Following up on previous results by Falmagne, this paper investigates possible mechanisms explaining how preference relations are created and how they evolve over time. We postulate a preference relation which is initially empty and becomes increasingly intricate under the influence of a random environment delivering discrete tokens of information concerning the alternatives. The framework is that of a class of real-time stochastic processes having interlinked Markov and Poisson components. Specifically, the occurence of the tokens is governed by a Poisson process, (...) while the succession of preference relations is a Markov process. In an example case, the preference relations are the various possible semiorders on the set of alternatives. Asymptotic results are obtained in the form of the limit probabilities of any semiorder. The arguments extend to a much more general situation including interval orders, biorders and partial orders. The results provide (up to a small number of parameters) complete quantitative predictions for panel data of a standard type, in which the same sample of subjects has been asked to compare the alternatives a number of times. (shrink)

The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished in two volumes with major original ...

In Darwinism's Struggle for Survival Jean Gayon offers a philosophical interpretation of the history of theoretical Darwinism. He begins by examining the different forms taken by the hypothesis of natural selection in the nineteenth century and the major difficulties which it encountered, particularly with regard to its compatibility with the theory of heredity. He then shows how these difficulties were overcome during the seventy years which followed the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, and he concludes by analysing the (...) major features of the genetic theory of natural selection, as it developed from 1920 to 1960. This rich and wide-ranging study will appeal to philosophers and historians of science and to evolutionary biologists. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophical and political thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings had a potency that was irresistible to the intellectual scene that swept post-war Europe, and have left a vital inheritance to contemporary thought. The central tenet of the Existentialist movement which he helped to found, whereby God is replaced by an ethical self, proved hugely attractive to a generation that had seen the horrors of Nazism, and provoked a revolution in post-war (...) thought and literature. In _What is Literature?_ Sartre the novelist and Sartre the philosopher combine to address the phenomenon of literature, exploring why we read, and why we write. (shrink)

Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader who (...) wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways." "In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche. (shrink)

A cornerstone of Sartre’s philosophy, _The Imaginary_ was first published in 1940. Sartre had become acquainted with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Berlin and was fascinated by his idea of the 'intentionality of consciousness' as a key to the puzzle of existence. Against this background, _The Imaginary_ crystallized Sartre's worldview and artistic vision. The book is an extended examination of the concepts of nothingness and freedom, both of which are derived from the ability of consciousness to imagine objects both (...) as they are and as they are not – ideas that would drive Sartre's existentialism and entire theory of human freedom. (shrink)

The perfect crime -- The spectre of the will -- The radical illusion -- Trompe-l'œl genesis -- The automatic writing of the world -- The horizon of disappearance -- The countdown -- The material illusion -- The secret vestiges of perfection -- The height of reality -- The irony of technology -- Machinic snobbery -- Objects in this mirror -- The Babel syndrome -- Radical thought -- The other side of the crime -- The world without women -- The surgical (...) removal of otherness -- The "laying-off" of desire -- The new victim order -- Indifference and hatred -- The revenge of the mirror people. (shrink)

In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories.

‘I should like to show here that the Ego is neither formally or materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world.’ _Jean-Paul Sartre _ _The Transcendence of the Ego_ is one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications and essential for understanding the trajectory of his work as a whole. When it first appeared in France in 1937 Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in a provincial French town. Attacking prevailing philosophical theories head on, Sartre (...) offers a brilliant and radical account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. He introduces many of the themes central to his major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, and anguish. This translation includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. _Jean-Paul Sartre_. The foremost French thinker and writer of the early post-war years. His books, which include _Being and Nothingness, Nausea, The Age of Reason _and _No Exit_ have exerted enormous influence in philosophy, literature, politics and drama. __. (shrink)

This new edition of "What is Literature?" also collects three other crucial essays of Sartre's for the first time in a volume of his.

Un essai qui prend l'époque à revers pour répondre à la question de la faillite de la communauté.

Rising exclusion rates indicate the continuing marginalisation of many young people in education in the UK. Working-class boys, children living in poverty, and children with additional/special educational needs are among those experiencing a disproportionate rate of exclusion. This book traces the processes of exclusion and alienation from school and relates this to a changing social and economic context. Jean Kane argues that policy on schooling, including curricular reform, needs to be re-connected to the broad political pursuit of social justice, (...) and presents compelling case studies of excluded pupils, showing the multi-faceted identities of pupils, with a particular focus on masculine and feminine identities. This invaluable contribution to the literature offers an alternative analysis where the social identities of pupils are shown to be tied up with their exclusion from school. Themes investigated include: the meanings of school exclusions social class, gender and schooling social identities of excluded pupils negotiating identities in school: moving towards exclusion exclusions and young people’s lives improving participation in schooling. Providing fascinating reading for teachers, social workers, researchers and policy-makers this book considers how educational disadvantage might be addressed through recognition of the gender and class identities of pupils. (shrink)

This article was originally Lai drunk leaves professor in 1994 year March 12 to 27 at Fu Jen Catholic University Department of Philosophy lecture on "Philosophy of Science" theme when the speech of course, today is led by Professor Shen-ching translated into Chinese to satisfy the readers. Speeches, the Lai drunk leaves professor from the phenomenological approach explore and rebuild "it" concept formation of thought processes, and especially from the physics theory in future test volume of this issue, that the (...) physics of the novel is that it is in theory integrated into the transcendental appearance regardless above, and thus different concepts in general regardless of the theory described. For him, physics theory although the use of purely abstract terms, but it still gives the specific physical presentation, try The arguments are purely ideal state, reflecting the world to open the actual Field of obvious things. He eventually proposed and therefore, physics can be interpreted as a phenomenological manifestation of Planning and its integration of theoretical representation regardless transcendental state, to give a physical reality now. This is a speech on physical reality delivered by Jean Ladrière in a series of talks related to philosophy of science during his visit to the Department of Philosophy, Fu Jen Catholic University from March 12 to March 27, 1994. Here it is translated into Chinese by Prof. Vincent Shen to exemplify an aspect of his philosophy. This paper attempts to reconstitute the process of thought by which the concept of reality is constructed and to consider it under the perspective of physics. For Jean Ladrière, the originality of physics is to integrate the transcendental discourse into its theoretical representation. All in using abstract terms, physical theories show us what happens effectively in the field of world manifestation. He would suggest that physics can be interpreted as a phenomenological project to make effective physical reality by integrating a transcendental discourse into its theoretical representation. (shrink)

A major figure in the contemporary critical world, Jean-Francois Lyotard originally introduced the term 'postmodern' into current discussions of philosophy. The Postmodern Explained is an engaging collection of letters addressed to young philosophers, including the actual children of some of Lyotard's colleagues, that inform the trajectory of his thinking in the period before The Postmodern Condition through The Differend.

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. -/- Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the (...) negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. -/- In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. -/- The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion. (shrink)