While COVID-19 spreads aggressively and rapidly across the globe, many societies have also witnessed the spread of other viral phenomena like misinformation, conspiracy theories, and general mass suspicions about what is really going on. This study investigates how exposure to and trust in information sources, and anxiety and depression, are associated with conspiracy and misinformation beliefs in eight countries/regions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in an online survey fielded from May 29, 2020 to June 12, 2020, resulting in (...) a multinational representative sample of 8,806 adult respondents. Results indicate that greater exposure to traditional media is associated with lower conspiracy and misinformation beliefs, while exposure to politicians and digital media and personal contacts are associated with greater conspiracy and misinformation beliefs. Exposure to health experts is associated with lower conspiracy beliefs only. Higher feelings of depression are also associated with greater conspiracy and misinformation beliefs. We also found relevant group- and country differences. We discuss the implications of these results. (shrink)

This volume features essays about and by Paul Benacerraf, whose ideas have circulated in the philosophical community since the early nineteen sixties, shaping key areas in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of logic, and epistemology. The book started as a worskhop held in Paris at the Collège de France in May 2012 with the participation of Paul Benacerraf. The introduction addresses the methodological point of the legitimate use of so-called “Princess Margaret Premises” in drawing philosophical (...) conclusions from Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem. The book is then divided into three sections. The first is devoted to an assessment of the improved version of the original dilemma of “Mathematical Truth” due to Hartry Field: the challenge to the platonist is now to explain the reliability of our mathematical beliefs given the very subject matter of mathematics, either pure or applied. The second addresses the issue of the ontological status of numbers: Frege’s logicism, fictionalism, structuralism, and Bourbaki’s theory of structures are called up for an appraisal of Benacerraf’s negative conclusions of “What Numbers Could Not Be.” The third is devoted to supertasks and bears witness to the unique standing of Benacerraf’s first publication: “Tasks, Super-Tasks, and Modern Eleatics” in debates on Zeno’s paradox and associated paradoxes, infinitary mathematics, and constructivism and finitism in the philosophy of mathematics. Two yet unpublished essays by Benacerraf have been included in the volume: an early version of “Mathematical Truth” from 1968 and an essay on “What Numbers Could Not Be” from the mid 1970’s. A complete chronological bibliography of Benacerraf’s work to 2016 is provided.Essays by Jody Azzouni, Paul Benacerraf, Justin Clarke-Doane, Sébastien Gandon, Brice Halimi, Jon Pérez Laraudogoitia, Mary Leng, Antonio Leòn-Sànchez and Ana Leòn-Mejía, Marco Panza, Fabrice Pataut, Philippe de Rouilhan, Andrea Sereni, and Stewart Shapiro. (shrink)

Winner of the 2015 Pierre-Antoine Bernheim Prize for the History of Religion by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-LettresAfter a century during which Confucianism was viewed by academics as a relic of the imperial past or, at best, a philosophical resource, its striking comeback in Chinese society today raises a number of questions about the role that this ancient tradition might play in a contemporary context. The Sage and the People is the first comprehensive enquiry into the "Confucian revival" that (...) began in China during the 2000s. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork carried out over eight years in various parts of the country, it explores the re-appropriation and reinvention of popular practices in fields as diverse as education, self-cultivation, religion, ritual, and politics.The book analyzes the complexity of the "Confucian revival" within the broader context of emerging challenges to such categories as religion, philosophy, and science that prevailed in modernization narratives throughout the last century. Exploring state cults both in Mainland China and Taiwan, authors Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval compare the interplay between politics and religion on the two shores of the Taiwan strait and attempt to shed light on possible future developments of Confucianism in Chinese society. (shrink)

In a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is (...) typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Psychopathy is a personality disorder frequently associated with immoral behaviors. Previous behavioral studies on the influence of psychopathy on moral decision have yielded contradictory results, possibly because they focused either on judgment (abstract evaluation) or on choice of hypothetical action, two processes that may rely on different mechanisms. In this study, we explored the influence of the level of psychopathic traits on judgment and choice of hypothetical action during moral dilemma evaluation. A population of 102 students completed a questionnaire with (...) ten moral dilemmas and nine non-moral dilemmas. The task included questions targeting both judgment (“Is it acceptable to … in order to …?”) and choice of hypothetical action (“Would you … in order to …?”). The level of psychopathic traits of each participant was evaluated with the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale. Logistic regression fitted with the generalized estimating equations method analyses were conducted using responses to the judgment and choice tasks as the dependent variables and psychopathy scores as predictor. Results show that a high level of psychopathic traits, and more specifically those related to affective deficit, predicted a greater proportion of utilitarian responses for the choice but not for the judgment question. There was no first-order interaction between the level of psychopathic traits and other potential predictors. The relation between a high level of psychopathic traits and increased utilitarianism in choice of action but not in moral judgment may explain the contradictory results of previous studies where these two processes were not contrasted. It also gives further support to the hypothesis that choice of action endorsement and abstract judgment during moral dilemma evaluation are partially distinct neural and psychological processes. We propose that this distinction should be better taken into account in the evaluation of psychopathic behaviors. (shrink)

The conceptual foundations, features, and scope of the notion of rationality are increasingly being affected by developments in embodied cognitive science. This article starts from the idea of embodied rationality, and aims to develop a frame in which a debate with the classical, possibly bounded, notion of rationality-as-consistency can take place. To this end, I develop a game theoretic description of a real time interaction setup in which participants' behaviors can be used to compare the enactive approach, which underlies embodied (...) rationality, with game theoretic approaches to human interaction. The Perceptual Crossing Paradigm is a minimal interaction interface where two participants each control an avatar on a shared virtual line, and are tasked with cooperatively finding each other among distractor objects. It is well known that the best performance on this task is obtained when both participants let their movements coordinate with the objects they encounter, which they do without any prior knowledge of efficient interaction strategies in the system. A game theoretic model of this paradigm shows that this task can be described as an Assurance game, which allows for comparing game theoretical approaches and the enactive approach on two main fronts. First, accounting for the ability of participants to interactively solve the Assurance game; second, accounting for the evolution of choice landscapes resulting from evolving normative realms in the task. Similarly to the series of paradoxes which have fueled debates in economics in the past century, this analysis aims to serve as an interpretation testbed which can fuel the current debate on rationality. (shrink)

This article proposes a unified framework for understanding creative problem solving, namely, the explicit–implicit interaction theory. This new theory of creative problem solving constitutes an attempt at providing a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of incubation and insight). The explicit–implicit interaction theory relies mainly on 5 basic principles, namely, (a) the coexistence of and the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge, (b) the simultaneous involvement of implicit and explicit processes in most (...) tasks, (c) the redundant representation of explicit and implicit knowledge, (d) the integration of the results of explicit and implicit processing, and (e) the iterative (and possibly bidirectional) processing. A computational implementation of the theory is developed based on the CLARION cognitive architecture and applied to the simulation of relevant human data. This work represents an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related.. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a general framework for understanding renormalization by drawing on the distinction between effective and continuum Quantum Field Theories (QFTs), and offer a comprehensive account of perturbative renormalization on this basis. My central claim is that the effective approach to renormalization provides a more physically perspicuous, conceptually coherent and widely applicable framework to construct perturbative QFTs than the continuum approach. I also show how a careful comparison between the two approaches: (i) helps to dispel the mystery (...) surrounding the success of the renormalization procedure; (ii) clarifies the various notions of renormalizability; and (iii) gives reasons to temper Butterfield and Bouatta's claim that some continuum QFTs are ripe for metaphysical inquiry (Butterfield & Bouatta, 2014). (shrink)

Theorem 0.1LetK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document}be an abstract elementary class with amalgamation and no maximal models. Letλ>LS\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda > {LS}$$\end{document}. IfK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document}is categorical inλ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document}, then the model of cardinalityλ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document}is Galois-saturated.This answers a question asked independently by Baldwin and (...) Shelah. We deduce several corollaries: K\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document} has a unique limit model in each cardinal below λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document}, K\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document} is weakly tame below λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document}, and the thresholds of several existing categoricity transfers can be improved.We also prove a downward transfer of solvability :Corollary 0.2LetK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document}be an AEC with amalgamation and no maximal models. Letλ>μ>LS\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda> \mu > {LS}$$\end{document}. IfK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document}is solvable inλ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lambda $$\end{document}, thenK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {K}$$\end{document}is solvable inμ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mu $$\end{document}. (shrink)

Williams and J. Fraser have recently argued that effective field theory methods enable scientific realists to make more reliable ontological commitments in quantum field theory than those commonly made. In this paper, I show that the interpretative relevance of these methods extends beyond the specific context of QFT by identifying common structural features shared by effective theories across physics. In particular, I argue that effective theories are best characterized by the fact that they contain intrinsic empirical limitations, and I extract (...) from their structure one central interpretative constraint for making more reliable ontological commitments in different subfields of physics. While this is in principle good news, this constraint still raises a challenge for scientific realists in some contexts, and I bring the point home by focusing on Williams’s and J. Fraser’s defense of selective realism in QFT. (shrink)

Sébastien Roman | : Dans la Théorie de l’agir communicationnel, Jürgen Habermas élabore pour la première fois le modèle communicationnel, dans l’intention d’en faire la norme de toutes les pratiques langagières. Pour ce faire, il recourt aux analyses austiniennes sur l’illocution et la perlocution, dont il propose une réinterprétation qui prétend parvenir à leur donner un sens adéquat, et les distinguer clairement. Le présent article fait l’examen critique de cette prétention, et démontre que la pragmatique formelle habermassienne n’est pas (...) convaincante. | : In the Theory of Communicative Action, Jürgen Habermas, for the first time, develops the communicational model, with the intent to take it as the norm of language practices. To this end, he refers to John L. Austin’s analysis of illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, and proposes to reinterpret these notions in order to adequately define and clearly distinguish them. The present paper evaluates this Habermasian project, and shows that Habermas’ Formal Pragmatics is not convincing. (shrink)

As corporations are going global, they are increasingly confronted with human rights challenges. As such, new ways to deal with human rights challenges in corporate operations must be developed as traditional governance mechanisms are not always able to tackle them. This article presents five different views on innovative solutions for the relationships between business and human rights that all build on empowerment, dialogue and constructive engagement. The different approaches highlight an emerging trend toward a more active role for corporations in (...) the protection of human rights. The first examines the need for enhanced dialogue between corporations and their stakeholders. The next three each examine a different facet of empowerment, a critical factor for the respect and protection of human rights: empowerment of the poor, of communities, and of consumers. The final one presents a case study of constructive corporate engagement in Myanmar (Burma). Altogether, these research projects provide insight into the complex relationships between corporate operations and human rights, by highlighting the importance of stakeholder dialogue and empowerment. All the five projects were presented during the Second Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, held in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 12, 2008. The audience for this conference, which examined business and human rights, was composed of researchers, governmental representatives, and business and non-governmental organization practitioners. (shrink)

This article traces the origins of Kenneth Wilson's conception of effective field theories (EFTs) in the 1960s. I argue that what really made the difference in Wilson's path to his first prototype of EFT are his long-standing pragmatic aspirations and methodological commitments. Wilson's primary interest was to work on mathematically interesting physical problems and he thought that progress could be made by treating them as if they could be analyzed in principle by a sufficiently powerful computer. The first point explains (...) why he had no qualms about twisting the structure of field theories; the second why he divided the state-space of a toy model field theory into continuous slices by following a standard divide-and-conquer algorithmic strategy instead of working directly with a fully discretized and finite theory. I also show how Wilson's prototype bears the mark of these aspirations and commitments and clear up a few striking ironies along the way. (shrink)

As corporations are going global, they are increasingly confronted with human rights challenges. As such, new ways to deal with human rights challenges in corporate operations must be developed as traditional governance mechanisms are not always able to tackle them. This article presents five different views on innovative solutions for the relationships between business and human rights that all build on empowerment, dialogue and constructive engagement. The different approaches highlight an emerging trend toward a more active role for corporations in (...) the protection of human rights. The first examines the need for enhanced dialogue between corporations and their stakeholders. The next three each examine a different facet of empowerment, a critical factor for the respect and protection of human rights: empowerment of the poor, of communities, and of consumers. The final one presents a case study of constructive corporate engagement in Myanmar (Burma). Altogether, these research projects provide insight into the complex relationships between corporate operations and human rights, by highlighting the importance of stakeholder dialogue and empowerment. All the five projects were presented during the Second Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, held in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 12, 2008. The audience for this conference, which examined business and human rights, was composed of researchers, governmental representatives, and business and non-governmental organization practitioners. (shrink)

Differences in language use and structures between signed and spoken languages have often been attributed to so-called language “modality.” Indeed, this is derived from the conception that spoken languages resort to both the oral-aural channel of speech and the visual-kinesic channel of visible bodily action whereas signed languages only resort to the latter. This paper addresses the use of enactment, a depictive communicative strategy whereby language users imitate referents in signed and spoken languages. Reviewing comparative research on enactment, this paper (...) highlights theoretical and methodological shortcomings in prior works. First, a broader set of causal explanations needs to be taken into account when interpreting differences between signing and speaking communities. A more comprehensive conceptual toolbox ensures that differences are not automatically attributed to modality. In particular, less-studied factors of language diversity, like sociolinguistic and cultural ecologies, and how they interact with other factors should be considered. Second, diversity in enactment across signed and spoken languages is shown to be inadequately and insufficiently documented. It is argued that by comparing enactment across more diverse signing and speaking communities and using large, directly comparable corpora, solid analyses can be carried out, enabling a better understanding of how and why different communities use enactment in similar or different ways. (shrink)

This survey covers some of the main philosophical debates raised by the framework of effective field theories during the last decades. It is centered on three issues: whether effective field theories underpin a specific realist picture of the world, whether they support an anti-reductionist picture of physics, and whether they provide reasons to give up the ultimate aspiration of formulating a final and complete physical theory. Reviewing the past and current literature, we argue that effective field theories do not give (...) convincing reasons to adopt a particular stance towards these speculative issues. They hold good prospects for asking ontologically perspicuous and sensible questions about currently accessible domains. With respect to more fundamental questions, however, the only certainty is provisional and instrumental: effective theories are currently indispensable for conducting fruitful scientific research. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore several issues surrounding what is called “telepathy” in the context of the problem of other minds. I begin with a quick review of the conditions in which this notion arose and the difficulties to which it gave rise upon its introduction. This review will allow me, after having shown that the notion of telepathy provides no path to the problem's solution, to draw a distinction between two discursive levels: an epistemological or ontological level, on the (...) one hand, and a semantic or logical level, on the other. I maintain that it is at the second level that the deepest and most intractable difficulties relating to the “powers of the mind” arise. These difficulties occupy a blind spot in discussions involving the notion of telepathy (Alan Turing will provide a striking illustration of this). Finally, I suggest that this pseudo‐solution (telepathy) is at root a response to a pseudo‐problem—the inaccessibility of other minds—since the difficulties with the intelligibility of telepathy are parallel to those with which the problem of “other minds” is freighted. (shrink)

A problem is a situation in which an agent seeks to attain a given goal without knowing how to achieve it. Human problem solving is typically studied as a search in a problem space composed of states (information about the environment) and operators (to move between states). A problem such as playing a game of chess has possible states, and a traveling salesperson problem with as little as 82 cities already has more than different tours (similar to chess). Biological neurons (...) are slower than the digital switches in computers. An exhaustive search of the problem space exceeds the capacity of current computers for most interesting problems, and it is fairly clear that humans cannot in their lifetime exhaustively search even small fractions of these problem spaces. Yet, humans play chess and solve logistical problems of similar complexity on a daily basis. Even for simple problems humans do not typically engage in exploring even a small fraction of the problem space. This begs the question: How do humans solve problems on a daily basis in a fast and efficient way? Recent work suggests that humans build a problem representation and solve the represented problem—not the problem that is out there. The problem representation that is built and the process used to solve it are constrained by limits of cognitive capacity and a cost–benefit analysis discounting effort and reward. In this article, we argue that better understanding the way humans represent and solve problems using heuristics can help inform how simpler algorithms and representations can be used in artificial intelligence to lower computational complexity, reduce computation time, and facilitate real-time computation in complex problem solving. (shrink)

We initiate a systematic investigation of the abstract elementary classes that have amalgamation, satisfy tameness, and are stable in some cardinal. Assuming the singular cardinal hypothesis, we prove a full characterization of the stability cardinals, and connect the stability spectrum with the behavior of saturated models.We deduce that if a class is stable on a tail of cardinals, then it has no long splitting chains. This indicates that there is a clear notion of superstability in this framework.We also present an (...) application to homogeneous model theory: for [Formula: see text] a homogeneous diagram in a first-order theory [Formula: see text], if [Formula: see text] is both stable in [Formula: see text] and categorical in [Formula: see text] then [Formula: see text] is stable in all [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

Philosophers of physics have spent much effort unpacking the structure of gauge theories. But surprisingly, little attention has been devoted to the question of why we should require our best theories to be locally gauge invariant in the first place. Drawing on Steven Weinberg's works in the mid-1960s, I argue that the principle of local gauge invariance follows from Lorentz invariance and other natural assumptions in the context of perturbative relativistic quantum field theory. On this view, gauge freedom is a (...) mere accidental feature of an already highly constrained set of quantities; the distinctive structure of our best gauge theories, in turn, traces back to the peculiar space-time transformation properties of particles like photons, gluons, and gravitons. I conclude by drawing a few interpretative lessons for the philosophy of gauge theories. (shrink)

We present a new proof of the existence of Morley sequences in simple theories. We avoid using the Erdős–Rado theorem and instead use only Ramsey’s theorem and compactness. The proof shows that the basic theory of forking in simple theories can be developed using only principles from “ordinary mathematics,” answering a question of Grossberg, Iovino, and Lessmann, as well as a question of Baldwin.

RÉSUMÉ: Pasch est généralement considéré comme le premier à avoir proposé une axiomatisation de la géométrie. Mais ses Vorlesungen über neure Geometrie (1882) contiennent plusieurs éléments étrangers au paradigme hilbertien. Pasch soutient ainsi que la « géométrie élémentaire », dont il propose une axiomatisation complète, est une théorie empiriquement vraie. Les commentateurs considèrent généralement les différences entre la méthode de Pasch et celle qui deviendra standard après Hilbert comme autant de défauts affectant une pensée encore inaboutie. Notre but consiste au (...) contraire à reconstruire la cohérence et l’originalité de l’approche de Pasch. Nous donnerons d’abord un aperçu du contexte historique dans lequel les Vorlesungen s’inscrivent, pour tenter ensuite de réconcilier l’effort d’axiomatisation et l’empirisme de Pasch. Nous insisterons notamment sur les remarquables procédures logiques que Pasch met sur pied afin d’adapter sa pratique mathématique aux contraintes dictées par sa réflexion philosophique.ABSTRACT: Pasch is usually credited with having presented the first axiomatization of a geometrical theory, but the Vorlesungen über neuere Geometrie (1882) contains many features which do not fit the Hilbertian paradigm. Thus Pasch, while axiomatizing his “elementary geometry,” claims that it is an empirically true theory. Scholars usually regard the discrepancies between Pasch and the post-Hilbertian standard method as mere inconsistencies of Pasch’s theory. On the contrary, this article aims at reconstructing the coherence and originality of the Vorlesungen. We will first display the historical background of this work and then try to reconcile Pasch’s logical axiomatic claim with his empiricist stance. More importantly, we will insist on the remarkable logical procedures worked out by Pasch in order to adapt his mathematical development to the strictures of his broad philosophical position. (shrink)

According to philosophers like James Weinstein, our democratic values give us a compelling reason to tolerate hate speech. In fact, they argue that even if hate speech causes significant harms, our democratic values nonetheless sometimes call for a hands-off approach. In particular, they evoke the democratic value of citizens being free to criticize and voice dissent towards the laws that bind them. This paper seeks to establish two key points. First, that upon closer examination, the kind of arguments that Weinstein (...) presents against hate speech regulation is less than convincing. Secondly, that by building on Weinstein's discussion of the concept of viewpoint discrimination, we can construct a more convincing objection to hate speech regulation. That said, this more convincing objection falls short of calling for the abolition of all hate speech regulation, instead highlighting the need for transparency and consistency in the way governments regulate harmful speech. (shrink)

The theory of social-property relations, or political Marxism, has argued that in contradistinction with pre-capitalist forms of exploitation, capitalism is characterised by the separation of the economic and the political, which makes surplus appropriation under this system uniquely driven by economic coercion. In spite of political Marxism’s various strengths, this article argues that the paradigm puts forward an ahistorical and sanitised conception of capitalism typical of bourgeois economics, which is an outcome of its formal-abstractionist approach to the concept of the (...) mode of production and the separation between theory and history that it operates. A more satisfactory solution to political Marxism’s inability to make sense of past and present forms of coercion and violence under capitalism can be found in Jairus Banaji’s emphasis on Marx’s historical – rather than formal – conception of the mode of production. (shrink)

L’article vise à établir un lien entre les travaux de Russell sur les fondements de la géométrie et ses célèbres textes des années 1911-1914 sur la perception, la matière et les sense-data. Nous insistons d’abord sur le fait que la notion russellienne de donnée sensorielle n’est pas phénoménaliste : les sense-data des Problèmes de Philosophie sont des objets extérieurs aussi peu mentaux que les corps matériels. L’accent est ensuite mis sur l’article On Matter : Russell y introduit pour la première (...) fois l’idée que les sense-data n’ont pas une, mais deux positions — une position où ils sont vus et une position d’où ils sont vus. Cette manœuvre permet à Russell de considérer la donnée sensorielle comme le point d’intersection neutre de deux ensembles fondamentalement différents : une série « physique », matérielle, et une série de « perspectives », mentales. L’idée qu’une même chose peut être classée sous différentes catégories, donc que le mode de classification aristotélicien en espèce et en genre n’est pas le seul concevable, est à la fois la clé de voûte de la théorie des relations entre « sense-data » et « physical things » de 1914 et le nerf du ralliement ultérieur au « monisme neutre ». Nous défendons, dans une troisième partie, que ce canevas n’est lui-même qu’un lointain écho de la conception de la géométrie projective définie comme théorie générale des relations d’incidence développée par Russell dans The Principles of Mathematics (1903). (shrink)

English summary: This volume offers French readers important texts of modern philosophical mathematics, addressing in particular ontological questions and others on mathematical objects, how to demonstrate the need for mathematical truths, and how to explain that mathematics apply to the real world. French description: Le compagnonnage entre la philosophie et les mathematiques ne date pas d'hier. Mais l'emergence des nouvelles logiques, au debut du XXe siecle, a profondement modifie la forme des interactions entre les deux disciplines, suscitant de nouvelles interrogations (...) et modifiant la formulation des problemes herites de la tradition. Ce premier volume vise a rendre accessible aux lecteurs francophones des textes importants de la philosophie contemporaine des mathematiques. Il est plus particulierement consacre aux questions ontologiques et a celles liees aux fondements: Qu'est-ce qu'un objet mathematique? Comment rendre compte de la necessite des verites mathematiques? Comment expliquer que les mathematiques s'appliquent au monde reel? (shrink)

Rights-based approaches (RBAs) are increasingly gaining favour among practitioners in the field of natural resource conservation and management. RBAs are a non-binding operational framework through which conservation actors can integrate human rights standards and principles into the design, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of projects and programmes. In addition to promoting the human rights of local populations, it is also argued that RBAs may hold benefits for conservation initiatives. This article draws on existing research on the social psychology of procedural (...) fairness to develop a relational account of how and whether RBAs may enhance levels of legitimacy and cooperation in conservation. This relational account stresses the importance of fair experiences for generating positive feelings of legitimacy and associated cooperative behaviour among individuals interacting with organisations or authorities. On the whole, this article suggests that if RBAs can ensure respect for the human rights of local populations, they have the potential to engender fair experiences and related positive institutional effects, thereby significantly strengthening the overall effectiveness of conservation initiatives. (shrink)

La référence à Saint Augustin chez Pierre-Joseph Proudhon questionne le lien entre une fondation d’une institution religieuse et celui d’un renouveau révolutionnaire. La comparaison des deux mouvements culturels qui ont façonné la culture occidentale dans deux moments critiques de l’histoire s’inscrit dans une logique d’indentification sociologique dont la religion se faisait le porteur et dont la révolution doit être la nouvelle expression.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 212 Seiten: 155-178.

RésuméLa définition de la condition suspensive, telle qu’elle nous est donnée dans l’article 1181 du Code civil français, est aujourd’hui au centre de différents projets de réforme. Si aucun projet de réforme n’a réussi à emporter l’assentiment de tous les juristes, nombre d’entre eux semblent s’accorder sur la nécessité de réformer ce texte—inchangé depuis 1804. Pourquoi un tel consensus sur ce besoin de réécriture de la définition de la condition suspensive mène à une discussion doctrinale où deux positions principales s’opposent? (...) C’est à cette question que nous tâchons de répondre en traquant l’origine de cette scission dans la lettre même du texte dont nous analysons à la fois la structure logique et la signification des termes employés pour sa rédaction. Cette analyse nous permet de mettre en évidence la sémantique ambiguë du terme “incertain”, terme pour lequel nous proposons une analyse logique de sa signification que nous comparons ensuite à celle du terme “inconnu”. (shrink)

What would be the result of reading Derrida from the standpoint of material phenomenology? And what would be the result of reading material phenomenology on the basis of the requirements of Derridean thought? These are the questions that this article endeavours to tackle by focusing on the two philosophers’ readings of Husserl’s Lectures on the Consciousness of Internal Time. At first strangely similar, these two readings soon display marked differences. Whereas Derrida, in his approach, is keen to demonstrate that there (...) is never any pure presence, Michel Henry brings out an “Archi-presence” which he attempts to safeguard from any deconstruction. So perhaps material phenomenology functions as “quasi-deconstruction”, having the same relationship with Derridean thought as “negative theology” has with deconstruction. (shrink)

Should the government censor dangerous anti-vaccination propoganda? Should it restrict the praise of terrorist groups, or speech intended to promote discriminatory attitudes? In other words, should the government curb the advocacy of dangerous ideas and actions (i.e. 'harmful advocacy'), or should the government take a more permissive approach? Strong free speech supporters argue that citizens should be free to engage in and to hear harmful advocacy, arguing that restrictions are deeply objectionable at best, and, at worst, wholly impermissible. To support (...) their position, strong free speech supporters have offered a wide range of arguments and ideas. One of the most interesting arguments revolves around the idea that restrictions on harmful advocacy are deeply insulting to citizens. The worry, broadly understood, is that this kind of censorship is demeaning, treats citizens as though they are stupid, or as though they are children. As such, even when censorship is effective in preventing harms to citizens, it nonetheless comes at the significant political cost of failing to properly respect the citizenry at large. By contrast, so the thought goes, an alternative political scheme that prohibits censorship, or permits it only in exceptional cases, does a better job of respecting citizens as independent, rational, morally responsible agents. This alternative political system may, sometimes, be less effective at preventing speech harms. But it is a political system where citizens can stand tall and hold their heads high. In this paper, I consider and reject three versions of the worry that censorship is insulting. §1 explores the idea that censorship is insulting qua involving a negative appraisal of the citizens being interfered with. The key idea here is that censorship involves a lack of what Stephen Darwall terms ‘appraisal respect’, insofar as the government is suggesting that citizens cannot be trusted to manage their own beliefs and intentions. Drawing on the work of Thomas Nagel, §2 explores the idea that censorship diminishes the political status of citizens. Finally, §3 explores the suggestion that censorship is incompatible with a full appreciation of the thinking nature of citizens, and thus involves a lack of what Darwall would term ‘recognition respect’. The paper argues that censorship is not necessarily premised upon an insulting view of the citizenry. On the contrary, it argues that the best kind of censorship stems from a rich appreciation of the diverse range of capabilities, needs, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities of citizens, as well as the need for co-operation between citizens if societal flourishing is going to be achieved on a large scale. Granted, such a vision places an emphasis on the imperfections and liabilities of citizens – at least when compared to the rather solitary, highly intellectual creature one sometimes finds in the philosophical literature. Still, such a vision of citizens as imperfect falls well short of being genuinely insulting. To err is human. And there’s nothing insulting about being treated like a human. (shrink)

In the setup of abstract elementary classes satisfying a local version of superstability, we prove the uniqueness property for μ‐forking, a certain independence notion arising from splitting. This had been a longstanding technical difficulty when constructing forking‐like notions in this setup. As an application, we show that the two versions of forking symmetry appearing in the literature (the one defined by Shelah for good frames and the one defined by VanDieren for splitting) are equivalent.