The principle of indifference has fallen from grace in contemporary philosophy, yet some papers have recently sought to vindicate its plausibility. This paper follows suit. In it, I articulate a version of the principle and provide what appears to be a novel argument in favour of it. The argument relies on a thought experiment where, intuitively, an agent’s confidence in any particular outcome being true should decrease with the addition of outcomes to the relevant space of possible outcomes. Put (...) simply: the greater the number of outcomes, the weaker your confidence should be in any one of those outcomes. The argument holds that this intuition favours the principle of indifference. I point out that, in contrast, the intuition is also incompatible with a major alternative to the principle which prescribes imprecise credences: the so-called wide interval view. Consequently, the argument may also be seen as an argument against the wide interval view. (shrink)

The principle of indifference has fallen from grace in contemporary philosophy, yet some papers have recently sought to vindicate its plausibility. This paper follows suit. In it, I articulate a version of the principle and provide what appears to be a novel argument in favour of it. The argument relies on a thought experiment where, intuitively, an agent’s confidence in any particular outcome being true should decrease with the addition of outcomes to the relevant space of possible outcomes. Put (...) simply: the greater the number of outcomes, the weaker your confidence should be in any one of those outcomes. The argument holds that this intuition favours the principle of indifference. I point out that, in contrast, the intuition is also incompatible with a major alternative to the principle which prescribes imprecise credences: the so-called wide interval view. Consequently, the argument may also be seen as an argument against the wide interval view. (shrink)

Sometimes different partitions of the same space each seem to divide that space into propositions that call for equal epistemic treatment. Famously, equal treatment in the form of equal point-valued credence leads to incoherence. Some have argued that equal treatment in the form of equal interval-valued credence solves the puzzle. This paper shows that, once we rule out intervals with extreme endpoints, this proposal also leads to incoherence.

A much discussed topic in the theory of choice is how a preference order among options can be derived from the assumption that the notion of ' choice' is primitive. Assuming a choice function that selects elements from each finite set of options, Arrow (Económica 26: 121-127,1959) already showed how we can generate a weak ordering by putting constraints on the behavior of such a function such that it reflects utility maximization. Arrow proposed that rational agents can be modeled by (...) such choice functions. Arrow's standard model of rationality has been criticized in economics and gave rise to approaches of bounded rationality. Two standard assumptions of rationality will be given up in this paper. First, the idea that agents are utility optimizers (Simon). Second, the idea that the relation of ' indifference' gives rise to an equivalence relation. To account for the latter, Luce (Econometrica 24: 178-191, 1956) introduced semi-orders. Extending some ideas of Van Benthem (Pac Philos Q 63: 193-203, 1982), we will show how to derive semi-orders (and so-called interval orders) based on the idea that agents are utility satisficers rather than utility optimizers. (shrink)

Rawls's difference principle contains a certain normative ambiguity, so that opposing views, including strong inegalitarian ones, might find a home under it. The element that introduces this indeterminacy is the absence of an explicit reference to time . Thus, a society that agrees on the difference principle as the proper justification of basic political-economic institutions, might nevertheless disagree on whether their specific institutions are justified by that principle. Such disagreement would most often centre on issues of fact: will a more (...) egalitarian policy in fact prioritize the least well off or will a more libertarian policy do so? But facts are not the only possible points of contention. According to the fundamental indeterminacy, considering merely the sum of advantages to the least well off, the difference principle is indifferent among different flows of equal income over time. It cannot adjudicate among more or less unequal distributions across social groups when the sum income of the least advantaged group is constant. The fundamental indeterminacy lies at the bottom of three derivative indeterminacies: an adequate future discount rate, an acceptable absolute minimum, and a reasonable time interval. These might form the basis of political disagreement among self-proclaimed endorsers of the difference principle of left and right over the way the principal social-economic institutions ought to be structured and the distributions that ensue. Key Words: Rawls • equality • incentives • future discount rate • primary goods • well-being. (shrink)

Recently, Wilcox (JGPS 51: 65–87, 2020) argued against the so-called wide interval view and in favor of the principle of indifference as the correct response to unspecific evidence. Embedded in a formal model of the beliefs of an agent, the former presupposes imprecise probabilities and the latter numerically precise degrees of belief. His argument is illustrated by a thought experiment that comes with a fundamental intuition. According to Wilcox, the wide interval view is incompatible with this intuition (...) and, thus, undermined. In contrast, I show that the intuition behind the thought experiment is, in fact, compatible with the wide interval view if it is embedded into a specific conception of imprecise probabilities as model of belief. This conception is an extension of a framework which I call modified supervaluationism (MSV) and which I recently presented elsewhere (Karge 2021, 175–191). To accommodate the thought experiment’s fundamental intuition, it introduces a notion of second-order beliefs. (shrink)

Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one’s evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I (...) argue that existing formulations of the principle are crucially ambiguous, and I go on to defend a particular disambiguation of the principle. According to the disambiguation I defend, how we should apply this restricted principle of indifference sensitively depends on our background metaphysical beliefs. My second goal is to apply this disambiguated principle to classical skeptical problems in epistemology. In particular, I argue that Eternalism threatens to lead us to external world skepticism, and Modal Realism threatens to lead us to inductive skepticism. (shrink)

I argue against motivational internalism. First I recharacterise the issue over moral motivation. Second I describe the indifference argument against motivation internalism. Third I consider appeals to irrationality that are often made in the face of this argument, and I show that they are ineffective. Lastly, I draw the motivational externalist conclusion and reflect on the nature of the issue.

This Paper combines interval- valued neutrouphic sets and rough sets. It studies roughness in interval- valued neutrosophic sets and some of its properties. Finally we propose a Hamming distance between lower and upper approximations of interval valued neutrosophic sets.

This paper begins with a response to Josh Gert’s challenge that ‘on a par with’ is not a sui generis fourth value relation beyond ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’. It then explores two further questions: can parity be modeled by an interval representation of value? And what should one rationally do when faced with items on a par? I argue that an interval representation of value is incompatible with the possibility that items are on a par (...) (a mathematical proof is given in the appendix). I also suggest that there are three senses of ‘rationally permissible’ which, once distinguished, show that parity does distinctive practical work that cannot be done by the usual trichotomy of relations or by incomparability. In this way, we have an additional argument for parity from the workings of practical reason. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an alternative to hermeneutic fictionalism, an alternative I call indifferentism, with the same advantages as hermeneutic fictionalism with respect to ontological issues but avoiding some of the problems that face fictionalism. The difference between indifferentism and fictionalism is this. The fictionalist about ordinary utterances of a sentence S holds, with more orthodox views, that the speaker in some sense commits herself to the truth of S. It is only that for the fictionalist this is truth (...) in the relevant fiction. According to the indifferentist, by contrast, we are simply non-committal – or indifferent – with respect to some aspects of what is literally said in our assertive utterances. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the expressiveness of the variety of propositional interval neighborhood logics , we establish their decidability on linearly ordered domains and some important subclasses, and we prove the undecidability of a number of extensions of PNL with additional modalities over interval relations. All together, we show that PNL form a quite expressive and nearly maximal decidable fragment of Halpern–Shoham’s interval logic HS.

Carter (Noûs 55(1):171–198, 2021) argued that while most simple positive numerical sentences are literally false, they can communicate true contents because relevance has a weakening effect on their literal contents. This paper presents a challenge for his account by considering entailments between the imprecise contents of numerical sentences and the imprecise contents of comparatives. I argue that while Carter's weakening mechanism can generate the imprecise contents of plain comparatives such as `A is taller than B', it cannot generate the imprecise (...) contents of comparatives that quantify the difference between their arguments, such as `A is exactly n times as tall as B'. I then propose an alternative theory on which intervals serve as both thick degrees on a scale and denotations of numerical expressions. I argue that the alternative theory can account for the imprecise contents of both forms of comparatives as well as the data that motivate Carter's theory. (shrink)

A logic of intervals is proposed akin to the one published by Hamblin (Hamblin (1969) and (1971)). Like Hamblin's, the present system is also based on a single primitive. However, the work presented here differs from Hamblin's in a number of respects. Most importantly, the present system is explicitly based on mereological ideas in such a way that not only are the two notions of abutment and temporal order involved in Hamblin's primitive two-place relation "abuts at the earlier end" distinguished (...) ; the temporal ordering itself is built up from a symmetric mereological primitive. The present system is shown to be complete. (shrink)

An indifference principle says that your credences should be distributed uniformly over each of the possibilities you recognise. A chance deference principle says that your credences should be aligned with the chances. My thesis is that, if we are anti-Humeans about chance, then these two principles are incompatible. Anti-Humeans think that it is possible for the actual frequencies to depart from the chances. So long as you recognise possibilities like this, you cannot both spread your credences evenly and defer (...) to the chances. I discuss some weaker forms of indifference which will allow anti-Humeans to defer to the chances. (shrink)

Indifference, Necessity, and Descartes's Derivation of the Laws of Motion BLAKE D. DUTTON WHILE WORKING ON Le Monde, his first comprehensive scientific treatise, Des- cartes writes the following to Mersenne: "I think that all those to whom God has given the use of this reason have an obligation to employ it principally in the endeavor to know him and to know themselves. This is the task with which I began my studies; and I can say that I would not (...) have been able to discover the foundations of physics if I had not looked for them along that road" . ' As the letter makes clear, knowl- edge of the foundations of Cartesian physics is inextricably linked to the knowledge of God. Unfortunately, Descartes never explains why this is the case, and the relation in which his theistic doctrine stands to his physics remains unspecified. In what follows I wish to clarify that relation by examining some of the problems surrounding Descartes's attempt to locate the metaphysical founda- tions of his physics in his doctrine of God. I begin my analysis with a discussion of the doctrine of divine indifference and argue that this doctrine is of great importance to any interpretation of the foundations of Cartesian physics, insofar as it provides Descartes with a rationale for dismissing the appeal to final causation in scientific explanation. Insofar as this is the case, it supplies an important piece of his justification for mechanism... (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the concept of interval valued neutrosophic soft topological space together with interval valued neutrosophic soft finer and interval valued neutrosophic soft coarser topology. We also define interval valued neutrosophic interior and closer of an interval valued neutrosophic soft set. Some theorems and examples are cites. Interval valued neutrosophic soft subspace topology are studied. Some examples and theorems regarding this concept are presented.

Nigel Clark’s ‘ex-orbitant globality’ concerns the incalculability of other-than-human forces we typically fail to acknowledge, yet which haunt all considerations of environmental change. This article considers Gaia theory as a useful heuristic to register the ubiquity of bacteria to environmental activity and regulation. Bacteria are Gaia theory’s fundamental actants, and through symbiosis and symbiogenesis, connect life and matter in biophysical and biosocial entanglements. Emphasizing symbiosis might invoke the expectation of a re-inscription of the human insofar as the ubiquitous inter-connectivity of (...) life ultimately connects everything to the human. I want to argue toward the opposite conclusion: that bacterial liveliness suggests a profound indifference to human life. As such, symbiosis does not efface difference, nor its vigorous refusal to be absorbed within human formulations of world-remaking, including environmental change. Bacterial indifference’s radical asymmetry suggests the need for non-human centred theories of globality. (shrink)

The oblivion of the interval -- Being in place -- The aporia between envelope and things -- Dualism in Bergson -- Interval, sexual difference -- Beyond man: rethinking life and matter -- Conclusion: interval as relation, interval as becoming.

This paper examines whether social workers and other direct service practitioners can find utility in ethnomethodology despite or even because of the policy of “indifference”. Garfinkel, the father of ethnomethodology, sets out “ethnomethodological indifference” to insist that EM studies do not supplement, formulate remedies, develop humanistic arguments, or encourage discussions of theory. While at first blush such limits on EM might appear to be a barrier for most social workers this paper argues against first impressions. It is argued (...) that EM provides an important redirection for social work practice and research. Additionally, it is proposed that by approaching EM through Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography social workers can bridge Garfinkel’s quest for haeccities with extended social relations and actual courses of actions to find congruence between EM and accomplished professional practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we first defined soft intervalvalued neutrosophic rough sets(SIVN- rough sets for short) which combines interval valued neutrosophic soft set and rough sets and studied some of its basic properties. This concept is an extension of soft interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy rough sets( SIVIF- rough sets). Finally an illustartive example is given to verfy the developped algorithm and to demonstrate its practicality and effectiveness.

Stephen Makin offers an account of indifference arguments and the pre-Socratic atomism underpinned by this sort of reasoning. Used by Parmenides, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz, as well as some contemporary philosophers, indifference arguments start from claims about a balance of reasons or an absence of asymmetries. While some provide plausible support for strong conclusion, others produce no conviction.

We study the reverse mathematics of interval orders. We establish the logical strength of the implications among various definitions of the notion of interval order. We also consider the strength of different versions of the characterization theorem for interval orders: a partial order is an interval order if and only if it does not contain 2 \oplus 2. We also study proper interval orders and their characterization theorem: a partial order is a proper interval (...) order if and only if it contains neither 2 \oplus 2 nor 3 \oplus 1. (shrink)

We present the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted cosine similarity measure in this paper, which combines the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy cosine similarity measure with the generalized ordered weighted averaging operator. The main advantage of the IVIFOWCS measure provides a parameterized family of similarity measures, and the decision maker can use the IVIFOWCS measure to consider a lot of possibilities and select the aggregation operator in accordance with his interests. We have studied some of its main properties and particular (...) cases such as the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted arithmetic cosine similarity measure and the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy maximum cosine similarity measure. The IVIFOWCS measure not only is a generalization of some similarity measure, but also it can deal with the correlation of different decision matrices for interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy values. Furthermore, we present an application of IVIFOWCS measure to the group decision-making problem. Finally the existing similarity measures are compared with the IVIFOWCS measure by an illustrative example. (shrink)

We propose a method to associate a coalitional interval game with each strategic game. The method is based on the lower and upper values of finite two-person zero-sum games. Associating with a strategic game a coalitional interval game we avoid having to take either a pessimistic or an optimistic approach to the problem. The paper makes two contributions to the literature: It provides a theoretical foundation for the study of coalitional interval games and it also provides, studies, (...) and characterizes a natural method of associating coalitional interval games with strategic games. (shrink)

Critics of the Fine-Tuning Argument for Theism have recently argued that even if the universe is fine-tuned for life, certain features of the universe are still surprising given theism, because God should be indifferent between those features and their contraries. In the first section of this paper, I summarize this sort of Indifference Objection to the Fine-Tuning Argument. In the second section, I explain why contrary to initial appearances, these objections fail. In the third section, I present the Argument (...) from Compatibility, which attempts to turn the tables by arguing that the paradigmatic features are more surprising given atheism than they are given theism. (shrink)

Of S. S. Stevens's well-known classification of nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio ‘scales of measurement’, perhaps its least-known aspect is its most distinctive, namely the distinction between interval and ratio scales. This article investigates the circumstances of the typology's origins among the experimental psychologists at Harvard in the 1930s and the unique fusion of personal, technical and intellectual forces this setting represented. It shows how it came to be that an influential psychologist reconceptualized measurement from first principles in (...) such a way as to both preserve the distinction between psychology and physics in this regard and yet implicitly classify his own work as the latter. The article concludes with the general suggestion that, if it is necessary to measure something, it might as well be something tangible enough to be measured usefully. (shrink)

Although largely neglected in Schelling scholarship, the concept of bliss assumes central importance throughout Schelling’s oeuvre. Focusing on his 1810–11 texts, the Stuttgart Seminars and the beginning of the Ages of the World, this paper traces the logic of bliss, in its connection with other key concepts such as indifference, the world or the system, at a crucial point in Schelling’s thinking. Bliss is shown, at once, to mark the zero point of the developmental narrative that Schelling constructs here (...) and to interrupt it at every step. As a result, bliss emerges here in its real utopian force but also its all-too-real ambivalence, indifference, and even violence, despite Schelling’s best efforts to theorize it as ‘love’; and Schelling himself emerges, in these texts, as one of modernity’s foremost thinkers not just of nature or freedom, but also of bliss in its modern afterlives. At stake in Schelling’s conception of bliss, I argue, is the very relationship between history and eternity, the not-yet and the already-here, the present, and the eschatological—as well as between Spinozian immanence and the Christian temporality of salvation, so important for modernity —not to mention the complex entanglement of indifference, violence, and love or the ideas of totality, nonproductivity, and nonrelation that Schellingian bliss involves. (shrink)

The successes scored by the big bang model of cosmic evolution in the 1960’s led to an intensive application of quantum theory to the problem of how the expansion might have begun and what its likely first stages were. It seemed as though an incredibly precise setting of the initial conditions would have been needed in order that a long-lived galactic universe containing heavy elements might develop. One response was to suppose that the fine-tuning could somehow be explained by the (...) presence of humans in the universe. This ran quite counter to the traditional supposition, according to which an initial "chaos" was sufficient. This essay outlines the history of the two principles, argues that the so-called "weak" anthropic principle is banal, distinguishes between two sorts of anthropic explanation, and assesses the prospects of the anthropic turn in cosmology. (edited). (shrink)

Data envelopment analysis is a popular mathematical tool for analyzing the relative efficiency of homogenous decision-making units. However, the existing DEA models cannot tackle the newly confronted applications with imprecise and negative data as well as undesirable outputs simultaneously. Thus, we introduce undesirable outputs into modified slack-based measure model and propose an interval-modified slack-based measure model, which extends the application of interval DEA in fields that concern with less undesirable outputs. The novelties of the model are that it (...) considers the undesirable outputs while dealing with imprecise and negative data, and it is slack-based. Furthermore, the model with undesirable outputs is proven translation-invariant and unit-invariant. Moreover, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the changes of the lower and upper bounds of the efficiency score after considering the undesirable outputs. The empirical results show that, without considering undesirable outputs, most of the lower bounds of the efficiency scores will be overestimated when the DMUs are weakly efficient and inefficient. The upper bound will also change after considering undesirable outputs when the DMU is inefficient. Finally, an improved degree of preference approach is introduced to rank the DMUs. (shrink)

Luce and Narens (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 29:1–72, 1985) showed that rank-dependent utility (RDU) is the most general interval scale utility model for binary lotteries. It can be easily established that this result cannot be generalized to lotteries with more than two outcomes. This article suggests several additional conditions to ensure RDU as the only utility model with the desired property of interval scalability in the general case. The related axiomatizations of some special cases of RDU of independent (...) interest (the quantile utility, expected utility, and Yaari’s dual expected utility) are also given. (shrink)

In some cases where we are faced with a decision of whether to prioritize identified lives over statistical lives, we have no basis for assigning specific probabilities to possible outcomes. Is there any reason to prioritize either statistical or identified lives in such cases? The ‘uncertainty argument’ purports to show that, provided we embrace ex ante contractualism, we should prioritize saving identified lives in such cases. The argument faces two serious problems. First, it relies on the principle of indifference, (...) and as such it leads to inconsistent assignments of epistemic probability to possible outcomes. Moreover, even if the uncertainty argument can be reformulated in order to avoid reliance on the principle of indifference, the uncertainty in such cases still undermines any judgment of which course of action – saving a statistical, or rather an identified life – involves the greater burden. The indeterminacy involved in the statistical group might be thought to undermine the argument that application of the principle of indifference leads to inconsistency in this case, but the thought that it does rests on a misunderstanding of the relationship between indeterminacy and reference. (shrink)

In this lucid and insightful study, Stephen Makin investigates a form of argument widespread in ancient Greek philosophy, where the absence of a reason for one alternative to be the case rather than another is used to establish substantive conclusions—where the alternatives are “indifferent”. Examples abound: Anaximander engages in such reasoning to show that the Earth does not move; Zeno of Elea to show that what is cannot be divided; Democritus to argue for finite divisibility, on the one hand, and (...) the infinite variety of atoms and worlds, on the other; not to mention the extensive use of such arguments in ancient skepticism. (shrink)

Cette étude a pour objet d’examiner la place et le rôle de l’indifférence au sein de la conception cartésienne de la liberté humaine. Notre analyse est principalement gouvernée par la distinction, au sein des affirmations cartésiennes au sujet de la liberté humaine entre 1641 et 1645, de deux dimensions conceptuelles qui déploient respectivement, d’une part, les notions relatives au libre arbitre, d’autre part, celles qui ont trait au rapport de la volonté à l’entendement et qui concernent donc les différents degrés (...) de la liberté. Cette distinction permet d’éclairer les rapports des termes « liberté » et « indifférence » au sein de la pensée de Descartes et de comparer sa position avec celles des courants théologiques majeurs de son époque. En outre, l’examen des diverses corrélations possibles entre les éléments de ces deux axes nous sert à analyser en quoi consistent les différents sens du « bien » que Descartes associe à la liberté, ainsi que les diverses formes du « bon usage » du libre arbitre. (shrink)

In this article, we apply the notion of interval neutrosophic sets to ideal theory in BCK/BCI-algebras.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INDIFFERENCE AND ENVY: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN ECONOMY Paul Dumouchel University ofQuébec-Montréal 1. Girard and economics René Girard himself has not written very much on economics, at least explicitly. Though his works are full ofinsights into and short remarks on the sacrificial origin of different economic phenomena or the way in which mimetic relations and commercial transactions are often intertwined and act upon each other.1 Unlike religion, (...) psychology, psychoanalysis, literature and anthropology, the analysis of modem and traditional economies from the point ofview ofmimetic theory has never been carried out by Girard himself, but for the most part by other people, for example, in the French speaking world, which I know best, essentially by Michel Aglietta and André Orléan in La violence de la monnaie (1982) and by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and myself in L'enfer des choses (1979) and as well as others, such as, by Mark Anspach, Andrew Feenberg, P. Lantz, A. Orléan, G-H. de Radkowsky and Lucien Scubla in various works on economy, economic anthropology, or the place and role of money in literary texts.2 In a way, this is somewhat surprising since the relationship between mimetic and economic phenomena, at least in a broad sense, was seen quite early on. For example, soon after the original publication Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) the French Marxist Lucien Goldman wrote in his Pour une sociologie du Roman (1964) that Girard's work was the most important book to read in order to understand 1 For example, Mensonge romantique (18-23); Des choses cachées (82-88). 2 See Anspach, Feenberg, Lantz, Orléan [passim], de Radkowski. 150Paul Dumouchel the effects of economic alienation on literature since Georg Lukács's Theory of the Novel (1920). Moreover in a footnote in Les origines du capitalisme (1971) Jean Baechler suggested that those wishing to understand the nature of the infinite desire for acquisition which capitalists economies have institutionalized should read Girard's book.3 Whatever the reason for Girard's relative disinterest in economic phenomena others have not been prevented from tackling this problem and it bears witness in a special way to the dynamism and intellectual power ofthe mimetic theory that its application to the field ofeconomics has essentially, ifnot entirely, been due to the work of others rather than to the efforts of René Girard himself. 2. The substantivist-formalist debate In the late 1 940's and early 1 950's a debate began that divided (and still divides) the community ofeconomists and ofanthropologists interested in economic phenomena. It concerns the nature ofeconomy and is generally referred to as the substantivist-formalist debate. It was first formulated in the works of the Austrian economist, Karl Polanyi.4 In The Great Transformation (1945), a book on the history ofthe formation and organization ofthe market economy in Europe from the late 1 8th to early 20th centuries, Polanyi already argued that the modem market economy was a rare historical accident. Furthermore Polanyi said, unlike what liberal and economic ideologies pretend, thatthere is nothingnatural aboutthe market. It does not correspond to any spontaneous human tendency to barter and exchange, and it does not arise by itself as soon as certain conditions are satisfied. Onthe contrary, modem markets have been put into place through sustained and voluntary state policies which consciously destroyed traditional solidarities, authorized the unlimited sale of land and labor and literally created the labor market, for example, in England through the Reform Bill of 1834 that repealed the existing Poor Laws which had prevented the free circulation of labor. The system formed by market economies, the balance of power among European states and the gold 3 Interestingly, 24 years later, in the second vastly enlarged edition of that work, Le capitalisme, (1995) the reference to Girard has disappeared though the text ofthe original work, which now constitutes the second part of the book, is otherwise reprinted in its integrity. 4 Actually Polanyi in The Livelihood ofMan (1977) sees the origin of the debate in Carl Mengers, Principles ofEconomics [1871]. Let us say then that it found its first modern formulation in the work of Polanyi. Indifference andEnvy... (shrink)

We survey main developments, results, and open problems on interval temporal logics and duration calculi. We present various formal systems studied in the literature and discuss their distinctive features, emphasizing on expressiveness, axiomatic systems, and (un)decidability results.

The physician who upholds the Hippocratic oath is supposed to be loyal to his or her patients. This requires choosing only the therapy that the physician believes is best for the patient. However, knowing what is best requires randomized clinical trials. Thus, clinicians must be willing to recruit their patients to be assigned at random to one of two therapies in order to determine which is best based on the highest standards of pharmacological science.

The principle of indifference states that in the absence of any relevant evidence, a rational agent will distribute their credence equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration. Despite its intuitive plausibility, PI famously falls prey to paradox, and so is widely rejected as a principle of ideal rationality. In this article, I present a novel rehabilitation of PI in terms of the epistemology of comparative confidence judgments. In particular, I consider two natural comparative reformulations of PI and argue (...) that while one of them prescribes the adoption of patently irrational epistemic states, the other provides a consistent formulation of PI that overcomes the most salient limitations of existing formulations. (shrink)

This paper argues in the first place that nominalists are right in insisting against ontological realists that semantic universality does not require commitment to universal entities. However, Ockham, in his zeal to get rid of Scotus’s universal entities, swept under the carpet the issue of universal representational content of genuinely universal symbols, conflating it with the mere indifference of the information content of non-distinctive singular representations. Buridan did come up with an abstractionist theory of the formation of genuinely universal (...) representational content to solve the resulting issues, however, the paper argues further, his solution is committed to attributing the sort of “aspectuality” to universal absolute concepts that his Ockhamist semantics denies to them. The conclusion of the paper suggests how Aquinas’s “moderate realism” can provide a consistent solution without the ontological extravaganza of ontological realists, without conflating the mere indifference of singular representation with genuine universality, and without having to deny aspectuality to our quidditative universal concepts formed by abstraction. (shrink)

We utilize contemporary cognitive and social science of religion to defend a controversial thesis: the human cognitive apparatus gratuitously inclines humans to religious activity oriented around entities other than the God of classical theism. Using this thesis, we update and defend two arguments drawn from David Hume: (i) the argument from idolatry, which argues that the God of classical theism does not exist, and (ii) the argument from indifference, which argues that if the God of classical theism exists, God (...) is indifferent to our religious activity. (shrink)

Cinema, like language, can be said to exist as a system of differences. In his latest book, acclaimed philosopher Jacques Rancière looks at cinematic art in comparison to its corollary forms in literature and theatre. From literature, he argues, cinema takes its narrative conventions, while at the same time effacing literature’s images and philosophy; and film rejects theatre, while also fulfilling theatre’s dream. Built on these contradictions, the cinema is the real, material space in which one is moved by the (...) spectacle of shadows. Thus, for Rancière, film is the perpetually disappointed dream of a language of images. (shrink)

A powerful work of moral and political philosophy.The idea which I shall present here came to me more or less out of the blue. I was on a train some five years ago, on my way to spend a day at Headingley and I was reading a book about the death camp at Sobibor... The particular, not very appropriate, conjunction involved for me in this train journey... had the effect of fixing my thoughts on one of the more dreadful features (...) of human coexistence, when in the shape of a simple five-word phrase the idea occurred to me. In The Contract of Mutual Indifference, Norman Geras discusses a central aspect of the experience of the Holocaust with a view to exploring its most important contemporary implications. In a bold and powerful synthesis of memorial, literary record, historical reflection and political theory, he focuses on the figure of the bystander -- the bystander to the destruction of the Jews of Europe and the bystander to more recent atrocities -- to consider the moral consequences of looking on without active response at persecution and great suffering. Geras argues that the tragedy of European Jewry, so widely pondered by historians, social scientists, psychologists, theologians and others, has not yet found its proper reflection within political philosophy. Attempting to fill the gap, he adapts an old idea from within that tradition of enquiry, the idea of the social contract, to the task of thinking about the triangular relation between perpetrators, victims and bystanders, and draws a somber conclusion from it. Geras goes on to ask how far this conclusion may be offset by the hypothesis of a universal duty to bring aid. The Contract of Mutual Indifference is an original and challenging work, aimed at the complacent abstraction of much contemporary theory. It is supplemented by three shorter essays on the implications of the Jewish catastrophe for conceptions of human nature and progress and for certain types of Marxist explanation. (shrink)

IntroductionExcitability of the primary motor cortex measured with TMS has been associated with cognitive dysfunctions in patient populations. However, only a few studies have explored this relationship in healthy adults, and even fewer have considered the role of biological sex.MethodsNinety-seven healthy middle-aged adults completed a TMS protocol and a neuropsychological assessment. Resting Motor Threshold and Long-Interval Intracortical Inhibition were assessed in the left motor cortex and related to attention, episodic memory, working memory, reasoning, and global cognition composite scores to (...) evaluate the relationship between cortical excitability and cognitive functioning.ResultsIn the whole sample, there was a significant association between LICI and cognition; specifically, higher motor inhibition was related to better working memory performance. When the sample was broken down by biological sex, LICI was only associated with working memory, reasoning, and global cognition in men. No associations were found between RMT and cognitive functions.ConclusionGreater intracortical inhibition, measured by LICI, could be a possible marker of working memory in healthy middle-aged adults, and biological sex plays a critical role in this association. (shrink)