Open peer commentary on the target article “From Objects to Processes: A Proposal to Rewrite Radical Constructivism” by Siegfried J. Schmidt. Upshot: Interested in the practical side of philosophy, I tell a story as an example of the never-ending process of life and add some questions: which stories can we tell that undermine and complement our traditions, emotions, abstract rationality, and mainstream ideologies?
Richard Wollheim grew up lonely and sad in London's wealthy suburbs during the 1920s and 1930s, yet his was a childhood more interesting than most. He had an impresario father and a “Gaiety Girl” mother; together they attracted important guests (Diaghilev, Kurt Weill, Serge Lifar) to the grand houses and hotels that punctuated the landscape of Wollheim's early years. Germs is his account of that time, of the years he spent adoring his charming but distant father; of his regret (...) for loathing his beautiful, mindless mother. Told in prose that with hypnotic ease moves from deadpan comedy to poignant loneliness, Germs is already a classic work of memoir. (shrink)
Research Ethics Boards (REBs) provide oversight for Canadians that research projects will comply with standards of ethics if the studies are carried out as described in the documents that have been approved. While REBs have traditionally been affiliated with institutions such as universities and hospitals, a number of factors - including the increased volume of research being conducted outside academic centres - have resulted in the establishment of some private or independent REBs. This, in turn, has raised concerns about the (...) credibility of REBs in the private sector and their capacity to handle issues around conflict of interest. This Breakout Session was an opportunity to hear the perspectives of people associated with institutional and private REBs and examine perceived problems with boards in the private sector, scrutinize theoretical and structural differences between types of REBs, and look at whether or not there is room for both institutional and private boards in the Canadian research review landscape. (shrink)
This paper offers a critique of Derrida's deconstruction of the promise on the grounds that it does not adequately account for the ethical constitution of the promise in the pragmatic context of face-to-face dialogue. Instead, Derrida focuses on the way in which the promise opens the horizon of interpretation or readability for an indefinite community of readers. Derrida's view is explicated at length, drawing on Limited Inc, Le monolinguisme de l'autre: ou, la prosthèse d'origine, and 'Avances', the Preface to (...) class='Hi'>Serge Margel's Le tombeau du dieu artisan. Paul Ricoeur's interpretation of the promise as an attestation of my availability to the other person is presented as a more justifiable grounding of ethics. Key Words: attestation • community • Derrida • ethics • pragmatics • promise • Ricoeur. (shrink)
On the subject of football, Serge Mésonès, former French international turned journalist, wrote that ?the true miracle remains the birth of a great team; everything which could contribute to this deserves consideration. Whatever happens, the coach and his group will always form that tandem which Bella Guttman used to compare to a symphony orchestra and their conductor: there is a significant difference between the performance when Toscanini is conducting, and that when the conductor is mediocre? (Mésonès 1992, 12). With (...) the aim of better understanding the issues of such an assertion, in this article we will develop the theoretical elements that we began to tackle in the book Teaching Collective Sport in Schools (1999).1 This will involve clarifying, and going into detail on, some conceptions relating to the long journey that is the formation of a sporting group, exploring one scenario at a time. (shrink)
Le Laboratoire d’ANalyse Cognitive de l’Information (LANCI) effectue des recherches sur le traitement cognitif de l’information. La recherche fondamentale porte sur les multiples conceptions de l’information. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux modèles cognitifs de la classification et de la catégorisation, tant dans une perspective symbolique que connexionniste. La recherche appliquée explore les technologies informatiques qui manipulent l’information. Le territoire privilégié est celui du texte. La recherche est de nature interdisciplinaire. Elle en appelle à la philosophie, à l’informatique, à la linguistique (...) et à la psychologie. Volume 6, Numéro 2007-02 – Août 2007 Publication du Laboratoire d’ANalyse Cognitive de l’Information Directeurs : Luc Faucher, Jean-Guy Meunier, Serge Robert et Pierre Poirier Université du Québec à Montréal Document disponible en ligne à l’adresse suivante : www.lanci.uqam.ca Tirage : 5 exemplaires Aucune partie de cette publication ne peut être conservée dans un système de recherche documentaire, traduite ou reproduite sous quelque forme que ce soit - imprimé, procédé photomécanique, microfilm, microfiche ou tout autre moyen - sans la permission écrite de l’éditeur. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. / All rights reserved. No part of this publication covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic or mechanical - without the prior written permission of the publisher. Dépôt légal – Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada Dépôt légal – Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec.. (shrink)
Although much attention has been given to Jacques Lacan in his rereading of Freud and to French women analysts in their deconstruction of traditional psychoanalysis, little has been available in the US on contemporary male French analysts and their treatment of women. She Speaks/He Listens illustrates the range of thought among some well-known French male psychoanalysts today--from Lacanians to anti-Lacanians to eclectics--with regard to women and sexual difference. Through the interview format, with its possibilities for surprise and spontaneity, the book (...) makes available the thought of Alain Didier-Weill, Bela Grunberger, Patrick Guyomard, Serge Lebovici, Rene Major, Gerard Pommier and Francois Roustang, as well as the internationally famed analyst Otto Kernberg, who gives a fascinating account of the French influences on his work. Other themes addressed include the place of Freud and Lacan in current theory and the relation of feminism to contemporary French male psychoanalysts. (shrink)
In the fall of 1979, I was asked by Serge Thion, a libertarian socialist scholar with a record of opposition to all forms of totalitarianism, to sign a petition calling on authorities to insure Robert Faurisson's "safety and the free exercise of his legal rights." The petition said nothing about his "holocaust studies" (he denies the existence of gas chambers or of a systematic plan to massacre the Jews and questions the authenticity of the Anne Frank diary, among (...) other things), apart from noting that they were the cause of "efforts to deprive Professor Faurisson of his freedom of speech and expression." It did not specify the steps taken against him, which include suspension from his teaching position at the University of Lyons after the threat of violence, and a forthcoming court trial for falsification of history and damages to victims of Nazism. (shrink)
Beginning in 1946 Henri de Lubac, S.J., sparked controversy by arguing against the Scholastic doctrine of “pure nature,” according to which God could have created man with a purely natural end rather than the supernatural end of the beatific vision. Although de Lubac’s view prevailed after his 1965 book, The Mystery of the Supernatural, the debate over the natural desire for God and pure nature has recently been renewed. This essay discusses the current state of the debate with particular attention (...) to four recent books, a collection of essays edited by Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., and monographs by Lawrence Feingold, Steven A. Long, and John Milbank. (shrink)
It is sometimes suggested that Collingwood's philosophy of history is decidedly anti-naturalist and argues for a complete separation between history and the natural sciences. The purpose of this paper is to examine this suggestion and to argue that Collingwood's conception of the relationship between history and natural sciences is much more subtle and nuanced than such a view would allow for. In fact, there is little in Collingwood to offend contemporary naturalistic sensibilities reasonably construed. The impression that Collingwood's views are (...) incompatible with naturalism stems, in part, from an overly Kantian interpretation of the idea of rationality, as applied to historical agents, in terms of transcendentally fixed norms. This difficulty, however, does not arise if we opt for a more Hegelian interpretation of rationality in terms of continuity in thought, which Collingwood himself seemed to favor. Examining Collingwood's pronouncements on these topics leads one to the conclusion that, while objecting to the excesses of early naturalism, Collingwood saw no insurmountable obstacles to the reconciliation of science and history and their potential collaboration in some areas. (shrink)
This article offers a review of Richard Rorty’s attempts to come to terms with the role of religion in our public and intellectual life by tracing the key developments in his position, partially in response to the ubiquitous criticisms of his distinction between private and public projects. Since Rorty rejects the possibility of dismissing religion on purely epistemic grounds, he is determined to treat it, instead, as a matter of politics. My suggestion is that, in this respect, Rorty’s position is (...) best construed as that of a humanist rather than a post-modernist. Ultimately, it appears that, in his view, the positive element of religion—i.e. the idea of religion as a social gospel—has been absorbed and transformed into a utopian striving which humanists associate with the ideal of democracy. Hence, in this regard, religion can be considered obsolete. Yet, without explicitly invoking the usual epistemic grounds, Rorty’s arguments for excluding religion from the public sphere remain rather thin, and an interest in reforming rather than excluding religion would have been more consistent with his general outlook. (shrink)
In this first paper dealing with Heraclitus' doctrine as such (as opposed to the texts both of our sources on him and of the surviving fragments of his book), the author examines and discusses two recent controversial articles with the content of which he sympathizes - one by Gábor Betegh (2007) on the cosmological (physical) status of Heraclitus' psychê, and the other by Aryeh Finkelberg (1998) on Heraclitus' cosmogony and the reality of a Heraclitean world conflagration. This (...) examination is aimed, first, at fostering "marginal" opinions which the author believes to be fundamentally correct - and the rejection of which since times immemorial (by Schleiermacher and others) he considers to have greatly harmed and hampered our understanding of the Ephesian philosopher ; second, at introducing some personal corrections and additions to these opinions ; and third, at illustrating the advantages of a deliberately un prejudiced approach towards our sources, an approach based on the presumption of innocence, knowledgeability and intelligence for all our informers and on the rejection of any rejection [this is not a dittography!] of any source on ground of mere suspicion.Among the proposed novelties (or olden oblivitions) the following particularly deserve to be underscored: (1) the defense of the authenticity of "fr. B 76" DK qua three different fragments and (2) the reconstruction of Heraclitus' system of four physical exhalations - both of which are connected with the notion of a world soul; and (3) the interpretation of Plat. Soph. 242 C - 243 A [T 132] as confirming (and not as contradicting) Arist. De cael. 279b12 [T 170] and (4) the cosmogonical interpretation of F 31 - both of which presuppose the reality of a Heraclitean ecpyrosis.Yet, since the author's dogmatism does not extend beyond the requirement of having re course to (methodo)logically sound procedures, he is ready to give up any conclusion of which it can be proven that it is irreconcilably contradicted by a sounder one and supported by none. (shrink)
By employing the theoretical template provided by agency theory, this article contributes a detailed clinical analysis of a large multinational Canada-headquartered telecommunications company, Nortel. Our analysis reveals a twenty-first century norm of usual suspects: a CEO whose compensation is well above those of his peers, a dysfunctional board of directors, acts of income smoothing to preserve the confidence of volatile investors, and revelations of financial irregularities followed by a downfall. In many ways, the spectacular rise and – sudden – fall (...) of Nortel illustrates excesses of actors within, and contradictions of the system of corporate governance implied by the agency model. Furthermore, this case illustrates limitations of the agency framework in complex situations with short-term oriented investors. (shrink)
While philosophers have, for centuries, pondered upon the relation between mind and brain, neuroscientists have only recently been able to explore the connection analytically — to peer inside the black box. This ability stems from recent advances in technology and emerging neuroimaging modalities. It is now possible not only to produce remarkably detailed images of the brain’s structure (i.e. anatomical imaging) but also to capture images of the physiology associated with mental processes (i.e. functional imaging). We are able to see (...) how specific regions of the brain ‘light up’ when activities such as reading this book are performed, and how our neurons and their elaborate cast of supporting cells organize and coordinate their tasks. As demonstrated in the other chapters of this book, the mapping of the human mind (mostly by measuring regional changes in blood flow, initially by positron emission tomography (PET) and recently by functional magnetic resonance imaging or (fMRI)) has provided insight into the functional neuroanatomy of neuropsychiatric diseases. Amazingly, the idea that regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) is related intimately to brain function goes back more than a century. As is often the case in science, this idea was initially the result of unexpected observations. The Italian physiologist Angelo Mosso first expressed the idea while studying pulsations of the living human brain that keep pace with the heartbeat (Mosso, 1881). These brain pulsations can be observed on the surface of the fontanelles in newborn children. Mosso believed that they reflected blood flow to the brain. He observed similar pulsations in an adult with a post-traumatic skull defect over the frontal lobes. While studying this subject, a peasant named Bertino, Mosso observed a sudden increase in the magnitude of the ‘brain’s heart-beats’ when the church bells signalled 12 o’clock, the time for a required prayer. The changes in brain pulsations occurred independently of any change in pulsations in the forearm.. (shrink)
By employing the theoretical template provided by agency theory, this article contributes a detailed clinical analysis of a large multinational Canada-headquartered telecommunications company, Nortel. Our analysis reveals a twenty-first century norm of usual suspects: a CEO whose compensation is well above those of his peers, a dysfunctional board of directors, acts of income smoothing to preserve the confidence of volatile investors, and revelations of financial irregularities followed by a downfall. In many ways, the spectacular rise and – sudden – fall (...) of Nortel illustrates excesses of actors within, and contradictions of the system of corporate governance implied by the agency model. Furthermore, this case illustrates limitations of the agency framework in complex situations with short-term oriented investors. (shrink)
The present study partly supports, partly corrects, and partly complements recent discussions of Arius Didymus fr. 23 and fr. 25 Diels, Aetius I, 20, 1 and Sextus Empiricus AM X, 3-4 = PH III, 124. It proposes a comprehensive interpretation of the first text (A.I), defends the attribution of its content to Zeno of Citium (A.II), interprets the Stoic definitions of space, place and void to be found in the other sources (B.I) and again vindicates the attribution of the core (...) definitions to Zeno (B.II). The central methodological principle is the presumption of innocence for sources.The main conclusions of (A) are: 1. Arius Didymus' fr. 23 deals only with the coherence and the structure of the cosmos, not with its immobility; 2. The coherence of the cosmos, as that of any object, is determined by its hexis which pushes its parts towards its centre; 3. The structure of the cosmos, its stratification into the four concentric spheres of the elements, is determined by the combined effect of (a) the thrust downwards they all undergo from the cosmos' hexis; (b) their own natural weight or lightness and (c) the relative quantitative values of these weights or lightnesses; 4. The reasons adduced against Zeno's authorship are not based on the evidence but on the now prevalent disparaging sceptical approach towards Stobaeus' way of excerpting from Arius.The main conclusions of (B) are: 1. There is no deep contradiction between the various de finitions of space ascribed by our sources to Zeno, Chrysippus and the Stoics in general: what Chrysippus denied was the form of the de finition attributed to Zeno by Aetius, not the concept de fined, even though this form seems to have prevailed later in the school; 2. There is no good reason therefore to question its ascription to Zeno as some modern researchers have done; 3. Here again the error is due to a predominantly sceptical approach towards the reliability of our sources. (shrink)
This paper is about the most important technical problem faced by Structured Meanings Semantics: the reiteration of hyperintensional functors (i.e., functors of -categorial languages of the sort defined by Max Cresswell in [6]). A way to solve this problem in a general and natural way by using Scott's Domains is both suggested and shown. The result is a semantics which unrestrictedly allows reiterations of hyperintensional functors. The semantics is also extended to accommodate -categorial languages with variables.
We consider the question of randomness of the probability ΩU[X] that an optimal Turing machine U halts and outputs a string in a fixed set X. The main results are as follows: ΩU[X] is random whenever X is $\Sigma _{n}^{0}$-complete or $\Pi _{n}^{0}$-complete for some n ≥ 2. However, for n ≥ 2, ΩU[X] is not n-random when X is $\Sigma _{n}^{0}$ or $\Pi _{n}^{0}$ Nevertheless, there exists $\Delta _{n+1}^{0}$ sets such that ΩU[X] is n-random. There are $\Delta _{2}^{0}$ sets (...) X such that ΩU[X] is rational. Also, for every n ≥ 1, there exists a set X which is $\Delta _{n+1}^{0}$ and $\Sigma _{n}^{0}$-hard such that ΩU[X] is not random. We also look at the range of ΩU as an operator. We prove that the set {ΩU[X]: X ⊆ 2<ω} is a finite union of closed intervals. It follows that for any optimal machine U and any sufficiently small real r, there is a set X ⊆ 2<ω recursive in ∅′ ⊕ r, such that ΩU[X] = r. The same questions are also considered in the context of infinite computations, and lead to similar results. (shrink)
We introduce a notion of syntactical truth predicate (s.t.p.) for the second order arithmetic PA 2 . An s.t.p. is a set T of closed formulas such that: (i) T(t = u) if and only if the closed first order terms t and u are convertible, i.e., have the same value in the standard interpretation (ii) T(A → B) if and only if (T(A) $\Longrightarrow$ T(B)) (iii) T(∀ x A) if and only if (T(A[x ← t]) for any closed first (...) order term t) (iv) T(∀ X A) if and only if (T(A[X ←▵]) for any closed set definition $\triangle = \{x \mid D(x)\}$ ). S.t.p.'s can be seen as a counterpart to Tarski's notion of (model-theoretical) validity and have main model properties. In particular, their existence is equivalent to the existence of an ω-model of PA 2 , this fact being provable in PA 2 with arithmetical comprehension only. (shrink)
I shall tell you the story, propose an overview, and show the structure, goal, and peculiarities of this monstrous edition that I undertook forty-four years ago: the Heraclitea, of which ten volumes have appeared since 1999. One volume was published in November 2011 and a few others are still in preparation. While telling you this story, I shall strive to show the radical differences between my approaches and the standard ones taught worldwide in the departments of classics and ancient philosophy (...) in universities. (shrink)
L’année 2007 marquait le dixième anniversaire de la mort du grand sociologue québécois Fernand Dumont (1927-1997), qui était aussi, et par‐dessus tout, philosophe, mais également théologien et poète. Au cours de ces dix années, le prestige attaché à sa pensée et à son oeuvre n’a cessé de grandir, comme en témoigne la récente publication de ses oeuvres complètes en cinq volumes aux Presses de l’Université Laval (Québec). Dans cette communication, nous ferons ressortir l'universalité de la théorie dumontienne de la culture (...) et sa valeur heuristique eu égard aux problèmes de notre temps. Telle que nous la concevons – dans une perspective qui s’inspire largement de l’herméneutique contemporaine – l’universalité est toujours singulière en ce sens qu’elle ne peut être scindéed’une expérience de culture, en l’occurrence celle de l'« émigration » ou du déracinement, que Dumont a subie comme un véritable « traumatisme » mais à laquelle il a cherché en même temps à répondre, en édifiant une théorie universelle de « la culture comme distance et mémoire » dont il a exposé le cadre général dans son oeuvre maîtresse parue en 1968, Le Lieu de l’homme. (shrink)
