In the global economy, linguistic diversity influences economic and political development as well as public policies in positive and negative ways. It leads to financial costs, communication barriers, divisions in national unity, and, in some extreme cases, conflicts and war--but it also produces benefits related to group and individual identity. What are the specific advantages and disadvantages of linguistic diversity and how does it influence social and economic progress? This book examines linguistic diversity as a global social phenomenon and considers (...) what degree of linguistic variety might result in the greatest economic good.Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber look at linguistic proximity between groups and between languages. They describe and use simple economic, linguistic, and statistical tools to measure diversity's impact on growth, development, trade, the quality of institutions, translation issues, voting patterns in multinational competitions, and the likelihood and intensity of civil conflicts. They address the choosing of core languages in a multilingual community, such as the European Union, and argue that although too many official languages might harm cohesiveness, efficiency, and communication, reducing their number brings about alienation and disenfranchisement of groups.Demonstrating that the value and drawbacks of linguistic diversity are universal, How Many Languages Do We Need? suggests ways for designing appropriate linguistic policies for today's multilingual world. (shrink)

This book offers a critical examination of those theories and advances a new argument for punishment's justification, calling it the 'duty view'.

This project explored what constitutes “ethical practice of mathematics”. Thematic analysis of ethical practice standards from mathematics-adjacent disciplines (statistics and computing), were combined with two organizational codes of conduct and community input resulting in over 100 items. These analyses identified 29 of the 52 items in the 2018 American Statistical Association Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice, and 15 of the 24 additional (unique) items from the 2018 Association of Computing Machinery Code of Ethics for inclusion. Three of the 29 items (...) synthesized from the 2019 American Mathematical Society Code of Ethics, and zero of the Mathematical Association of America Code of Ethics, were identified as reflective of “ethical mathematical practice” beyond items already identified from the other two codes. The community contributed six unique items. Item stems were standardized to, “The ethical mathematics practitioner…”. Invitations to complete the 30-min online survey were shared nationally (US) via Mathematics organization listservs and other widespread emails and announcements. We received 142 individual responses to the national survey, 75% of whom endorsed 41/52 items, with 90–100% endorsing 20/52 items on the survey. Items from different sources were endorsed at both high and low rates. A final thematic analysis yielded 44 items, grouped into “General” (12 items), “Profession” (10 items) and “Scholarship” (11 items). Moreover, for the practitioner in a leader/mentor/supervisor/instructor role, there are an additional 11 items (4 General/7 Professional). These results suggest that the community perceives a much wider range of behaviors by mathematicians to be subject to ethical practice standards than had been previously included in professional organization codes. The results provide evidence against the argument that mathematics practitioners engaged in “pure” or “theoretical” work have minimal, small, or no ethical obligations. (shrink)

O presente artigo busca traçar um estudo político-filosófico e se dedica a articular as nuances do conceito arendtiano de ação, sobre o entendimento do agir humano dentro do espaço público. Observar as nuances e a imprevisibilidade pela qual a ação humana é expressa frente à convivência entre iguais e diferentes no espaço público é enxergar a forma com a qual as singularidades humanas e o fenômeno da revelação das identidades se tornam evidentes. Dessa maneira, o objetivo geral do presente trabalho (...) se perfaz em analisar como a dimensão política do conceito arendtiano de ação está ligada à busca da liberdade do indivíduo no espaço público. Dessa forma, busca-se entender as interações interpessoais em meio a pluralidade humana e a procura pela liberdade frente ao mundo das aparências. (shrink)

This debate, I shall argue, has everything to do with Aristotle. Aristotle raises the charge of epiphenomenalism himself against a theory that seems to have close affinities to his own, and he offers what has the makings of an emergentist response. This leads to controversy within his own school. We find opponents ranged on both sides, starting with his own pupils, several of whom are stout defenders of epiphenomenalism, and culminating in the developed emergentism of later commentators. Aristotle’s theory and (...) the debate that ensued are thus quite relevant to contemporary discussions. But first we need to get clear on terms. (shrink)

This paper concerns the credibility problem for commitments. Commitments play an important role in cooperative human interactions and can dramatically improve the performance of joint actions by stabilizing expectations, reducing the uncertainty of the interaction, providing reasons to cooperate or improving action coordination. However, commitments can only serve these functions if they are credible in the first place. What is it then that insures the credibility of commitments? To answer this question, we need to provide an account of what motivates (...) us to abide by our commitments. We first discuss two conceptions of the nature of the commitments present in joint action and of the norms that govern them. We contend that while normative considerations may have some motivational force, there are reasons to doubt that they, by themselves, could provide a sufficient motivational basis to fully explain why agents abide by their commitments and thus why their commitments are credible. In the next two sections, we discuss two proposals regarding further sources of motivation, reputation management and social emotions. We argue that while reputation management and social emotions certainly play a role in motivating us to act as committed, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons to think that neither captures the most basic motivational force at work in sustaining commitments. We propose instead that the need to belong, i.e., the need to affiliate with others and form long-lasting bonds with them, is what primarily motivates us to interact and engage with those around us and act so as to preserve and reinforce the bonds we have forged with them. We argue that the need to belong is a more basic proximate motivation for conforming to commitments, in the sense both that affiliative behaviors are evidenced much earlier in human development than either reputation management or social emotions and that the need to belong is at least part of an explanation of why we care for our reputation and why we care about others’ assessments of our behavior. (shrink)

In his recent book, Killing in War, Jeff McMahan sets out a number of conditions for a person to be liable to attack, provided the attack is used to avert an objectively unjust threat: (1) The threat, if realized, will wrongfully harm another; (2) the person is responsible for creating the threat; (3) killing the person is necessary to avert the threat, and (4) killing the person is a proportionate response to the threat. The present article focuses on McMahan's second (...) condition, which links liability with responsibility. McMahan's use of the responsibility criterion, the article contends, is too restrictive as an account of liability in general and an account of liability to be killed in particular. In order to defend this claim, the article disambiguates the concept of liability and explores its role in the philosophical analysis of the permission to cause harm to others. (shrink)

Recent work in cerebral neurology should be used to fashion a new synthesis with anthropological studies. Beginning with Paul D. Madean's model of the triune brain, we explore Ralph Wendell Burhoe's question whether creative processes result from a coadaptation, perhaps in ritual itself, of genetic and cultural information. Then we examine the division of labor between right and left cerebral hemispheres and its implications for the notions of play and “ludic recombination.” Intimately related to ritual, play may function in the (...) social construction of reality analogous to mutation and variation in organic evolution. Finally, we consider how our picture of brain functioning accords with some distinctive features of the religious systems dominant in human cultures. (shrink)

One of the most interesting questions raised in Cecile Fabre’s Cosmopolitan War concerns war for the sake of resources. Fabre argues that it is sometimes permissible to go to war for the sake of resources that the poor are entitled to. I agree with this, but I think it is true only in very restricted circumstances. I consider a number of arguments in favour of resource wars, showing many of them to fail. The most promising argument, I suggest, is that (...) those who possess resources that have unjustly been secured are complicit in posing future threats by contributing to a market for unjustly secured resources. Whilst this argument has some promise, even it, I suggest, is in no way decisive. (shrink)

La philosophie pratique de Kant / par Victor Delbos,...Date de l'edition originale: 1905Sujet de l'ouvrage: Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)Collection: Bibliotheque de philosophie contemporaineCe livre est la reproduction fidele d'une oeuvre publiee avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande editee par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliotheque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunite d'acceder a des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette (...) collection ont ete numerisees par la BnF et sont presentes sur Gallica, sa bibliotheque numerique.En entreprenant de redonner vie a ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilite de rencontrer un public elargi et participons a la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.Nous avons cherche a concilier la reproduction fidele d'un livre ancien a partir de sa version numerisee avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous esperons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entiere satisfaction.Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.frhttp: //gallica.bnf.fr/ark: /12148/bpt6k255788x. (shrink)

This essay is a response to the excellent contributions to the double special issue of Law and Philosophy on my book The Ends of Harm. I further defend the Duty View of punishment outlined in the book, responding to criticisms of that view. I also challenge the plausibility of retributivist accounts offered in response to the challenges to that view developed in The Ends of Harm.

The study examines a problematic hypothesis of possible approaches to identifying the quantum physical foundations of the functioning of consciousness. The authors proceed from the fact that in modern conditions, not a single science, nor all sciences taken together, gives a final answer to the question of the “mechanism” of the origin of thought. However, this does not mean at all that research in this direction needs to be stopped. The authors express confidence that modern and subsequent research into the (...) “quantum concept of consciousness” will lead to the identification of previously unknown patterns, opening the way to the formation of new principles and approaches. As an example, the corresponding Penrose - Hameroff concept is considered. Quantum mechanics complements the tools of neurobiology and other branches of neuroscience, which together form an interdisciplinary field of knowledge that is dynamically growing and developing. The authors are not apologists for the omnipotence of quantum physics. Quantum correlates of consciousness actually mean that it is not today’s quantum mechanics itself that explains the emergence of mental states, but the fact that in the birth of these states it is essential that in the very process of the formation of neurodynamic impulses in the neurons of the cerebral cortex that generate mental states, there are processes of quantum nature. It should also be recognized that the quantum-molecular level (nanolevel) of processes in the neurons of the brain really exists and it is this that is the source of proto-consciousness. Science strives to move forward, new research programs are emerging within the framework of quantum biology, quantum psychology, quantum information science, which in turn can shed light on the hypothesis of the “quantum concept of consciousness.”. (shrink)

This new Encyclopedia of Postmodernism is structured with biographical entries on all the key contributors to the postmodernism debate, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieum, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas and Wittgenstein. Providing an all-encompassing and welcome addition to the field, the Encyclopedia contains entries on foundational concepts of postmodernism which have revolutionized thinking in every intellectual discipline. This new Encyclopedia is the first to provide comprehensive A-Z coverage of the key individuals and concepts of postmodernism. The 300+ entries include: * African (...) American studies * Roland Barthes * binary opposition * Buddhism * comparative literature * cyberculture * death of God * Gilles Deleuze * desire * digital culture * end of history * globalization * grand narrative * improvisation * jouissance * logocentrism * metalanguage * sadism * theatre arts * trope * visuality * Cornell West * and much more. Fully cross-referenced and indexed, with suggestionsfor further reading. (shrink)

This article clarifies and further defends the view that the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, protected by Article 6(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights has implications for the substantive law. It is shown that a ‘purely procedural’ conception of the presumption of innocence has absurd implications for the nature of the right. Objections to the moderate substantive view defended are considered, including the acceptability of male prohibits offences, the difficulty of ascertaining intentions of legislatures and (...) the proper role of prosecutorial discretion. (shrink)

In this lucid and insightful study, Stephen Makin investigates a form of argument widespread in ancient Greek philosophy, where the absence of a reason for one alternative to be the case rather than another is used to establish substantive conclusions—where the alternatives are “indifferent”. Examples abound: Anaximander engages in such reasoning to show that the Earth does not move; Zeno of Elea to show that what is cannot be divided; Democritus to argue for finite divisibility, on the one hand, and (...) the infinite variety of atoms and worlds, on the other; not to mention the extensive use of such arguments in ancient skepticism. (shrink)

What are the laws of physics? -- The stuff that kicks back -- Point-of-view invariance -- Gauging the laws of physics -- Forces and broken symmetries -- Playing dice -- After the bang -- Out of the void -- The comprehensible cosmos -- Models of reality.

The article discusses some of the fundamental conceptual and theoretical aspects of rational choice and moral order. A distinction is drawn between constitutional interests and compliance interests, and it is argued that a viable moral order requires that the two interests somehow be brought into congruence. It is shown that with regard to the prospects for a spontaneous emergence of such congruence, a distinction between two kinds of moral rules which we call trust-rules and solidarity-rules is of crucial importance.

This article is a defence of a differentiated offence of rape. A differentiated offence is an offence which can be completed in a number of different ways that cannot be captured in a simple definition. It is argued that such an offence would meet several concerns that have been expressed in the feminist literature about the law of rape. It would assist certainty, it would reduce the extent to which the offence focuses on the conduct of the complainant, it would (...) allow the law to express that violence is central to the offence of rape where violence is present, but it would also allow convictions of rape where there is no violence. The argument is developed through critical engagement with the law of rape as set out in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The Sexual Offences Act, it is argued, fails adequately to meet the concerns outlined above. (shrink)

From Fodor and Pylyshyn’s celebrated 1988 systematicity argument in favour of a language of thought , a challenge to connectionist models arises in the form of a dilemma: either these models do not explain systematicity or they are implementations of LOT. From consideration of this challenge and of systematicity in domains other than language, defenders of connectionism have mounted a parallel systematicity argument against LOT which results in a new self-defeating dilemma, what I call here the systematicity challenge challenge : (...) either LOT does not explain nonlinguistic systematicity, or it is in no better position than its rivals to explain any systematicity, even linguistic systematicity. In this paper, first, I critically examine the SCC and some considerations that seem to support it. Second, I offer a response to the SCC by: showing that LOT was never meant to be a cognitive model restricted only to linguistic systematicity, and formulating a new argument in favour of LOT from nonlinguistic systematicity. Third, I argue that there is a central assumption underlying the SCC and maintain that it is mistaken. I conclude that the classical systematicity challenge continues to be fully valid for linguistic and nonlinguistic domains. (shrink)

I am extremely grateful to Daniel Farrell, Hamish Stewart, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Suzanne Uniacke for their careful, imaginative and probing responses to The Ends of Harm: The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law in this special issue of Criminal Law and Philosophy. It is especially gratifying that philosophers of this calibre, not all of whom have worked directly on the philosophy of punishment and the philosophy of criminal law, have engaged with Ends in this way.One of my ambitions in writing Ends (...) was to connect the philosophy of punishment more directly with a set of broader issues in normative ethics than is common in the philosophy of punishment. I hoped this would encourage others to see the justification of punishment as a small part of a more general normative theory of permissible harm. This special issue has further confirmed to me that this way of developing the philosophy of punishment is fruitful.I will not attempt to respond to all of the arguments i .. (shrink)

L'esprit philosophique de l'Allemagne et la pensee francaise / par Victor Delbos,...Date de l'edition originale: 1915Collection: Pages actuelles; 40Ce livre est la reproduction fidele d'une oeuvre publiee avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande editee par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliotheque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunite d'acceder a des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette collection ont ete (...) numerisees par la BnF et sont presentes sur Gallica, sa bibliotheque numerique.En entreprenant de redonner vie a ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilite de rencontrer un public elargi et participons a la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.Nous avons cherche a concilier la reproduction fidele d'un livre ancien a partir de sa version numerisee avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous esperons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entiere satisfaction.Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.frhttp: //gallica.bnf.fr/ark: /12148/bpt6k5608386g. (shrink)

Le spinozisme : cours professe a la Sorbonne en 1912-1913 / Victor Delbos,...Date de l'edition originale : 1916Ce livre est la reproduction fidele d'une oeuvre publiee avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande editee par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliotheque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunite d'acceder a des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette collection ont ete numerisees (...) par la BnF et sont presentes sur Gallica, sa bibliotheque numerique.En entreprenant de redonner vie a ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilite de rencontrer un public elargi et participons a la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.Nous avons cherche a concilier la reproduction fidele d'un livre ancien a partir de sa version numerisee avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous esperons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entiere satisfaction.Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.frhttp://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k55683664. (shrink)

The affective though and the intuition in moral judgment has been discovered lately (Haidt, 2001). This article analyzes the Moral Judgment theory (Kohlberg, 1964) and the basic logical operations (Piaget, 1950). The rational stages with a few intervention of emotion have been historically assumed by moral judgment theory, which judges the affective as a mistaken notion and as a simple cognitive extension (Greene & Haidt, 2002). This paper demonstrates that the Piagetian basic operations, seriation and categorization are applicable to an (...) affective system. In addition, the intuition is a moral determinant and finally, that neuronal activity confirms an intuitional cognition for the resolution of social problems. It is expected that the present deliberation guides and stimuli researches on the intuition and emotion in moral judgment. (shrink)

Lain (antropölogo, filösofo e historiador de la medicina) define como relaciön amistosa una serie de actividades que en esencia son: desear el bien del amigo por el amigo mismo, igualdad entre los amigos, comunalidad y comunicaciön entre los amigos y consideraciön de una relaciön entre personas. De la misma forma establece que una vez producido el encuentro, para que exista la amistad, deben cumplirse una serie de reglas, tales como el respeto, la liberalidad, la franqueza, la imaginaciön y el discernimiento (...) afectivo. Entre las patologias de la amistad se encuentran: la consideraciön del otro como objeto, alteraciones derivadas de la relaciön (estatus o niveles sociales), alteraciones entre los fines, los grados de amistad y de las propiedades de la relaciön amistosa, y que habitualmente se manifiestan como alteraciones en el respeto, la igualdad, la confidencia y la convivencia. Las alteraciones producidas en la relaciön amistosa pueden superarse si existe respeto, igualdad, franqueza, consideraciön de ambos como personas, liberalidad,... Todos los fenömenos que se han presentado en esta comunicaciön tienen como caracteristicas la alteraciön de alguna de estas reglas de mantenimiento de la amistad. (shrink)

Dans ce travail, je me propose d'examiner, en réfléchissant sur l'apophatisme, les modalités par lesquelles la philosophie entre ou peut entrer en dialogue avec la théologie. L'ouverture vers la pensée théologique est fondée sur le fait que l'apophatisme philosophique peut être compris comme une étape préparatoire à l'apophatisme théologique: le dernier niveau auquel le philosophe peut arriver dans sa méditation peut correspondre à la première étape de la pensée apophatique à un niveau theologique.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the dichotomy between factual and eidetic represents one of the fundamental presuppositions of the Husserlian phenomenology. No authentic understanding of the phenomenological reduction and of its constitutive role for the transcendental phenomenology is possible without a proper understanding of this dichotomy and of its relevance for the transcendental problem. One of the questions I am going to discuss in this paper is the following: Could it be possible that both the dichotomy (...) between fact and essence and that between empirical and eidetic sciences is actually at work in Husserl’s Ideen I as a phenomenologically uninvestigated presupposition of his undertaking? The other matter I am going to address in this paper is the concept of originary givenness and the legitimacy of the knowledge based on it (which is presupposed by the “principle of all principles” which Husserl formulates in Ideen I). I will argue that this concept is a revolutionary idea not only from a philosophical standpoint, but also from a more general scientific one, because it offers a new criteria of knowledge, that of the originary donating intuition. (shrink)