Our purpose is to give a phenomenological interpretation of fear and to highlight, while following Heidegger's reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the basic tone in which average existence moves. We show that signs that are given in fear are related to a certain kind of knowledge. The knowledge of coming into closeness of farness. But since knowledge of what comes into closeness is also what second Heidegger tries to think with the word premonition (Ahnung) — premonition as knowledge of Ereignis (...) — we wonder if hermeneutics of fear is really to be considered as a phenomenological description, or if it’s not already a sort of attention paid to the dimension, phenomenology itself, belongs to. (shrink)

English summary: Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956) was one of the most important members of the Lwow-Warsaw school of logic. The thirteen translated articles in this volume demonstrate the protean form of Lukasiewiczs work, from his texts on Aristotle and the principle of non-contradiction and syllogistics to modal logic, intuitionism, and multivalent logics. The articles show in particular his preoccupations with logical precision and the problem of human liberty. French description: Avec Kazimierz Twardowski, Stanislaw Lesniewski et Alfred Tarski, le logicien et (...) philosophe polonais Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956) est l'un des membres les plus importants de l'Ecole de Lvov-Varsovie. Celebre pour ses ouvrages consacres a Aristote, notamment sur le principe de non-contradiction et sur la syllogistique, il a egalement publie des articles majeurs sur la logique propositionnelle, la logique modale, l'intuitionnisme et les logiques multivalentes, dont il fut l'un des fondateurs. Enfin, il a contribue a faire reconnaitre l'importance des travaux en logique de l'ecole megarico-stoicienne, trop longtemps eclipses par ceux d'Aristote sur la syllogistique. Mais Lukasiewicz ne fut pas seulement un logicien et un historien brillant, il s'engagea aussi dans les polemiques philosophiques de son temps. Il defendit ainsi la methode logique en philosophie. Proche sur ce point des membres du Cercle de Vienne, il ne rejetait pas pour autant les questions metaphysiques, commecelle du determinisme qui l'occupa toute sa vie. Les treize articles de ce recueil, fruit d'un travail collectif de traduction, ont pour ambition de montrer le caractere proteiforme de l'oeuvre de Lukasiewicz, preoccupe autant par la precision logique que par le probleme de la liberte humaine. (shrink)

The project of this Précis de philosophie de la logique et des mathématiques (vol. 1 under the direction of F. Poggiolesi and P. Wagner, vol. 2 under the direction of A. Arana and M. Panza) aims to offer a rich, systematic and clear introduction to the main contemporary debates in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. The two volumes bring together the contributions of thirty researchers (twelve for the philosophy of logic and eighteen for the philosophy of mathematics), specialists in (...) the history or philosophy of logic or mathematics. Each volume consists of ten chapters; each chapter is about forty pages, is independent from the others and deals with a particular philosophical question about logic or mathematics. The objective is to offer to the French-speaking reader a reference book. On many of the issues addressed, this Précis offers the first clear and thorough synthesis that is available in French. -/- This book is intended for third year / master's students, but also for teachers of philosophy in secondary or higher education, for logicians and mathematicians willing to take a philosophical look at the fundamental concepts of their discipline, and for any reader interested in the basic issues discussed in the philosophy of logic and mathematics. Each chapter is self-contained, although some basic training in logic (or in mathematics, as the case may be) is required. The book should be looked at as a comprehensive framework for contemporary discussions in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, while also giving some guidance on the disciplinary content required by these discussions. -/- The first three chapters of the present volume (on the philosophy of mathematics) are devoted to the history of the philosophy of mathematics: from antiquity to the modern era, and from this period to the foundational crisis of the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century. Next, four chapters deal with the crucial questions for the philosophy of mathematics of the twentieth century: the opposition and/or comparison of set theory and category theory as foundational frameworks for mathematics; mathematical constructivism; the analysis of calculability; and Benaceraff's problem. The two following chapters are focused on the philosophy of mathematical practice, by treating the notion of ideals of proof, in particular explanation and purity, and the notion of informal proof and the use of visual artifacts in mathematical argumentation. Finally the last chapter deals with the applicability of mathematics, including the role of probability. -/- In Chapter 1, Sébastien Maronne and David Rabouin present the history of the philosophy of mathematics from antiquity to the modern era. The goal is to show that the philosophy of mathematics has a history as ancient as mathematics and philosophy itself, a history largely continuous with the latter, often by staying out of sync with respect to the former. In Chapter 2, Sébastien Gandon discusses the question of the foundations of mathematics from Kant to the end of the nineteenth century. By tying this question to Kant, he is able to show that the discussion of the foundations of mathematics that occupied a large part of these two centuries has much older roots. Accent is placed on the differences between the framework proposed by Kant for making sense of classical mathematics and the use made by Frege and then Russell of logical tools for giving a different reading of arithmetic and real analysis. The link between between these different conceptions and the evolution of mathematics itself is also underlined. -/- Chapter 3, written by Hourya Benis-Sinaceur and Mirna Džamonja, deals with the evolution of mathematics in the twentieth century, notably the structuralist turn of Dedekind, E. Noether, and Bourbaki, and certain more recent developments. They devote themselves, among other things, to explaining how these developments can be understood as responses to and extensions of questions posed during the foundational debate of the immediately preceding era. -/- In Chapter 4, Jean-Pierre Marquis and Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz discuss the different foundational options coming from set theory and category theory. They discuss, among other things, Lawvere's program to replace ZF with an axiomatization of the category of sets, the latter judged better adapted to the needs of contemporary mathematics. Different reactions, as much philosophical as technical, raised by this program are also taken into account. -/- Constructive mathematics are the object of Chapter 5, in which Gerhard Heinzmann and Mark van Atten examine in a critical and comparative manner a variety of constructivisms, including intuitionism, constructive type theory, predicativism, and finitism. -/- In Chapter 6, Guido Gherardi and Maël Pegny present computability theory, stressing its philosophical consequences. They discuss the basic concepts of this theory, for the computability of both the natural numbers and the real numbers. They then tackle the theory of computational complexity. -/- In Chapter 7, Andrea Sereni and Fabrice Pataut present Benacerraf's problem, opposing every possible account of mathematical knowledge to the availability of a theory of truth founded on an abstract ontology of mathematical objects. They give an overview of the original problem and its reformulation by Hartry Field, and reconstruct the debate that this problem has raised, by meeting at once the major opposing positions today of the analytic affiliation of the philosophy of mathematics, as much those on the platonist side as on that of nominalism. -/- In Chapter 8, Valeria Giardino and Yacin Hamami treat certain crucial aspects of the philosophy of mathematical practice. They deal in particular with the notion of an informal proof and on the role of artifacts in mathematical reasoning. They consider how such proofs, making use of these means, can contribute to the understanding of theorems and mathematical theories, thanks also to the role of visualisation and the aid of computer tools. -/- Why do mathematics often give several proofs of the same theorem? This is the question that Andrew Arana raises in Chapter 9, introducing the notion of an epistemic ideal and discuss two such ideals, the explanatoriness and purity of proof. -/- Chapter 10 is devoted to the applicability of mathematics in the study of empirical phenomena. After summarizing the history of this question, going back to Plato and Aristotle and passing by Mill and Kant, Daniele Molinini and Marco Panza reconstruct the contemporary debate, in relation, among other things, to questions raised in the philosophy of science. -/- Two appendices complete the volume. In the first Frédéric Patras treats the French tradition in philosophy of mathematics of the 20th century. In the second, Maria Carla Galavotti discusses the notion of probability and its use in science. (shrink)

Whether unconscious stimuli can modulate the preparation of a cognitive task is still controversial. Using a backward masking paradigm, we investigated whether the modulation could be observed even if the prime was made unconscious in 100% of the trials. In two behavioral experiments, subjects were instructed to initiate a phonological or semantic task on an upcoming word, following an explicit instruction and an unconscious prime. When the SOA between prime and instruction was sufficiently long , primes congruent with the task (...) set instruction led to speedier responses than incongruent primes. In the other condition , no task set priming was observed. Repetition priming had the opposite tendency, suggesting the observed task set facilitation cannot be ascribed solely to perceptual repetition priming. Our results therefore confirm that unconscious information can modulate cognitive control for currently active task sets, providing sufficient time is available before the conscious decision. (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)

ABSTRACT We consider in this work the problem of iterated belief revision. We propose a family of belief revision operators called revision with memory operators and we give a logical (both syntactical and semantical) characterization of these operators. They obey what we call the principle of strong primacy of update: when one revises his beliefs by a new evidence, then all possible worlds that satisfy this new evidence become more reliable than those that do not. We show that those operators (...) have a satisfying behaviour concerning the iteration of the revision process. Then we provide four particular operators of this family. (shrink)

Belief merging aims at combining several pieces of information coming from different sources. In this paper we review the works on belief merging of propositional bases. We discuss the relationship between merging, revision, update and confluence, and some links between belief merging and social choice theory. Finally we mention the main generalizations of these works in other logical frameworks.

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)

My aim in this paper is to show the relevance of an ‘effective semiotics’; that is, a field study based upon Peirce's semiotics. The general context of this investigation is educational semiotics rather than semiotics of teaching: I am concerned with a general approach of educational processes, not with skills and curricula. My paper is grounded in a field study that I carried out in a school, L'Ecole de la Neuville, implementing Institutional Pedagogy in France. I first investigate the relevance (...) of Peirce's semiotics in such a context. I then propose several definitions for the word ‘institution’, referring to the core concepts of this particular pedagogy, before describing the concept of ‘institution-sign’, which is considered a useful tool for making effective connections between several aspects of semiotics. I finally assert that an institution constitutes a tool that allows teachers to favour semiosis in educational contexts. (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)

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)

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)

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)

The main aim of our paper is to implement Leibniz's analysis of the conditional right in the framework of a dialogical approach to Public Announcement Logic. According to our view, on one hand: PAL furnishes a dynamic epistemic operator which models communication exchange between different agents that seems to be very close to Leibniz understanding of the dynamics between the truth of a proposition and the knowledge of the truth of that proposition (Leibniz calls the latter certification of its truth); (...) on the other hand, the dialogical approach provides a semantics for the dynamic epistemic operator in the context of conditional right by means of which: (i) the exchange between agents leading to a public announcement amounts to the (contractual) interaction of commitments of both the benefactor and the beneficiary of a conditional right (ii) the notion of certification is understood as an action, namely as a move where the beneficiary asks the benefactor to stand to his commitments, (iii) some restrictions specific to the logical nature of the head and the tail of the conditional right can be implemented by combining PAL with some features of linear logic within the same theory of meaning. (shrink)

Michel Henry a fondé une partie de son oeuvre philosophique sur la phénoménologie matérielle. L'ouvrage tente d'en analyser la singularité, parmi les oeuvres d'autres phénoménologistes tels que Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur et Derrida. Cette analyse renvoie à une interrogation de la phénoménologie matérielle elle-même et ouvre d'autres voies de réflexion.

Il est arrivé que l’on compare Machiavel à La Boétie pour grossièrement les opposer, selon l’idée fausse que le premier serait du côté du prince, et le second du côté du peuple. Nous proposons, ici, une étude comparative de leurs pensées qui se concentre sur leur manière de lire les Anciens et de se situer vis-à-vis de la culture humaniste de leur époque, pour mieux saisir adéquatement leurs différences et leurs similitudes.

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)

The theory of social property relations and its historical sociology The theory of social property relations (or Political Marxism) represents an important breakthrough in the renewal of Marxian historical sociology. Rooted in a specific reinterpretation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism grounded in a comparative history of social property regimes, the theory renews historical materialism through a deep historical, relational and geopolitical understanding of history. It offers an important epistemological shift in our understanding of historical change. At the core (...) of the theory is a decisive attempt to debunk the pitfalls of teleological and deterministic conception of history that litters most Liberal, Weberian and Marxist conceptions of history. The theory’s recent developments are also proposing a reinterpretation of the international and geopolitical developments of capitalism and modernity. The purpose of this article is to offer a general presentation of the core attributes, contributions and developments of the theory. (shrink)

We propose the notion of a quasiminimal abstract elementary class. This is an AEC satisfying four semantic conditions: countable Löwenheim–Skolem–Tarski number, existence of a prime model, closure under intersections, and uniqueness of the generic orbital type over every countable model. We exhibit a correspondence between Zilber’s quasiminimal pregeometry classes and quasiminimal AECs: any quasiminimal pregeometry class induces a quasiminimal AEC, and for any quasiminimal AEC there is a natural functorial expansion that induces a quasiminimal pregeometry class. We show in particular (...) that the exchange axiom is redundant in Zilber’s definition of a quasiminimal pregeometry class. (shrink)

Le deuxième siècle inaugure une nouvelle trame d’expression artistique dans laquelle vient s’immiscer le discours philosophique et sociologique. La relation Courbet-Proudhon nous invite à envisager une nouvelle organisation de l’expérience esthétique en résonance avec une articulation de la conscience collective et de la conscience individuelle dont le concept d’« esthésie»s’affirme comme faculté qui y est spécifiquement dédiée.

Mars 1980. Une série d'entretiens publiés par le Nouvel Observateur fait scandale. Jean-Paul Sartre, un mois avant sa mort, y révoque des pans entiers de son oeuvre, dénigrant la notion d'angoisse et reléguant l'athéisme pour s'intéresser au messianisme juif et à la résurrection des corps. Face à lui, son dernier secrétaire, Benny Lévy. Accusé par Simone de Beauvoir de manipuler Sartre, Benny Lévy offre à l'écrivain une dernière occasion de revisiter son oeuvre.

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)

The roots of the « Bolivarian revolution » are located in the fall of the dictatorship in 1958. The role of the armed forces in the history of the Venezuelan left considerably predates Chavez’s accession to power in 1998. If we are to understand the political process involved here, we must grasp the nature of the historical bonds between the radical left and certain sectors of the armed forces. The article reviews this history, examining the achievements of the Chavez governments (...) in power since 1998; It then addresses certain current debates in the country, notably on the question of the construction of a socialism for the twenty-first century and the role of the armed forces in the struggles of the country. (shrink)

Sébastien Richard se propose dans ce quinzième volume des Cahiers du Centre de logique de présenter ces résultats, à la fois du point de vue des concepts philosophiques et du point de vue de la technique logique mis en jeu dans la ...

We propose in this paper a new family of belief merging operators, that is based on a game between sources : until a coherent set of sources is reached, at each round a contest is organized to find out the weakest sources, then those sources has to concede. This idea leads to numerous new interesting operators and opens new perspectives for belief merging. Some existing operators are also recovered as particular cases. Those operators can be seen as a special case (...) of Booth's Belief Negotiation Models [BOO 02], but the achieved restriction forms a consistent family of merging operators that worths to be studied on its own. (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)

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)

Eudemian ethics -- Nicomachean ethics -- Magna moralia -- Virtues and vices.

Joe Sachs has followed up his brilliant translation of Aristotle's Physics with a new translation of Metaphysics. Sachs's translations bring distinguished new light onto Aristotle's works, which are foundational to history of science. Sachs translates Aristotle with an authenticity that was lost when Aristotle was translated into Latin and abstract Latin words came to stand for concepts Aristotle expressed with phrases in everyday Greek language. When the works began being translated into English, those abstract Latin (...) words or their cognates were used, thus suggesting a level of jargon and abstraction, and in some cases misleading interpretation, which was not Aristotle's language or style. These important new translations open up Aristotle's original thought to readers. (shrink)