This book is devoted to a thorough analysis of the role that models play in the practise of physical theory. The authors, a mathematical physicist and a philosopher of science, appeal to the logicians’ notion of model theory as well as to the concepts of physicists.

La juridicisation croissante de notre vie publique et le fonctionnement de l'Etat de droit ont rendu nécessaire de reposer la question des modes de raisonnement fondant désormais les décisions judiciaires, de plus en plus importantes, de plus en plus nombreuses, qui régissent notre activité quotidienne. L'enjeu n'en est pas négligeable. Au-delà d'une vision "technologique" du droit - le droit, une technique, un outil... -, c'est aussi, et de manière peut-être plus inquiétante, une vision plus politique qui en est souvent suggérée (...) : la mort annoncée du droit comme technique autonome, capable de résister au politique - simple habillage, habile camouflage, d'une décision dont la motivation ne serait jamais - ne pourrait jamais être - mise en échec, orientée, ou commandée par les contraintes du droit. Entre positivisme et réalisme, l'oscillation risque d'être catastrophique. Entre ces deux abîmes, cet ouvrage tente d'ouvrir les voies d'une réflexion rigoureuse et scientifique sur les moyens intellectuels les plus nécessaires à l'affirmation - et à l'affermissement - de l'Etat de droit. (shrink)

It is now integral to much of cultural, political and social analysis. This is the first comprehensive survey in one volume of the interdisciplinary field of cosmopolitan studies.

This book will appeal to second- and third-year undergraduates, and graduates and academics in sociology and social theory, politics, cultural studies and other ...

LA CRITIQUE PAR RAMSEY EN 1926 DE LA THESE DU DUALISME DES CONSTITUANTS DE LA PROPOSITION CONSTITUE UNE DES MANIFESTATIONS LES PLUS IMPORTANTES DE L'EBRANLEMENT DE LA CONSEPTION STANDARD ASSOCIANT LE DUALISME ONTOLOGIQUE (PARTICULIERS ET UNIVERSELS), LA DICHOTOMIE DES CONSTITUANTS DE LA PROPOSITION ET LA DISTINCTION METAPHYSIQUE ENTRE SUBSTANCE ET QUALITES. LA CRITIQUE DE LA NOTION DE SUBSTANCE AMORCEE AVEC L'EMPIRISME, NOTAMMENT CHEZ HUME, VA TROUVER DANS LA THEORIE DE LA RELATIVITE DE NOUVELLES JUSTIFICATIONS, ET L'EFFONDREMENT DE LA NOTION DE (...) SUBSTANCE VA METTRE EN CAUSE LA CONCEPTION STANDARD. LE DUALISME ONTOLOGIQUE SEMBLE SURVIVRE A CES ATTAQUES MAIS AU PRIX D'UN COMPLET REAMENAGEMENT CONCEPTUEL. LA SUBSTANCE CEDE LA PLACE A L'EVENEMENT COMME PARADIGME DES PARTICULIERS. (shrink)

Adam and Eve’s theft marks the beginning of the human career as moral agents. This article will examine the assumptions underlying the notion of moral agency from the perspective of three unremarkable human beings who found themselves in situations of moral difficulty. The article will conclude that these three people could not have acted differently than they did. It will conclude that it is unreasonable to assume that ordinary human beings will inevitably possess the resources to address difficult moral decisions.

For the contemporary reader of Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public the analyses of communicative systems in the book provides a challenging occasion for reconsidering current social psychological thinking about the character of social groups. In Moscovici's careful delineation of the communicative systems of diffusion, propagation and propaganda through his content analysis of the French press, one can also see the description of different types of group structured through distinctive social psychological organisations. Moscovici himself suggests that the genres of diffusion, (...) propagation and propaganda are each linked to the construction of a specific type of social-psychological object, opinion, attitude and stereotype respectively. But one can also identify different forms of affiliation corresponding to each communicative genre, and consequently also different representations of the people who constitute both the in-group and the out-group in each instance. The affiliative bonds might be described as forms of sympathy, communion and solidarity. (shrink)

Many scientists believe that the universe, including the human brain, is governed by natural laws and that all can be explained by natural processes. In consequence, they believe that all events, including brain events, are determined. From this, they often conclude that free will cannot exist. I believe these views are mistaken and will present several lines of argument to support this position. I conclude that the operation of free will is compatible with determinism, can be explained by natural processes (...) and does not entail immaterial substance. (shrink)

The blood oxygen level dependent effect that provides the contrast in functional magnetic resonance imaging has been demonstrated to affect the linewidth of spectral peaks as measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy and through this, may be used as an indirect measure of cerebral blood flow related to neural activity. By acquiring MR-spectra interleaved with frames without water suppression, it may be possible to image the BOLD effect and associated metabolic changes simultaneously through changes in the linewidth of the unsuppressed water (...) peak. The purpose of this study was to implement this approach with the MEGA-PRESS sequence, widely considered to be the standard sequence for quantitative measurement of GABA at field strengths of 3 T and lower, to observe how changes in both glutamate and GABA levels may relate to changes due to the BOLD effect. MR-spectra and fMRI were acquired from the occipital cortex of 20 healthy participants whilst undergoing intrascanner visual stimulation in the form of a red and black radial checkerboard, alternating at 8 Hz, in 90 s blocks comprising 30 s of visual stimulation followed by 60 s of rest. Results show very strong agreement between the changes in the linewidth of the unsuppressed water signal and the canonical haemodynamic response function as well as a strong, negative, but not statistically significant, correlation with the Glx signal as measured from the OFF spectra in MEGA-PRESS pairs. Findings from this experiment suggest that the unsuppressed water signal provides a reliable measure of the BOLD effect and that correlations with associated changes in GABA and Glx levels may also be measured. However, discrepancies between metabolite levels as measured from the difference and OFF spectra raise questions regarding the reliability of the respective methods. (shrink)

In the standard formalism of quantum gravity, black holes appear to form statistical distributions of quantum states. Now, however, we can present a theory that yields pure quantum states. It shows how particles entering a black hole can generate firewalls, which however can be removed, replacing them by the ‘footprints’ they produce in the out-going particles. This procedure can preserve the quantum information stored inside and around the black hole. We then focus on a subtle but unavoidable modification of the (...) topology of the Schwarzschild metric: antipodal identification of points on the horizon. If it is true that vacuum fluctuations include virtual black holes, then the structure of space-time is radically different from what is usually thought. (shrink)

The central issue in this paper is the overtaking of neoliberalism by a possible new “social order”, a new phase in the history of capitalism. In contemporary capitalism, the “upper classes”—capitalist classes, the classes of managers and officials—jointly ensure the control of the means of production. Their common hegemony in neoliberalism is supported by the alliance at the top of the social hierarchies, under the leadership of capitalist classes. This hegemony could be continued beyond neoliberalism, though under new forms. A (...) first such potential social order is similar to neoliberalism, which it prolongs, a “third financial hegemony”. (Neoliberalism represented the “second financial hegemony”; the first prevailed before the Great Depression of the 1930s). The other social order can be described as a “neomanagerialism”. While the same alliance would prevail at the top, the leadership would here be that of the managerial class, and would involve much stronger state intervention. (Another opportunity, albeit one which we unfortunately deem unlikely, would be the alliance between popular classes and managers, a “social-managerialism”). A comparison between the United states and China highlights the relevance of neomanagerialism. The strong neomanagerial features of China show the potential efficiency of this social configuration. A turn to neomanagerialism would probably be the only way of preserving what can be saved of U.S. international hegemony. (shrink)

Examines the basic concepts and methodologies of assisting people in other countries, and their application in such areas as indigenous people, population control, national sovereignty, women's status, and free-trade agreements.

For much of Western history, we have been confident that human beings are persons but no other creatures have that status. These beliefs matter because personhood has often been deemed a necessary requirement for possessing moral value. Recently, an American legal activist group, the Nonhuman Rights Project, has challenged the assumption that only human beings are persons. Their approach is simple. They assume that humans possess particular features that make them persons, then ask whether there is evidence that any nonhuman (...) animals display these same qualities. The group has offered testimony from an array of experts to support the claim that chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins do indeed possess them. They conclude that these animals should legally be considered persons. Although the Project makes claims about legal rights only, and their court suits have so far been unsuccessful, their arguments have implications for more general issues concerning the moral standing of nonhuman animals and their relations to humans. If some animals do have a standing as persons even in the narrow sense required for legal recognition, then we may be morally obliged to treat those animals very differently, by, for example, not killing them for sport or food, or using them for medical experimentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editor’s IntroductionGerard A. HauserThe call for papers for this special issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric1 acknowledged the continuous centrality of human agency across the history of Western thought on rhetoric. At its ancient Greek origins, the Sophists and philosophers were at swords points over the question of what constituted responsible speech and who had responsibility for the consequences of moving the demos to public actions that bore on the (...) city-state and the lives of its citizens. On the one hand, sophistic understood the human world as indeterminate, progressing or regressing through appeals that would establish social and political reality for the community through the power of language and argument to move the minds and hearts of citizens. Protagoras expressed this vision with his aphorism, "Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not." Central to their understanding of the human world was a recognition and exploration of language's psychogogic powers. For the philosophers, on the other hand, sophistic's position represented a problematic abandonment of the quest for Eternal Truth.The tension between the quest for contingent truth and Eternal Truth is illustrated by Xenophon's rendition of the aftermath of the Athenian naval victory at Arginoussai, in 406 BCE. In his Hellenika,2 he recounts how some of the victorious fleet's sailors became separated from it during the confusion of battle and were left behind. Although the commanders sent a group to rescue them, violent seas thwarted their efforts and the men drowned. Upon returning to Athens as victors, the commanders were arrested and charged with cowardice. The Ecclesia met to decide whether to bind them over for trial. The commanders seemed to have persuaded most of their innocence, but time ran out for that day's proceedings before a vote on whether to bind them over for a trial could be taken. That evening, at a festival in the city, opponents of the commanders attended dressed in [End Page 181] black mourning clothes and pretended to be grieving relatives of the lost sailors. Their displays of sorrow over the sailors' deaths were so convincing that they swung the emotions of many in the opposite direction.The next day, opponents of the commanders played upon the events of the night before and the citizens, remembering the displays of grief they had witnessed, were persuaded to try the commanders themselves, rather than deciding whether to bind them over to the courts for trial. Arguments went back and forth on how to interpret the tragic event—were the commanders brave but foiled by nature, or was their conduct spineless? Did they deserve a laurel wreath for their victory in battle, or to be executed for cowardice in allowing the stranded sailors to drown? Finally a vote was taken and, reversing their sentiment from the day before, the citizens voted to condemn the commanders. The military leaders were taken away to be executed. Soon thereafter, Xenophon tells us, the citizens had a change of heart and wished to reverse their verdict. However, since it was too late—the generals having already been put to death!—they lodged a complaint against those who had persuaded them to convict for "deceiving the People."The story may be read as a representative anecdote of rhetoric's fatal flaw or of rhetoric's constitutive powers of agency. On one reading, Athenian Ecclesiasts, convulsed with emotion, were stripped of their agency by arguments seeking the probable through sensory engagement structured by phantasia and mimesis3 while lacking a foundation in the Eternally True. However, it also may be read as disclosing the absence of Eternal Truth on which to ground a human world, and the agential power of language—of rhetoric—to constitute understanding and action.4 On one side, agency resided in the self-aware person who made responsible arguments with reference to pure reason and ideal justice. On the other, agency resided in the powers of language to engage thoughts and emotions, of discourse to circulate, and of representative thinking5 for discovering human reality. These latter were products of human... (shrink)

For the Jena Romantics the idea of a self is always in a process, never fully completed. It develops itself as an acting I that interacts with the world, an ongoing interchange between what I am and what I am not. In order to grasp how the self develops and is educated, this paper compares this idea of the self to Schlegel’s account of irony. Both irony and the I exist as an ongoing process. In this comparison the self is (...) found to be a work of art, which is never what it is since its identity always still has to become completed. (shrink)

Partant de la prémisse selon laquelle « la loi assure la primauté de la personne, interdit toute atteinte à la dignité de celle-ci et garantit le respect de l’être humain dès le commencement de sa vie », l’auteur pose deux grandes questions relevant de l’éthique sociale : « La » personne, n’est-ce pas « toute » personne, parce que nulle n’est plus démunie de dignité qu’une autre? Le pacte social n’est-il pas fondé sur la certitude de la naissance de sujets (...) égaux en droit? À la lumière de ces dernières, l’auteur croit qu’il est permis de se demander si ces principes sont aussi parfaitement respectés qu’emphatiquement affirmés dans les sociétés occidentales pluralistes, surtout lorsque l’on examine la condition des personnes les plus vulnérables de nos communautés. (shrink)

The long sentence at Plato Pbaedo 62a has been the subject of much discussion from Antiquity on. None of the proposed interpretations gives satisfactory sense. The basic error is that everyone has failed to perceive the ultimate unity of the sentence, which leads to the wrong view that the force of the negation ουδέποτε extends to the first part of the sentence only. The reading proposed here takes account of the fundamentally oral character of Plato's language; it is shown that, (...) when the sentence is half-way, the initial construction is resumed and simplified. The force of the negation ουδέποτε extends to the sentence as a whole. This results in an interpretation which is in full accordance with the context: Cebes is supposed to be astonished at the fact that suicide is prohibited, even for those people for whom death is preferable to life. (shrink)

One cannot go far in the reading of St Thomas Aquinas and other medieval writers without coming across a multiplicity of usages of the Latin term for ‘being’ or ‘to be’, esse, such as esse intentionale, esse intelligibile, esse naturale, esse sensibile and so on.3 It is not always easy to appreciate the distinctions which these terms are intended to mark and if one is inclined to scepticism one might indeed suspect that these are distinctions without a difference. However, such (...) a judgment would be both precipitate and incorrect. Even if the distinctions marked by such terms are not immediately perspicuous it is essential, if one wishes to understand and appreciate the thought of the medievals, that one come to understand them. Within the compass of a short paper it will not, of course, be possible to be comprehensive, so I shall investigate the notions of immateriality and intentionality with a view to clarifying their relationship.4 In so doing, I hope some light will be thrown.. (shrink)