The maze and the masses -- Democracy as the rule of the dumb many? -- A selective genealogy of the epistemic argument for democracy -- First mechanism of democratic reason: inclusive deliberation -- Epistemic failures of deliberation -- Second mechanism of democratic reason: majority rule.

This paper takes stock of a recent but growing movement within the field of deliberative democracy, which normatively argues for the epistemic dimension of democratic authority and positively defends the truth-tracking properties of democratic procedures. Authors within that movement call themselves epistemic democrats, hence the recognition by many of an ‘epistemic turn’ in democratic theory. The paper argues that this turn is a desirable direction in which the field ought to evolve, taking it beyond the ‘fact of disagreement’ that had (...) previously blocked the conceptual road to acknowledging more than intrinsic properties to democratic decision procedures. The paper shows how two authors in particular – Joshua Cohen and David Estlund – have successfully lifted the Rawlsian requirement of epistemic abstinence and defends epistemic democrats and the implications of the epistemic turn in democratic theory against various misconceptions. (shrink)

Consensus plays an ambiguous role in deliberative democracy. While it formed the horizon of early deliberative theories, many now denounce it as an empirically unachievable outcome, a logically impossible stopping rule, and a normatively undesirable ideal. Deliberative disagreement, by contrast, is celebrated not just as an empirically unavoidable outcome but also as a democratically sound and normatively desirable goal of deliberation. Majority rule has generally displaced unanimity as the ideal way of bringing deliberation to a close. This article offers an (...) epistemic perspective on this question of consensus versus disagreement. For ensuring the production of better decisions, we argue, the normative appeal of consensus varies depending on the deliberative task – whether it entails problem solving or prediction. We argue that in pure problem-solving contexts, consensus retains a strong normative appeal and forms the ideal deliberative outcome of deliberation. In contrast, on predictive tasks, consensus should generally not be used as a stopping rule noris it likely to be epistemically desirable as an outcome. Instead deliberators may be better served by ending the deliberation with a form of deliberative disagreement we call ‘positive dissensus’, which paves the way for more accurate aggregate predictions. (shrink)

This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democratic deliberative assemblies and derives the implications of this argument in terms of the epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives. The paper makes the general case that, all other things being equal and under some reasonable assumptions, more is smarter. When applied to deliberative assemblies of representatives, where there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be included in the group, (...) the argument translates into a defense of a specific selection mode of participants: random selection. (shrink)

This paper is a review of the nine chapters more directly concerned with philosophy of the volume Jaina Scriptures and Philosophy. Edited in 2015 by Peter Flügel and Olle Qvarnström, this interdisciplinary volume in philosophy, philology, linguistics, literary studies and history is presented as an essential contribution to the study of Jaina philosophy inasmuch as it offers a collection of cutting-edge analyses on the emergence and development of philosophical concepts such as the Self and its epistemic faculties, with a focus (...) on early Jaina canonical literature and commentaries thereof. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe idea that the crowd could ever be intelligent is a counterintuitive one. Our modern, Western faith in experts and bureaucracies is rooted in the notion that political competence is the purview of the select few. Here, as in my book Democratic Reason, I defend the opposite view: that the diverse many are often smarter than a group of select elites because of the different cognitive tools, perspectives, heuristics, and knowledge they bring to political problem solving and prediction. In this (...) essay I defend my epistemic argument against proceduralist democrats; the value of model thinking against empiricists; the bracketing of fundamental value diversity against critics who see such diversity as an essential feature of politics; the intelligence of the masses in the face of voter ignorance and systematic biases; and the normative priority of democracy over market mechanisms. I also consider challenges to my use of Hong and Page's formal results, the epistemically proper selection method for representatives, and the role of deliberation in problem solving. I finally chart three avenues for further research. (shrink)

Disclosure is a common response to conflicts of interest; it is intended to expose the conflict to scrutiny and enable it to be appropriately managed. For disclosure to be effective the receiver of the disclosure needs to be able to use the information to assess how the conflict may impact on their interests and then implement a suitable response. The act of disclosure also creates an expectation of self-regulation, as the person with the conflicting interests will be mindful of their (...) own potential biases and aware that their decisions may be monitored. This article discusses some of the problems of relying on disclosure as a solution to address conflicts of interest in research, including the added complexities around institutional conflicts of interest. The case of Dan Markingson illustrates these issues and highlights the vulnerable position relying on disclosure as a solution leaves research participants in. (shrink)

In Insister, Hlne Cixous brings a unique mixture of theoretical speculation, breath-taking textual explication and scholarly erudition to an extremely close reading of Derrida's work, always attentive to the details of his thinking. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous's from the beginning of their careers.

The purpose of this article is to show how schizophrenia, understood as a distortion of the most intimate structures of subjectivity, illustrates the nature of subjectivity as such, while at the same time how philosophical considerations may help to understand schizophrenia. More precisely, schizophrenic experiences of self-alienation seem to reflect a congealing or concretization of a form of differentiation or potential alterity implicit in the dynamic nature of subjectivity. In other words, we propose that the structure of subjectivity includes potential (...) divisions and fissures that condition the experiences of radical self-alienation seen in schizophrenia. In order to elucidate how this alterity emerges within the self in schizophrenia and in order to consider its conditions of possibility we examine the disorders of the self as described in phenomenological psychopathology. We especially use the work of the Japanese psychiatrists Mari Nagai, her teacher Bin Kimura, and the French psychiatrist Henry Ey, supplemented with clinical material from our own research. Finally, we shed light on the development of the psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, which are understood as the expressions of a radical alterization of the self. (shrink)

_Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing_ is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: _The School of the Dead_--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; _The School of Dreams_--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and _The School of Roots_--the importance of (...) depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault's work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault's constant focus on the question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be understood (...) as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism or of materialism. The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault's work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the "anthropological sleep"--various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault's work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

_Hyperdream_ is a major new novel by celebrated French author Hélène Cixous. It is a literary tour de force, returning anew to challenge necessity itself, the most implacable of human certainties: you die in the end – and that’s the end. For you, for me. But what if? What if death did not inevitably spell the end of life? _Hyperdream_ invests this fragile, tentative suspension of disbelief with the sheer force of its poetic audacity, inventing a sort of magic telephone: (...) a wireless lifeline against all the odds to the dearly departed. It is a book about time, age, love and the greatest loss. A book which turns on death: on the question or the moment of death, depending on it, expecting it, living off it, taking place at once before and after, but at the same time turning against it, contesting it, outwriting it hopefully, desperately, performatively, as an interruptible interruption. _Hyperdream_ is a book of mourning, but also of morning, a tragedy-with-comedy and a universal family romance in which it transpires that the narrator is the veritable offspring of a “treasure of literature” in the form of a bed, purchased by her mother from a certain W. Benjamin in 1934, slept on for 40 years by her brother and dreamt of by her friend “J.D.”. (shrink)

The use of information technology in linguistic research gave rise in the 1950s to what is known as Natural Language Processing, but that framework was created without paying due attention to the need for logical reconstruction of linguistic concepts which were borrowed directly from barely formalised structural linguistics. The Computer-aided Acquisition of Semantic Knowledge project based on the Knowledge Discovery in Databases technology enabled us to interact with computers while gathering and improving our knowledge about languages. Thus, with the help (...) of data mining tools, as a result of revisiting two sorts of generally admitted linguistic theories, we succeeded in improving these local linguistic approaches by proposing to unify the Associative Semantics theory with the Meta-Informative Centering theory. The resulting Distributed Grammar program treats, in addition to the above types of information, the third one, para-information which – despite many studies – had no uniform theoretical background in general linguistics. This DG program aims to lay the foundations for creating the theoretical background of Conceptual Linguistics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mutz argues that there is an inverse correlation between deliberation and participation. However, the validity of this conclusion partly depends on how one defines deliberation and participation. Mutz's definition of deliberation as ?hearing the other side? or ?cross-cutting exposure? is narrower than a minimal conception of deliberation with which deliberative democrats could agree. First, a minimal conception of deliberation would have to revolve around the principle of a reasoned exchange of arguments, as opposed to mere exposure to dissenting views. (...) Second, Mutz's almost exclusive focus on participation as partisan activism gives the impression of an essential tension between participation and deliberation. But another form of civic participation, which I call ?critical-deliberative involvement,? is perfectly compatible with the incentives for reasoned exchange of arguments with others. We should thus encourage people to participate in politics in ways that engage their reasoning faculty, not just their party loyalty. This also requires teaching people how to disagree constructively. (shrink)

ML-HCAs have the potential to significantly change an entire healthcare system. It is not even necessary to presume that this will be disruptive but sufficient to assume that the mere adaptation of...

Objective: Basic temporal dysfunctions have been described in patients with schizophrenia, which may impact their ability to connect and synchronize with the outer world. The present study was conducted with the aim to distinguish between interval timing and synchronization difficulties and more generally the spatial-temporal organization disturbances for voluntary actions. A new sensorimotor synchronization task was developed to test these abilities. Method: Twenty-four chronic schizophrenia patients matched with 27 controls performed a spatial-tapping task in which finger taps were to be (...) produced in synchrony with a regular metronome to six visual targets presented around a virtual circle on a tactile screen. Isochronous (time intervals of 500 ms) and non-isochronous auditory sequences (alternated time intervals of 300/600 ms) were presented. The capacity to produce time intervals accurately versus the ability to synchronize own actions (tap) with external events (tone) were measured. Results: Patients with schizophrenia were able to produce the tapping patterns of both isochronous and non-isochronous auditory sequences as accurately as controls producing inter-response intervals close to the expected interval of 500 and 900 ms, respectively. However, the synchronization performances revealed significantly more positive asynchrony means (but similar variances) in the patient group than in the control group for both types of auditory sequences. Conclusion: The patterns of results suggest that patients with schizophrenia are able to perceive and produce both simple and complex sequences of time intervals but are impaired in the ability to synchronize their actions with external events. These findings suggest a specific deficit in predictive timing, which may be at the core of early symptoms previously described in schizophrenia. (shrink)

This article furnishes a philosophical background for the current debate about responsibility and culpability for war crimes by referring to ideas from three important just war thinkers: Augustine, Francisco de Vitoria, and Michael Walzer. It combines lessons from these three thinkers with perspectives on current problems in the ethics of war, distinguishes between legal culpability, moral culpability, and moral responsibility, and stresses that even lower-ranking soldiers must in many cases assume moral responsibility for their acts, even though they are part (...) of a military hierarchy and act under orders. The questions addressed in this article are arguably among the hardest and most muddled in military ethics and deserve close philosophical analysis and scrutiny. (shrink)

Training students to write with a Philosophical Aim: Pedagogical Scenario and Psychological Perspective. Perspective with the international swarming of the oral and collective P4C (Philosophy FOR Children) practice, its benefits for children’s development have been demonstrated in various and transversal fields. Are these beneficial effects transferable and quantifiable in individual writings of students aged 13 to 14 years? We will outline some directions to answer this question by presenting an original educational P4C tool, Philo & Carto, which is based on (...) artworks as anchors to initiate the dialogical community of inquiry. The results from a first experiment will be presented and discussed, and pedagogical directions will be proposed. (shrink)

Once Apollonius' Conics had been translated from Greek into Arabic, they became a main reference and the principal tool in studying solid problems, algebraic equations of 3rd and 4th degrees, infinitesimal mathematics, etc. Mathematicians of the 9th–10th centuries also studied the conic sections' constructions, as well as their continuous drawing and their drawing by points. Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān, as his grandfather Thābit ibn Qurra, was one of the most active and inventive mathematicians in these fields. Late Hélène Bellosta examined in (...) this article Ibn Sinān's contribution.Une fois les Coniques d'Apollonius traduits en arabe, ces livres sont devenus la référence indispensable et le principal instrument dans l'étude des problèmes solides, des équations algébriques des 3e et 4e degrés, des problèmes des mathématiques infinitésimales, etc. Les mathématiciens des ixe-xe siècles ont également étudié les constructions des sections coniques ainsi que leur tracé par points et leur tracé continu. Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān, comme son grand-père Thābit ibn Qurra, était l'un des mathématiciens les plus actifs et les plus inventifs en ce domaine. Dans cet article, la regrettée Hélène Bellosta a examiné la contribution d'Ibn Sinān.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.DE L'USAGE DES CONIQUES CHEZ IBRĀHĪM IBN SINĀNVolume 22, Issue 1Hélène Bellosta DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000129Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. DE L'USAGE DES CONIQUES CHEZ IBRĀHĪM IBN SINĀNVolume 22, Issue 1Hélène Bellosta DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000129Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. DE L'USAGE DES CONIQUES CHEZ IBRĀHĪM IBN SINĀNVolume 22, Issue 1Hélène Bellosta DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000129Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer change in people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. With the increasing presence of such visuals comes a more (...) emotive media environment with which people are forced to engage, and, under certain circumstances, disengage. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a similarity between an ancient and a modern theory of living nature. There is no need to present the Aristotelian doctrine in full detail. I must rather apologize for repeating much that is well known. My endeavour is to offer it for comparison, and, incidentally, to clear it from misrepresentation. Uexküll's theory, on the other hand, is little known, and what is given here is an insufficient outline of it. I (...) do not maintain that either doctrine is right. I am fully aware that the problem of the essence of living nature by no means admits of an éasy solution. In offering for consideration the comparison contained in this paper I would go no farther than owning my belief that the two authors here discussed, both thinkers who combine an intensely philosophical outlook with a wide biological experience, are worth the attention not only of the historian of science and philosophy, but also of the student of philosophical biology. (shrink)

Intellectual historians have rarely attended to the genre of fighting manuals, but these provide a new window on long-debated questions such as the relationship between Scholasticism and Humanism. This article offers a close comparison of the first known fencing manual, the 14-th century Liber de Arte Dimicatoria (Leeds, Royal Armouries FECHT 1, previously and better known as MS I.33), and the corpus of fighting manuals which underwent a remarkable expansion during the 15th and 16th centuries. While the former clearly shows (...) its origins in a scholastic background, the latter is mainly viewed as reflecting its humanist context. To this historiographical division corresponds a linguistic one: MS I.33 is a Latin text, while the rest of the corpus is mainly written in German and Italian. However, exceptions arise, amongst which, Heinrich von Gunterrodt’s Sciomachia et Hoplomachia: sive de Veris Principiis Artis Dimicatoriae (1579), the first text which explicitly refers to I.33. This article will compare these two texts, in order to interrogate their common relation to Scholasticism, namely the traditional frame of the knowledge within the medieval and early modern universities. The intent is to show that (at least some) Renaissance fight books include references to Scholasticism and to provide a better qualification of the nature of such references. The general hypothesis is that a large part of the texts―and products of culture―of the Renaissance that have been read, until recently, exclusively in relation to a humanist intellectual background can valuably be interpreted in the context of a Scholasticism that is still vivid during the period in question. (shrink)

Between the elitist “philosophy is for grown-ups” and the demagogic “everyone can be a philosopher”, where does Philosophy for Children (P4C) belong in preschools? What is it assumed, expected, or intended to achieve? How is it implemented? This article reviews the literature evaluating the impact of P4C practices on preschool children (aged 3–6). It identifies the main actual or purported obstacles signaled by educators to argue that philosophy cannot be practiced before age 6. It then appraises, from a cognitive developmental (...) psychology perspective, the reality of these supposed obstacles, considering the underlying developmental skills that very young children may lack compared with older ones. Finally, pedagogical adjustments to P4C school practices are suggested, illustrated, and discussed to adapt this program, initially designed and documented for elementary-school children, to the potential of preschoolers. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) framework assumes an efference copy based on the interlocutor's intentions. Yet, elaborate attribution of intentions may not always be necessary for online prediction. Instead, contextual cues such as speaker gaze can provide similar information with a lower demand on processing resources.

Parmi les différentes approches possibles de la matière historique, on observe souvent, dans la littérature, une tension entre les deux options suivantes : faire d’un auteur le précurseur d'une révolution dont notre modernité serait l'héritière directe, ou au contraire, et par réaction, se livrer à un travail de remise en contexte détaillé qui prend parfois le risque de gommer l'originalité possible de ce même auteur. Le Traité sur les signes de Jean Poinsot, dominicain du début du XVIIe siècle, a ainsi (...) d’abord été édité comme un texte annonciateur de la sémiotique de Peirce, la thèse de cette originalité révolutionnaire étant fondée sur le traitement de la catégorie de la relation. Le travail critique qui s’est effectué en réaction tempère, parfois de façon excessive, la nouveauté de cet auteur du point de vue de sa contribution à la pensée des signes. Cet article s’inscrit dans cette démarche de remise en contexte en proposant une comparaison entre le texte de Poinsot et les Quaestiones sur les signes, que l'on doit à Sebastião do Couto, commentateur de l'université de Coimbra. Optant pour une contextualisation qui vise à mesurer l’originalité relative de Poinsot, cette étude porte sur les variations de la description du rapport du signe à l'intention. Nous montrerons ainsi que même si les contenus du discours sur les signes ne comportent que de maigres différences, on peut cependant constater une certaine originalité de Poinsot dans son traitement de la relation, qui l’amène à reconfigurer l’ordonnancement de la question des signes. (shrink)

This article explores the influence of textual structures on the acquisition of knowledge in popularization discourses related to biopesticides. Following a terminological insight into the linguistic and cognitive complexities of the notion, we proceed to a semantic analysis of press articles in major Anglo-Saxon newspapers, focusing on the explanation strategies used by the media to simplify their presentation. We show that in the mediation process, biopesticides are systematically described as being environmentally friendly, and opposed to chemical pesticides, consistently shown to (...) be detrimental to the environment. We hypothesize that this simplistic binary framing is exploited by journalists as it is easy to understand in a context of agroecological transition and commonly shared distrust for chemical pesticides. In that respect, it proves to be adequate for purposes of explanation and simplification. However, by outlining this discursive process based on duality, we aim to draw attention to the potential misconceptions of plant protection issues in general, and biopesticides in particular. We ultimately demonstrate that when adopting other perspectives, this dual framing proves to be inadequate for the construction of knowledge by any non-expert press reader. (shrink)

Soit Π une théorie complète de corps pseudo-finis. L'objet de cet article est de montrer que, dans le langage des anneaux augmenté d'un symbole de prédicat unaire (pour le petit corps), la théorie des paires élémentaires non triviales de modèles de Π admet 2n0 complétions, soit le maximum envisageable. /// Let Π be a complete theorie of pseudo-finite fields. In this article we prove that, in the langage of fields to which we add a unary predicate for a substructure, the (...) theory of non trivial elementary pairs of models of Π has 2 ℵ 0 completions, that is, the maximum that could exist. (shrink)