal, and the purpose and direction of existence. (shrink)

The dominant neuroscientific theory of spatial memory is, like many theories in neuroscience, a multilevel description of a mechanism. The theory links the activities of molecules, cells, brain regions, and whole organisms into an integrated sketch of an explanation for the ability of organisms to navigate novel environments. Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, (...) providing a kind of interlevel and intratheoretic robustness that has not previously been recognized. (shrink)

The dominant neuroscientific theory of spatial memory is, like many theories in neuroscience, a multilevel description of a mechanism. The theory links the activities of molecules, cells, brain regions, and whole organisms into an integrated sketch of an explanation for the ability of organisms to navigate novel environments. Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, (...) providing a kind of interlevel and intratheoretic robustness that has not previously been recognized. (shrink)

Obese people consume significantly greater amounts of health resources. This study set out to determine if health resource utilization by obese people decreases after losing weight in a comprehensive medically supervized weight management programme. Four hundred and fifty-six patients enrolled in a single-centred, multifaceted weight loss programme in a universal health care system were studied. Patient information was anonymously linked with administrative databases to measure health resource utilization for 1 year before and after the programme. Mean body mass index (BMI) (...) decreased by more than 15%. The mean annual physician visits (pre = 9.6, post = 9.4) did not change significantly after the programme. However, patients saw a significantly fewer number of different physicians per year following the programme (pre = 4.5, post = 3.9; P < 0.001). Mean annual number of emergency visits (pre = 0.2; post = 0.2) and hospital admissions (pre = 0.05; post = 0.08) did not change. Neither baseline BMI, nor its change during the programme, influenced changes in health resource utilization. Our study suggests that weight loss in a supervized weight management programme does not necessarily decrease short-term health resource utilization. Further study is required to determine if patients who maintain their weight loss experience a decrease in health utilization. (shrink)

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) is a kind of synaptic plasticity that many contemporary neuroscientists believe is a component in mechanisms of memory. This essay describes the discovery of LTP and the development of the LTP research program. The story begins in the 1950's with the discovery of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus (a medial temporal lobe structure now associated with memory), and it ends in 1973 with the publication of three papers sketching the future course of the LTP research program. The (...) making of LTP was a protracted affair. Hippocampal synaptic plasticity was initially encountered as an experimental tool, then reported as a curiosity, and finally included in the ontic store of the neurosciences. Early researchers were not investigating the hippocampus in search of a memory mechanism; rather, they saw the hippocampus as a useful experimental model or as a structure implicated in the etiology of epilepsy. The link between hippocampal synaptic plasticity and learning or memory was a separate conceptual achievement. That link was formulated in at least three different ways at different times: reductively (claiming that plasticity is identical to learning), analogically (claiming that plasticity is an example or model of learning), and mechanistically (claiming that plasticity is a component in learning or memory mechanisms). The hypothesized link with learning or memory, coupled with developments in experimental techniques and preparations, shaped how researchers understood LTP itself. By 1973, the mechanistic formulation of the link between LTP and memory provided an abstract framework around which findings from multiple perspectives could be integrated into a multifield research program. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's overt alliance with the Nazis and the specific relation between this alliance and his philosophical thought - the degree to which his concepts are linked to a thoroughly disreputable set of political beliefs - have been the topic of a storm of recent debate. Written ten years before this debate, this study by France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist is both a precursor of that debate and an analysis of the institutional mechanisms involved in the production of philosophical (...) discourse. Though Heidegger is aware of and acknowledges the legitimacy of purely philosophical issues (in his references to canonic authors, traditional problems, and respect for academic taboos), Bourdieu points out that the complexity and abstraction of Heidegger's philosophical discourse stems from its situation in the cultural field, where two social and intellentual dimensions - political thought and academic thought - intersect. Bourdieu concludes by suggesting that Heidegger should not be considered as a Nazi ideologist, that there is no place in Heidegger's philosophical ideas for a racist conception of the human being. Rather, he sees Heidegger's thought as a structural equivalent in the field of philosophy of the 'conservative revolution', of which nazism is but one manifestation. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's overt alliance with the Nazis and the specific relation between this alliance and his philosophical thought--the degree to which his concepts are linked to a thoroughly disreputable set of political beliefs--have been the topic of a storm of recent debate. Written ten years before this debate, this study by France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist is both a precursor of that debate and an analysis of the institutional mechanisms involved in the production of philosophical discourse. Though Heidegger is (...) aware of and acknowledges the legitimacy of purely philosophical issues, Bourdieu points out that the complexity and abstraction of Heidegger's philosophical discourse stems from its situation in the cultural field, where two social and intellectual dimensions--political thought and academic thought--intersect. Bourdieu concludes by suggesting that Heidegger should not be considered as a Nazi ideologist, that there is no place in Heidegger's philosophical ideas for a racist conception of the human being. Rather, he sees Heidegger's thought as a structural equivalent in the field of philosophy of the "conservative revolution," of which Nazism is but one manifestation. (shrink)

It is usually the case that scientists examine either ecological systems or social systems, yet the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of environmental management and sustainable development is becoming increasingly obvious. Developed under the auspices of the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, this new book analyses social and ecological linkages in selected ecosystems using an international and interdisciplinary case study approach. The chapters provide detailed information on a variety of management practices for dealing with environmental change. Taken as (...) a whole, the book will contribute to the greater understanding of essential social responses to changes in ecosystems, including the generation, accumulation and transmission of ecological knowledge, structure and dynamics of institutions, and the cultural values underlying these responses. A set of new (or rediscovered) principles for sustainable ecosystem management is also presented. Linking Social and Ecological Systems will be of value to natural and social scientists interested in sustainability. (shrink)

The origins of human social cooperation confound simple evolutionary explanation. But from Darwin and Durkheim onward, theorists (anthropologists and sociologists especially) have posited a potential link with another curious and distinctively human social trait that cries out for explanation: religion. This dissertation explores one contemporary theory of the co-evolution of religion and human social cooperation: the signalling theory of religion, or religious signalling theory (RST). According to the signalling theory, participation in social religion (and its associated rituals and sanctions) (...) acts as an honest signal of one’s commitment to a religiously demarcated community and its way of doing things. This signal would allow prosocial individuals to positively assort with one another for mutual advantage, to the exclusion of more exploitative individuals. In effect, the theory offers a way that religion and cooperation might explain one another, but which that stays within an individualist adaptive paradigm. My approach is not to assess the empirical adequacy of the religious signalling explanation or contrast it with other explanations, but rather to deal with the theory in its own terms – isolating and fleshing out its core commitments, explanatory potential, and limitations. The key to this is acknowledging the internal complexities of signalling theory, with respect to the available models of honest signalling and the extent of their fit (or otherwise) with religion as a target system. The method is to take seriously the findings of formal modelling in animal signalling and other disciplines, and to apply these (and methods from the philosophy of biology more generally) to progressively build up a comprehensive picture of the theory, its inherent strengths and weaknesses. The first two chapters outline the dual explanatory problems that cooperation and religion present for evolutionary human science, and surveys contemporary approaches toward explaining them. Chapter three articulates an evolutionary conception of the signalling theory, and chapters four to six make the case for a series of requirements, limitations, and principles of application. Chapters seven and eight argue for the value of formal modelling to further flesh out the theory’s commitments and potential and describe some simple simulation results which make progress in this regard. Though the inquiry often problematizes the signalling theory, it also shows that it should not be dismissed outright, and that it makes predictions which are apt for empirical testing. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler’s contributions to political philosophy in the presence of technology are honored and complemented by imagining an encounter with the thought of Leo Strauss. The concept of sovereignty is taken as pivotal. Notions of sovereignty find expression not only in nation state politics but also in engineering and technology. Pierre Manent calls attention to further roots in Christian theology. The complexities and challenges of this interweaving point suggest the need for a “Tractatus Politico-Technologicus.”.

Carl Schmitt, the author of such books as Political Theology and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, was one of the leading political and legal theorists of the twentieth century. His critical discussions of liberal democratic ideals and institutions continue to arouse controversy, but even his opponents concede his uncanny sense for the basic problems of modern politics. Political Romanticism is a historical study that, like all of Schmitt's major works, offers a fundamental political critique. In it, he defends a (...) concept of political action based on notions of good and evil, justice and injustice, and attacks the political passivity entailed by the romanticization of experience. The book has three strands. The first is an attack on received notions of the origins of the Romantic Movement. Schmitt argues that this movement represents a secularization, subjectification, and privatization in which God is replaced by the emancipated, private individual of the bourgeois social order. The second is an assault on political romanticism that includes a broader attack on the new European bourgeoisie, which Schmitt characterizes as the historical bearer of the movement. The third strand is a defense of political conservatism and a refutation of the view that political romanticism is intrinsically linked with romanticism. Here Schmitt argues that the political romantic is tied not to positions but to aesthetics, and can therefore as easily become a Danton as a Frederick the Great. Guy Oakes's introduction places the book in historical context and also suggests its continuing relevance through his discussion of the latest outcropping of political romanticism in the late 1960s, intriguingly brought out in his example of Norman Mailer as a political romantic. (shrink)

Le concept du champ moléculaire a été introduit par Pierre Weiss en 1907 dans une théorie classique du ferromagnétisme. En 1928, Werner Heisenberg a donné une interprétation physique du champ moléculaire dans sa théorie quantique du ferromagnétisme. Louis Néel, héritier de Weiss, a mené à partir de 1928 une recherche d'un caractère particulier, à l'écart des modes. Sa démarche s'est révélée fructueuse dans le domaine de la théorie avec la découverte de l'antiferromagnétisme et du ferrimagnétisme. La théorie et la (...) technique ont eu partie liée dans la production de composés magnétiques hautement performants: les ferrites et les grenats ferrimagnétiques.Dans cet article, l'accent est mis sur la continuité d'une ligne de recherche, suivie pendant près d'un demi-siècle, à travers les bouleversements apportés par la théorie quantique dans les années vingt.The concept of the molecular field was put forward by Pierre Weiss in 1907, in a classical theory of ferromagnetism. In 1928, Werner Heisenberg gave the physical meaning of the molecular field in his quantum theory of ferromagnetism. Louis Néel, as heir to Weiss, developed research of a distinctive character, detached from current fashion. His approach has been fruitful in the theoretical field with the discovery of antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism. Theory and technique were strongly linked in the production of highly efficient magnetic compounds: ferrites and ferrimagnetic garnets.In this paper the author stresses the continuity of a line of research that was pursued over fifty years, despite the upset created by the quantum theory in the twenties. (shrink)

This paper examines perspectives on student disaffection in education at the levels of culture and policy. It considers the balance between punitive/exclusionary and therapeutic/restorative positions. The paper engages with concepts of retributive punishment (Murray, 2004a; 2004b), social welfare ideologies (Esping-Andersen, 1990) and discourses of social exclusion (Levitas, 1998). The conclusion is that policy choices are made about how disaffected, at risk young people are to be provided for, and these policy choices are not contained simply within an education policy and (...) practice setting. The policy responses emerge from national and local government decision-making. They correlate with national indicators of punitiveness in the criminal justice system and the scale of inequalities tolerated. Policies resonate with deep-seated cultural positions which are linked to the willingness to pay -- for prevention or for punishment -- and with the propensity to allocate blame either to individuals and families or to societal failures. Opportunities for intervention at points in the reinforcing cycle of punitiveness are indicated. (shrink)

According to the new public management, the interaction between governments and their citizens should be "client oriented". It is considered crucial for policy-makers that they know how citizens perceive the policy process, that they know if citizens are satisfied with policy outcomes.Our empirical study deals with the satisfaction with global local policy. We examine the main determinants of satisfaction with global local policy. This study is based on a face-to-face survey among citizens entitled to vote in Ghent. More than 1500 (...) respondents, spread over 2 surveys, took part in our research. Attention is also paid to the satisfaction with more specific aspects of local policy. We linked the voter's satisfaction with the global local policy to a wide range of traditional and less traditional independent variables. Finally, we discuss the satisfaction of the electorate of the different political parties. (shrink)

Redish et al. present a compelling, interdisciplinary, unified framework of addiction. The effort to integrate pathological gambling is especially important, but only the vulnerability of misclassifying situations is described in detail as being linked directly to this disorder. This commentary focuses on further developing the comprehensiveness of this framework for pathological gambling using over-fast discounting as an illustrative example.

This article explores the erosion of public education as a project of democratization. It locates this erosion in the neoliberal world order that has redefined our understanding of schooling the democratic citizen in terms of developing market assets. In it, Carl Anders Säfström investigates specifically how this shift is apparent in the ways in which schooling operates and demonstrates how education itself stands in stark contrast to this view of schooling's function. The need to revitalize education and teaching as (...) means to further equality in society derives from the inequality that neoliberal schooling produces and that is undermining the democratic character of reputedly democratic orders. Teaching liveable life, Säfström concludes, means to verify equality in situations otherwise defined by inequality and, by this means, to expand who can be seen as belonging to democratic public life. His critique of political instrumentalism shows how late capitalism's neoliberal market ideology is systematically linked with schooling and results in the institutionalization of this ideology. (shrink)

It is argued that the tensed theory of the creative subject provides a natural formulation of the logic underlying Brouwer's notion of unextendable order and explains the link between that notion and virtual order. The tensed theory of the creative subject is also shown to be a useful tool for interpreting recent evidence about the stages of Brouwer's thinking concerning these two notions of order.

As is often the case when scientific or engineering fields emerge, new concepts are forged or old ones are adapted. When this happens, various arguments rage over what ultimately turns out to be conceptual misunderstandings. At that critical time, there is a need for an explicit reflection on the meaning of the concepts that define the field. In this position paper, we aim to provide a reasoned framework in which to think about various issues in the field of distributed cognition. (...) We argue that both relevant concepts, distribution and cognition, must be understood as continuous. As it is used in the context of distributed cognition, the concept of distribution is essentially fuzzy, and we will link it to the notion of emergence of system-level properties. The concept of cognition must also be seen as fuzzy, but for a different reason: due to its origin as an anthropocentric concept, no one has a clear handle on its meaning in a distributed setting. As the proposed framework forms a space, we then explore its geography and visit famous landmarks. (shrink)

Mirror neurons fire both when a primate executes a transitive action directed toward a target (e.g., grasping) and when he observes the same action performed by another. According to the prevalent interpretation, action-mirroring is a process of interpersonal neural similarity whereby an observer maps the agent's perceived movements onto her own motor repertoire. Furthermore, ever since Gallese and Goldman's (1998) influential paper, action-mirroring has been linked to third-person mindreading on the grounds that it enables an observer to represent the agent's (...) intention. In this paper, I criticize the prevalent interpretation on two grounds. First, action-mirroring could not result in interpersonal neural similarity unless there was a single mechanism active at different times in a single brain during the execution and the perception of acts of grasping. Second, such a neural mechanism is better conceived as underlying the possession of the concept of grasping than as a basis for mindreading. (shrink)

Among the theoretical foundations of Transformative Learning, two closely linked issues are to be revisited in a critical way: On one hand, the notion of dialogue in a space of discussion, inspired by the Habermas›s notion of public space and, on the other hand, the limits of rationality in the discursive activities. Which new light on the theoretical foundations of the construct of transformative learning (TL) can throw the works of some authors, which approached the question of dialogue in the (...) fields of the political philosophy and the philosophy of language? Which consequences to hold for the practice of Transformative Learning? (shrink)

As is often the case when scientific or engineering fields emerge, new concepts are forged or old ones are adapted. When this happens, various arguments rage over what ultimately turns out to be conceptual misunderstandings. At that critical time, there is a need for an explicit reflection on the meaning of the concepts that define the field. In this position paper, we aim to provide a reasoned framework in which to think about various issues in the field of distributed cognition. (...) We argue that both relevant concepts, distribution and cognition, must be understood as continuous. As it is used in the context of distributed cognition, the concept of distribution is essentially fuzzy, and we will link it to the notion of emergence of system-level properties. The concept of cognition must also be seen as fuzzy, but for a different reason: due to its origin as an anthropocentric concept, no one has a clear handle on its meaning in a distributed setting. As the proposed framework forms a space, we then explore its geography and visit famous landmarks. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a basis for renewed talk about ‘use’ in computing. Four current ‘discourse arenas’ are described. Different intentions manifest in each arena are linked to failures in ‘translation’, different terminologies crossing disciplinary and national boundaries non-reflexively. Analysis of transnational use discourse dynamics shows much miscommunication. Conflicts like that between the ‘Scandinavian System Development School’ and the ‘usability approach’ have less current salience. Renewing our talk about use is essential to a participatory politics of information technology and (...) will lead to clearer perception of the implications of letting new systems becoming primary media of social interaction. (shrink)

Environmental governance has emerged as a recent perspective to explain the link between corporate governance mechanisms and environmental performance such as pollution reduction. We extend current models by incorporating the crucial role of the underlying institutional logics in terms of an a priori focus on either shareholder rights or stakeholder inclusion, which, in turn, can be traced back to the legal origin of a specific country. Using data on a sample of common and civil law countries, we find support (...) for our predictions that a shareholder-focused common law legal origin is associated with significantly higher emissions of CO2, and also that international environmental agreements like the Kyoto protocol seem to have a more pronounced effect in shareholder-centric economies than thus far assumed. (shrink)

Behavioral biologists have long sought to link behavioral units (e.g., aggression, depression, sociopathy) with biological units (e.g., genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, neuroanatomical loci). These units, originally contrived for descriptive purposes, often lead to misunderstandings when they are reified for purposes of causal analysis. This genetic and biochemical explanation for sociopathy reflects such problems.

The point of departure of this paper is Penrose's definition of conscious action as that in which stimulus and response are linked by a non‐algorithmic relationship, which Penrose defines as ‘understanding’. My purpose is to explore the nature of this understanding by means of a two‐step process. The first step is provided by Tononi's Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. This theory provides us with a quantitative measure of conscious states that we need to transform into qualitative meaning. In the second (...) step, we obtain this qualitative meaning with the help of the structuralist theory of mind. From this perspective, meaning originates in the set of qualitative contrasts that define the alternative courses of action that might have been implemented. Work on the analogy between quantitative bits and qualitative binary oppositions does not solve the hard problem of consciousness, but it might help to reformulate it in a new, productive way. (shrink)

Research in artificial intelligence (AI) has led to revise the challenges of the AI initial programme as well as to keep us alert to peculiarities and limitations of human cognition. Both are linked, as a careful further reading of the Turing’s test makes it clear from Searle’s Chinese room apologue and from Dreyfus’ suggestions, and in both cases, ideal had to be turned into operating mode. In order to rise these more pragmatic challenges AI does not hesitate to link (...) together operations of various levels and functionalities, more specific or more general. The challenges are not met by an operating formal system which should have from the outset all the learning skills, but -for instance in simulation- by the dynamics of a succession of solutions open to adjustments as well as to reflexive repeats. (shrink)

Este estudio propone una hipótesis de lectura de la Scienza nuova fundada en una redefinición de la noción de razón en Vico. Radicalmente opuesta a la razón cartesiana, que se repliega sobre sí misma, la razón de Vico es movimiento, riesgo, apertura. Al salir de sí misma, la razón ha de metamorfosearse y, para ello, ha de adoptar nuevos instrumentos y nuevos criterios . Este nuevo status de la razón confiere un sentido particular a la empresa científica de Vico al (...) ligar exigencias prácticas con dificultades epistemológicas.This paper proposes an hypothesis to reading the Scienza Nuova based upon a re-definition of Vico's notion of reason. Radically opposed to that of Descartes's, which bends on itself, Vico's reason is movement, risk, aperture. When reason comes out from within, it has to metamorphoses and in doing so it has to employ new means and new criteria . This new status of reason provides Vico's scientific enterprise with a particular meaning since it links practical claims with epistemological difficulties. (shrink)

Due to the failure of the classical principles of bivalence and verifunctionality, the logic of experimental propositions relative to quantum systemscannot be interpreted in Boolean algebras. However, we cannot say neither that this logic is captured by orthomodular lattices, as claimed by many authors along the line of Birkhoff‘s and von Neumann‘s standard approach. For the alleged violation of distributivity is based on the possibility of combining statements relative to complementary contexts, which does not refer to any experience and, consequently, (...) has no meaning. Indeed, quantum logic should be interpreted in partial, transitive Boolean algebras whose compatibility relation limits the application of the connectives within each of its Boolean sub-algebras, which refer to partial, classical descriptions. Moreover, this approach of quantum logic makes it possible to deal with composite systems, which was not possible to do within the standard approach, and then to deal with the fundamental notion of quantum entanglement. The latter notion can be represented by a series of axioms of the object language that restrict the set of experimental statements bearing on a composite system, while its close link to the notion of complementarity can be expressed in the metalanguage. (shrink)

The author explores with the leading scholars of today the way and extent to which many forms of oppression, such as racism, classism, capitalism, sexism, and linguicis, have affected the women, poor working-class people, queer people, students of color, female faculty and faculty of color. The leading scholars are: Richard Delgado, David Gillborn , Zeus Leonardo, Antonia Darder, Howard Winant, Christine Sleeter, Sonia Nieto, Carl Grant, Peter McLaren, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Pedro Noguera, and Dave Stovall. Sometimes immensely personal, (...) the interviews unveil the how far America has come, and just how far we have to go, in the quest for equality for all its citizens. (shrink)

Agent-Based Models are useful to describe and understand social, economic and spatial systems' dynamics. But, beside the facilities which this methodology offers, evaluation and comparison of simulation models are sometimes problematic. A rigorous conceptual frame needs to be developed. This is in order to ensure the coherence in the chain linking at the one extreme the scientist's hypotheses about the modeled phenomenon and at the other the structure of rules in the computer program. This also systematizes the model design from (...) the thematician conceptual framework as well. The aim is to reflect upon the role that a well defined ontology, based on the crossing of the philosophical and the computer science insights, can play to solve such questions and help the model building. We analyze different conceptions of ontology, introduce the 'ontological test' and show its usefulness to compare models. Then we focus on the model building and show the place of a systematic ABM ontology. The latter process is situated within a larger framework called the 'knowledge framework' in which not only the ontologies but also the notions of theory, model and empirical data take place. At last the relation between emergence and ontology is discussed. (shrink)

This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of artificial life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly integrate (...) the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from the environment. This proposition does not however, resolve that of the relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making). Such reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues, thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways. (shrink)

Writers and readers of literature are, among other things, biological entities that evolve under particular political (geographical/historical) conditions. A comparative study of certain texts by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) can help us establish a fruitful interpretation of this threefold link between literary art, biology and politics. However, careful analysis reveals that Heidegger remains too rooted in an old-world, nationalistic and anthropocentric paradigm. We will attempt to rethink Heidegger’s assumptions on the grounds that literature, a cultural practice, enables us to delineate (...) our natural environment. By reformulating Heidegger’s line of thought, we can more precisely address the plural structure of our biotic and political-literary experiences. (shrink)

To improve on the argument presented by classical economists, many authors have tried to rely as much as possible on a value-free approach. In this paper, reasons to reject the propositions made by neoclassical economists are briefly recalled. We then turn toward Kirzner’s proposition which is to evaluate a policy, or a rule, according to the extent to which it promotes coordination. This proposition, however, must also be rejected because, if it introduces some dynamics in the picture, it is a (...) dynamics towards equilibrium, while real life, entrepreneurial dynamics can either be towards coordination or discoordination. Coordination is not monotonously linked to progress. It therefore appears preferable to rely on Hayek’s notion of order; a notion specifically designed to allow progress to take place, while maintaining a ‘satisfactory’ level of coordination. For such an order to prevail, any rule or policy deliberately introduced must be compatible with the existing order, that is, it must protect legitimate expectations. Following a reflection on the definition of ‘legitimacy’ we then reach the conclusion that the quest for a value-free welfare economics is lost, and that even the quest for a value-free economics will have, in a certain sense, to be left, or at least reconsidered.Afin d’améliorer l’argument présenté par les économistes classiques, beaucoup d’auteurs ont essayé de se reposer autant que possible sur une approche sans jugements de valeur. Dans cet article, nous rappelons brièvement les raisons de rejeter les propositions faites par les économistes néoclassiques. Nous nous tournons donc vers la proposition de Kirzner qui est d’évaluer une politique, ou une règle, par rapport à la manière dont elle promeut la coordination. Cependant, cette proposition doit aussi être rejetée car si elle introduit une dynamique dans l’analyse, c’est une dynamique du côté de l’équilibre, alors que dans la vie réelle, la dynamique entrepreneuriale peut initier plus de coordination ou plus de discoordination. La coordination n’est pas liée de manière monotone au progrès. Il apparaît aussi préférable de se rattacher à la notion d’ordre de Hayek, notion construite précisément pour permettre au progrès d’avoir lieu, tout en maintenant un niveau “satisfaisant” de coordination. Pour qu’un tel ordre existe, toute règle ou politique délibérément introduite doit être compatible avec l’ordre existant, c’està- dire, qu’elle doit protéger les anticipations légitimes. Après une réflexion sur la définition de “légitimité”, nous arrivons à la conclusion que la quête d’une science économique du bien-être sans jugement de valeur est un échec, et que la quête d’une science économique sans jugement de valeur doit être, dans un certain sens, abandonnée ou au mieux reconsidérée. (shrink)

Kant's philosophy must be understood nonnaturalistically and anti-psychologistically. Self-consciousness must be interpreted as preceding the distinction between different persons. Kant departs from the traditional idea that I thoughts are always mediated by a certain specific I sense or conceptualization of oneself. At the same time the so-called paradoxes of self-consciousness are resolved. The possibility of a pre-personal self-consciousness is what links the way all objects are given to finite beings to the way they are conceptualized by those beings. It serves (...) as the unifying basis for intuitions and concepts. Intuitions and concepts of objects are connected by their relation to a numerically identical self. ;The subject construed impersonally provides the frame for any possible experience and is one in the same in all possible experience. As such it can never be experienced as a distinct entity. It is the condition under which it is possible to have a point of view at all. One must be in a position to become conscious of the numerical identity of this logical subject of all representation if is to be possible to communicate indeed to compare and contrast representational contents at all. ;Self-consciousness is inherently empty and yet also necessarily in relation to contents of consciousness. This means that its numerical identity can only be sustained if all potential contents of consciousness present themselves to the self in such a way that they sustain the possibility of consciousness of the self as having a discrete empirical identity. Kant's argument in the First Analogy and the Refutation of Idealism fulfills this demand for a correlate to the numerical identity of pre-personal consciousness in the data presented to self-consciousness spatio-temporally. We must view self-construction and construction of objects existing outside of us as part of a single process which presupposes an impersonal self-consciousness. (shrink)

In the philosophical tradition, the notions of determinism and causality are strongly linked: it is assumed that in a world of deterministic laws, causality may be said to reign supreme; and in any world where the causality is strong enough, determinism must hold. I will show that these alleged linkages are based on mistakes, and in fact get things almost completely wrong. In a deterministic world that is anything like ours, there is no room for genuine causation. Though there may (...) be stable enough macro-level regularities to serve the purposes of human agents, the sense of “causality” that can be maintained is one that will at best satisfy Humeans and pragmatists, not causal fundamentalists. (shrink)

A specter haunts the Tractatus de intellectus emendatione: eternity. It is a specter, for it never appears there in person, except at the end, in the genitive, that is to say, to determine another word – species. The search for eternal joy does not involve asceticism or contempt for what ascetics call the goods of this world. Eternity has therefore finally found its definition – and this definition links it closely to divine existence. Eternity plays a major and very complex (...) role. Eternity has therefore become a general characteristic of being and no longer the characteristic reserved for God. Where Spinoza is true to his own thought, and far from Descartes, he is so precisely with the instruments borrowed from Descartes, but completely transformed: the distinction between essence and existence, and the thesis of continued creation. (shrink)

It is very widely accepted that the French Revolution represents a decisive moment in the history of archives, not only in France but throughout the world. The great German-born scholar Ernst Posner, writing in 1940, claimed that it "marks the beginning of a new era in archives administration."1 Posner's view has been reaffirmed many times since, in one form or another, by authors of various nationalities.In France itself this opinion is not contested. Rather than assert a claim of historical primacy, (...) however, the interest has been instead to emphasize the link between the Revolution and the present system of archival organization. A 2001 petition calling for the National Archives to be brought together under one... (shrink)

This volume presents, in an integrated framework, contemporary perspectives on the role of nonverbal behavior in psychological regulation, adaptation, and psychopathology, and includes both empirical and theoretical research that is central to our understanding of the reciprocal influences between nonverbal behavior, psychopathology, and therapeutic processes. It has several objectives: One is to present fundamental theories and data relevant to researchers and clinicians working in such fields as psychopathology and psychotherapy. Another objective is to link contributions of basic research to (...) clinical applications. Finally, the volume gathers contributions in different sub-fields that are rarely presented jointly, such as brain damage and non-verbal skills. (shrink)

Les Sphériques ont été écrites par Ménélaos sous la forme d’un traité d’apparence purement mathématique. Cependant, la matière qui y est développée dans les deuxième et troisième livres est étroitement liée à des problèmes rencontrés en astronomie: calcul des coordonnées équatoriales du Soleil, établissement de tables d’ascensions, étude du mouvement du Soleil dans la sphère oblique, levers simultanés. Ce lien, qui demeure implicite dans le texte, a été mis en évidence par deux mathématiciens et astronomes arabo-musulmans, qui ont exposé la (...) signification astronomique de certains théorèmes des Sphériques. Nous présenterons, commenterons et complèterons cette explicitation en classant les théorèmes concernés en trois groupes: sens de variation de certaines grandeurs sur la sphère, propositions de trigonométrie sphérique et applications, sens de variation de rapports entre certaines grandeurs sur la sphère. The Spherics were written by Menelaos in the form of a purely mathematical treatise. However, the material developed in the second and third book is closely linked to problems met in astronomy: computation of equatorial coordinates of the Sun, setting up of rising-time tables, study of the motion of the Sun in the sphaera obliqua, simultaneous risings. This link, which remains implicit in the text, was clearly displayed by two arabo-islamic mathematicians and astronomers, who expounded the astronomical meaning of some theorems of the Spherics. We describe, comment and complement their explanations, by classifying the implications of the theorems in three groups: direction of variation of some quantities on the sphere, spherical trigonometry and applications, direction of variation of ratios of some quantities on the sphere. (shrink)