Latour is a world famous and widely published French sociologist who has written with great eloquence and perception about the relationship between people, science, and technology. He is also closely associated with the school of thought known as Actor Network Theory. In this book he sets out for the first time in one place his own ideas about Actor Network Theory and its relevance to management and organization theory.

This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind, of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Mölder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism, the ascription theory, which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability, and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly (...) directed against interpretivism, the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness -- perception and the awareness of one’s own mental states -- in the interpretivist framework. (shrink)

1. Can “practice” and “practices” be used as epistemological tools to study history? Can these concepts be used to break up unilateral and teleological narratives one the one hand, and, on the other, to provide a basis for a new understanding and writing of history and histories? The twelve essays (by thirteen authors) collected by Francis Chateauraynaud and Yves Cohen under the title Histoires Pragmatiques (in the Ehess’s Raisons pratiques. Epistémologie, sociologie, théorie sociale series)...

The Italian «constitutional compromise» between the liberal, catholic, and socialist-communist traditions and the «fordist-keynesian compromise» between capital and labor are two frequent set expressions. They are often put together, and sometimes overlapped, insofar as they share an emphasis on the central role of labor, the former putting it at the very foundation of the Republic, the latter at the core of the virtuous circle of mass production and mass consumption. Starting from a discussion of these formulas, the essay will propose (...) some lines of research for the history of the Italian Republic, not without significance for contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

The Prince and the Wolf contains the transcript of a debate which took place on February 5, 2008 at the London School of Economics (LSE) between the prominent French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour and the Cairo-based American philosopher Graham Harman.

German classicist's monumental study of the origins of European thought in Greek literature and philosophy.

Abstract: The standard picture of rationality requires that the agent acts so as to realize her most preferred alternative in the light of her own desires and beliefs. However, there are circumstances where such an agent can predict that she will act against her preferences. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is the paradigmatic example of such cases. In those circumstances the orthodoxy requires the agent to be ‘sophisticated’. That is to say, she should take into account her expected (...) future choices and prevent her future self to act in certain ways. She should ‘bind’ herself to a certain course of action. This is a form of causal commitment. It is generally recognized that this form of self-commitment is the only one that is available to a rational agent. Rational commitment, where the agent gives herself a reason to act in a certain way rather than making herself act in that way, is considered not feasible. In this paper, I question this verdict. I sketch the broad outlines of a model of rational commitment, which takes as its starting point Michael Bratman’s ‘planning theory’ of intention. There are two important objections against this theory (one by John Broome and one by the Dutch philosopher Govert den Hartogh.) Both criticisms claim that such a theory is a form of ‘bootstrapping’ reasons for action into existence. In the remainder of the paper, I will defend the theory against these objections. This way, I hope to establish that defending the feasibility of rational commitment is not an obvious mistake. (shrink)

Metaphysically possible worlds have many uses. Epistemically possible worlds promise to be similarly useful, especially in connection with propositions and propositional attitudes. However, I argue that there is a serious threat to the natural accounts of epistemically possible worlds, from a version of Russell’s paradox. I contrast this threat with David Kaplan’s problem for metaphysical possible world semantics: Kaplan’s problem can be straightforwardly rebutted, the problems I raise cannot. I argue that although there may be coherent accounts of epistemically possible (...) worlds with fruitful applications, any such an account must fundamentally compromise the basic idea behind epistemic possibility. (shrink)

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of (...) the truth response and that habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant. (shrink)

A necessarily true sentence is 'brute' if it does not rigidly refer to anything and if it cannot be reduced to a logical truth. The question of whether there are brute necessities is an extremely natural one. Cian Dorr has recently argued for far-reaching metaphysical claims on the basis of the principle that there are no brute necessities: he initially argued that there are no non-symmetric relations, and later that there are no abstract objects at all. I argue that there (...) are nominalistically acceptable brute necessities, and that Dorr's arguments thus fail. My argument is an application of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. (shrink)

Working on the assumption that ideas are embedded in socio-technical arrangements which actualize them, this essay sheds light on the way the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) achieves the Lisbon strategic goal: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world . Rather than framing the issue in utilitarian terms, it focuses attention on quantified indicators, comparable statistics and common targets resulting from the increasing practice of intergovernmental benchmarking, in order to tackle the following questions: how does (...) the OMC go about co-ordinating Member States through the benchmarking of national policies? And to what extent does this managerial device impact the path of European construction? Beyond the ideological and discursive construction of the competitive imperative, this technology of government transforms it into an indefinite discipline (Foucault) which constantly urges decision-makers to hit the top of the charts. This contribution thus argues that the practice of intergovernmental benchmarking is far from being neutral in purpose and effect. On the contrary, it lays the foundation for building a competitive Europe which unites Member States through competition. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

English summary: Aufhebung is one of the major terms in philosophy and through it, the author explores the possibility of the ultimate transformation of the mind. By questioning this conceptual node, which stands for destruction and surpassing, disaster and metamorphosis, he tries to find within it the cipher of an ultra-modernity that exists primarily through its destructive power. French text. French description: Aufhebung est l'un des noms majeurs de la philosophie et l'auteur y cherche les chances d'une ultime transformation de (...) l'esprit. Interrogeant ce noeud conceptuel qui, a la fois, signifie destruction et depassement, sursaut et releve, catastrophe et metamorphose, il y cherche le chiffre d'une ultra-modernite qui regne d'abord par son pouvoir de destruction. Elucider la part de sursaut qui demeure encore accessible quand tout se fait decombre, ce n'est pas seulement interroger le plus puissant systeme philosophique de l'Occident, celui de Hegel, c'est demander a des constellations en apparence secondaires ou depassees dans l'economie du savoir: l'instant, la langue, la substance, le secret ou l'analogie de temoigner pour une faculte d'interiorisation et de synthese qui echappe aux desespoirs de l'heure, quand bien meme elle ne s'exercerait dans l'histoire que sous des formes parcellaires, decevantes ou dramatiques. Mais pour ce faire, il faut accepter d'entrer a nouveau, par-dela les certitudes communes de l'espace et du temps, dans le romantisme d'une dialectique absolue qui n'epargne rien, mais eclaire toute chose en s'imposant comme la metaphysique meme de toute destruction. (shrink)

Menschen haben eine Fülle von moralischen Überzeugungen. Wodurch sind diese Überzeugungen aber gerechtfertigt? In diesem Buch wird dafür argumentiert, dass verschiedene Arten von Gründen zur Rechtfertigung von moralischen Überzeugungen beitragen können: Gründe, die ihrerseits Überzeugungen sind, aber auch Gründe, die selbst keine Überzeugungen sind wie etwa Intuitionen, Emotionen und Wünsche. Die These lautet: Wenn derartige Gründe als Inputs in eine verlässliche Überzeugungsbildungsfähigkeit eingehen, sind die daraus resultierenden moralischen Überzeugungen gerechtfertigt.

Autoren Johannes Brachtendorf, Professor für Philosophie am Institut für philosophische Grundfragen der Theologie an der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultät ...

We define elementary extension and elementary equivalence in Positive Logic.