When trying to help teachers cope with the critical situations they face in classrooms, public policies are mainly concerned with improving initial teacher training. I claim in this article that the role of lifelong learning should no longer be undermined and that the design of teachers' training should be supported by a thorough examination of the cognitive processes involved. A faulty view of cognition may explain both our emphasis on initial training and most of the difficulties faced in designing teachers' (...) training. Searching existing alternative metaphors of cognition and investigating new ones constitutes a way of coping with these problems: first to design new forms of training, second to understand the processes involved in innovative training methods that have already been implemented. My focus in this article is precisely the ‘metaphor of cognition’ that underlies innovative teacher training methods. This metaphor is based on Peirce's pragmaticism, and it describes teachers' training as a process of taking and changing habits. This article mainly investigates the links between Peirce's later semiotics, Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception and Varela's theory of enaction, in order to propose a threefold definition of ‘habit’ and define the notion of ‘educational gesture’, which constitutes a translation of the concept of habit in the field of education and training. (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)

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

Semiotic Theory of Learning asks what learning is and what brings it about, challenging the hegemony of psychological and sociological constructions of learning in order to develop a burgeoning literature in semiotics as an educational foundation. Drawing on theoretical research and its application in empirical studies, the book attempts to avoid the problematization of the distinction between theory and practice in semiotics. It covers topics such as signs, significance and semiosis; the ontology of learning; the limits of learning; ecosemiotics; ecology (...) and sexuality. -/- The book is written by five of the key figures in the semiotics field, each committed to the belief that living is a process of interaction through acts of signification with a signifying environment. While the authors are agreed on the value of semiotic frameworks, the book aims not to present an entirely coherent line in every respect, but rather to reflect ongoing scholarship and debates in the area. In light of this, the book offers a range of possible interpretations of major semiotic theorists, unsettling assumptions while offering a fresh, and still developing, series of perspectives on learning from academics grounded in semiotics. -/- Semiotic Theory of Learning is a timely and valuable text that will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates working in the fields of educational studies, semiotics, psychology, philosophy, applied linguistics and media studies. (shrink)

This chapter examines two ways in which liberal thinkers have appealed to claims about disagreement in order to defend a principle of free speech. One argument, from Mill, says that free speech is a necessary condition for healthy disagreement, and that healthy disagreement is conducive to human flourishing. The other argument says that in a community of people who disagree about questions of value, free speech is a necessary condition of legitimate democratic government. We argue that both of these arguments, (...) in their standard guises, are premised upon contestable views about the realpolitik of disagreement in a liberal society. (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)

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.

If research devoted to the clandestine literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is today enjoying considerable expansion in the scholarly world, it tends, nonetheless, to be restricted to materialist considerations. However, other themes are open to exploration, such as the immaterialist one which is explicitly mentioned in two manuscripts (theRéflections morales et métaphisiques sur les religions et sur les connoissances de l'hommeand theJordanus Brunus Redivivus). After presenting and analyzing these two texts, we argue that this clandestine account of immaterialism (...) could explain both the evolution of this theory during the Enlightenment and the misunderstanding of Berkeley's philosophy. (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)

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)

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)

Here we question the mechanisms underlying the emergence of the feeling of control that can be modulated even when the feeling of being the author of one’s own action is intact. With a haptic robot, participants made series of vertical pointing actions on a virtual surface, which was sometimes postponed by a small temporal delay (15 or 65 ms). Subjects then evaluated their subjective feeling of control. Results showed that after temporal distortions, the hand-trajectories were adapted effectively but that the (...) feeling of control decreased significantly. This was observed even in the case of subliminal distortions for which subjects did not consciously detect the presence of a distortion. Our findings suggest that both supraliminal and subliminal temporal distortions that occur within a healthy perceptual–motor system impact the conscious experience of the feeling of control of self-initiated motor actions. (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)

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)

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)

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)

Research on corporate sustainability has started to acknowledge the role of temporality in creating more sustainable organizations. Yet, these advances tend to treat firms as monolithic and we have little understanding of how different temporal patterns throughout an organization shape perceptions of and actions toward sustainability. Building on studies highlighting how the temporal structures of work shape employee engagement with different organizational processes and issues, we seek to answer: How does the temporality of work practices structure perceptions of corporate sustainability (...) throughout the firm? Using data from an ethnography of a small European sustainable bank, we provide an account of the variety of ways in which employees in different departments perceive the bank and how they engage with sustainability. We then go on to show how the temporal structures of work practices within different departments help explain some divergence in perceptions of sustainability. Our study highlights the variegation of temporal structures in organizational processes of meaning-making and its role for a better understanding of the efforts to make corporations more sustainable. (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)

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)

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)

L'échapper belle signifie "se sortir de justesse d'une situation délicate". Cependant, prise au pied de la lettre, l'expression pourrait signifier "s'extraire d'une impasse d'une belle façon". Il s'agirait alors de la capacité à trouver des façons efficaces et élégantes d'échapper à des situations épineuses. Si l'échappée peut évoquer la fuite, voire la lâcheté, l'échappée belle relève du courage et du panache. Quelle sagesse recèle cette capacité à prendre la tangente en mariant le cran et le style? Comment rendre l'échappée belle? (...) Cet essai examine la notion d'échappée belle sous ses différentes facettes en faisant appel à des exemples empruntés à la littérature, à l'histoire et à la pop culture. Inventivité et créativité, esquive et ruse, manipulations lexicales, voies détournées, subtilités et subterfuges, tout est permis pour qui veut l'échapper belle. (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)

Providing Single Sign-On (SSO) between service providers and enabling service providers to share user personal attributes are critical for both users to benefit from a seamless access to their services, and service providers to realize new business opportunities. Today, however, the users have several independent, partial identities spread over different service providers. Providing SSO and attribute sharing requires that links (federations) are established between (partial) identities. In SAML 2.0 (Maler et al. 2003), the links between identities are stored and managed (...) at the network side by the identity providers (network-side identity federation). This model prevents the service providers from mass-correlating the partial identities they have, but the users must fully trust the identity providers. In this paper, we propose a complementary approach where the users have a full control of the links between their partial identities. It is a client-side identity federation approach, which relies on the introduction of a new cryptographic tool, called invariable partially blind signature scheme, that may be of independent interest. (shrink)

Il est commun, aujourd'hui, d'associer la démocratie au consensus, et ce d'une double manière : d'une part en admettant qu'elle est le meilleur régime politique possible, d'autre part en considérant que l'accord vaut intrinsèquement mieux que le désaccord, et l'entente que le conflit: La qualité de la démocratie tiendrait à ses débats publics, qui à la fois rendent possible la confrontation des points de vue, tout en y mettant fin par l'obtention de consensus éclairés et légitimés par la règle de (...) la majorité. Et si le conflit, au contraire, dans certaines conditions, devait servir de principe à la vie politique? Il ne suffit pas de vivre en démocratie pour rendre la démocratie vivante. La démocratie n'est pas un régime mais un questionnement. Elle exige des citoyens une interrogation continue sur le bien commun à suivre. Machiavel n'était pas un démocrate. Mais c'est étrangement en actualisant sa pensée, dans le sillage des travaux de Lefort, qu'il est possible d'associer le conflit civil avec l'imaginaire social pour redynamiser la démocratie par la tension conflictuelle entre l'idéologie et l'utopie. Penser la démocratie à partir de ce que donne à penser Machiavel : voilà ce que s'efforce de faire Sébastien Roman, pour proposer dans une perspective républicaine le modèle d'un espace public dissensuel."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)