This paper analyzes a model of sequential parimutuel betting described as a two-horse race with a finite number of noise bettors and a finite number of strategic and symmetrically informed bettors. For generic objective probabilities that the favorite wins the race, a unique subgame perfect equilibrium is characterized. Additionally, two explanations for the favoriteâlongshot biasâaccording to which favorites win more often than the market's estimate of their winning chances implyâare offered. It is shown that this robust anomalous empirical regularity might (...) be due to the presence of transaction costs and/or to strategic bettors' subjective attitude to probabilities. (shrink)
After satisfying their quantitative and qualitative needs as regards nutrition, consumers in developed countries are becoming more involved in the ethical aspects of food production, especially when it relates to animal products. Social demands for respecting animal welfare in housing systems are increasing rapidly, as is social awareness of human responsibility towards farm animals. Many studies have been conducted on animal welfare measurement in different production systems, but the available information for small ruminants remains insufficient. In this study, a 75 (...) criteria-evaluation tool has been set up on the basis of the five freedoms concept. Animal welfare considerations have been analyzed in 25 documents, including labeling schemes, regulations, and recommendations from different European countries. The results show many differences between regular and organic small ruminant farming standards. Emergency measures are generally lacking. A weak representation of psychological aspects of animal welfare, especially by the current European legislation, is highlighted. (shrink)
Ce volume comprend les laquo;Actesraquo; de la Table Ronde reacute;aliseacute;e au sein du XXe Congregrave;s International d'Eacute;tudes Byzantines (Paris, ...
In classical India, Jain philosophers developed a theory of viewpoints ( naya-vāda ) according to which any statement is always performed within and dependent upon a given epistemic perspective or viewpoint. The Jainas furnished this epistemology with an (epistemic) theory of disputation that takes into account the viewpoint in which the main thesis has been stated. The main aim of our paper is to delve into the Jain notion of viewpoint-contextualisation and to develop the elements of a suitable logical system (...) that should offer a reconstruction of the Jainas’ epistemic theory of disputation. A crucial step of our project is to approach the Jain theory of disputation with the help of a theory of meaning for logical constants based on argumentative practices called dialogical logic . Since in the dialogical framework the meaning of the logical constants is given by the norms or rules for their use in a debate, it provides a meaning theory closer to the Jain context-sensitive disputation theory than the main-stream formal model-theoretic semantics. (shrink)
Towards the end of the Byzantine Empire many texts of the Latin Fathers were translated into Greek, beginning with the De Trinitate of Augustine. This flurry of translation spurred discussion on the authority of the Fathers. The Greeks were now confronted with the problem of what one should do when the (presumably infallible) Fathers justify apparent heresy (the Filioque) ? This question became crucial after the Council of Florence and the fall of the Byzantine Empire. What is the definition of (...) a Father? A saint? A disciple? Is it possible to honour a Father and yet refuse to follow him on a particular point of doctrine? (shrink)
The hypothesis I develop involves that we have been witnessing, during the last ten years or so, an interpenetration in the area of applied ethics of certain concepts originally belonging to different areas of ethics, namely bioethics, environmental ethics, and also business ethics. Certain concepts such as “future generations,” “consent,” “precautionary principle,” “intrinsic value,” “global governance,” “sustainable development,” or “scientific uncertainty” are becoming “thick ethical concepts,” in the terminology of metaethics; or in the terminology of American pragmatism: “living beliefs.” They (...) are now charged with strong moral contents that unfolds a new horizon of meaning at the heart of Western Modernity, a horizon largely defined by science and technical actions. Nevertheless, is this conceptual convergence in the area of applied ethics the sign of the coming of a new ethic of technique? I will discuss this topic taking as an example the case of nanotechnology. (shrink)
Les grandes tendances de l’art contemporain invitent dans leurs convergences étonnantes à renouveler notre image de la culture artistique. Quasi-mysticisme des artistes «visionnaires», ou jeux del’esprit des démarches dada, se rejoignent au delà des contrastes, pour rompre avec l’héritage artistique, le savoir infaillible, les voies usuelles de communication. La «perception aigüe d’une incompréhensibilité éternelle» ou le goût de la subversion peuvent.-ils s’enseigner? Qu’en est-il de notre désir de comprendre et de faire comprendre de telles démarches?
Much has been written on the relative merits of different readings of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The recent renewal of the debate has almost exclusively been concerned with variants of the ineffabilist (metaphysical) reading of TL-P - notable such readings have been advanced by Elizabeth Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and H. O. Mounce - and the recently advanced variants of therapeutic (resolute) readings - notable advocates of which are James Conant, Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd and Michael Kremer. During this debate, (...) there have been a number of writers who have tried to develop a third way, incorporating what they see as insights and avoiding what they see as flaws in both the ineffabilist and resolute readings. The most prominent advocates of these elucidatory readings of TL-P are Dan Hutto (2003) and Marie McGinn (1999). In this paper we subject Hutto's and McGinn's readings of TL-P to critical scrutiny. We find that in seeking to occupy the middle ground they ultimately find themselves committed to (and in the process commit Wittgenstein to) the very ineffabilism they (and Wittgenstein) are seeking to overcome. (shrink)
One of the fundamental questions raised by Ruchkin, Grafman, Cameron, and Berndt's (Ruchkin et al.'s) interpretation of no distinct specialized neural networks for short-term storage buffers and long-term memory systems, is that of the link between perception and memory processes. In this framework, we take the opportunity in this commentary to discuss a specific working memory task involving percept formation, temporary retention, auditory imagery, and the attention-based maintenance of information, that is, the verbal transformation effect.
In May 1933 the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger addressed a letter to the renowned historian and philosopher of science Émile Meyerson, a cri de coeur against Meyerson's patronizing attitude toward her. This recently discovered letter is published and translated here because it is an exceptional human document reflecting the gender power structure of our discipline in interwar France. At the age of forty-three, and with five books to her credit, Metzger was still a junior scholar in the exclusively male (...) community of French historians and philosophers of science. We sketch the institutional setting of higher learning in France at the time, noting the limited openings it offered to would-be femmes savantes, and situate Metzger in this context. We also describe the philosophical differences between Metzger and Meyerson. Though Metzger never managed to obtain a post of her own, in her letter to Meyerson she forcefully lays claim, at least, to a mind of her own. (shrink)
In this article, I examine the historiographical ideas of the historian of chemistry Helene Metzger (1886-1944) against the background of the ideas of the members of the groups and institutions in which she worked, including Alexandre Koyre, Gaston Bachelard, Abel Rey, Henri Berr and Lucien Febrve. This article is on two interdependent levels: that of particular institutions and groups in which she worked (the Centre de Synthese, the International Committee for History of Science, the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et Techniques (...) (Sorbonne) and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) and that of historiographical ideas. I individuate two particular theoretical aspirations pursued by the historians in Metzger's milieu: the ideal of total history and the study of the human mind. These two objectives were seen by Metzger and many others as implicating each other. Moreover, Metzger and other historians wanted to integrate the practice of commentary of texts in the realisations of those ideals. I argue, however, that these objectives proved very difficult to realise at the same time. One tradition which stemmed out of these discussions, exemplified by Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault, focused on the mind and knowledge, and renounced commentary of texts and total history as it was understood by the historians of the Centre de Synthese. The latter, however, did not really pursue the study of the mind. Moreover, historians like Metzger and Koyre who practised an attentive analysis of texts could not realise total history. (shrink)
Jacques Arènes | : Marie de la Trinité est une mystique contemporaine dont Jacques Lacan fut l’analyste. Cette trajectoire est paradigmatique de la manière dont une mystique rencontre la souffrance psychique dans le paysage culturel du milieu du xxe siècle. La pensée de Jacques Lacan concernant la mystique, ainsi que des considérations psychanalytiques plus générales à propos de la paternité, sont mises en relation avec la logique apophatique de cette spirituelle. Cette mystique « antinaturelle » se déploie en une sécheresse (...) vertigineuse, à la lisière du Symbolique, et dans une fascination vis-à-vis de l’attraction du Père, impérieuse et contrariée. L’article analyse en particulier, à travers la figure de Marie de la Trinité, la manière dont la mystique contemporaine se confronte, dans le champ chrétien, à la question de la mort de Dieu, et du déclin du Père. | : Marie de la Trinité was a contemporary mystic who was analyzed by Jacques Lacan. The trajectory of her life is a paradigmatic example of the way in which a mystic encountered psychic suffering in the cultural landscape of the mid-20th century. Jacques Lacan’s thinking about mysticism, as well as broader psychoanalytical considerations about fatherhood, are associated here with the apophatic path of Marie. As her counter-natural mysticism unfolds she draws ever closer to the symbolic, fascinated by the dual nature of the attraction, at once imperious and impeded, exerted by the Father. This article uses the figure of Marie de la Trinité as the specific vantage point to examine how contemporary Christian mysticism is faced with the question of the death of God and the decline of the Father. (shrink)
Valérie Chevassus-Marchionni | : Le « cas » de Marie de la Trinité illustre d’une manière particulière la thématique « croyance et psychanalyse ». En effet, chez cette soeur dominicaine des campagnes, la foi religieuse et la croyance en sa vocation de dévotion interfèrent très étroitement avec l’expérience psychanalytique : d’une part, elle se prête pendant quatre années à une cure psychanalytique avec le docteur Jacques Lacan, d’autre part, elle exercera elle-même quelque temps la profession de psychothérapeute. Pour Marie de (...) la Trinité, la psychanalyse arrive à un moment critique de son existence, alors que ce qu’elle nomme ses « obsessions » lui rendent la vie impossible et lui interdisent même de pratiquer sa foi ; elle se tourne alors vers des traitements divers, parfois brutaux et inhumains. Ce n’est pas la psychanalyse qui la guérira, mais c’est à partir de cette expérience qu’il lui sera donné de triompher de son mal et, en comprenant quelle en était l’origine, d’entreprendre « sa propre rééducation » et de connaître « la lumière et l’harmonie » dans sa vie de dévotion. | : The case of Mary of the Trinity illustrates in a particular way the thematic of “belief and psychoanalysis”. Indeed, in this Dominican sister, a missionary in the country, religious faith and belief in her vocation of devotion closely interfere with psychoanalytical experience : on the one hand she undergoes a four year psychoanalytical cure with Doctor Jacques Lacan ; on the other hand she works for a while as a psychotherapeutist. For Mary of the Trinity psychoanalysis appears at a critical moment in her life, just as what she calls her “obsessions” make her life unbearable and even prevent her from practising her faith ; then she tries many different treatments, sometimes brutal and inhuman. Psychoanalysis won’t cure her, but thanks to this experience, she will overcome her pain and by understanding its origin will undertake “her own reeducation” and know “light and harmony” in her life of devotion. (shrink)
Anne-Marie Weidler Kubanek: Nothing less than an adventure: Ellen Gleditsch and her life in science Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s10698-011-9119-8 Authors Marelene Rayner-Canham, Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, Corner Brook, NL, Canada Geoff Rayner-Canham, Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, Corner Brook, NL, Canada Journal Foundations of Chemistry Online ISSN 1572-8463 Print ISSN 1386-4238.
A history of the Atomic Bomb from Marie Curie to Hiroshima. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” — Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita after witnessing the successful demonstration of the atom bomb. The bomb, which killed an estimated 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima and destroyed the countryside for miles around, was one of the defining moments in world history. That mushroom cloud cast a terrifying shadow over the contemporary world and continues to do so today. But how could this (...) have happened? What led to the creation of such a weapon of mass destruction? From the moment scientists contemplated the destructive potential of splitting the atom, the role of science changed. Ethical and moral dilemmas faced all those who realized the implications of their research. Before the Fall-Out charts the chain of events from Marie Curie’s scientific breakthrough through the many colourful characters such as Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Lord Rutherford, whose discoveries contributed to the bomb. The story of the atomic bomb spans 50 years of prolific scientific innovation, turbulent politics, foreign affairs and world-changing history. Through personal stories of exile, indecision and soul-searching, to charges of collaboration, spying and deceit, Diana Preston presents the human side of an unstoppable programme with a lethal outcome. (shrink)
L. M. de Rijk, born at Hilversum (Nederland) November, 6 1924, is Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Leiden, and Honorary Professor at the University of Maastricht. A complete bibliography of his writings up to 1999 is available in: Maria Kardaun and Joke Spruyt (eds.) - The winged chariot. Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk - Leiden, Brill, 2000. pp. XV-XXVI. I made some corrections, updated the bibliography and (...) omitted the publications in Dutch. (shrink)
: This introduction highlights two of Mondzain's contributions in the chapter reproduced here, "Iconic Space and the Rule of Lands." The first is her discussion of a link between images and power, which stresses the formal characteristics of paintings rather than their narratives. The second is her examination of the specific task which representation is called on to perform in religious as opposed to secular contexts, where spiritual, otherworldly figures are given physical shape and form.
