Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) comprise a powerful organizational sector that has been criticized for its lack of accountability to governments and their citizens. These organizations are established to serve the public as a whole by targeting the needs of particular groups or fulfilling specific functions. Often they use practices adopted from the business sector, and sometimes they enter the marketplace as profitmaking enterprises. In light of the contribution of GSE Fannie Mae to the 2008 world economic (...) crisis, the impact of this sector on effective democratic government bears further examination. In this article, I present a systems model that suggests how researchers might comprehensively assess the accountability of organizations in this sector, here termed the "gray sector," with respect to their government missions. I focus on four systems dimensions: mission, organizational design, organizational outcomes, and the information feedback process. Organizational design and the nature of the sector population are cited as emerging issues of particular importance. (shrink)

Ao analisar parte da tradição filosófica Ocidental e, em particular, contrapor o ensinamento de mestres e gurus do Oriente aos ensinamentos de escolas metafísicas e de ciência política do Ocidente, o presente artigo, poderá ser dito, insere-se na categoria de filosofia das civilizações. Não estando limitada, porém, a nenhuma dessas civilizações, a arte política, enquanto perícia daquele que governa ou leva a vida feliz, pode ser examinada no prolongamento das suas intersecções e enquanto questão filosófica independente. Neste artigo, o autor (...) parte por isso do pressuposto de que a busca do conhecimento do bom governo e vida feliz é comum a ambas as civilizações ou, mais essencialmente, a todo o homem enquanto homem e, observando a ausência de uma correspondência significativa entre ambas no tema da ciência ou arte política, procura examinar possíveis modalidades específicas dessa investigação. Se puder ser dito que, nesse sentido, a filosofia política é uma modalidade mais específica do Ocidente e, do Oriente, a filosofia do sentir intuitivo, o escopo deste artigo é, então, o exame da possibilidade da filosofia do sentir político enquanto questão filosófica independente. (shrink)

Esta dissertação, apoiada na análise bibliográfica, descreve a Religião Tradicional Tsonga-Changana e o Cristianismo Católico no Sul de Moçambique, território acentuadamente marcado pela injustiça social contra a mulher e a criança. No passado, a afiliação religiosa servia para estimular e justificar guerras, homicídios e crueldades. Para erradicar essa atitude desumana no âmbito do fenômeno religioso, na segunda metade do século XX, alguns autores cristãos passaram a ponderar sobre a cultura do diálogo inter-religioso. Neste contexto, em face da convivência inter-religiosa e (...) das condições de injustiça social prevalecentes na sociedade Tsonga-Changana, esta pesquisa examina a possibilidade de o diálogo inter-religioso, no nível ético, entre as duas tradições religiosas – Igreja Católica e Religião Tradicional Tsonga-Changana – contribuir para o aprimoramento de suas identidades e atuações. A dissertação compõe-se, basicamente, de Introdução; Descrição da experiência religiosa no Sul de Moçambique: Religião Tradicional Tsonga-Changana e Cristianismo Católico; Diálogo Inter-Religioso: uma necessidade; Tradições religiosas Tsonga-Changana e Cristã Católica ante a necessidade de humanizar a sociedade tsonga-changana; e Considerações finais. (shrink)

Resumo: Este artigo pretende mostrar que a teoria das ideias de Hume náo apresenta apropriadamente uma soluçáo cética para o problema da justificaçáo das crenças, mas, sobretudo, uma soluçáo naturalista. Uma investigaçáo empirista como a de Hume prioriza as impressões sensíveis no processo cognitivo da natureza humana ao mesmo tempo em que reconhece as dificuldades em se extrair ideias diretamente de impressões, o que pode ocasionar a dúvida e a suspensáo das crenças. Como mitigaçáo ao ceticismo, Hume propõe uma intervençáo (...) terapêutica, visando uma descriçáo das crenças naturais mais do que a sua suspensáo devido à ausência de fundamentaçáo racional. Palavras-chave: Ceticismo. Crenças naturais. Hume. Naturalismo. (shrink)

Notre science ne saurait être qu’inachevable et infondable. Qu’implique cette situation du discours scientifique selon Pascal? Et quelles significations, existentielles et épistémologiques, accorder au recours inévitable à la « nature »? En quoi la nature est-elle en nous relais du discours?

L'oeuvre de Jacques Ellul riche de plus d'une cinquantaine d'ouvrages, plus connue aux États-Unis qu'en France, reste encore à découvrir. Dans ses analyses, Ellul porte une attention particulière à l'information et à la communication qu'il considère comme des constituants essentiels de la société technicienne. Il a contribué à l'Université de Bordeaux dans les années 1950, à faire de ces phénomènes des objets d'études et d'enseignement. Ses livres sur la propagande et le bluff technologiques sont toujours d'actualité et témoignent de la (...) pertinence et de la fécondité de son approche.The work of Jacques Ellul rich more than fifty books, best known in the United States and France, have yet to discover. In its analysis, Ellul pays particular attention to information and communication that it considers essential components of the technological society. He helped the University of Bordeaux in 1950, to make these phenomena objects of study and teaching. His books on propaganda and technological bluff are still relevant and reflect the relevance and fruitfulness of his approach. (shrink)

En droit pénal, le « parricide » et l’« infanticide » figurent parmi les circonstances aggravantes d’un crime. En 2014, les associations féministes ont sollicité la Délégation aux droits des femmes de l’Assemblée nationale afin que le « féminicide » soit également introduit dans le Code pénal en France. Dans la langue, le mot « féminicide » n’est entré au Robert qu’en 2015. Des dates, des définitions, des lois, des coutumes, des cas, voilà le point de départ de ce livre (...) d’une actualité tragiq... (shrink)

On trouve dans l'ouvrage de M. Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, une structure essentielle d'opposition entre «compter» et «méditer». Cette opposition prend son origine dans la dualité des interprétations du principe de raison, selon qu'on l' accentue dans le sens du nombre ou dans le sens de l'être. Contrairement à ce que soutient Heidegger, A. R. estime que l'interprétation du principe de raison selon Leibniz relève d'une troisième accentuation, qui exige la connivence du nombre et de l'être, et non leur (...) coupure. On repère au passage à quelle tradition gnostique Heidegger se réfère (Eckhart, Silesius, ou bien Dom Deschamps), et comment Leibniz offre, contre le pessimisme du «sol natal» et la mentalité élitique de Heidegger, l'esquisse d'un monde où les sciences et la métaphysique ont à la fois leur rôle à jouer. (shrink)

Das Problem der Anwendung der lexikalischen Tatsachen, die durch die Bearbeitung des Spinozaschen Werkes mit Hilfe der Informatik geliefert werden, erlaubt die Frage, ob die Erkenntnisse, die man auf diese Weise gewinnt, mit denen zusammenfallen, die man ihnen früher gab. Wie stimmt der wirkliche Sprachgebrauch Spinozas überein mit der von ihm vorgetragenen Theorie der Sprache ? Vor allem wäre zu fragen, ob die Wortgestaltungen in Beziehung stehen zu den rhetorischen Gestaltungen des Werkes, vor allem mit der „geometrischen“ Anordnung. Die Termini (...) SUBSTANTIA, ATTRIBUTUM, MODUS usw. haben jeweils ein eigentümliches Profil in Spinozas Werk. Man stellt fest, daß z. B. SUBSTANTIA über den ersten Teil hinaus nur eine kurze Lebensdauer hat. Dieser Sachverhalt wirft die Frage nach der Abgrenzung zwischen dem ersten und dem zweiten Teil auf. Die Formen CONATUS/CONARI finden ihren Aufschwung erst in den Teilen III und IV, und ihr genaues Funktionieren kann ermittelt werden durch das Studium der lexikalischen Mikro-Strukturen ihrer Umgebung. Die Vorzüge eines vertieften Studiums aufgrund der Ergebnisse der Lexikographie sind evident. (shrink)

Este artigo é parte de um estudo mais amplo que tem como eixo a formação das noções comuns e a definição da razão na Ética de Espinosa. Neste artigo, examino a questão a partir da leitura de Gilles Deleuze em Espinoza e o problema daxpressão.

It is usually claimed that the Laguerre polynomials were popularized by Schrödinger when creating wave mechanics; however, we show that he did not immediately identify them in studying the hydrogen atom. In the case of relativistic Dirac equations for an electron in a Coulomb field, Dirac gave only approximations, Gordon and Darwin gave exact solutions, and Pidduck first explicitly and elegantly introduced the Laguerre polynomials, an approach neglected by most modern treatises and articles. That Laguerre polynomials were not very popular (...) before their use in quantum mechanics, probably because they had been little used in classical mathematical physics, is confirmed by the fact that, as we show, they had been rediscovered independently several times during the nineteenth century, in published or unpublished studies of Abel, Murphy, Chebyshev, and Laguerre. (shrink)

Dr. Coots discusses creativity: 1. A different interpretation; 2. Differences and problems with Whitehead’s view; 3. What does creativity try to answer? 4. Ultimacy and creativity; 5. The relevance of Whitehead’s metaphysics of creativity in contemporary metaphysics.

There is a gap between Rand 'sethical egoism and today's global capitalism on at least six points. Since her version of " capitalism : the unknown ideal" addresses none of these points, it cannot resemble the reality of today's global capitalism. The connection between Objectivist ethics and politics is preserved by a possible change in her minarchical political philosophy. This will mean that there is no necessary connection between ethical egoism and minarchism or between ethical egoism and minimal government intervention. (...) An ethically hard Objectivism determining the unknown ideal of capitalism leaves room for a politically soft Objectivism. (shrink)

Legal positivism understands natural law as performing classifying connections between morality and law as tests of legal validity: if a norm with some pretence to legality contradicts a moral good, it cannot be called a legal norm. The new natural law school, however, claims that natural law develops qualifying connections between morality and law: tests of legal validity are performed by non-moral criteria such as due enactment or efficacy, and morality determines not what the law is, but rather which law (...) is legally binding and which is legally defective. This article will demonstrate that Aquinas's endorsement of the lexeme lex iniusta non est lex cannot be interpreted in any of these senses. Rather, Aquinas's strong version of natural law indicates clearly that it can indeed be a classifying criterion of positive law, and that it cannot be the only and exclusive criterion of legal validity. (shrink)

This paper focuses on historic anthropological photographs, meant to depict Indigenous individuals as generic models of colonial stereotypes, and examines their later reclamation as portraits. Applying an intention-based account of portraiture, we discuss the historical context and contemporary examples of the utilisation of these images in order to address several questions. What happens when the depicted persons in colonial imagery are treated and presented as sitters, rather than model specimens? Does this change the nature of the image? If a photograph (...) was not originally intended as a portrait, can it come to function as such at a later stage? Regardless of whether they fulfill all the requirements necessary for portraiture, these colonial photographs represent a vital resource for the reclamation of Indigenous cultural heritage. As such, this paper serves as an introductory discussion into the complex issues surrounding the recategorisation, repatriation, and restitution of colonial photographic archives. (shrink)

Burge famously argued that one can have thoughts involving a concept C even if one’s understanding of C is incomplete. Even though this view has been extremely influential, it has also been taken by critics as less than clear. The aim of this paper is to show that the cases imagined by Burge as being ones in which incomplete understanding of concepts is involved can be made clearer given an account of direct concept ascriptions—such as “Peter has the concept of (...) arthritis”—according to which these ascriptions are to be analysed in terms of ascriptions of the knowledge of what something is. The upshot is that the cases imagined by Burge can be explained is terms of the idea of subjects knowing in part what something is. (shrink)

A motivation and a presentation of the semantics of a formal system which proceeds from von neumann's "eine axiomatisierung der mengenlehre" by taking as fundamental notions the notion of partial functions, his principles of reification on the grounds of a "method of simulation" of meaningless terms and formulas by "ideal" terms and "virtual" formulas. theory of sets appears as the end of axiomatic extensions of the theory of objects (the intermediary extensions being the theories of classes, of universes, of aggregates).