The nationwide economic reform in 1986 transformed Vietnam from a centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirits within the populace are suggested to fuel the structural changes. Despite the importance of entrepreneurship in Vietnam’s economy, studies in Vietnam mainly pay attention to the practical aspects of entrepreneurial activities and neglect the cognitive and theoretical aspects of entrepreneurship. Thus, the current study employs the information-processing perspective of the Mindsponge Theory to explore how entrepreneurs’ knowledge accumulation can (...) affect their perceived likelihood of business success. Bayesian analysis indicates that business-related experience positively affects entrepreneurs’ business success likelihood. Greater willingness/readiness to transform thinking, acting, and beliefs can improve the business success of entrepreneurs who study others’ failures carefully. However, for entrepreneurs who perceive learning from others’ failures as unnecessary, higher willingness/readiness to transform diminishes their chance of success. Based on these findings, we recommend Vietnamese entrepreneurs accumulate knowledge through experience, learning, and an open mind for better decision-making and innovation creation capabilities. However, the learning process should be selective. (shrink)

In the trust-health relationship, how trusting other people in society may promote good health is a topic often examined. However, the other direction of influence – how health may affect trust – has not been well explored. In order to investigate this possible effect, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to go deeper into the information processing mechanisms underlying the expressions of trust. Conducting Bayesian analysis on a dataset of 1237 residents from Cali, Colombia, we found that general health (...) status is positively associated with generalized trust, but recent experiences of illnesses/injuries have a negative moderating effect. Personalized trust is largely unchanged across different general health conditions, but the trust level becomes higher with recent experiences of illnesses/injuries. Psychophysiological mechanisms of increasing information filtering intensity toward unfamiliar sources during a vulnerable state of health is a plausible explanation of found patterns in generalized trust. Because established personal relationships are reinforced information channels, personalized trust is not affected as much. Rather, the results suggest that people may rely even more on loved ones when they are in bad health conditions. This exploratory study shows that the trust-health relationship can be examined from a different angle that may provide new insights. (shrink)

The water scarcity crisis is becoming more severe across the globe and recycled water has been suggested as a feasible solution to the crisis. However, expanding the use of potable and recycled public water has been hindered by public acceptance. Previous studies suggest threat perception and trust of provided information have positive linear relationships with recycled water acceptance. However, given the complex filtering role of trust in the human mental process, we argue that the effects of threat perception and trust (...) may have non-linear relationships with acceptance of recycled water for drinking. To support and validate this argument, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on 726 Spanish residents. We found that individuals more concerned about water shortage are less likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if their trust in the water quality and safety is low. Meanwhile, people more concerned about water shortage are more likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if they trust the water quality and safety. The findings suggest the non-linear relationships between threat perception, trust, and recycled water acceptance while validating mindsponge-based reasoning. Moreover, the results also highlight the importance of trust in influencing the mental process’s outcome: recycled water acceptance. (shrink)

We study the effect of scarcity on decision making by low income Swedes. We exploit the random assignment of welfare payments to study their borrowing decisions within the pawn and mainstream credit market. We document that higher educated borrowers borrow less frequently and choose lower loan to value ratios when their budget constraints are exogenously tighter. In contrast, low-educated borrowers do not respond to temporary elevated levels of scarcity. This lack of response translates into a significantly higher probability to (...) default and an 11.6% increase in borrowing cost. We show that a difference in access to liquidity and/or buffer stocks cannot explain our results. Instead a framework, where the awareness of self-control problems is positively correlated with education can explain that high-educated consumers choose a lower LTV as a commitment device to increase their likelihood to repay. Analogously, low-educated with less awareness of their future self-control problems, do not tie themselves to the mast and thus ignore the consequences of their credit decisions when focusing on solving acute liquidity problems. Our findings highlight that increased levels of scarcity risk reinforcing the conditions of poverty through overborrowing. (shrink)

The present discussion derives from a larger research project that concerns the medieval Latin translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. The translation was carried out by Hermann the German in Toledo in 1240. I am concerned here specifically with nine passages that are distributed over three chapters of the Commentary in which the Latin translation is sprinkled with transliterations based on Greek and Arabic terms. These transliterations, which are not glosses, can be understood on several levels, and (...) these, in turn, raise questions about the boundary between transliteration proper and translation that borrows from the source language a term which is then integrated into the Latin lexicon in the form of a calque or ‘loan translation’. Examining these transliterations makes it possible, first, to show that the translator does not follow a uniform method throughout the text, which could imply the existence of several translators or several collaborators with disti... (shrink)

John Schlitpacher (†1482), who was prior of Melk in the 15th century, encouraged both the circulation of manuscripts at his Abbey and their transcription, even in abbreviated form to the benefit of the Abbey School students. This article looks at the sources and diffusion of texts to and from Melk Abbey in that period, examining the case of a codex purchased by Nicholas of Cusa, registered in his Library as no. 58, and subsequently loaned to the monks in Melk to (...) be copied. It contained the Scala Paradisi by John Climacus and the De spiritualibus deliciis by John of Dambach. In the article, I underline that both of these works, copied in codex 58, were in accordance with John Gerson’s theological approach, which was prevalent in Melk at that time. Moreover, I confirm that there are doctrinal similarities between the two works mentioned above and two, hitherto, unedited writings by Schlitpacher from the same period – the treatise De ascensionibus cordis, which is a summary of the De spiritualibus ascensionibus by Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, and another entitled De felicitate beatorum (or De gaudiis electorum). (shrink)

Le point de départ de cet article est d'observer comment, en France, des organismes accordent des prêts aux chômeurs pour qu'ils créent leur entreprise. Ce qui est connu sous le nom de « microcrédit » dans les programmes de développement internationaux est qualifié de « finance solidaire » en France. Dans ce cas aussi, les créanciers ne visent pas le profit. Le crédit n'est pas qu'un outil économique mais le support de liens de solidarité. Cependant la finance solidaire ne peut (...) se résumer à un moyen de lutte contre le chômage. Un grand nombre d'organismes de ce secteur ont un projet politique sous-jacent qui consiste à replacer l'homme au coeur de l'économie.The starting point of this article is to watch how, in France, some organizations give loans to unemployed people to help them create their enterprise. What is called « microcredit » in international development programs is known in France as « financial solidarity ». In this case also, creditors are not looking for benefits. With this point of view, credit isn't only an economic tool but also a medium of solidarity. But financial solidarity insn't only a tool to struggle against unemployment. A lot of organizations of this sector are trying to implement the political idea that people are in the heart of economy. (shrink)

In 1982-83, I was preparing my volume on the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. During the Second World War, Hergé’s comic strips appeared daily in the newspaper Le Soir. Since I wanted to analyze the influence of the rightist thought on Hergé and Tintin, I borrowed most of the copies of Le Soir available in this country through interlibrary loan. Examining the newspaper, I came across Paul de Man’s articles, which were sometimes on the same page as the comic strips. I (...) showed these articles to some colleagues related to or teaching at Harvard University. I specifically recall an afternoon with a colleague from Boston University whose specialty is the hunting of presumed French fascist intellectuals; we discussed together the possible bridges between de Man’s contemporary thought and his former intellectual engagement during the Second World War.That is to say that, as far as I know, several people at Harvard and in the Boston area were aware of de Man’s former affiliation with rightist circles. One can ask why it took five more years for the “scandal” to appear: why this “sudden” revelation after several years of silence and dissimulation? Compared to the fact that Hergé had constantly been confronted with his political past, one can wonder how strongly Paul de Man’s “secret” was kept. Jean-Marie Apostolidès is professor of French at Stanford University. He is currently writing an essay on the anthropological reading of literature. His article “Molière and the Sociology of Exchange” appeared in the Spring 1988 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

In this intriguing study, Jacques Le Goff, one of the most esteemed contemporary French historians of the Middle Ages, presents a concise investigation of the problem that usury posed for the medieval Church, which had long condemned the lending of money for interest. Le Goff describes how, as the structure of economic life inevitably began to include financial loans, the Church refashioned its theology in order to condemn the usurer not to hell but merely to purgatory.Jacques Le Goff is Director (...) of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and the author of The Birth of Purgatory.Patricia Ranum is the translator of Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel. (shrink)

I will introduce and motivate eliminativist super-relationism. This is the conjunction of relationism about spacetime and eliminativism about material objects. According to the view, the universe is a big collection of spatio-temporal relations and natural properties, and no substance (material or spatio-temporal) exists in it. The view is original since eliminativism about material objects, when understood as including not only ordinary objects like tables or chairs but also physical particles, is generally taken to imply substantivalism about spacetime: if properties are (...) directly instantiated by spacetime without the mediation of material objects, then, surely, spacetime has to be a substance. After introducing briefly the two debates about spacetime (§1) and material objects (§2), I will present Schaffer's super-substantivalism (§3), the conjunction of substantivalism about spacetime and eliminativism about material objects at the fundamental level. I shall then expose and discuss the assumption from which the implication from eliminativism to substantivalism is drawn, and discuss the compatibility of eliminativism with relationism: if spacetime is not a substance, and if material objects are not real, how are we to understand the instantiation of properties (§4)? And what are the relata of spatio-temporal relations (§5)? I then show that each argument in favor of super-substantivalism offered by Schaffer also holds for super-relationism (§6) and examine several metaphysical consequences of the view (§7). I conclude that both super-substantivalism and super-relationism are compatible with Schaffer's priority monism (§8). (shrink)

A ‘‘duality’’ is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naïvely interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world—differing in, for example, spacetime structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, (...) what is one to say about the ontology of the world? Int his paper, we undertake a comprehensive and nontechnical survey of the landscape of possible ontological interpretations of duality-related theories. We provide a significantly enriched and clarified taxonomy of options—several of which are novel to the literature. (shrink)

Since he proved his theorem in 1982, Fine has been challenging the traditional interpretation of the experimental violation of the Bell Inequalities. A natural interpretation of Fine's theorem is that it provides us with an alternative set of assumptions on which to place blame for the failure of the BI, and opens to a new interpretation of the violation of the BI. Fine has a stronger interpretation for his theorem. He claims that his result undermines the traditional interpretation in terms (...) of local realism. The aim of this paper is to understand and to assess Fine's claim. We distinguish three different strategies that Fine uses in order to support his view. We show that none of these strategies is successful. Fine fails to prove that local realism is not at stake in the violation of the BI by quantum phenomena. (shrink)

A thought experiment invites us to examine our intuitive beliefs about the reality of the past, the reality of the future, and our capacity to affect either, and provides a test of our attitudes towards life. Given an inescapable choice and extraordinary power, would it be our duty to destroy the whole of reality, both past and future?

What is agnosticism? Is it a belief, or just the absence of belief? What is the 'agnostic' principle? Robin Le Poidevin takes a philosophical approach to the issue of agnosticism, challenging some of the common assumptions, arguing in favour of the agnostic attitude, and considering its place in society and education.

Can we rely on the altruism of professionals or the public service ethos to deliver good quality health and education services? How should patients, parents and pupils behave - as grateful recipients or active consumers? The book provides new answers to these questions, and evaluates recent government policies in health services, education, social security and taxation, and puts forward proposals for policy reform: universal capital or 'demogrants', discriminating vouchers, matching grants for pensions and for long-term care and hypothecated taxes.

"Leopold Flam (1912-1995) is samen met Leo Apostel wellicht de belangrijkste figuur van het filosofische gebeuren tussen de jaren vijftig en tachtig van de vorige eeuw. Toch is hij in de vergetelheid geraakt.

Photographs, paintings, rigid sculptures: all these provide examples of static images. It is true that they change—photographs fade, paintings darken and sculptures crumble—but what change they undergo is irrelevant to their representational content. A static image is one that represents by virtue of properties which remain largely unchanged throughout its existence. Because of this defining feature, according to a long tradition in aesthetics, a static image can only represent an instantaneous moment, or to be more exact the state of affairs (...) obtaining at that moment'. It cannot represent movement and the passage of time. This traditional view mirrors a much older one in metaphysics: that change is to be conceived of as a series of instantaneous states and hence that an interval of time is composed of extensionless moments. The metaphysical view has been involved in more controversy than its aesthetic counterpart. Aristotle identified it as one of the premises of Zeno's arrow paradox and Augustine employed it in his proof of the unreality of time. (shrink)

Physics not only describes past, present, and future events but also accounts for unrealized possibilities. These possibilities are represented through the solution spaces given by theories. These spaces are typically classified into two categories: kinematical and dynamical. The distinction raises important questions about the nature of physical possibility. How should we interpret the difference between kinematical and dynamical models? Do dynamical solutions represent genuine possibilities in the physical world? Should kinematical possibilities be viewed as mere logical or linguistic constructs, devoid (...) of a deeper connection to the structure of physical reality? This chapter addresses these questions by analyzing some of the most significant theories in physics: classical mechanics, general relativity and quantum mechanics, with a final mention to quantum gravity. We argue that only dynamical models correspond to genuine physical possibilities. (shrink)

The erosion of the three interlocking dimensions of nature, society and self is the consequence of what Felix Guattari referred to as integrated world capitalism (IWC). In South Africa the erosion of nature, society and self is also the consequence of centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid. In this paper I wish to explore how the African philosophy of ubuntu (humanness), which appears to be anthropocentric, might be invoked to contribute to the healing of the three ecologies—how healing of (...) the social might transversally effect healing of nature and the self. My theoretical exploration has relevance to education in South Africa, given that a mandate of national curriculum policy is that indigenous knowledge systems form part of the discursive terrains of all school learning areas/subjects. (shrink)

Proceedings of the international colloquium held at the âEcole pratique des hautes âetudes, Section des sciences religieuses, Paris, France, October 25-26, 2013.

1. Nietzsche l'éclatant -- 2. Nietzsche l'exorbitant.