The Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City was founded on the hypothesis that direct contact with illness is a strong force in igniting the curiosity and energy that can, from time to time, lead to great leaps in our understanding of human biology and disease. This was repeatedly proven at the Hospital, a special locale where the “prepared minds” of physicians uncovered new facts that often led to effective treatments. It is neither a hospital (...) nor a laboratory, but a hospital-laboratory, which celebrated its 100th birthday in 2010. Although this was a first for America, the idea had been in the minds of European and British physician-investigators from the late 19th .. (shrink)

The Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg remains largely unexplored as far as social science is concerned. An excellent study in electoral sociology by Jules Gérard-Libois gives interesting insights and points out rather convincingly that Luxembourg is endowed with a political system that has a marked degree of specificity, be it from the point of view of the electoral system, electoral habits or the social structure in general. It shows in particular that owing to the rather peculiar electoral system, a large party (...) diversity and a dynamic regionalism is fostered.Consequently, the systematic study of small political entities such as Luxembourg enables a considerable and genuine refinement of political analysis. (shrink)

Jules Coleman, one of the world's leading philosophers of law, here presents his most mature work so far on substantive issues in legal theory and the appropriate methodology for legal theorizing. In doing so, he takes on the views of highly respected contemporaries such as Brian Leiter, Stephen Perry, and Ronald Dworkin.

This book by one of America's preeminent legal theorists is concerned with the conflict between the goals of justice and economic efficiency in the allocation of risk, especially risk pertaining to safety. The author approaches his subject from the premise that the market is central to liberal political, moral, and legal theory. In the first part of the book, he rejects traditional "rational choice" liberalism in favor of the view that the market operates as a rational way of fostering stable (...) relationships and institutions within communities of individuals with broadly divergent conceptions of the good. However, markets are needed most where they are most difficult to create and sustain, and one way to understand contract law in liberal legal theory, according to Professor Coleman, is as an institution designed to reduce uncertainty and thereby make markets possible. Another target of this book is the prevalent view that tort law helps rectify market failures when transaction costs are too high to permit contracting. The author argues instead that tort law should be understood as a way of rectifying wrongful losses not inefficient exchanges. (shrink)

Based on a framework that distinguishes several types, roles and functions of values in science, we discuss legitimate applications of values in the validation of computer simulations. We argue that, first, epistemic valuesEpistemic values, such as empirical accuracyAccuracy and coherence with background knowledgeBackground knowledge, have the role to assess the credibilityCredibility of simulation results, whereas, second, cognitive valuesCognitive values, such as comprehensiveness of a conceptual modelConceptual model or easy handling of a numerical model, have the role to assess the usefulness (...) of a model for investigating a hypothesisHypothesis. In both roles, values perform what we call first-order functions. In addition, cognitive values may also serve an auxiliary function by facilitating the assessment of credibility. As for a third type of values, i.e. social valuesSocial values, their legitimate role consists in specifying and weighing epistemic and cognitive values with respect to practical uses of a simulation, which is considered a second-order function. Rational intersubjective agreementAgreement on how to specify and weigh the different values is supposed to ensure objectivity in simulation validation. (shrink)

We prove that everyn-modal logic betweenKnandS5nis undecidable, whenever n ≥ 3. We also show that each of these logics is non-finitely axiomatizable, lacks the product finite model property, and there is no algorithm deciding whether a finite frame validates the logic. These results answer several questions of Gabbay and Shehtman. The proofs combine the modal logic technique of Yankov–Fine frame formulas with algebraic logic results of Halmos, Johnson and Monk, and give a reduction of the representation problem of finite relation (...) algebras. (shrink)

A number of jurisdictions, including England and Wales after their adoption of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, require that sentences be `proportionate' to the severity of the crime. This book, written by the leading architect of `just deserts' sentencing theory, discusses how sentences may be scaled proportionately to the gravity of the crime. Topics dealt with include how the idea of a penal censure justifies proportionate sentences; how a penalty scale should be `anchored' to reduce overall punishment levels; how non-custodial (...) penalties should be graded and used; and how political pressures impinge on sentencing policies. (shrink)

This book reflects on the variety of ways in which mourning affects political and social life. Through the narrative of the contributors, the book demonstrates how mourning is intertwined with politics and how politics involves a struggle over which losses and whose lives can, or should, be mourned.

The principle that a sentence should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence remains at the centre of penal practice and scholarly debate. This volume explores highly topical aspects of proportionality theory that require examination and further analysis. von Hirsch and Ashworth explore the relevance of the principle of proportionality to the sentencing of young offenders, the possible reasons for departing from the principle when sentencing dangerous offenders, and the application of the principle to socially deprived offenders. They (...) examine the claim that the principle tends to be associated with greater severity in sentencing, and explore the relevance of penance and of restorative justice to proportionality theory. Their examination of arguments and counter-arguments culminates in a re-statement of the main criteria for proportionate sentencing.The authors are well known for their previous writings on proportionality theory, and this volume broadens the theory to deal with important contemporary issues in crime and punishment. (shrink)

Do participants in shared activity have mutual obligations to do their bit? This article shows this question has no one-size-fits-all answer and offers a pluralist account of the normativity of shared agency. The first part argues obligations to do one's bit have three degrees of involvement in shared activity. Such obligations might, obviously, bolster co-participants’ resolve to act as planned (degree 1). Less obviously, there also are higher and lower degrees of involvement. Obligations to do one's bit might provide our (...) agency-pooling mechanism. When they do, we act together by virtue of satisfying them (degree 2). Conversely, some shared activities involve no obligation (degree 0). In the second part, I argue shared agency theory is best served by a non-moralistic conception of obligation, one on which co-participants’ obligations need be neither strict-performance obligations, nor directed ones. Overall, my arguments suggest that we can choose how to coordinate normatively our shared activities. (shrink)

In this introduction to the new edition of Durkheim and Mauss's Primitive Classification, I flesh out Durkheim and Mauss’s account of the acquisition of the concept of class, and I argue that their account steers a middle course between traditional strands of rationalism and empiricism.

What is the role of psychoanalysis in today's world? _Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow _presents a selection of papers written by Hanna Segal. The collection introduces the reader to a wide spectrum of insights into psychoanalysis, ranging from current thoughts on the nature of dreaming to new ideas about vision and disillusionment. Her long interest in factors affecting war is pursued in her examination of the psychotic factors, symbolic significance and psychological impact of the events of September the 11th, and the (...) ensuing war on Iraq. The second half of the book discusses Segal's presentations to conferences and symposia from 1969-2000, this material is split into six sections: Models of the mind and mental processes Psychoanalytic technique Segal on Klein Segal on Bion Envy and narcissism Interviews. _Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow_ is a masterly contribution to the field. Segal's clarity of thought and striking clinical illustrations make the book accessible to those new to the field as well as those acquainted with her seminal work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Jurisprudence: Method and Subject Matter Legality and Authority Positivism: Austin vs. Hart The Authority of Law Judicial Discretion Incorporationism and Legality Raz' s Theory of Authority Incorporationism and Authority Conclusion Postscript References.

Milton Friedman's famous methodological essay contains, along with much else, some strands that look as though they were taken from the “empirical-scientific” fabric described by Karl Popper. Think, for example, of Friedman's conviction that the way to test a hypothesis is to compare its implications with experience. Or of his more or less explicit espousal of the view that while no amount of facts can ever prove a hypothesis true, a single “fact” may refute it. Or of his assertion that (...) hypotheses are to be accepted only as provisionally true, and then only after repeated efforts to refute them have failed. The appearance of these Popperian ideas is not surprising. (shrink)

Next SectionIn emphasizing the importance of the separability thesis, legal philosophers have inadequately appreciated other philosophically important ways in which law and morality are or might be connected with one another. In this article, I argue that the separability thesis cannot shoulder the philosophical burdens that it has been asked to bear. I then turn to two issues of greater importance to jurisprudence. These are ‘the moral semantics of law’ and ‘the normativity of theory construction in jurisprudence’. The moral semantics (...) claim is that legal content is best understood as moral directives about what is to be done and who is to decide what is to be done. The problem is that legal positivists typically hold that only social facts contribute to the content of law, and it is hard to see how a positivist can hold both the social-facts claim and the moral-semantics claim. I argue that not only are the two claims consistent with one another, but that legal positivists must hold some version of the moral semantics claim if they are to make sense of the claim that legal reasons purport to be content-independent moral reasons for acting. In Section 3 of the article, I take up the question of whether theory construction in jurisprudence is normative or descriptive. This is hard to do in part because so little attention has been paid to correctly formulating the issue. I suggest a demanding test for descriptivism; namely, that an adequate analysis of law can be provided entirely in terms of its formal features. I then defend this claim against three arguments designed to show because governance by law is necessarily desirable or valuable that, we cannot characterize law without making reference to those values or to other material features of law. This constitutes a limited but powerful defence of descriptive jurisprudence. (shrink)

Research programs in empirical psychology from the past two decades have revealed implicit biases. Although implicit processes are pervasive, unavoidable, and often useful aspects of our cognitions, they may also lead us into error. The most problematic forms of implicit cognition are those which target social groups, encoding stereotypes or reflecting prejudicial evaluative hierarchies. Despite intentions to the contrary, implicit biases can influence our behaviours and judgements, contributing to patterns of discriminatory behaviour. These patterns of discrimination are obviously wrong and (...) unjust. But in remedying such wrongs, one question to be addressed concerns responsibility for implicit bias. Unlike some paradigmatic forms of wrongdoing, such discrimination is often unintentional, unendorsed, and perpetrated without awareness; and the harms are particularly damaging because they are cumulative and collectively perpetrated. So, what are we to make of questions of responsibility? In this article, we outline some of the main lines of recent philosophical thought, which address questions of responsibility for implicit bias. We focus on (a) the kind of responsibility at issue; (b) revisionist versus nonrevisionist conceptions of responsibility as applied to implicit bias; and (c) individual, institutional, and collective responsibility for implicit bias. (shrink)

. Selective incapacitation reexamined: The national academy of sciences' report on criminal careers and “career criminals”. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 19-35.

We explore the relationship between jurisprudential theories pertaining to the nature of law and semantic and metasemantic theories pertaining to the meaning of ‘law’ in the wake of Dworkin’s notorious Semantic Sting argument in Law’s Empire (HUP 1986). Along the way we delineate various aspects of the semantic and metasemantic underpinnings of ‘law’ as an artifact term and advance the general methodological point that jurisprudential inquiry is only negligibly constrained by the findings of semantic and metasemantic inquiry.

H.L.A. Hart'sThe Concept of Lawis the most important and influential book in the legal positivist tradition. Though its importance is undisputed, there is a good deal less consensus regarding its core commitments, both methodological and substantive. With the exception of an occasional essay, Hart neither further developed nor revised his position beyond the argument of the book. The burden of shaping the prevailing understanding of his views, therefore, has fallen to others: notably, Joseph Raz among positivists, and Ronald Dworkin among (...) positivism's critics. Dworkin, in particular, has framed, then reframed, the conventional understanding, not only of Hart's positivism, but of the terms of the debate between positivists and him. While standing on the sidelines, Hart witnessed the unfolding of not only a lively debate between positivists and Dworkin, but an equally intense one among positivists as to positivism's (and his) core claims. The most important debate has been between so-called inclusive and exclusive positivists: a debate as much about Hart's legacy as about the proper interpretation of legal positivism. (shrink)

Suppose the prevailing distribution of property rights is unjust as determined by the relevant conception of distributive justice. You have far more than you should have under that theory and I have far less. Then I defraud you and in doing so reallocate resources so that our holdings ex post more closely approximate what distributive justice requires. Do I have a duty to return the property to you? There are many good reasons for requiring me to return to you what (...) I have taken. One is that while you may have no right in justice to all that you own, it does not follow that I do, or that I have a right to take it. Thus, requiring me to return the property to you is a way of recognizing that I had no right to take it from you in the first place. (shrink)

1. bd. Zur innern geschichte, 1835-1841. Der Dichter.--2. bd. Der denker.

Philosophers who have written about implicit bias have claimed or implied that individuals are not responsible, and therefore not blameworthy, for their implicit biases, and that this is a function of the nature of implicit bias as implicit: below the radar of conscious reflection, out of the control of the deliberating agent, and not rationally revisable in the way many of our reflective beliefs are. I argue that close attention to the findings of empirical psychology, and to the conditions for (...) blameworthiness, does not support these claims. I suggest that the arguments for the claim that individuals are not liable for blame are invalid, and that there is some reason to suppose that individuals are, at least sometimes, liable to blame for the extent to which they are influenced in behaviour and judgment by implicit biases. I also argue against the claim that it is counter-productive to see bias as something for which individuals are blameworthy; rather, understanding implicit bias as something for which we are liable to blame could be constructive. (shrink)

Reprint. Originally published: Tsedek u-mishpat, die mosaisch-rabbinische Tugend- und Rechtslehre. 2., verm. und verb. Aufl. Gross-Kanizsa: J. Markbreiter, 1862.

A successful writer and committed feminist's search for spiritual wholeness after a career crisis, the sudden death of her brother, and the birth of her son moves her to seek out a range of remarkable women who are consciously tryng to live in balance.

The goal of this paper is to propose a model that distinguishes between irony and humor in the context of literary texts. The comparative model was constructed based on existing models, and elaborated on them, substantiating the model through textual analysis focusing on cues for irony and cues for humor. The research was based on four conceptual paradigms: pragmatic studies of irony, pragmatic studies of humor, a pragmatic approach to the study of literary texts, and theories of text interpretation. The (...) textual analysis was based on an existing model for the interpretation of indirect speaker's meanings, and on the concepts “cues“ and “clues“ as employed in that model. (shrink)

Dieser Band prasentiert eine kritische Analyse der avancierten politischen Theorie der Gegenwart. Zum einen geht es hier um jungere Diskussionen im Anschluss an Niklas Luhmanns Systemtheorie, die eine sozialwissenschaftliche Entzauberung des Staatsbegriffs betreiben. Zum anderen nimmt der Autor neuere politische Philosophien aus Frankreich in den Blick, die eine zeitgenossische Theorie "des Politischen" im Unterschied zu "der Politik" entwickeln. Die Arbeit legt die gemeinsame theoretische Basis der scheinbar weit auseinanderliegenden Argumentationsformen frei und beschreibt sie als zwei Seiten einer Entpolitisierung der Politik: (...) politische Technokratie einerseits, politische Ontologie auf der anderen Seite. Die Studie zeigt, in welcher Weise heute wichtige Theorien zentrale Aspekte von den autoritaren Staatslehren Hegels und Carl Schmitts ubernehmen. Dem stellt der Autor einen scharf begrenzten Politikbegriff in der Tradition Kants entgegen. (shrink)

A Platonist philosopher and priest of Apollo at Delphi, Plutarch (ca. 45-120 CE) covers in his vast oeuvre of miscellaneous writings and biographies of great men virtually every aspect of ancient religion, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Egyptian, Persian. This collection of essays takes the reader on a hike through Plutarch's Religious Landscapes offering as a compass the philosopher's considerations on issues of philosophical theology, cult, ethics, politics, natural sciences, hermeneutics, atheism, and life after death. Plutarch provides a unique vantage point to (...) reconstruct and understand many of the interesting developments that were taking in the philosophical and religious world of the first centuries CE. (shrink)

Reactive emotion accounts hold that blameworthiness should be analyzed in terms of the familiar reactive emotions. However, despite the attractions of such views, we are not persuaded that blameworthiness is ultimately a matter of correctly felt reactive emotion. In this paper, we draw attention to a range of little-discussed considerations involving the moral significance of the passage of time that drive a wedge between blameworthiness and the reactive emotions: the appropriateness of the reactive emotions is sensitive to the passage of (...) time in ways that attributions of blameworthiness are not. There are a number of ways in which reactive emotion accounts might attempt to accommodate the moral significance of time, however. We consider the most important of these, but ultimately find them wanting. Accordingly, we conclude that the prospects for the reactive emotion accounts are bleak. Our argument, if successful, has a range of implications for legal theory, most importantly in providing a novel moral basis for statutes of limitations and in shedding light on new avenues in the theory of criminal law generally. (shrink)

A dissertation in the tradition of logical positivism includes a discussion of the functions and methods of philosophy and a critique of ethics and theology.

Oedipus’s basic error was to have viewed evil as a problem, whereas he learns to his grief that it is actually a mystery, an irresolvable paradox, a natural contradiction between the mutually exclusive possibilities of self-determination and predetermination, between freedom of the will and divine omniscience. This is the quandary as it is perceived by philosophy and religion. In the domains of religion and theology Fate is indeed a mystery. Ill-equipped as I am to elucidate mysteries, I will move the (...) discussion to a firmer ground, where the concept of Fate is merely a problem, where scholars, those who “traffic in words,” as Goethe calls us, stand a fighting chance.1My major concerns will be: 1) to determine what .. (shrink)