1. Philosophie anthropologique--2. Philosophie du savoir scientifique.

In the social sciences we hardly can create laboratory conditions, we only can try to find out which kinds of experiments Nature has carried out. Knowledge about Nature's designs can be used to infer conditions for reliable predictions. This problem was explicitly dealt with in Haavelmo's (1944) discussion of autonomous relationships, Friedman's (1953) as-if methodology, and Simon's (1961) discussions of nearly-decomposable systems. All three accounts take Marshallian partitioning as starting point, however not with a sharp ceteris paribus razor but with (...) the blunt knife of negligibility assumptions. As will be shown, in each account reflection on which influences are negligible, for what phenomena and for how long, played a central role. (shrink)

Glenn Harrison [Journal of Economic Methodology, 2013, 20, 103–117] discusses four related forms of methodological intolerance with respect to field experiments: field experiments should rely on some form of randomization, should be disconnected from theory, the concept of causality should only be defined in terms of observables, and the role of laboratory experiments is dismissed. As is often the case, the cause of intolerance is ignorance, as it is here. To acquire knowledge about potential influences, which we need for both (...) the evaluation of internal and external validity of experimental results, we cannot do without theory. A purely empiricist methodology will be unable to give us sufficient understanding of the validity of these results. An account of causality only based on directly observed things, is an account based on factual influences only. This account will be too restricted, because it will not deal with the unobserved potential influences, which we need – again – for the evaluat... (shrink)

Generally, rational decision-making is conceived as arriving at a decision by a correct application of the rules of logic and statistics. If not, the conclusions are called biased. After an impressive series of experiments and tests carried out in the last few decades, the view arose that rationality is tough for all, skilled field experts not excluded. A new type of planner's counsellor is called for: the normative statistician, the expert in reasoning with uncertainty par excellence. To unravel this view, (...) the paper explores a specific practice of clinical decision-making, namely Evidence-Based Medicine. This practice is chosen, because it is very explicit about how to rationalize practice. The paper shows that whether a decision-making process is rational cannot be assessed without taking into account the environment in which the decisions have to be taken. To be more specific, the decision to call for new evidence should be rational too. This decision and the way in which this evidence is obtained are crucial to validate the base rates. Rationality should be model-based, which means that not only the isolated decision-making process should take a Bayesian updating process as its norm, but should also model the acquisition of evidence (priors and tests results) as a rational process. (shrink)

La singularité de la démarche philosophique de Gabriel Marcel vient de ce qu'elle renoue avec ses origines socratiques ; elle se fonde résolument sur le concret, c'est-à-dire le corps-propre (par oposition au corps-objet ou instrument), la sensation traitée comme manière d'être au monde plutôt que comme message, la mémoire, la volonté.

We compare diverse degrees of compactness and finiteness in Boolean algebras with each other and investigate the influence of weak choice principles. Our arguments rely on a discussion of infinitary distributive laws and generalized prime elements in Boolean algebras. In ZF set theory without choice, a Boolean algebra is Dedekind finite if and only if it satisfies the ascending chain condition. The Denumerable Subset Axiom implies finiteness of Boolean algebras with compact top, whereas the converse fails in ZF. Moreover, we (...) derive from DS the atomicity of continuous Boolean algebras. Some of the results extend to more general structures like pseudocomplemented semilattices. (shrink)

Starting from a recent discussion in the Netherlands about the application of the Pontifical Council for Social Communication for the Internet extension ‘.catholic,’ the author inquires into the meaning of confessing the catholicity of the church. He shows that ‘catholic’ is a title phrase, a descriptive term that often functions as a proper name. It is important to distinguish between both functions ; in the PCSC application ‘catholic’ functions, contrary to what its critics assume, as a proper name. In ecumenical (...) discussions, the main problem with catholicity is the Roman Catholic Church's alleged all-or-nothing approach to catholicity, in which it asserts its own catholicity while rejecting the claim that other churches are catholic. This approach, however, has been abandoned for a degrees of catholicity approach which allows the Roman Catholic Church to recognise the catholicity of Protestant churches. Finally, the author argues that confessing the catholicity of the church is rather like pledging ourselves to furthering this catholicity than like asserting that this catholicity has been achieved. (shrink)

The author argues that Thomas G. Weinandy in his book Does God Suffer? starts from the axiom of divine apathy, rather than that he argues for it. He criticizes the hermeneutic implicit in Weinandy’s interpretation of 1 Samuel 15, and proposes an alternative approach. Moreover, he criticizes Weinandy’s appeal to agreement among the church fathers and his appeal to the doctrine of the Trinity.

In de economische wetenschap worden vragen beantwoord met behulp van modellen. Voor ieder type vraag bestaat een eigen klasse van modellen. Het type vraag bepaalt de eisen waaraan het model moet voldoen en geeft daarbij aan hoe de modellen gemaakt dienen te worden. Dit artikel behandelt de vraag die gesteld wordt om tot begrip te komen: de ‘hoezo-vraag’. Om duidelijk te maken welke modellen hoezo-vragen impliceren zal dit type vraag vergeleken worden met ‘waarom-vragen’ en ‘hoeveelvragen’. Het antwoord op een waarom-vraag (...) is een verklaring. Het antwoord op een hoeveel-vraag is een meetresultaat. (shrink)

When observing or measuring phenomena, errors are inevitable, one can only aspire to reduce these errors as much as possible. An obvious strategy to achieve this reduction is by using more precise instruments. Another strategy was to develop a theory of these errors that could indicate how to take them into account. One of the greatest achievements of statistics in the beginning of the 19th century was such a theory of error. This theory told the practitioners that the best thing (...) they could do is taking the arithmetical mean of their observations. This average would give them the most accurate estimate of the value they were searching for. Soon after its invention, this method made a triumphal march across various sciences. However, not in all sciences one stood waving aside. This method, namely, only worked well when the various observations were made under similar circumstances and when there were very many of them. And this was not the case for e.g. meteorology and actuarial science, the two sciences discussed in this paper. (shrink)

Depuis le 29 juin 2006, le Conseil des droits de l’homme a adopté la « Déclaration sur les droits des peuples autochtones » ; elle doit être débattue par l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU, à New York. Les citoyens d’Athènes, familiers des oraisons funèbres, annuellement prononcées chez eux sur le thème de l’Autochtonie, se sont dits..