This book aims to provides an introductory survey of Montesquieu's economic ideas and a fresh examination of the longstanding controversy over the meaning and purpose of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws. No one doubts that Montesquieu helped to formulate the core liberal ideals at the heart of the development of liberal republicanism on both the European and American continents. Yet, questions remain about Montesquieu's political intentions. In particular, the view of Montesquieu as a conscious proponent of commercial modernity has (...) come under increasing scrutiny. While not ignoring recent scholarly challenges, Bibby moves the debate forward by uncovering the many hidden connections between commerce, liberty, and religion in The Spirit of the Laws. A failure to make these connections, Bibby argues, has led to significant interpretative errors. This book attempts to eliminate one source of the confusion which continues to cloud Montesquieu's political arguments in obscurity. (shrink)

Our present models and theories of African history and prehistory are profoundly influenced by the physical anthropologists’ perceptions of human reality in present-day Africa. Professor P. V. Tobias has suggested that the present-day people of Africa, excluding the recent arrivals from Europe and Asia, descended from a common proto-Negriform stock which gave birth first to the so-called “Khoisan” (I am using here the terminology of my source, not the historically justified Khoe and San, meaning the Hottentots and the Bushmen) and (...) later to the Negro genetic type. Of greater importance to archaeologists, who deal mainly with the so-called pre-history, is the fact that, genetically speaking, the difference between the “Khoisan” and the Negroids is smaller than the difference between these two African racial types and all other non-African types. This realisation tends to have one consequence: the pre-historic and even historic developments are generally perceived as explainable from within Africa, without any need for external clues or explanations. Archaeological finds are thus taken for evidence of a basically internal evolution and the finds of foreign glass beads, though very frequent and spread all over Africa, are seen as belonging to the same category as Persian, Chinese, or Arab ceramics and are explained as indication of a coastal trade. (shrink)

Lonergan writes both of a foundation for human knowing as well as of a functional specialty he termed ‘foundations’. Neither of these is the same as ‘foundation’ as the term is used by nonfoundationalists. Lack of clarity and differentiation regarding what is meant by ‘foundationalism’ sometimes informs the perception that Lonergan is a foundationalist. The burden of this essay is to show that Lonergan's philosophical and theological thought, as well as his use of the term ‘foundations’, fall awkwardly, if at (...) all, under anti-foundationalist strictures. There is a need to clarify and differentiate a range of terms and concepts in this regard. Lonergan shares with anti-foundationalists the rejection of ocular metaphors and other naïve approaches to human knowing. Lonergan's own search for ‘foundations’, which I argue is critical for a world Church consciousness and meets the Rahner-test for a world Church, is part of an overall project to situate knowing within identifiable, recurring patterns in the operations of human consciousness. (shrink)

La 4e de couv. indique : "Prenant le contrepied de l'interprétation nietzschéenne plutôt dépréciative du ressentiment, qui cadrait avec un certain souci de défendre les privilèges de l'aristocratie, cet essai suggère une interprétation juridique du ressentiment permettant d'en faire ressortir les aspects positifs. La démarche convie à un parcours en trois étapes. La première conduit de la définition que Spinoza donna de la haine en général au sentiment d'injustice, qui est un motif de haine particulier. La définition de l'injustice, correspondant (...) chez Aristote à des cas de haine donnant lieu à une colère justifiée, permet, à rebours, d'identifier et de déprécier la haine qui ne répond pas à cette définition. Se dévoile ainsi déjà en filigrane le discret génie du ressentiment. La deuxième étape chemine du sentiment d'injustice au ressentiment et permet de distinguer, à partir du critère du droit, le ressentiment de l'indignation. Si l'interprétation de Nietzsche approfondissait la distinction entre le ressentiment et l'acquiescement, l'interprétation juridique conduit à souligner la distinction entre le ressentiment et l'indignation. Redéfini comme sentiment du droit et sentiment juridique d'injustice, le ressentiment fait l'objet d'une réhabilitation dans le dernier temps de cet essai qui est aussi l'occasion d'aborder les relations entre droit et politique, droit et science, justice et amour et de réfléchir aux liens entre ressentiment, indignation et droits de l'homme à l'âge démocratique. En intégrant la vision de Jhering, qui faisait de la paix le but du droit et de la lutte le moyen de l'atteindre, en cherchant à corriger « l'erreur » de Nietzsche par Nietzsche, le droit, sous le rapport de ses liaisons avec les affects, pourrait peut-être se définir comme une arme morale, sociale et politique, plongée dans les complexions de la haine, qui sépare le ressentiment de l'indignation, la domination du premier ayant pour effet de modérer ou de subjuguer la seconde..". (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Nous pensons avoir souvent le choix entre plusieurs options et considérons que les personnes humaines qui exercent normalement ce pouvoir peuvent être tenues pour responsables de leurs actes. Ces croyances, en la liberté, en la responsabilité et en leur relation nécessaire, ont pu être entendues de manières différentes, voire niées. L'idée que les actions humaines sont déterminées par des facteurs qui ne dépendent pas des agents humains, comme le sont tous ou la plupart des événements de ce monde, est une (...) croyance ancienne (destin, prédestination) et moderne (déterminisme des lois de la nature). Et la pensée qu'une indétermination des actions humaines ne serait pas plus favorable à la liberté et à la responsabilité peut conduire à la conclusion que ces dernières sont impossibles. Pour affronter ce problème, il faut élucider les concepts, et évaluer les analyses ainsi que les arguments proposés de part et d'autre. En s'appuyant sur l'état contemporain de la discussion, ce livre défend la possibilité et la plausibilité de la conception "libertarienne" de la liberté. Elle serait incompatible avec le déterminisme et compatible avec l'indéterminisme, qui est la condition de la responsabilité morale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The Neo-Fregean view individuates concepts at the level of Fregean senses. It is an internalist view according to which concepts can be described as ways of thinking that imply classifications and epistemic/normative inferences. In this paper, I argue that the Neo-Fregean view of concepts adequately characterises the targets of conceptual engineering (CE), which I depict as the activity of purposefully changing our concepts in order to change classifications and/or concept-implicit inferences. I discuss and reject rival views that either reduce the (...) targets of CE to linguistic meanings or classification procedures or characterise concepts in a psychological or concept-externalist manner. I argue that the Neo-Fregean view is a more encompassing and adequate characterisation of the targets of CE. (shrink)

When consciousness is examined using subjective ratings, the extent to which processing is conscious or unconscious is often estimated by calculating task performance at the subjective threshold or by calculating the correlation between accuracy and awareness. However, both these methods have certain limitations. In the present article, we propose describing task accuracy and awareness as functions of stimulus intensity as suggested by Koch and Preuschoff . The estimated lag between the curves describes how much stimulus intensity must increase for awareness (...) to change proportionally as much as accuracy and the slopes of the curves are used to assess how fast accuracy and awareness increases and whether awareness is dichotomous. The method is successfully employed to assess consciousness characteristics on data from four different awareness scales. (shrink)

Comment les juristes pensent-ils les fondements du droit? Le constructivisme juridique apporte une réponse inédite à cette interrogation. Cet essai le révèle en tant que modèle épistémologique permettant de refonder le droit par la science juridique. Inexploré jusqu'alors en droit, le constructivisme apparaît comme une structure de la pensée des juristes qui se manifeste en période de crise à travers un processus en forme de boucle révolutionnant successivement les méthodes, le concept et les valeurs de la connaissance juridique (fig. de (...) la couverture). Par une plongée au cur de la Rome antique, ce premier tome consacré aux origines romaines du constructivisme juridique étudie l'émergence du jusnaturalisme dans une société romaine en crise marquée par un droit privé en pleine mutation. Il décrit comment la transformation du savoir classique des jurisconsultes en une science du droit rationnelle et abstraite est l'uvre d'un fondement constructiviste du droit en mesure de répondre aux réalités sociopolitiques. Et si l'étude historique de ces temps de crise pouvait nous aider à comprendre les évolutions du droit d'aujourd'hui? (shrink)

Comparison of behavioural measures of consciousness has attracted much attention recently. In a recent article, Szczepanowski et al. conclude that confidence ratings predict accuracy better than both the perceptual awareness scale and post-decision wagering when using stimuli with emotional content . Although we find the study interesting, we disagree with the conclusion that CR is superior to PAS because of two methodological issues. First, the conclusion is not based on a formal test. We performed this test and found no evidence (...) that CR predicted accuracy better than PAS . Second, Szczepanowski et al. used the present version of PAS in a manner somewhat different from how it was originally intended, and the participants may not have been adequately instructed. We end our commentary with a set of recommendations for future studies using PAS. (shrink)

We have developed a process model that learns in multiple ways while finding faults in a simple control panel device. The model predicts human participants' learning through its own learning. The model's performance was systematically compared to human learning data, including the time course and specific sequence of learned behaviors. These comparisons show that the model accounts very well for measures such as problem‐solving strategy, the relative difficulty of faults, and average fault‐finding time. More important, because the model learns and (...) transfers its learning across problems, it also accounts for the faster problem‐solving times due to learning when examined across participants, across faults, and across the series of 20 trials on an individual participant basis. The model shows how learning while problem solving can lead to more recognition‐based performance, and helps explain how the shape of the learning curve can arise through learning and be modified by differential transfer. Overall, the quality of the correspondence appears to have arisen from procedural, declarative, and episodic learning all taking place within individual problem‐solving episodes. (shrink)

Brentano is perhaps most famously renowned for his re-deployment of Scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ in the elaboration of his novel science of ‘descriptive psychology’ in the mid-1870s and 1880s. In this re-deployment, however, Brentano adapted the original Scholastic meanings of both of these terms. Thus Brentano advanced not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality.1 These theses, however, are often not properly distinguished, and consequently they are more often confused. Nevertheless, once the two theses are distinguished, (...) Brentano’s basic descriptive-psychological tenet of the intentionality of consciousness is more readily understandable on its own terms. Whether Brentano’s descriptive-psychological tenet is entirely acceptable philosophically, or not, of course, is another matter but this presupposes understanding in a straightforward sense what Brentano’s doctrine is. In this article, I will be concerned mainly with Brentano’s re-introduction of ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874),2 even though it is Brentano’s (second) thesis on ‘intentional act’, one that he developed after his 1874 publication, that is more generally well known and examined. While acknowledging that many versions of ‘Brentano’s thesis’, as it is usually (and loosely) referred to by commentators today, have been re-worked in modern philosophy of mind, this article focuses attention on some of the main points of convergence and deviance between the original Scholastic concept and Brentano’s ‘new’ concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (shrink)